Peeve

Some things give me the staggering irrits. Minor things. Things that in the great scheme of things do not matter. Things that on a scale of 100, where 100 equals death, would rate a 2. But some of these things have a cumulative effect.which can really crap up your day. Some of these things are usually committed by other people and therefore you have no power over the outcome. I think that is the issue. You have no power. Some of these things are:

People whose conceptual ability is so limited that they cannot related the idea of an arriving bus with the concept of actually paying for their journey. They get on the bus, lock eyes with the driver and then realise that there is an inherent contract in operation whereby the driver takes the person to an approximate location in exchange for small round metallic discs. Once they realise this, the person then dives into their handbag (yes, they are usually women) to locate their purse and rummage through it looking for aforementioned small metallic discs to complete the contractual negotiations. Meanwhile, the rest of the passengers are looking for any available small firearms that may have been left behind by previous travellers.


Microsoft Internet Explorer. How I hate it. How much do I need to move up to Mac OSX. Bill Gates has much to answer for .


John Howard. I may have mentioned this before.


People who phone AIDSLine and hang up as soon as you pick up the phone.


Television commercials with voiceovers that scream at you. What, in the name of humanity, do they think that by screaming at their customers that is going to induce them to patronise their Rug Clearance, CD Clearance, Book Clearance, Manchester Clearance... Are we seeing a pattern here?


Marge, who at 3.37 a.m. decided she wants to go outside and, after nine years of fruitless effort, still thinks that by clawing at the carpet she can actually dig her way under the door and escape to freedom. She also believed she can dig her way under the bathroom door if I am having a shower and she is locked out of the bathroom. She really is not very bright. Also, what is the deal that a 3.5 kg cat can shift me through the night so that she has the middle of a queen size bed and I am contorted around her? How does she do that? I guess this qualifies as my pet peeve.

Sing

Wednesday night at MGLC rehearsals was fun. We have a new chorus patron, the wonderful Angela Toohey. A great singer and musical performer, she is currently in rehearsal for the arena production of Boy From Ozwhich stars Hugh Jackman (sigh!). Angela reprises her role as Liza Minelli, which she originated in the first Australian production.

Angela is our third patron. She joins John-Michael Howson and Jimmy Somerville. One of the Chorus members, Angela (not Toohey) took a photo of the Chorus with Jimmy at our recent concert with him and then arranged for him to sign individual copies for us all. How cool. Thanks Angela!! I will upload it when I get my scanner working again.

Liar

John Howard.

Australian Prime Miniature.

It had to be said.

After ten years in power, do you really need me to point out the evidence?

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Media

We now return you to normal transmission. Or as normal as it gets in this blog.

But exactly what is normal transmission these days? I caught the start of Channel Seven's "curent affairs" show, Today Tonight and saw the most appalling beat up of an article about alleged political correctness. They lead with the change of the name Fairy Penguin to Little Penguin (a name change that actually occured several years ago for reasons a birdwatcher could explain) and said that it was because of complaints from the gay community. I have NEVER read anywhere in any gay publication anyone advocating a change of name. Of course the story never actually quoted anyone proposing such a change. They didn't even interview the supposed Queensland source of the story, Sea World..

More examples were cited, usually regurgitated from some dodgy overseas sources and then to lend the article a veneer of respectability they trot out some alleged media studies academic which proceeds to bag gays and any other minority.

Talk about a set up.

Apparently television stations can now broadcast blatant lies knowing full well that they can get away with it as long as they attack minorities. They must have learnt that from somewhere...

Cycle

Relying on a bicycle as your personal transport gives a person a new insight into the way traffic works. I was nearly cleaned up by a car this week after a driver yet again decided that I was invisible, even though he was looking straight at me, and that my life was not worth the 3 seconds he would have lost on his journey by actually slowing down for me.

There are too many drivers who think that a giveway sign is only advisory if the other vehicle with right-of-way is a person on a bicycle. It is very strange. It is as though drivers only recognise the existence of other cars on the road and disregard any other road user, including pedestrians. I wonder if there have been any studies about the changes in perception drivers undergo in traffic?

Another case in point is when a cyclist is in the left hand lane (too narrow for a car to get past safely) waiting at the lights to go ahead and a green left turn arrow comes on. If a car behind wants to turn left, invariable the driver goes nuts because a cyclist is impeding his opportunity to save ten seconds on his trip. Replace the cyclist with a car in the same situation and the car behind will calmly wait until the overall green light comes on and the car in front goes ahead before completing his left turn. There is no difference in the actual human presence in these situations, only that a cyclist has less bulk and therefore less status and apparently less worth.

Gym

I continue to go to the gym and even the instructors are commenting on how much weight I have lost. I actually have not physically lost that much lately but I I have definitely developed a lot more muscle mass while shedding body fat. I was going to do a Aqua class on Thursday but there were only two people booked in so we opted to transfer to the deep water muscle tone class which was on in the diving pool. DWMT is like Aqua except you wear a float belt and do all the exercise in a 3 metre deep pool so you don't touch the bottom. It is definitely more intense.

The clincher for me to change to the other class was the group of hunky footballer types who were lined up to do the class. Bliss! Of course they had no idea what they were doing and spent most of the class talking to each other, but I got into testosterone mode and was really competitive. These guys would have had 20 years on me (some 25 years) and I was keeping up with them and probably doing a better job at the exercises. It was very good to check a benchmark and know that my level of fitness is actually pretty good and that all this work is not only making me feel good and look better, but is doing me a lot of good as well.

Walking

I did a lot of walking on Friday and Saturday. The wheel on my bike needed repairing and while I could probably do it myself, I still would have had to walk to the bike shop in St Kilda to buy a spoke and then find my wheel truing tool somewhere in the mess that is my bedroom. Getting a professional to do it seemed to be the safer and more expedient option.

The guy at the bike shop said that the wheel would be ready by 2.00 p.m. but by the time I had to run a few errands in Prahran (on the train) it was time to go to do my telephone counselling so it had to wait until Saturday.

Come Saturday and a nice walk through the leafy streets of Elwood to the bike shop and the wheel has not been started. Grrr! After effusive apologies they promise that it would only be 20 minutes to fix it so I get the The Age and head to the nearest coffee shop. I return to pick up the wheel and the very scary lesbian with the multiple facial piercings (and who was all of 150 cm tall) tells me it would be $25.00. The guy who I left the wheel with on Friday told me $20.00, which is what I ended up paying for it.

I should remind people who may have visited my web site that the car described thereon is not a well Mitsubishi. Basically the engine has blow some valves so that when it warms up it refuses to idle. This can be scary when one is turning a corner and the engine stops; along with the power steering and power brakes. Not a good look. So now the thing is sitting in the driveway of the apartment block gathering leaves and looking sad. It's now out of registration and I cannot afford the ~$2000 it will take to fix it so I don't quite know what to do with it. Aside from the engine, it is in perfect condition inside and out so it seems shame to shunt it off to the wreckers, but that is about the only option I can think of which will get me at least some money.

Otherwise I spent the weekend quietly; going to the gym for a proper workout on Saturday (ouch!) and an aqua class this morning. Meanwhile the MGLC spent the weekend at Healesville for a rehearsal camp. I don't go to these as I snore really badly and I have no wish to inflict my subterranean rumblings on others sharing my dorm room, and I am not sure I could cope with a whole weekend with a lot of people. I still get the occasional twinge of a panic attack in large groups and being shut up with 90 people just seems like the ideal way to set me off.

Spoke

I went to collect my bike from Ailsa's today and about a half kilometre on the way home I broke a spoke. So back on train I went. It's funny how the most minor things can really disrupt your day and your mood.

I am not working tomorrow but I do have things to do and really want to get to the gym, so I hope that my local bike shop can fix my wheel quickly. And cheaply.

I have a double shift at AIDSLine tomorrow night. As I have no social life, Friday nights may as well be spent doing telephone counselling rather than sitting home watching television.

I also weighed myself today and have put on a kilogram. When I get stressed and unhappy I tend to really start into the comfort food and I did that big time last weekend. This a reason I need to get back to the gym because, although I have been riding my bike a lot, working out seems to affect my mood for the better and make me less prone to overeating.

I am so close to being the lightest I have been for years and I don't want to fail when I can see my goal in sight.

Protest

Yesterday was a very long day. I was up at 5.30 a.m. and was at Ailsa's place in Yarraville to get ready for the MTAG protest. We got to the intersection at around 7.30 am and already a news crew was in place. We did the media schmoozing thing and waited for people to turn up. At 7.45 a.m. we were getting worried that no one would turn up and that we would have to explain to a horde of angry media people why the protest failed. However, people started arriving and by the time the intersection was closed and the protesters were allowed to occupy it, there were over 200 people there. It was a pretty impressive sight.

The police were great. They stopped the traffic about a block from the intersection so there was an eerie quiet for a half hour in the middle of what is usually a busy peak hour traffic spot - except for the two television helicopters hovering overhead. Yes! We got two commercial news helicopters to cover the protest.

All up we had the major daily papers, three television stations, radio and three local papers covering the protest and coverage ran all day on the television. After the protest we repaired to Le Chien café at Seddon for a debrief and a desperately needed coffee or two. Everyone was incredibly impressed by the media coverage Ailsa and I managed to achieve.

Then it was time to start work.

After work it was on to choir. After it had rained most of the day, although the weather for the protest was fantastic, I decided to leave my bike at Ailsa's and catch the train to choir. Of course, travelling there and then home at 10.00 p.m., not one drop of rain was seen.

Exercise

My gym reopened today after being closed to host the Commonwealth Games. I went and did an aqua class. It was fun and I am still in surprisingly good shape after a month of only riding a bike.

I have hit a bit of a plateau with my weight loss which is a bit annoying as O am only 3kg away from 100 kg, which I have not weighed since I was about 30. Looking in the full length mirror in the change room tonight I was really happy with the improvement in the old bod. Havig a bit of a tan for the first time in years helps too.

This is a short one tonight as I have to be up at 5.30 am to help Ailsa with the Maribyrnong Transport Action Group blockade of a local intersection as part of a campaign to take large trucks off residential street in the inner west. Check out the MTAG Website

Realpolitik

There are rumblings in the gay community from people who should know better about the Victorian Government's commitment to gay rights. Because the ACT government is now considering legislation to legalise civil unions and because it is not allowing, in an election year, a private member's bill to move forward for debate in the Victorian Parliament, apparently the government is now not sufficiently supportive of the gay community.

Bad government, horrible homophobic government. Yeah right! Despite the bleatings of the the usual wannabee community leaders in the gay community this current Victorian Government has advanced the civil rights for gays and lesbians to an extraodinary degree. In its first term, without the advantage of a majority in the Legislative Council, the government changed nearly thirty pieces of legislation to provide same-sex couples all the rights that heterosexual unmarried couples enjoy under state legislation, which basically means that every right that a married couple gets under state law, same-sex couples get (Except for adoption, which I will get to later). Civil Union legislation would not make one bit of difference to this situation.


This government set up a special advisory commitee to the Minister for Health to enquire into the health needs of gays and lesbians. In response to the report from this committee the government established and funded Gay and Lesbian Health Victoria, the first government body in the world to promote, research and educate the health sector in the particular health needs gays and lesbians in this state.


This government set up an advisory committee to the Attorney-General on gay, lesbian and transgender issues. I have attended some of these meetings. The agenda that committee resulted in legislation to enable transgender people to change their birth certificate once their re-assignment surgery was complete. It resulted in the ability of lesbians and single women's ability to access IVF treatments to be referred to the Law Reform Commission for review of the legislation. The same for adoption laws.

While one may argue that in many ways this government is chronically cautious and slow to move, one cannot maintain that because of this that it is anti-gay or somehow not committed to gay and lesiban rights. Yet that is the bullshit that is being bruted about on the internets.

One could argue that this cautious approach is an advantage. By referring legislation to the Law Reform Commission, the government is assured that a much broader range of opinion and positions are canvassed on prospective legislation. It is an effective measure to defuse potential community objections. Also, by the slow drip of information that flows from this process, it becomes far less of a hot political potato.

As for the proposed private member's legislation, why would a government bring forward legislation with no practical application but the potential to be a distracting and divisive political issue in an election year. The ALP learnt that lesson years ago when a candidate in the seat of Prahran dropped a bombshell that he would support euthanasia legislation three weeks before the election. It was not even ALP policy, it caused a distraction and cost him any chance of winning the seat. The time for civil union's legislation (which I am not against, by the way) is at the beginning of a government's term, not 7 months before an election. What's a few months wait, gang, after waiting all these years?

Published!

Woo hooo!!

I submit the odd letter to our two local papers. Occasionally I write a tome but mostly I send in a couple of sentences with a pithy message. I just send them out and don't usually look to see whether they are published, although friends sometimes notice and let me know.

I was out on Saturday and saw that my latest one was published in the Herald Sun. Over a coffee after work today I was reading The Age and saw that my letter headed the short letter section and that one of the paper's cartoonists had done an illustration to accompany it. Wow!

the letter in question went like this:

Kevin Andrews says that the IR laws may have unintended consequences. Is that code for sackings en masse?

Somewhat of a no brainer given the number of cases the ACTU has documented in just over a week of workers being royally screwed by employers. If you live in Australia and are having a problem with losing your job or other bullshit by your boss go to the ACTU site and tell them and get some help.

Getting Regular

I seem to write stuff for other people and never write for myself. Kind of a metaphor for my life really. I have spent years writing thousands of words for my employers; media releases, reports, brochures, annual reports and more. But I never get around to writing for myself. The entries on my website were reasonably regular, but I have not been able to get into the habit of writing for my blog with any regularity at all. it has certainly not been for lack of time or things happening,

Call it a combination of not thinking I have very much to say, being intimidated by the few blogs that I do read which are really, really good, and the old procrastination thing when you want something to be perfect the first time. (The pressure I put on myself!).

Anyway...

Melbourne has now recovered from the Commonwealth Games and the Australian F1 Grand Prix was on today. I managed to avoid most of the activities, although I did watch the road cycling time trials as they went past the end of my street along Ormond Esplanade. It was interesting but the time trials are not the most exciting event as the riders are essentially riding against the clock and not each other and are spaced about a minute apart so there is no one-one-one racing.

Meanwhile, the Federal Government's industrial relations "reforms" have come into force, and already the vicious nature of the laws are being felt across the country. Workers are being sacked without cause and without warning. Workers are being sacked and forced to reapply for their jobs at much lower wages and working conditions. So much for the ephemistic title of the Government's laws. Work Choices? For whom?