crazyelf

So it looks like the media is finally getting onto the fact that having a whole bunch of homeless people in the one place leads to drug use, which isn't such a great thing when you have kids hanging around. That's what Occupy Melbourne is currently becoming known for. I'm most entertained by the comment on that posting, with people claiming that the Salvation Army is secretly working for the "1%" because they (gasp) own property. I guess that when you're an unemployed homeless drug addict owning property would seem like something only evil people would do, particularly when you're high on drugs and in the company of children.

None of this should really come as a surprise. When a group like Occupy Melbourne comes together with no real central theme it's inevitable that someone else will come along and hijack the whole affair. People like the Socialist Alliance have a strong history of doing this sort of thing. It must be working out for them, too, as Communists tend to come dead last when it comes to actual elections. That's people power right there. In the last federal election they received fewer votes than the Climate Sceptics. People that are wilfully ignorant enough to disregard decades worth of scientific research are more popular than Communists, so supporting movements like Occupy Melbourne is a tried and tested political tool for generating support... for the people you're protesting against.


Oops!

Sure, the Socialist Alliance did manage to get someone elected to the Yarra City Council, but so what? The Yarra City Council is so pathetic it actually gave me money, which is a pretty solid argument for why they don't actually matter.

Back to my original point, Occupy Melbourne was hijacked by the Socialists for a time, but they've largely lost interest in the whole deal after they worked out that a prolonged protest is really hard and that the media stops paying attention to it after awhile. What you're left with are a few homeless people that have to sleep somewhere so it may as well be there, and people that can't count. It's hardly a movement. It's not having an impact on global finances. About the only thing it is doing is making the police better at evicting people, so I guess there is a positive after all.

This post is over.

The idea that I could be a responsible adult is as reprehensible to me as it is to anyone that knows me. I have all the calling cards that lead one to claim such a title, being a house, stable employment, a partner that doesn't always try to kill me and I can sustain myself for weeks on end without resorting to fast food, yet still the idea that I am responsible is alien to me. Hopefully it's also alien to everyone else, and thus no one will ever think to grant me with responsibility.

Superhero movies have been piping on about power and responsibility ever since Spiderman. Spiderman 3 was an excellent example of what occurs when one disregards responsibility in favour of a terrible dance scene. With great power comes great responsibility the movies claim, but what the hell does responsibility mean anyway? In movies it seems to be the capacity to beat up bad people, but I don't think that could hold true to most people day to day. It doesn't even seem responsible in the light of the movies. I'm pretty sure there are better ways to deal with people you have a problem with than punching the shit out of them. If someone's really such a problem that violence is necessary, perhaps shooting them at a distance would be a more responsible approach?

Most Hollywood takes on responsibility seems to revolve around the strong helping the weak. That's all well and good, and it's certainly charitable, but is it in fact responsible? If we continually lift the weak from their ruts are they not simply becoming dependent on our strength rather than developing their own? Is it more responsible to give a homeless guy spare change, or to walk on by? Either way he'll still be homeless tomorrow, but if you take the charitable/responsible course of action he'll also be drunk.

It seems to me that responsibility is largely to do with opinion and myth. It's all very well to say that something should or shouldn't be a certain way, but without enough strength behind you to back up your position there isn't much you can do to make it so. When you've strength behind you the rules are yours for the making. So responsibility, essentially, comes down to picking the winning side of an ideological stance and hitting the opposing side until it submits to your will.

Ha! I guess I am responsible.

This post is over.

The Queen was in Melbourne the other day, trying to soak up some of the vibes that come from the world's most liveable city. Perhaps that's how she manages to live so long. In any case she was here and I didn't go to see her, so I can't say for sure that she didn't drain a little bit of life from all those that went to view her, but some of those children looked pretty damn tired.

The Occupy Melbourne people had decided not to protest while the Queen was in town in a remarkable display of civic understanding. They stated that protesting while the Queen was in town would undermine what they're trying to achieve, which is interesting because it implies that they actually know what that is. So they put it to the vote and in the end they democratically decided not to ruin the Queen's trip. All 250 of them. It could also be that 250 people realised that if they disrupted the Queen's stay when the thousands of people that came out to see her didn't want them to, that they may have to face an actual popular movement and have the crap beaten out of them.

In any case, it was a wise move, and managed to have people pay them a bit of respect for a change for acting so nobly.

The morons protesting against the carbon tax, however, acted in a somewhat less noble fashion.

Before I go on I would like to just reiterate the fact that these people are indeed a-grade fuck-wits. People that don't believe that global warming is taking place are on a level of idiocy so high that they should have long ago died from lack of oxygen. The human brain needs oxygen in order to operate, which is why a lack of oxygen is no problem for these lobotomised cunt-monkeys. The science is in, and has been for a damned long time. If you don't agree with that you should be put down.

So there were fifty "people" with banners asking the Queen to stop the carbon tax. These people went out of their way to make an arse of themselves when the proposed anti-social elements of society had decided that protesting while the Queen was about was in poor taste. That's like Alan Jones walking into a gay sauna while Bob Downe decides to take his mother out to dinner, which now I think about it is the exact sort of thing Alan Jones would do.

Go for your life, Occupy Melbourne. You may not have any solid arguments and you may not be all that intelligent, but at least you're not anti-carbon tax.

Thanks, Lizzy, for showing the people of Australia who the real scum are in the current Australian political scene.

For those of you that have been living under a rock for the past few months, there are a series of protests occurring around the world in the wake of Occupy Wall Street. If you haven't heard about it you're probably exceptionally disenfranchised and should join in. By and large these protests have been peaceful affairs but not on every occasion. Sometimes they've been dangerously jovial.


They speak French so all they can do is retreat and surrender, which is strange because Jean-Claude Van Damme isn't about that at all.

In Australia, hippies from the town of Melbourne decided to join in on the “Occupy Something” trend and started their own movement, which was creatively named “Occupy Melbourne” because the fringe dwellers of society just love copying Americans. I was kind of interested in what the people of Occupy Melbourne were interested in achieving, because Melbourne is the world's most liveable city so what the hell were they complaining about? I trawled their website looking for the answer and eventually found that they didn't really know what they were doing. The closest thing to a reason for being there was this, which basically says, “America's doing this, so we should do it, too!”

The protesters occupied the city square. The thing about the city square is that it's not really designed to accommodate a series of tents and doesn't have the drainage to allow for the swift removal of gallons of bong-water, and thus the Melbourne council eventually decided that they had to go. They were told to leave on Friday by 9 AM, and then the Victorian Police pepper sprayed people and made fun of their sexuality until they left. Alternatively they gave them ample warning and broke it up after the professional protesters had taken things too far.

Whatever you believe happened there are some pressing questions that must be asked about this occupation.

What the hell were you all protesting about?

If you know you're going to have to fight police, shouldn't your front line be made up of people that actually eat meat?

If you're going to claim that your protest is a popular movement for the common man, maybe you should get people to come to the protest that aren't unemployed hippies forced to live on cat food?

If you live in Australia you may have heard about something called the carbon tax. Depending on the media sources that you've been consuming the carbon tax is either Christ or the anti-Christ. If you've been waiting for the government to do something about global warming for around 20 years it's probably falling into the Christ category. If you're really worried that people will start paying attention to the fact that you run a media organisation that routinely conducts illegal wiretaps then the carbon tax is the anti-Christ.

Regardless of how you feel about the tax there's a good deal of interest in the person responsible for all of this. There's a great many people (or, in the case of Rupert Murdoch, a Lich) stating that Julia Gillard is responsible as she once said that there wouldn't be a carbon tax under any government she leads. I feel that this is an unfair assessment as the current government is a patchwork made up of the clientele of the Mos Eisley Cantina and a few pumpkin seeds that some Labor party backbencher thought may be magical. As a result I feel it's unfair to say that Julia Gillard is wholly responsible. It's even more unfair to categorise her conduct as Prime Minister as leadership.

When the media is tired of pinning the blame on Julia Gillard many other commentators state that the real person responsible is Bob Brown, the leader of the Greens. One of the pumpkin seeds that was picked up by a Labor backbencher was in fact Adam Bandt, a Green's candidate that won the seat of Melbourne in the last election. As a result of that it would be more fair to state that Adam Bandt is responsible but as Adam doesn't really have a personality it's easier to state that the Bob Brown is, as he's homosexual and therefore fabulous.

Despite all the media coverage I don't think it truly highlights the one person that really made all this happen. As a supporter of the carbon tax I would like to say a very big thank you to this man, Simon Olsen:


The best loser ever!

Not many of you know who this man is, so allow me to explain. During the last federal election the seat of Melbourne was being contested between the Greens and the Labor party. Very few people in Melbourne were voting for the Liberal party as Melbourne was once voted the world's most liveable city, which suggests a dearth of Liberal supporters. There were still some that voted for them, though, and seeing that the Greens didn't win enough of the primary vote to get them over the line votes had to go back to preferences.

Simon, being a visionary, had decided to put on his voting forms a preference for the Greens. What this means is that a Liberal voter would be handed a voting form by a Liberal party supporter which said, “Vote like this, vote one for Liberal, which in the seat of Melbourne means you're throwing your vote away, and then vote two for the Greens, because humpity dumpity dooooo!” I may be paraphrasing. I don't think I'll ever understand why someone in Simon's position would do that, but he's a visionary so I don't question it. Although the Liberal party giving a preference to the Greens on their voting forms is much akin to a KKK candidate preferencing Malcolm X, it is not for me to wonder why. Visionaries do remarkable things like this for reasons that are inexplicable to most people.

As a result of this preferencing the Greens, Adam Bandt, and thus our secret gay Prime Minister Bob Brown, now reign supreme.

So thank you, Simon. Thank you for the carbon tax. Thank you for your visionary behaviour that has allowed the nation to take a step forward rather than backwards into the feudal reign of terror so clearly envisioned by the terrifying leader of your Liberal party at the moment. We know you didn't want that, and I'm sure that's why you did what you did.

Thank you!

If you want to thank Simon for yourself, you can send him an email at: simon.olsen@vic.liberal.org.au which would be a very nice thing to do. It would also be nice if you tweeted about the guy, because so far all the tweets involving the term Simon and Olsen are to do with the Olsen twins, and no one deserves that.

Recently the slaughter of animals has been in the press quite a bit due to the Australian people finding out that Indonesian abattoirs aren't nice places for animals. It's made the front page of The Age today after people worked out that 15 Australian abattoirs have permission to slit the throats of animals without stunning them first so that they're conscious as they slowly bleed to death. This is in accordance with religious tradition of both Muslim and Jewish dietary practices because their God is, apparently, a total arsehole.

Religion is an interesting thing. In one sense it gives many people a set of guidelines to live their lives by which are principled and quite noble. There are many people in the world that are much better off because of religion. On the other hand it provides some people with a shield to hide behind so that their actions cannot be questioned. I am very big on religion. I think that, by and large, religion does a lot more good in the world than it does bad. I'm a huge fan of the social groups that are formed because of religion and the sense of sharing that many religious groups have for not only each other but also outsiders that are interested in what they're doing. That's why this sort of shit pisses me off.

Rabbi Mordechai Gutnick stated in The Age that calls to ban the conscious slaughter of animals was motivated by ignorance and anti-Semitism.



Fuck you, Mordechai.

It's not anti-Semitism to want to limit the suffering of an animal that's getting killed, it's basic morality. If you're saying that basic morality is anti-Semitic then I really don't see a place for Judaism in the world, at least not the psychotic orthodox kind that leads to making outlandish statements like that. Anti-Semitism isn't a shield that you can raise every time someone says something that doesn't completely surrender to the world-view that Jews can do whatever the hell they want. Further on in the article he states, "We make a concession for beef..." which shows that the rules on this sort of thing are actually flexible. The Talmud and Mishna are Jewish texts which involve Rabbis debating the intricacies of God's word. It's actually one of the things that impresses me most about Judaism is the room that it makes for debate within the Talmud:

He [R. Eliezer] said to them: “if the law is with me, the heavens will prove it!” A bat kol (“heavenly voice”) issued forth: “Why do you dispute Rabbi Eliezer, when the law is with him in everything!”

But Rabbi Yehoshua arose and said: “Not in the heavens is it…” [Deut. 30:12]. What did he mean by “not in the heavens?” Said Rabbi Yirmiya: “The Torah has already been given at Mount Sinai; we give no credence to a bat kol, because You had already written in the Torah at Mount Sinai, ‘Decide according to the majority’” [Exod. 23:2]

Rabbi Nathan met Elijah. He said to him, “What did the Holy One Blessed Be He do then?”

He said to him, “He laughed and said, ‘My children have beaten me. My children have beaten me.”

This is perhaps one of the most beautiful lines in the Talmud in which God itself, the God that threatened to murder the entirety of the Israelites several times as they were walking through the desert because they questioned its orders and murdered Moses because he didn't give it full credit after he drew water from a rock, says, "Okay, you guys can decide whatever you want to, it's fine with me."

Judaism, within its own religious texts, has leeway to debate and modify religious practice to better suit the changing world. As long as it doesn't violate the fundamentals of the core rules laid down by God it's okay. Instead of harking back to these impressive foundations of Judaism, however, this Mordechai says, "You're anti-Semitic if you don't agree." He rejects God's Law for Godwin's Law.

It's not anti-Semitic to think that animals shouldn't die horribly. To say otherwise is the sort of knee jerk crap that makes people hate religion, and rightly so. If the shield of anti-Semitism is constantly raised in this manner it will eventually be beaten out of the hands of those that raise it.

Let's save the call of anti-Semitism for when things are actually anti-Semitic, and let's make God laugh at the lack of suffering in animals.

This post is over.

Like many people I watched Go Back to Where You Came From over the past three nights, a show in which a group of three people with strong views about asylum seekers take the asylum seeker journey in reverse. At the end of the three days the majority of the participants had changed their views about asylum seekers. Darren Hassan, however, was very vocal about his continued opposition to them coming to the country by boat.

I was left wondering how someone could be so adamantly staunch in their views on the subject when confronted with human suffering at the level he had seen so I looked around for a bit seeing what I could work out about the guy. I was wondering if perhaps he was a serial killer, because he was from South Australia.

His participant profile page on his website states this, however:

As an aspiring politician he ran unsuccessfully for the Democrats at the last two Federal elections. He has since joined the Liberal party.

His political aspirations are very telling. First he's attempted to run twice with a now defunct political party and has changed allegiance to the Liberals, who have a staunch anti-refugee stance so they can win the lucrative Australian racist vote. In order to keep his dreams of becoming a political creature alive he agreed to participate in Go Back to Where You Came From.

You could see in several sections that Darren was struggling with what he was being confronted with. In fact he went so far as to say one of the most stupid things in the entire show, "You're forcing us to feel empathy," which was kind of the entire point of the project to begin with. He managed to look like a complete dick throughout the show, but his reasons for doing so are pretty clear.

Check out his blog.

It's basically a venomous attack on asylum seekers and a call back to the immigration policies of the Howard era, kowtowing to his new Liberal masters. If political opportunity is what he's looking for he may actually get somewhere with vicious rhetoric like this. He may become the Liberal party's shining black knight that they can wave at the asylum seeker issue with calls of, "I completely understand what these people go through, but they're scum anyway."

It doesn't change the fact that he's had to sell his soul to do it, and anyone that's willing to go to these lengths in order to grab hold of a scrap of power should have it stripped from them as soon as is humanly possible.

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For those of you that have seen both the Ninja and I at the Woodford Folk Festival in the past, we've applied to return there. Perhaps we'll get in, perhaps we won't. I do enjoy going to Woodford and the Ninja seems to enjoy it also. The best thing about the festival is that when we put on a show people show up, which doesn't seem to be the way things work in Melbourne. In any case, here's the artist profile for your entertainment:

"Crazy Elf dresses like a pirate and can bench press more than you can. He hangs out with the Ninja despite being sworn enemies. Crazy Elf says offensive things and the Ninja communicates only through violence. They are not friends."

In any case, we could be back this year. Things to keep in mind. I'll keep you all posted as to what's occurring with it.

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The Ninja and I sat down to watch Rocky IV the other night, as part of our ongoing mission to watch all the Rocky movies together. We were doing pretty well all in all until we got to Rocky III, after which we had to take a small break in order to recuperate. One year later we decided we were ready for Rocky IV.

I remember having watched segments of Rocky IV as a child. Like many things from my childhood the memory is blurred with visions of Legend of Zelda, getting chased by highly venomous wildlife and punching other children for no discernible reason. What I do remember of the movie was the cross training montage, where both Rocky and Ivan Drago were training for the upcoming fight. Ivan Drago is using evil Russian science to train whereas Rocky is using blind stupidity. I remember thinking as a child, “Man, being dumb must be awesome.”

Some of you may not have seen Rocky IV, in which case I should give a brief outline of the storyline so that you don't have to inflict yourself with it. The story opens with Rocky beating the crap out of Mr T with such ferocity that you pity the fool. In fact this happens so fast that Mr T doesn't even say anything, which is an inspired piece of editing. We then progress to Rocky and Apollo Creed punching each other and freeze framing so that we never know which of the two wins the match, like at the end of Rocky III only they don't turn into a painting this time.

After that Rocky gives his abusive brother in a law, Paulie, a robot for his birthday. This robot.


It's the one on the right.

For some reason this had slipped my mind upon viewing the film as a child, which is strange because something as terrifying as that would usually stick in my memory. It looks just like the aliens that are said to abduct people in the night and probe them. Later on it's reprogrammed by Paulie to have a subservient personality and female vocal patterns, meaning that advanced artificial intelligence programming is one of the skills that he managed to pick up while being a hopeless alcoholic working in a slaughterhouse.

Anyway, while Rocky is purchasing technology that doesn't exist yet for his abusive brother in law that just happens to be capable of moments of hyper genius off screen, a Russian fighter, Ivan Drago, makes an appearance on TV while Apollo Creed is playing in his swimming pool. Apollo sees this as an opportunity to beat the crap out of an amateur fighter in an attempt to cash in on the popularity that will generate, which is basically the plot to the first movie. This means that over four movies Apollo hasn't progressed even slightly as a character.

Rocky is too stupid to draw this comparison so he goes along as Apollo's partner to the press conference. At the press conference Apollo behaves like a raving jackass and insults the shit out of the Russians, who respond by saying that Apollo is old. It's a remarkably tame response in light of the torrent of abuse that Apollo had been spouting, but Apollo is offended and leaves the press conference in a rage. Ivan Drago says nothing at all throughout the entire press conference, and instead his wife and trainer do all the talking. I'm sure they have character names, but I can only remember them as presented. Let's call them the inexplicably evil Russians.

Meanwhile Paulie has reprogrammed his robot.

Eventually there is a fight between Ivan Drago and Apollo Creed. Ivan is standing on the boxing ring as it's rises from underground to the centre of the stadium, and Apollo descends from the ceiling on a giant golden bull while James Brown sings, “Living in America.” He then flaunts about the ring in a manner so obnoxious and jingoistic it would make a Republican blush. Ivan, like the audience, stares at him with uncomprehending disinterest. Then, with the same level of disinterest, Ivan kills Apollo Creed. The crowd is upset by this and boo Ivan.

This is presented as tragic. As a viewer I felt relieved.

Rocky then agrees to fight Ivan in Russia. Paulie comes to help him train by complaining a lot about how crap Russia is. Adrian, Rocky's wife, doesn't come until later. Rocky's son is strangely left in America with no parents to look after him. I don't know where the robot is.

There is a training sequence that has been addressed earlier. Ivan trains using sports science, a team of trainers and drugs. Rocky chops wood and pulls a sled through the snow, both activities well known to increase punching power. He doesn't do a single second of sparing. He does grow a beard.

Ivan and Rocky then fight in Russia. The fight starts with a display of Russian jingoism, which is remarkably restrained in comparison to what Apollo was responsible for earlier. Rocky knocks out Ivan in the last round and the crowd that was originally hostile applauds him despite him having felled their national hero. He then says, “We can all change,” and everyone cheers. The movie then mercifully ends.

The robot remains unaccounted for.

I was going to say something about how Ivan is never really presented as a bad guy as such, but more a pawn of the evil Russian science team behind him. However writing all of this has drained my will to run commentary on anything ever again. It seems that Rocky really can beat the crap out of anything. It's a shame the audience is included.

This post is over.

I've been keeping tabs on the alleged death of Osama bin Ladin as it's been one hell of an interesting news week. The conflicting stories that are flying out of the woodwork make for some entertaining reading and viewing. I'm yet to meet anyone in the flesh that actually believes that he was killed by the U.S. but it seems that most Americans are hell bent on taking the word of their government at face value. Because we all know how well that works out for them.


Whoops!

Anyway, the greatest of these stories to come out recently has been the tale of the heroic military dog that took part in the raid somehow. I'm not making up that term, by the way, it's seriously referred to by the media as a heroic military dog. Further media releases have informed us that the identity of the dog will remain a secret, which should stem the tide of concern that would otherwise be out there for the pooch. Surely it's high on the hit list of the Islamic militants' most wanted by now.

Then again if the dog's identity needed to be protected doesn't that mean that this is a dog that is somehow going to be identified if the media accidentally let the name slip? Does the dog have a very distinctive name rather than one that millions of other dog have, or it it just that this dog is the only Fido on the military payroll?

Hang on a minute, there aren't that many famous dogs that would be capable of something like this that would work well in a team. I think I've figured out who killed Osama, folks:


Rice ron Robama!

This is probably a more realistic take on the story because if these guys were involved it was just someone dressing up as Osama to scare everyone else. I find that much more believable.