Holy smoke, or something.

For a couple of weeks I’ve had a mild cold and a stuffy nose, not bad, just annoying. But I’ve also had an awful chemical solvent smell in the back of my mouth and throat.

Years ago I complained to my doctor that I seemed to have a smell in my throat – like Araldite. He said, “Have you been using Araldite?”  I said, “Yes, I suppose so, but that was weeks ago.”

“Well, there you are,” he said. “These things linger in your nasal passages.”

Now I’m smelling a familiar but awful chemical smell all the time (right now!). I’ve been trying to work out what it is. It seems to get worse every time I go into the loo.

Suddenly today, it dawned on me: paint thinners.

A few weeks ago I had a couple of guys doing some painting for me (paid, of course). I cleaned the brushes afterwards in thinners and turps, then used detergent many times over, but always with that smell. Then like a fool, I poured the residue down the drains.

I suspect that the thinners and turps have formed a film or a flotation layer in my drains and are vapourising up into my nose every time I go near it. Ugh!

What to do? High pressure detergent down the drains? Thinking about it.

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Today I was listening to Radio National and I heard a guy being interviewed about tribal violence somewhere. I didn’t intially know where, but I assumed it was in the NT or Qld somewhere and involved aboriginal violence.

As the interview went on, I thought, Gee this bloke speaks well. Is he a policeman? The more he spoke, the more I thought, Gee, this is Aussie police at its best. Very articulate, very level headed, very common-sensical.

More and more, I realised he was well spoken even if in the broadest of Aussie Ocker accents, pronouncing all his words correctly first time, even using Latin law words properly. It was fluent, fluid, lucid, eloquent speaking.

Gradually, I realised it was a Torres Strait Islander, talking about domestic and tribal violence in the islands between Australia and Papua New Guinea. I was impressed! This guy knew his stuff and was a guy I would want on my side if I were caught up in anything there. His name: Bob Black. How ironic.

Hats off to him. I was proud to think of him as an Aussie. I have no idea of his skin colour, but I don’t care. What a good bloke.

“Suffer the children to come unto me …”

Suffer is right. Once again, the church has cost boys their lives and covered it up. Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, is in this up to his neck. This holy man! Holier than thee, Holier than me, Holier than thou.

He pontificates (top word) against abortion, contraception, gays and gay marriage, but he turns a blind eye to his priests buggering boys and driving them to suicide. I predict that some of the church leaders are going to see the inside of a jail cell. I think he should.

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SMH 23 June 2012

But the study finds that overall they are five times more likely than other members of the population to be charged with some sort of offence.

I previously missed the story about the Catholic Church being involved in child abductions in Spain. It’s been the subject of articles (e.g. here) and documentaries earlier this year. The allegations are that up to 300,000 children may have been taken away from their mothers after birth and then sold, all over a course of four or five decades.
This is a moral disgrace in addition to the existing Catholic Church child rape scandal, which is already raging. Here’s Austin Cline’s summary:

Apparently stolen babies purchased from the Catholic Church may have amounted to 15% of all adoptions (the term has to be used very loosely here) in all of Spain between 1960 and 1989. It wasn’t until 1987 that anything started to change, and that was only because the Spanish government began to regulate adoptions instead of the Catholic hospitals. In other words, the Catholic leaders and institutions never chose to change on their own and never acknowledged ever doing wrong.

Cline goes on to point out that this is not a Catholic phenomenon per se, but rather one associated with unaccountable power. However, it is also tempting to emphasize that the Catholic Church claims to be and is largely considered to be a global moral authority. It is hard to conceive what more it could do to prove otherwise, when one considers how it has treated children elsewhere (including the systematic covering up of what its child-raping priests did) and the Pope’s appalling stance on AIDS prevention (which amounts to telling the highest risk groups that contracting the disease is preferable to the “sin” of contraception).
Invariably horrendous crimes arise wherever there is unaccountable power, obviously including that which rests on ridiculous metaphysics, blind faith and sexual repression.
Catholics who understand that it is wrong to abduct and sell or rape a child should ask themselves why a good and loving God permits not only that this happens, but that it is carried out by his self-professed representatives on Earth. Why hasn’t God stopped them himself?

Religion is evil. All over the world, religion is costing children their lives. In the USA, a Catholic priest has recently been sentenced to a long jail term for abusing boys and lying about it for years.

Richard Dawkins is right. Atheism is the answer. We’ve been deceived for too long.

 

I mentioned Kingfishers yesterday. Now here’s a Kingfisher, from Malaysia! Isn’t that beautiful? See the resemblance to the Kookaburra? Same family, different environment evolves different feather colours.

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I mentioned last week that I had donated to BlogBooker so that my images would download into the BlogBook. I paid 10 Euros, about A$13. I mentioned the little conversation we had about not wanting to list my blog because I’m having a sad session about Minnie slowly dying – maybe later. He replied, sympathising.

On Saturday I did the latest BlogBook – no images again, even though I donated!

It’s a long story but Saturday, and Sunday morning, were occupied by back and forth emails to Germany (I think that’s where he is) trying to get it to work.

Finally, about midday Sunday he says try it again. This time, I see a new process description while it works and the resulting pdf file is 3.8MB instead of 2.6MB.

This is pretty crook. I’m happy that he fixed it, but I’m not impressed that the fault  existed for so long. I first tried it more than a year ago.

You think this is an isolated case? Nope.

I paid for a UK password program called PortableSafe over two years ago. It’s a password storage program, encrypting all your passwords into an unbreakable file. I’ll email it to you if you like, the actual password file!  I actually email it to myself on a regular basis, so that I’ve got copies on the Gmail server.

However, although it works well, it’s got annoying bugs. I asked them about it more than a year ago but no response.

A week ago I used their web site to again notify of the bugs and ask when I might see a new version?

Reply: sorry, we’re a small company and we’ve had problems, there won’t be any updates. That’s it, no support.

I am annoyed! A password storage program is a database and I have more than 100 records in it. To transfer them now to some other program is going to be a major job. NOT impressed. As I said to the guy (Richard Devlin is his name), if you market a program like this, you have a responsiblity to maintain it. I paid about $30. It’s not trivial.

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AGAIN! AGAIN!! I’m listening to PM and yet another case of priests abusing children has been revealed! And AGAIN, the Catholic Church in Australia refused to deal with it in 1983 and simply moved the abuser, a priest, around to other parishes.

Fortune favours the prepared.

When I opened the back door first thing on this beautiful sunny morning, a movement caught my eye in the back yard. I looked and it was a kookaburra flying up to sit on the fence. 

My camera was sitting on the table behind me, so I slowly moved inside and got it. Initially, I only had the 16-45mm (24-70mm) lens, not really long enough, but I’ve learnt over the years, take a shot. At least you’ll have something, even if it’s not the right lens. So I banged off a couple but they are not much use.

Then I realised there were two kookas.

Then I realised there were three kookas.

The one on the left was looking intently upwards at the sound of yet another kookaburra (a fourth) in a tree to the right of the group.

I’m no expert but I think the pair on the right of the above photo are immature young ones, while the left one is a parent bird and the one in the tree chortling is the other parent.

One flew down to the ground looking for food. I think this is a Mumma or Pappa bird.

For the benefit of my overseas reader, Kookaburras are the Australian branch of the Kingfisher family of birds. You can tell by the shape of their beak.

They are also known as Laughing Jackasses for the sound they make, which starts off as a long sequence with a low, prolonged chuckle and chortle, developing into a full blown laughing sound. It’s quite magnificent and an icon of Australia, used in the opening of the old Movietone newsreels. It”s guaranteed to send shivers down the spine of any Aussie who hears it, especially when overseas away from home.

Then Minnie came ambling slowly around from the front of the house, having heard me moving around (she’s old, but there is no loss of hearing or of any of her faculties!)

Kookaburras are quite fearless birds and will actually attack snakes, catching them in their beaks and flying up high, then dropping the snake to kill it on the ground for food. No kidding, I’ve seen this with my own eyes in the country.

So a dog is no threat to them, but they started to move away.

I think this may be the parent birds on a neighbour’s antenna.

All in all, it was a magic ten minutes or so. Thanks to digital, I’m able to get the shots in the first place, image stabilised and sharp, immediately develop them (I shot RAW as I’ve spoken about), crop, resize, sharpen and change the colour space from AdobeRGB to sRGB for the web and post this within an hour or two.

We’re living in a marvellous time.

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What does it take to get a comment? I thought this page was rather nice. No-one ever says anything.

The other day I was talking to someone in Sydney (by email, of course) and mentioned the awful stuff up on Radio National on Tuesday or Wednesday morning. At about 7am, Mark Colvin’s voice (AM) was mixed over Fran Kelly’s voice for three minutes! At full, equal level, so that neither could be heard properly. When is someone going to wake up and stop it? I was thinking.

The Sydney person said yeah, it happened there at 7am too.

So even though it MUST have been obvious, it was not considered important enough to fix it before the two hour delayed program was replayed in WA.  Two hours, but they didn’t fix it for us.

This is Sydney arrogance at its worst. I am making a formal complaint to the ABC management. It’s not the first time it’s happened of course, things like this happen all the time on our ABC.

I mentioned to the Sydney (ABC, of course) person that we are a bit sick of the neglect of WA. We are regarded as a foreign country over here, we don’t matter. The two hour delay of the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant is a prime example. Two hour delayed??!! Oh, it’s only WA. I am sick of it.

I said I’m reminded of Kruschev’s Cold War speech about the West: “We will bury you.” He was referring to Communism, of course, but … draw your own conclusions.

This gives me an idea: I’m quite an admirer of New Zealand. I’ve found that whatever Kiwis do, they do it well. Peter Jackson and The Lord of the Rings series is an example. Cheese is another – NZ cheese is brilliant. NZ wines are another example – they decide to get into it and they do it superbly well.

So, WA and NZ form a new country. We have the wealth and the jobs here. They have the scenery and the expertise and the ideas – they won the Americas Cup, after we did, don’t forget, and held it longer than we did. We get to have cheap holidays and skiing in NZ. What? We’ve got that already? Yeah, OK,

That way we form a vise over the eastern states of Australia. We squeeze the bastards. They’ll need a passport to go either way.

What are we gunna call it? WANZ? NewZWA? I’m working on it.

I’m reading The Guardian on the banking scandal in London. The head of Barclays  Bank worked a deal that saw the bank pay him a huge salary, plus an amount equal to the tax on that salary, plus an amount equal to the tax on the tax benefit as well. So that he got the bank to pay him a tax free salary, free of tax!

If it wasn’t so sick and dishonest it would be funny. But the effect is that people are losing confidence in the banks in Britain, and when that happens, they take their money out, and when enough people do that, banks fail, and then more people lose confidence and the system draws ever nearer to collapse. Then the government is called on to step in and save the banks with public funds and …

All based on the greed of a relatively few men. Who drive their Rolls Royces and Jaguars back to their homes and hold dinner parties with their trophy wives …

Only in America!

Chuck Norris, y’know, that 1980s pseudo TV tough guy, devout Christian, has written an article saying there’s no place for gay children or youths in America’s (I emphasise, America’s) Scout movement.

In the same article, a woman who happens to be lesbian was asked, no, told to step aside from her role as leader of a Scout troop in her area. Not a Girl Guides troop – these were boy scouts.

But additionally, her son was also told to leave the Scout troop!  Her son is blamed for some perceived deviance of his mother!

Only in America? I fear not. Witness the boy in New Zealand who was barred from child care because his mother is HIV positive. “The sins of the father are often visited upon the son …” I don’t know who said it, but it’s still true. [And will continue to be true, as long as people lack the courage to stand up and take a stand against it. Easy for me to say, I know.]

Remember that the former Republican presidential candidate in 2009, (what was his name, that ancient former Marine? so memorable, so forgettable – white hair, old, ultra-ultra conservative) chose him, Chuck Norris as a future Secretary of Defense in his administration, alongside the nutcase Sarah Palin.

Just count your lucky stars – we nearly had a super hawkish ex-Marine war heeroh as President,  with another nut case as VP, and a Neanderthal brain deficient Ultra Christian  ex movie tough guy as Sec Def, all with their fingers on the nuclear trigger.  Oooowwww!

I’ve just sent this to the Police Union web page:

Subject: 7:30 Report interview

Comments:

Bravo! I’ve just seen George Tilbury give clear, unambiguous, direct answers to Andrew O’Connor on police chases. I am very impressed. Full support. This was such a refreshing interview – no waffle, just Yes, No answers.

I support the police. You’ve got a rotten job and it must be hard. Keep going. I also give full support to Karl O’Callaghan. The Commish will always be attacked by the forces of darkness.

Peter Croft, Trigg

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Speaking of the Forces of Darkness! 

On 8 December 2010 my back fence neighbours held a wild ALL-NIGHT party. Full live amplified rock band (which finished about 1am), then partying on until dawn, literally. Loud music, shouting, screeching, swearing, screaming, dirty jokes, singing along to the music. And that was just the women! If you doubt me, just ask me for the DVD. I have 2 hours of it in video.

I sent them a letter of protest, saying I’ve been putting up with your back patio entertaining for years and never complained before. But your patio lights shining in my eyes (as one example) are just too bloody much and I listed all the shit I’d tolerated over 8 years (the thud of basketballs, the endless yapping of a lonely dog breaking my heart, the screams of kids, the crackling of 5.30am sprinklers, the smoke of a barbecue fire every few days etc etc.)

I got a letter back, “Sorry about the party, we let everyone know beforehand, as for the rest of your complaints,…” go take a running jump. They actually said, “The rest of your complaints are ridiculous.”

I wrote again saying “What great neighbours! How neighbourly! I tell you of my distress and you tell me to fuck off”, etc etc.  No reply this time, but it all stopped. Quiet as a mouse for the past two years. No more barbecue smoke, no more loud parties, no more back verandah entertaining. I was so pleased I even considered sending a Xmas card saying Thanks.

They’re baaaack.

How am I supposed to interpret this? Are they so stupid that they don’t realise the effect? I think they are. Mr and Mrs Mason.

Time for another letter?  Time for a 1 million candle power spotlight on my pergola aimed at them? Time for a laser pointer or three, legal power of course.

Stupid, stupid people.

Revolution? No, not another Commie rant.

Phwoar. I’d like one of those. Nine hours of recording, no tape (tape, yikes!). Available off the shelf for $2,016, ffs.  (STOP PRESS: I just fixed the corrupted photo and it has dropped to US$1920, a reduction of $96 in three days! That’s electronics for you…)

Thirty five years of learning and using audio and videotape and it’s gone, dead, forgotten. Sob.

Speaking of phwoar:

Madame Najat-Vallaud-Belkacem, France’s new Minister for Women’s Affairs or something. Not conventionally beautiful, but she can have an affair with me, any time.

Only problem is, I’d never be able to introduce her to anyone because I could never remember or pronounce her name. “Hi, this is my friend, er, I call her Frenchie.”

I kept something I found on The Guardian web site a week or two ago:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out–

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out–

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out–

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.

It was contributed by a Guardian reader in the UK.  I don’t know the origins or who wrote it, but I find it poignant and meaningful. Maybe it’s adapted from some other writing – I don’t know.

What I think it means is that there are times when we see injustices and count ourselves lucky we’re not involved. We can stand back and watch, thankful that we don’t have to show courage.

But eventually, it may be our turn to show courage. We should think about that.

We have an easy life in Australia.  We rarely, if ever, have to show courage.

One of my “friends” sent this to me a few days ago:

I for one also classified these people as illegal migrants and I agree with Andrew [Bolt] on his views here.
I am not being racist here as these people are actually what they are.
By definition, refugees are people who flee a war torn country or a country of savage killings of ethnic people.
These people want a cut short into entry into Australia.
There are official and legal methods for entry which they chose not to follow as they know they will not qualify.

This  person is a Malaysian Chinese (or is that Chinese Malaysian?). He already lives very comfortably in Perth on a permanent residency and he wants to keep the boat people out.

From GetUp:
Currently, Australia makes available a very small number of humanitarian visas through official channels in our region. In the 10 months to April this year, Australia granted only 97 refugee visas out of Indonesia. A further 1126 were made available through Malaysia, but 95% of those went to Burmese refugees. So for those fleeing other troubled countries, including Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq, their chances of receiving refuge are slim. Many are left with little choice but to risk their lives on leaky boats.
 
Another quote from the Malaysian Chinese “friend”:

I don’t claim any special courage but I’m finding I’m surrounded by xenophobic racists and I’m fed up to the back teeth with it.

I’m faced with a dilemma. Do I take a stand and fight these “friends” or do I take the easy way out and stay quiet and polite? Another friend said, “Hey, take it easy Pete, he’s a mate.”

He’s not my mate, not after this. All this has happened in the past 7 days.

I want to limit it to BluRay because (1) it looks awesome in hi-def and ordinary DVD quality cuts it to pieces; and (2) because BluRays can’t be copied very easily. I want to sell it.

The revolution has arrived! Australian camera and lens prices are now on par or lower than US prices, and Michael Keenan, Liberal Party MHR for Stirling, WA has shown some sympathy for asylum seekers. I never thought I would live long enough.

I have strongly criticised Michael Keenan in the past in emails, telling him I feel disenfranchised in my own electorate, but I will now make another attempt to find common ground.

I am surrounded by “friends” who gloat over the drownings off Christmas Island. People drowning? They’re not like us, so it doesn’t count. “Serve ’em right”, “They should join the queue”, “Why do we bring them to Perth, why don’t we send them to Indonesia?” 

Indonesia doesn’t care and won’t take them back. What are we supposed to do? Leave them in the water? Make war on Indonesia and force them to take them back? Throw lifebelts and let the sharks take them? Let them swim 36 miles back to Java or to CI or Nauru?

We can’t go into Indonesian ports to stop the boats and the smugglers! We don’t have the power. We have no choice but to rescue the swimmers. Do they suggest we do nothing and watch them drown? I seriously say that many, many Australians do say that at the moment. I am not proud.

This is blind, irrational fear. Fear of some Northern Invasion Hordes. I’ve even had one Malaysian Chinese immigrant “friend” say to me, seriously, “We don’t know what diseases they are carrying.” We put them into quarantine, for fuck’s sake!

He’s OK, of course: he’s here, therefore he wants to keep others out. I spit.

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