Ineligible to vote

So here’s this week’s joke. I get an email asking me to take part in a survey. If I complete it I will earn $1. Ooh I wonder, what might I spend my hard earned dollar on – maybe an onion or a carrot might be nice.  

My answers to the first few questions will determine my eligibility.

I click my residential state, my age, my gender, and get to question 4: What medical conditions do you have? 

 I answer: None of the above.

Result: I am not eligible to take part in the survey. 

And poof, there go my dreams of a fresh new vegetable.

In the meantime I watched the presidential public forum broadcast between Krudd and Blabbot  until my eyeballs popped out and my brain exploded through my ears, and I switched over to Spicks and Specks. At least the answers there were fun and entertaining – as were the questions. And there was no wavy line that went predictably up and down to record whether I liked what I was hearing regardless of whether anyone was actually speaking at the time - or what they said.

I am still befuddled by how you can promise to create more jobs while announcing you will take your trusty little hatchet to the public service where real people, do daily grind, at the behest of politicians and managers with ever-changing new vision and are now told thanks for nothing, you’re just a bludger,  and join the dole queue. Should have got a job at the Cadbury factory.

Equally I wonder if I will get my relationship voucher, given I am not engaged, married, one of a gay couple or in a de facto relationship. And if I do get it, will it pay my rego to a Hash House Harrier event where all my worries fade away with a bit of dribbly conversation, a glass of bubbles, and a load of sheep dung?

At least the magpies are firing at the moment.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Art Work of the Week

Go you Pie boys!

Tea with Daisy

It’s been a football kinda week.

 On Friday 21 I took the car out for a toddle and arrived at ANZ stadium to see the Pies play the Swans. I should have known that a loss at the opponent’s home ground would lead me to want to poke out one of my eyes with a bodkin. I would then truly be the one eyed supporter my friends accuse me of.

Good thing my fellow Magpie lover and I had bought a stash of gin and tonic so we could slink off discretely to our room – above the victory hotel – and drown our sorrows.  Equally fortuitous was the fact that mobile service was intermittent so we had a good excuse to ignore calls from the ABC followers (Anyone But Collingwood). Regardless of their mighty persistence….if only the boys had been…but I am drifting off into daydream….

Monday was Brownlow day and despite his two weeks in-house suspension for being a naughty boy, I still held a faint hope that Swannie might do it two years in a row. He came close.

I love the red carpet bit where the footy wives and dates parade and tell us who has donated their gown, and the boys do likewise with their suits - which are all remarkably similar. 

Brynne Edelsten is my favourite, and this year’s ballooning tutu number was a stand out. You have to give her points for brazen sassiness. I might even have to put a reminder in to my telly so it pokes me when her reality show starts.

But I didn’t vote for her in my top three best dressed and I obviously got that wrong anyway as my free tickets to the grand final have not arrived yet.

The medal presentation had some interesting moments. I’m sure the table didn’t know that their conversation had been picked up when one ‘date’ who tried to straddle her footballer’s knee and  give him mouth to mouth resuscitation,  was told in very stern terms by the Captain’s wife  to: Get off  him. Interestingly, Miss slinky red dress was nowhere to be seen when the cameras panned the table the next time.

There were great video clips. I liked that Jaffa headed up the fans section. I liked the tag line we’ve seen for the finals: This is greatness – although in the universal scheme of things that’s probably something of an overstatement. …..And if you count the Pies form last Friday it was anything but great…..whoops...I digress again…… 

Back to my point.  Behind Jaffa’s head as the clip came to an end was loomed large: THIS IS 

GRATENESS.

Irony?  I ask myself .

Are they trying to say something about fans being grating?

Is this a go at the literacy level of Collingwood fans that my so called friends refer to continually during football season? 

Or, did someone just stuff up?

As the week went on I finally was able to breathe out again when Travis signed for the next five years with the knowledge that Mick would not whisk him away to the arch rivals Caaaaarlton, And I can continue to watch him throw hands-full of dirt each week - that's literally, not figuratively.

So, I’m now preparing for the grand final. This year I won’t have to sit on the edge of the seat, fear a heart attack, or listen to the abuse of the ABC supporters.  I will even get to hear Paul Kelly instead of the bat out of hell let loose previously by someone who obviously had bats in the belfry.

 And I won’t miss out on the barbeque because I am sobbing in to my tissue.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This week's art work:

 The best I can do given I am posting early.

You have already seen the magpie and the swan. I have not got a picture of a hawk....so you will have to settle for a chook.... at least it's still in the bird family.

Spartacus. Acrylic on canvas

Demonising the Desperate

Demonising the Desperate

Shock jocks have always raised my hackles. So have the weasel words that dominate the spin of politicians. But I am totally over the demonising of desperate people displaced by political persecution, civil war, religious factionalism, invasion, famine and the range of atrocious situations encountered by many who are not fortunate enough to have been born into a free, stable and democratic life.

      This week I’ve:

·         listened to a program on Radio National about NATO responses to a refugee boat on  which over two thirds of people died while potential rescue boats stood by and did nothing

·         read about attacks on immigrants and refugees in Greece 

·         Watched the SBS’s latest version of Go back to where you came from.

And what do they have in common? 

-          People using language that dehumanises the desperate by referring to them as criminals, queue jumpers, illegals, and security threats. Even the holding places are referred to as detention centres .

       I’m over hearing about the queue

I’ve come into Australia at a number of airports and I while I see queues for Australian passport holders, foreign passport holders, diplomats and air crew, I haven’t yet see the queue line marked refugees.

      I’m over hearing the catchcry: Stop the boats.

I can understand that no one wants to see desperate people taken advantage off by ruthless others who pile them on to unseaworthy vessels for profit. But I have to believe that no one willingly jeopardises their own life and safety and that of their families, if their reasons are not absolutely compelling.

  

I’m over the scaremongering that wants us to think that our whole national security and way of life is at risk from invading hordes. I’m still getting over the Reds under the Bed scare of my childhood.

So, my advice is ditch the detached rhetoric and political spin and start talking about real human beings who are in desperate need so we can find sensible solutions to assist them. 

In the end, it’s about who we are as a civilised society. And it’s how we deal with the most vulnerable and desperate around us that determines who we are as a culture.

      ******************************************************************************

New Art works this week: 

Lake Tuggers Tweet

 I am currently preparing works for entry in the 2012 Rotary  Outdoor Art Show to be held in City Walk Canberra opening September 29.
www.qarts.com.au

Backyard Tweet