The photo above is in response to a Facebook post today with a cartoon in favour of reading. You don’t need to persuade me. I’ve read all those books in the past eight months or so, and more. There are still quite a few piled on my bed, next to my bed and back in the bookshelves. Yes, I like reading. But I keep buying books before I’ve got around to reading the ones I’ve got. Hah.

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Oooh, what a gloomy day. Clouded over, little breeze, no rain, humid, 32deg. Warm last night – I nearly put the aircon on, but resisted. I got my latest power bill a couple of weeks ago and despite the solar power, it still cost me about $170, although I can’t be sure due to the arcane way the billing is shown. However, due to the Labor government’s $600 power credit, it didn’t cost me any payout so I’m happy.

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Only two days to election day and Labor looks like doing well, to put it mildly. They deserve to win. That’s the point, the Liberal government of Colin Barnett 2013-17 was a disaster, leaving the state around $35 billion in debt (when they had been left a balanced budget by the previous Carpenter Labor government!). Labor replaced them in 2017 in a landslide because people were fed up with the Liberals’ incompetence, financial mismanagement and broken promises, aka lies.

Labor has delivered on their promises, of good government and competence. They got the state budget back into surplus in this, their first term and are reducing that massive debt. This, despite the shock of the pandemic. They are widely praised for their competence and leadership in keeping WA virtually free of the COVID19 virus. We had a couple of lockdowns, one at the beginning, last March, and a week-long one about a month ago, but WA is free of restrictions and people appreciate it.

I’m looking forward to Saturday evening to see just how much Labor wins by.

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Pet peeves time. One of the most common words being said and written during this pandemic is pre-existing. Pre-existing? Please tell me, how can something existing be pre-existing? If it exists, how can it be pre-existing?

Next one: pre-prepared. Airline meals, soup kitchen meals, school meals are all called pre-prepared. Of course they are! That’s why they’re called prepared in the first place. Why add pre in front?

Next: an Americanism that’s being picked up and adopted here – acclimated. Why not the word we already have, acclimatised?

Next: the word shown seems to have been forgotten. People have showed good behaviour. He has showed how to do it. Show, showed, shown – the correct word is shown.

And the usual ABC rubbish: sink, sank, sunk. The ABC nearly always says “The market sunk today.” No it didn’t, it sank! Just like your standards have sunk, ABC. This also applies to drink, drank, drunk.

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In this brouhaha (Etymology Dictionary: 1890, from French brouhaha (15c.), said by Gamillscheg to have been, in medieval theatre, “the cry of the devil disguised as clergy.”) about Meghan and Harry, the royals are worried about her colour?? What colour? To me, she’s just got the kind of suntan and skin-tone we all wish we had. I don’t see any “colour”, in the racist sense. She’s beautiful, gorgeous, lovely. What more do you want? Many of the world’s most beautiful women are darker than her. So what? If she was criticised for that, then what a rotten family to marry in to.

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Damn, my lovely Mitsubishi Verada has let me down. I bought it as a cheap second-hand car in November 2018 for $1,250. I knew it had been in an accident but it had been fixed up, looked OK and ran well and I’ve had almost no trouble. I’ve replaced the brakes and exhaust and had the roof lining replaced. Plus a new rear tail-light assembly.

But ever since I’ve had it, about once a month or less it would give a big mis-fire, just once, for less than a second, then carry on as if nothing’s wrong. But it was so intermittent, like once a month, even once in two months, that I knew it would be impossible to reproduce to be able to fix it. The “Check Wallet” (Check Engine) light had been coming on intermittently for months, but I assumed it was the power steering fluid being low, and it didn’t affect the driving, so, like Penny in Big Bang Theory, I ignored it. Ha!

Until yesterday. It died at the lights just near here, but luckily started again straight away, but then did it half a dozen times more while I got it home. Even backing into my garage, it died four times.

So yesterday I called the RAC. The guy brought out his fancy OBD analyser but no luck – “Cannot communicate.” He tried a much smaller, cheaper OBD reader – same thing. The engine ran fine for him, of course. It stopped once while we were doing something else, but it started again OK and continued running. He said there was nothing he could do until the fault showed but suggested I get it transported (ie trucked) to the Joondalup workshops and they can do a full test, looking for diagnostic problems.

He emphasised that with my membership level, it would all be at no cost. The trucking, the diagnosis, all “free”. I said to him that along with HBF, I am extremely pleased with the service I get from my membership. (It’s 55 years this year. I deserve a medal, I reckon, or at least an elephant stamp.)

While he was here, I bought a new battery from him for the Honda. It cost $204. That will teach me to be more careful about ensuring there’s nothing draining the battery when I’m not using the vehicle much, and to keep it on the charger. He took the old battery away for me as well, saving me a trip to the dump (recycling centre, I should say).

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The shocking story from federal Parliament House just shows how what goes around, comes around. The bad things you do come back to bite you, sooner or later. The man in question, the Attorney General Christian Porter, made a big show of his macho swagger when he was younger and in law school at the University of WA. He wrote things in the law school’s magazine about how he was going to “smut his way” through uni, and wrote derogatory things about women, even then. Drew a stick figure of himself with a huge dick and balls. Was alleged to be a member of a male parliamentary group calling themselves the Big Swinging Dicks.

A talented woman has accused him of rape when they were 17 and 16 and she has died since by her own hand. That alleged act, if it happened, ruined her life to the point where she ended it. We can’t directly blame him and he denies it ever happened, but since she is gone and never submitted to a police interview, then he can maintain his denials to eternity because there were no witnesses and no evidence.

In these circumstances, and given his track record, who do I believe? One guess. He’s getting what was coming to him. He’s got two failed marriages and two children as well. Nice guy. Not.

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Speaking of Penny, would you believe I’ve started watching The Big Bang Theory again? I find I never tire of the jokes, which are very, very good, and it just gives me a comfortable feeling after seeing and hearing all the bad news all day. I remember watching this show at least ten years ago and it’s been shown on Nine, then repeated on Seven (even while still being shown on Nine, remarkable), and now it’s being shown on Ten too. Not surprising – it’s a ratings winner, I would say.

I just finished watching all twelve seasons on Netflix, around 240 episodes, and now I’m starting again at series 1, episode 1. I’m a tragic.