Making the Freeway, Chapter II

Here, again (mostly) below the fold, is chapter two of the piece of writing I was mentioning before.

II: George

Curious George — Capt. Logan explores, climbs mountains — George, the map freak, before the accident — a riverboat ride — "...the finest tract of land..." — a parent's dream comes true — non-danger signs — The accident.

George was a psycho nutjob with a serious drug habit and an acquired brain injury. He lived with his mother in Loganholme. He spoke his mind — constantly — but his mind was crazy...

George was not always like this, of course. Before the injury was acquired, he was an active, inquisitive boy with an interest in cricket and cars and the world around him and, basically, in doing what boys do. And he also had a developing interest in Logan City — where he lived — and Captain Logan.


Captain Patrick Logan was the commandant of the Moreton Bay Penal Colony from 1826 until the time of his unsolved, but undeniably unpleasant, death in 1830. He was an avid explorer who discovered the river than now bears his name — although in the custom of the time, he named it the 'Darling' after the Governor of New South Wales (which is where the river would be for another two decades) — and thus gave his name to the area.

Logan liked watercourses and climbing things, once trekking along Oxley Creek with Cunningham, another explorer now with his name on things around South-East Queensland. On one of his inland excursions, Logan became the first white man to climb Mt. Barney. By the accounts, it was a difficult — possibly even dumb — climb. Other experienced climbers in the party gave up and waited the five hours it took for Logan to return.


George was immediately interested in Logan from the first time he heard about him, at age 12, before the accident. By that time, George already referred to himself as a 'map freak'. So did his friends and family. He liked to know where he was; he liked to relate it to the pocket street map he always carried.

George especially liked travelling on trains while tracking his course on his map. Roads and buses went past the front of people's houses; trains often went past their backs. It wasn't that George wanted to see people's sordid secrets; he just liked the new perspective on things this back-to-front view gave to his world. Trains also went through empty ground and farmland that roads didn't reach. Another chance for a new vista.


It was on a riverboat ride he had received for his twelfth birthday that George first saw the view from the river.

The riverboat was sailing in commemoration of the boats of times past which used to ply their trade up and down the Logan River. George's parents, who, having been pestered for maps as Christmas and birthday presents for years, were well aware of George's passion for seeing things from new viewpoints, had saved for the trip ever since they read in the Albert and Logan that such an opportunity was upcoming.

George was inspired. The river gave him the chance to see things he hadn't seen before; notice details obscured by the speeds of the vehicles — even the trains — in which he'd previously been travelling. He saw how the features of the land, like the Tanah Merah hill he'd trudged to the top of many times, affected the course of the river. And he listened intently to the knowledgeable lady from the local library who provided commentary on the journey.


George had been brought up in an era when road transport ruled. It never occurred to him that the river; that flash of water seen between the railings of the concrete cattle-run of the freeway bridge at 100km/h—that river; could once have been at the heart of everything. But on the riverboat ride, George heard about local history and about how the river had once been at the centre of it all; transporting timber, sugarcane and, of course, passengers and everything else it took to sustain a nineteenth century frontier community in the midst of what its European discoverer, Logan, had once called "...the finest tract of land I have seen in this or any other country..."

And, on that day on the river, George finally heard about Logan himself: the commandant, the explorer, the mountain-climber. It was when he heard about Logan's (probably incorrect) claim to have seen the river from Mt. French that George realised height provided the opportunity to see his world from yet another angle.


Not long after, George's social studies class at school began looking at the history of the Logan. This had two effects: first, it reinforced George's interest in the subject, almost to the point of obsession; second, he aced that exam at school.

So, his parents were happy. They had always encouraged George, providing gifts or matching funding for his map and street directory purchases. They were pleased when his interest in knowing where he was developed into an interest in knowing where other things were and then into knowing how those things and places came to be there in the first place. And when it helped George's grades at school, his parents were ecstatic.

To George's parents, the fact that the interest continued after its utility for grades at school ended was no problem: this was how people found out what they wanted to do for a living. That the interest escalated into requests for funding for 'topographical' maps — aerial photos with little lines drawn over them indicating the height of the land — was harmless enough. It seemed to George's parents that knowing the history of an area and knowing its landforms were related disciplines.

And teenage boys can always use a little discipline.


George's parents didn't see any danger when their son made it his mission to walk to the tops of all of the high points in the local area. He was 13 by then and he had been going to the top of the rock at Tanah Merah since he'd been given a (secondhand) bike at age ten, but mostly just to ride back down really fast. His parents listened with some pride, but mostly boredom, as he described the view from Eden's Landing, North Hill in Cornubia or the Kingston reservoir.

On George's part, he hoped his parents didn't know the reservoir too well, or they'd know he'd had to break-in to see what he had described. Maybe 'break-in' was too strong: there was a two foot gap in the wire security fence where it joined the fence of the house next door. And to see some of the other sights he'd had to trespass in some pretty posh places, too.

To George's parents, it was a natural extension when he wanted to travel further afield to see what he could see— Daisy Hill, Springwood, Wineglass Park at Hillcrest...


By the age of 16, George had an intimate firsthand knowledge of the place of his birth. He knew where everything was and every way to get there. He knew the history and the people. But he also knew that Captain Logan had done things he had not, besides order all the floggings. Such as to follow Oxley Creek overland, or to climb Mt. Barney.

So, it was on Mt. Barney a year later that George's accident occurred. He had taken along photocopies of books containing information about Logan's climb. He had already once insisted on a more dangerous route based on what he considered to be Logan's "true path" that he had discerned from his reading.

He was walking along a narrow ledge, apparently reading a map, when he stumbled and fell.

This was the accident in which George acquired his brain injury. Along with his overwhelming interest in Captain Patrick Logan, the injury caused two more effects: a need to know exactly where he was at all times, and a pathological obsession with safety.

© 2006

[END]

Voting

Well, apparently candidate for Mayor of Logan City, Councillor Lutton has admitted to sending a threatening text message to Councillor Darren 'Supertool' Power: "ur dead meat arsehole" during the election campaing, which ends today.

He's got my vote.

But then again, Lutton did put "landscaping" as his second dot point... and I just think we have to accept it that plants have to be left to die when we're likely to run out of water in two years.

While not running, Darren has apparently endorsed two people. I must find out who they are and put them last. One of them will be that Jessica Rowe-looking woman, because she's listed that she tried to stop the Daisy Hill Rd development...

[END]

Travel stuff

I was travelling on Tuesday, doing the usual "It's bloody 4am, bloody daylight-savings, early flight" thing. Here's some things...

Brisbane airport doesn't think birds are animals, judging from its 'No animals or birds' signs.

Airport Security (you know, the metal detector, put your bags on the belt, walk through the archway people) told me to take a cigarette lighter out of my carry-on bag and put it in my pocket. After I'd passed security. They didn't take it away from me, they didn't say I couldn't have it. After I got through security, I walked around the corner and put it back in my bag.

We flew on JetStar's flying pizza - a plane totally decked-out (apart from the tail) with an ad for Domino's puff pastry pizza. There were ads on all the seat backs and a lot of the overhead lockers.

It looks like the Green Leaf party (who support legalising it) didn't win a seat in the Israeli Knesset, as was suggested in an article I read the other day.

I read an article — I've tried but I can't find it online — talking about how the usefulness of the green belt that stretches from (at least) southern Brisbane to Flinders Peak is in jeopardy, due to current and proposed subdivisions around Camira and the Larapinta Motorway Business Park. Well, I saw the latter from the air yesterday and it really is a massive scar on the landscape.

[END]

Downing Street cat dies

I bet his full name was 'Sir Humphrey'.

[END]

You've come a long way, baby

What appears 'below the fold' is chapter one of one of the things I'm writing. By "I'm writing", I mean "that I've started in the past six years"... It was to be called Making the freeway safe for the Free Way: Living in Logan City. Or something like that, since that's a little long.

I started it a couple of years ago and then lost it when my computer at work decided to do one of its weekly random reversions to an earlier copy of my desktop and whoosh! it wasn't there any more. But luckily, I had been obsessed with formatting it and proof-reading it, so I had lots of printed copies to look at as I typed it back in today.

I've written a big three chapters of Freeway (the title comes from a song by fIREHOSE, by the way, and fIREHOSE is where the title of the Slaughterhouse Joe song gARDENHOSE comes from,) and I haven't tried to integrate chapter three into my "story" yet, it's still a stand alone article about Christmas. I haven't really started the story in the chapter below: the actual characters (apart from the first-person narrator) start in chapter two.

It's the most plotted thing I've ever planned, In fact, it's one of the first things I've ever planned, or plotted. Seriously, I've got a cork-board downstairs filled with different coloured three-by-five cards with major plot points outlined on it. I might type them up sometime and post them, since I'm using the internet as a great big archive to make sure I only have to ever frickin' type something once from here on in and there'll always be a copy somewhere.

A lot of the 'plot' was going to be a suburban story about, among other things, a coup in the management committee of a local community centre; interwoven with pretty much everything I know about Logan City, hence the introductory history lesson reproduced — for the very first time! — when you click on the time, just below...

I: You've come a long way, baby

Boomtown — Making the freeway — Beaudesert — Ratepayer-rebellion — Borders — Council — Kuraby — Farewell to Albert

In the boom after WWII, the Brisbane City Council had strict planning regulations for the new sub-divisions popping up in previously-rural outlying areas. The still-rural Shires to the south, however, had laxer laws; only requiring the developer to pay for lightly-sealed roads and minimal drainage. So, given the choice, the developers did what developers always do, and simply built where the costs were lower.

Sub-divisions were built along the popular road between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, just south of the border with Brisbane. The Housing Commission got into the act in the 60s and 70s, knocking up low-cost homes; even though the Shire Council planning rules were toughened up in 1967.


South-East Queensland — like most regions in Australia containing the State capitals — has always been profoundly affected by decisions made at the state level. And so it was with Albert Shire, that place just south of Brisbane on the road to the Gold Coast, in 1965 when a plan was announced by the State to build a freeway to link to the highway to the coast by 1970. As it turned out, only phase one was completed by '70. The whole project wasn't completed until 1985, 15 years late.

Still, freeway fervour was enough to sustain the pace of development, even after the change in the building laws. Land along the proposed route was bought and built on as the cost-benefit ratio swung firmly in favour of the property developers. Areas to the south of the post-war Housing Commission satellite suburbs, areas with proud rural histories and famous pioneer families, whose names now only dotted the landscape as the names of suburbs and streets and in pioneer graveyards, these areas were sub-divided and exploited for the sake of the non-stop unplanned boom that is South-East Queensland.


And what of the other rural Shire to the south of Brisbane City; Beaudesert Shire, inland from Albert?

Like Albert, Beaudesert had lax post-war planning regs and a major thoroughfare tapping directly into — and draining directly out of — the arteries of Brisbane. Unlike in Albert, Beaudesert's road was a transportation rather than tourist trail. Commercial developments sprung up along with the suburbs on the border Beaudesert shared with Brisbane.

Roads with origins as aboriginal tracks or simple paths linking isolated settlements became busy routes linking Beaudesert Road with the Gold Coast Highway, and Brisbane with points further south.


And so it was that the northern Divisions of the Albert and Beaudesert Shires became densely-populated, vigorous, vibrant, productive, rate-paying commuter communities jacked into the veins of the Capital while the southern portion remained undeveloped rural land dozing in God's bounteous Queensland sun.

Or so it seemed to the residents in the north. By the 70s most of them lived in 50s houses with crappy roads and shitty sewerage and they were beginning to raise a stink. Why, they asked, was less than a quarter of the rate-money collected in Division 1, (northern) Albert Shire actually spent there? Why did our vote count so much less in Council? And, for that matter, why were the council seats so far away?

So, yea and verily, did Albert and Beaudesert Shires play their part in the never-ending cycle of history by taking a leaf out of the property developer handbook: when you have a problem (like the expense of the provision of proper kerbed and channelled roads and reticulated water) just shift the cost onto someone else. But Brisbane didn't want the cost and the State Government didn't want Brisbane (already large and powerful) to get the people, so the Shires cut the north adrift and left it to fend for itself.

People say there were reasons for the decision beyond the undeniable pain-relief felt by the southerners of the Shires. The State Government of the time was the party for country folk: farmers; while the rebellious residents of the ramshackle northern region weren't sons of ther soil. They were probably socialists, communists, God-knows-what-else-ists. Likely to be L... Lab... Labor Party voters.

So, in 1970s Queensland, you did the traditional thing — what you always did — when your natural God-given majority was threatened by evil ideologues: draw upon Governor Gerry's Salamander and draw a new, separate but equal, local government area into existence.


Thus was the creation of Logan Shire, a place named after a river named after a commandant of the Moreton Bay colony who, at one time, held the record in the Australian colonies for the most lashes administered to convicts in a single year.

While not a salamander, Logan was indeed a curious shape. Even in the 21st Century, 'Logan Central', the suburb housing the administration centre — which had been carved out of the Woodridge and Kingston, two of the original Housing Commission house clusters — borders onto the City of Brisbane. From my house in the east, I can see south into the City of Gold Coast. The next hill further east not only affords a view into Redland Shire, to the east of both Logan and Brisbane; and which is only now having its red earth encased in concrete construction; but, because it is a high hill, the view probably extends all the way west to the City of Ipswich.

It is a seven minute drive north from my house to the frontier of the City of Brisbane. Once I get onto the freeway, of course.

Since its tumultuous birth, Logan has always been in the middle of nowhere, on the road halfway to somewhere. And the road is always a freeway.

Drivers heading for the Gold Coast on the three-year-old überautobahn can drive through Logan in 15 minutes flat. And in the summer, with the air-conditioning blowing recirculated air and their radios blasting their favourite Brisbane FM station, they neither have to smell nor hear Logan as they go through. The sights, kept away from travellers as they are by concrete or wood noise baffles, can be safely ignored in favour of the white lines and arrows indicating the fastest way thehell outta town.


But, back to 8 June 1978, when the foundation legislation, which had been introduced into State parliament only nine days earlier, was approved. Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my butt! Or back to 18 April 1979, when the woefully inexperienced, probably technically insolvent Council had its first official meeting. Or 1 July 1979, the new financial year, when the Logan Shire Council formally assumed full responsibility for its fledgling community.

Or maybe just cut a long and, I'm sure, colourful story (which I don't happen to know) short and go back to 1 January 1981, when Logan became a city. Just a few years ealier a new Shire had winked into existence and now it was a City.

The official history on the Council website doesn't dwell much on the time since 1981 (beyond a few teething troubles) and jumps forward to the present day. And since it is on the official website, phrases like 'a success story' are to be expected. But Logan has come a long way. After all, I moved there in 1993.

But the biggest symbol and the most potent metaphor for the distance Logan has come and the distances people have travelled to come to Logan are its freeways.


I came to Logan on the freeway in 1992. I was driving a friend to her father's business premises in Loganholme where she was to live and work. She is now my wife; we bought a house on the hill above the business in February 1993.

Of course, I had driven or been driven through it lots of times. I have childhood recollections of the family driving home from the coast. When you passed the Big W on Logan Rd at Kuraby, you knew that the great expanse of nothing between the Gold Coast and Brisbane had ended and you were back in Brissie.

Except part of that expanse of 'nothing' was Logan, and the Big W was on Logan Rd in Underwood, a Logan suburb, not Kuraby in Brisbane City.

And it's not like I was totally unaware at the time of things going on in Logan. When I drove my Nana back home to her place down the coast in those heady days in 1987-88 before I lost my licence, I dimly remember being annoyed by delays caused by construction — perhaps of the Logan Hyperdome (but perhaps not: it seems something was always being constructed in Logan in those days) — and I definitely remember trying to drop her off as early as possible so I could get back to the Loganholme McDonald's before breakfast finished at 10:30.


There is one more thing: some time in the 1980s, 'efficiency' became the be-all and end-all. So it didn't take long for someone to say that smaller Shire Councils in Queensland weren't as efficient as the larger Shires, Towns and Cities. From little seeds do the big oaks of "amalgamation" grow. (Oaks are, of course, an introduced species in Australia which out-compete the native plants and choke the waterways. Technically, they are weeds.)

The rump of the Albert Shire was amalgamated into the richer Gold Coast City Council in the mid-90s, a process repeated with many small Shires across the state. The council seat was moved onto the coast itself; but, to be fair, it moved from a location that was already quite a ways away from the city's northern suburbs.

By the end of the 90s, it was the residents of the northern Gold Coast who were complaining they were underserviced, neglected and remote from the seat of government.

© 2006

[END]

Saturday Evening

>>>>Happy Birthday to Boycat's Aunt.

>>>>My Bombay Express correspondent reports seeing some of the formerly-G.C.-Bulletin-reading commuters now reading the new tabloid Courier Mail on the train in the mornings.

We get the paper home delivered (I figure that since I already spend hours online collecting overseas news, should let the local stuff come to me) and it's been harder to get my chance to read the paper since it got rid of all the separate sections. Once I get my hands on it, though, it is easier to read; mostly because you don't have to keep track of whether or not you've read all the separate sections.

>>>>The Souths Logan Magpies are almost ready to go out and lose to the North Queensland Young Guns in the Qld Cup.

>>>>Surprise, surprise. Alan Moore apparently doesn't like the movie of V for Vendetta either.

>>>>More on JT Leroy.

[END]

Chef quits South Park

link.

[END]

Sunday Morning

It looks like the Queensland Reds might not be the worst rugby union Super 14 team in Australia.

Devo re-record their songs to be sung by kids. The jerky 'new wave' rhythms are great for kids to jump up and down to, apparently. Watch out for kids singing Go-Gos songs; coming soon.

In round one of the Queensland Cup rugby league competition, the Souths Logan Magpies give it a red hot go, but lose as usual.

Someone's finally printed a map of where the Wolffdene dam was supposed to go. I've been looking for info on this since I moved to Logan. I was only talking about it a couple of weeks ago with a person who was looking for land in the '80s. She was telling me that every map of land in the area had a big warning on it about the dam. (The dam wall is pretty much where I guessed it would be.)

And Australia lost all three group games and is out of the World Baseball Classic.

Oh, yeah, and I forgot to say- we bought a new DVD recorder yesterday. Same brand as the last one; all our old discs seem to work okay. The last one worked for 2 years and 11 days. It cost $1000. The new one cost $329, and it's better. It's weird though, our last one was in the '50' series - you know, model number DMR50a or something like that - the new one is in the '10' series. The 50s still exist, but they're the 200Mb hard drive jobbies. So it's like the average unit in the cheaper model of recorder is now better than the 2nd best model in the more expensive series was two years ago. (There was an 80Meg HD version out when we bought our HD-less version. That's why it was on special.)

[END]

Priceless...

From the Asian Champions League website, with my bolding added -

Group F
Arema Malang (IDN), Ulsan Horang-i (KOR), Tokyo Verdy (JPN), Thai Tobacco Monopoly (THA)

Group G
Shanghai Shenhua (CHN), Persipura Jayapura (IDN), Provincial Electricity Authority (THA), Dong Tam Long An (VIE)

Arema Malang and Persipura Jayapura of Indonesia and Thai Tobacco Monopoly and Provincial Electricity Authority of Thailand were later disqualified from the competition for failure to submit their squad lists by the deadline. That left Group F and Group G with only two teams each.

These were the only two Osaka Orangeaid Concern-type teams in the entire competition and now they're not playing.

Although, now that I look at it, Shanghai Shenhua sounds like a company team, and when you think about it, I don't really know what many of the team names mean.

But, hey, it tickled my fancy.

[END]

R.I.P., Kirby Puckett

Kirby Puckett was a baseballer for the Minnesota Twins. That's the team I support.

Seriously - I went to see them play at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome* once, and I haven't really ever been to that many live sporting events that I wasn't playing in myself.

And some people may recall I was once in a band called The Minnesota Triplets. (It was a four-piece.)

I support the Twins because Hüsker Dü formed in Minneapolis. (In NFL, I support the Minnesota Vikings for the same reason.)

Kirby played in the first World Series I ever watched all of. That's the series that inspired my song "Series MVP".

Kirby's dead at the age of 45.

* a three-H dome in a 3M town.

[END]

Police brutality on Brisbane train

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8

Three Queensland police officers brutalised a teenage girl on a Brisbane train and on Beenleigh station, according to witnesses.

It has been alledged that the three officers boarded a Brisbane to Beenleigh train at Woodridge station at approximately 1.50pm on March 8 and began checking passenger tickets.

They moved forward towards the front of the train.

Try to "break your thumb off"

A witness descibed the events which followed after the train arrived at Beenleigh: "I got off the train and was on the platform and then this screaming starts from the front carriage where the cops were."

"They dragged this young girl off the train and started dragging her down the ramp. She was crying and screaming and basically begging with them to stop hurting her."

"They had her in some kind of 'twist your arm, squeeze your hand and try to break your thumb off' hold. One cop on each side. It looked really cruel."

"When they dragged her past me her hands were really white, like they'd squeezed all the blood out. It looked like they'd rotated her wrists around, like, 360 degrees."

"It was traumatic. Her friend was in tears."

Missing persons

The arrested girl was travelling with a female companion.

"We're missing persons" she said.

It is understood that both girls had been reported missing after running away from their foster homes.

"I was right there beside them [on the train]," another witness reported, "She didn't do anything. It's police brutality."

"They'd believe the foster parents over the girl? Who knows what goes on in foster houses?"

"I'm going right now to make a complaint to my local member."

It is understood that a complaint has already been made to the Crime and Misconduct Commission over the matter.

Queensland Police were not contacted for comment.

[END]

Sydney win. Yawn.

Sydney won. 1-0. The Central Coast looked good in the first half, with no success. Then they got the the wind knocked out of their sails by Sydney's goal in the 61st minute and they never really looked like scoring after that.

Record crowd of 41,689; lots of away fans in yellow. Now for next year.

>>>Sydney FC's Alex Brosque won player of the year (3-2-1 voting each week) for his play with Queensland, before he left us.

[END]

Cat story

Sydney cat found in Melbourne

[END]

Give me back my Malden. Have a Gin and Tonic instead.

Feb 20, 2006; 2:39pm: So apparently kiddies today aren't getting enough iodine in their diets, possibly leading to "mental and growth retardation". The study has "prompted calls" for all edible salt to be iodised.

Does that mean uniodised salt would be banned? What about uniodised Malden Sea Salt, the best cooking salt in the world?

There's iodine in tonic water. Give the kiddies a daily G&T instead.

LATER: When I mentioned the above issue and my solution, Boycat's Mum pointed out that the kids can just drink the tonic. D'oh!

[END]

Some Thoughts

It's three weeks into the Super 14, and Queensland haven't won a game. Is the season over? Well they won't make the four, but if that was the sole criterion on whether or not the season was over, then the season was over before the start of the first game.

I hear that people are saying (there's some thin sourcing for you) that they could've sold out the A-League grand final twice over. Be that as it may, I was so pleased to read that people were scalping tickets on eBay. You know you've arrived when they're scalping your tickets on eBay.

Isn't it great how the British are still managing to keep the great old tradition of the 'heist' alive and kicking? Not boring old smash and grab robberies, but full-on intricately planned heists.

Here's something for your diaries, (ha!) March 7 - 20, the Australian Baseball Team are playing in the World Baseball Classic, baseball's attempt at a world competition, styled on the World Cup.

[END]

Take that, you tool

Yahoo! Adelaide are out of the A-League. It's not that I don't like the team, only their coach. But I've always been partial to the underdog, so I was going for the Central Coast anyway.

The Coast won 1-0. I won't try to describe the game this week, because I'm sick of that and there will be plenty of articles about it. Pondeljak scored in the 7th minute and then the game was a lot of attack and a lot of defence.

The crowd continued Adelaide's record of abysmal efforts, only 11,400-odd. The final was always going to sell well, but I'm sure everyone's happy that, with Sydney v Gosford, they can play up the local "rivalry" (hang on, I thought the Coast and Newcastle were rivals due to that broken leg thing...) and the Mariners' fans seem to be good travellers anyway.

[END]

Simpsons did it, Simpsons did it!

I don't know if you've heard about the whole controversy going on in New Zealand about the South Park episode Bloody Mary. Their PM commented on it and everything. TV3 decided to bring the episode forward, out of its usual place in the run; to help contribute to the debate, they said.

Anyway, it aired last night and got six times the usual audience. Like a scene from an early episode, 350 people protested outside the building.

>>> I just saw an episode of the Simpsons where they bring all the kids around to catch Chicken Pox off Maggie. South Park's done it, South Park's done it!

[END]

And the winner is Syd-en-ee

30,377 people saw Sydney beat Adelaide 2-1 to go through to the final 4-3 on aggregate. I bet the FFA are pleased. A record crowd this week and then a chance to beat it again in a fortnight for the final. Hindmarsh Stadium in Adelaide only has a capacity of 16,500, even Central Coast's ground is bigger than that.

The game itself? Meh... Lots of long balls in, lots of defenders hacking balls away.

To anywhere.

Sydney seemed to have the best of it, scoring once, until Adelaide equalised, and then Sydney got rattled. But as their defence got on the end of everything that counted, they got it together enough to score again and hold out until the end.

All in all, it was a grind. Adelaide fans now know how Queensland fans have felt all season. All those shots on goal and bugger-all to show for it.

But will I change my prediction of Adelaide to win the championship? Yes.

I said previously who could tip against Adelaide? Well I could. Obviously Sydney have what it takes to grind them down and win; and Central Coast are looking good.

And what was Super-tool John Kosmina going on at Littbarski about after the match?

>>>I don't like white football boots. It makes players look like they're wearing sandshoes kicking a football around in the park.

>>>73,043 people saw the four semi-final games so far.

[END]

And then there were three

The good thing about the second leg of matches is that, unlike the first leg, you don't have to make any predictions about the rest will go. So this will be short: Newcastle are out.

No surprise there. What was surprising was how long it took to be sure. Despite the rabid crowd and grand-final atmosphere (at least two players obviously slipped on the tinsel littering the ground) who would go through was in doubt until injury time.

As always seems to happen, Central Coast had the run of play early, but then they went cold for fifty-odd minutes after Matthew Thompson's 28th minute goal for Newcastle. They woke up for a little while at the beginning of the second half, but that was short-lived due to horrible finishing by Damien Brown. But Brown redeemed himself with his cross to Heffernan for Central Coast's tying-goal.

That made it 2-1 on aggregate and the Central Coast Mariners go through to the preliminary final.

Remember, the Mariners won the pre-season competition, so being one of the remaining three teams at this stage in the season should not be unexpected. And neither, I think, was the record crowd of 17,429, since -- as the commentary pointed out -- Rugby League didn't want the Central Coast, neither did Super 14. But football did, and they got their pay-off this week.

And if Sydney wins tomorrow, that will mean the final is played at Aussie Stadium, which the FFA would be pleased with, crowd-wise.

So, have my predictions for the remaining games changed? No, not really. Whoever loses tomorrow will probably still beat the Coast next week and then Adelaide will still win.

>>>Nicky (or is it just 'Nick'?) Carle was Newcastle's best tonight; and all season from what I saw.

>>>Fox Sports seem to think the same as I do, about how crowd noise can really 'make' a game. But I think they had the effects mike too high in the mix; when the crowd really cheered, it drowned out the commentators.

>>>Finally, some Queensland Roar news. Miron's kept his job. Now we wait to see how much more of the team will leave.

[END]

Mrs. Peel, we're needed.

Channel Eddie has The Avengers on again. As usual, it's the colour Diana Rigg series, not black and white Honor Blackman, but hey, it's been so long since I've seen these -- it was The Fear Merchants -- I can't remember a lot about them.

[END]

Let's beat hippies with truncheons

Some band should do a remake of The Song Remains the Same. Led Zeppelin did something with that movie that no one has ever tried again. For good reason.

Let's allow the band to do wanky fantasy sequences over interminable '70s guitar or electric piano or drum solos; the lead singer banging away on a tamborine. Robert Plant; we get it.You like Lord of the Rings. As if Misty Mountain Hop wasn't a big enough clue. Jimmy Page; we get it. You luuurve Satan. Peter Grant; what a character!

I love the bit in the guitar solo in Dazed and Confused where Jones and Bonham just look at each other as if to say "Where's he going now?" "I don't know. Just go with it."

"No comment is more incriminating than a comment." "Is it?" "Yeah." "No comment."

But I just think of Mr Dark using my pink paisley Telecaster to play Stairway to Heaven at a school mass.


I'm not sure if I was in that band, but I remember playing Tom Apelt's 12-string acoustic. I went out and bought my own soon after.

"Does anybody remember laughter?"

Wow! So now we're at the drum solo where Bonham plays them with his hands. Classic!

Carpentry with a fag hanging out of his mouth. Racing hotrods and dragsters. Fantastic.

Now Jimmy Page brings out the theremin.

And then they hop into their limos, drive to their private plane and fly away...

[END]

Marc Ecko ain't getting up at all

Jeez, you patronising morons, it's just a game. And it's available over the internet anyway.

And when it comes down to it, fat little X-Boxing kiddies are unlikely to do anything that requires physical effort.

UPDATE - I just don't see what would be wrong with kids going out and doing this.


[END]

For those of you watching in black and white, Sydney are the team in blue: A-League Semi-Finals, First Leg

Can Newcastle bring out their away-from-home magic and snap the Central Coast's 10-game winning streak? Can Sydney and Adelaide play two halves of football? Should Newcastle's Corbo have been sent off for a second yellow in the first half? Would it have mattered? Will Adelaide's Carl Veart get an Academy Award for his acting in the 80th-minute kerfuffle? Can I explain the away-goals-rules accurately and succinctly? And does anyone really care?

Newcastle has to win and score at least two goals. Adelaide have to win or score at last two goals (and not lose). I'm halfway to getting my predictions right for the first round.

All this and more after the jump...

Friday: Newcastle 0, Central Coast 1

The Jets fell to their third loss in a row; but at least they stemmed the bleeding, with the goals-against coming down from 5 against the Roar to 3 against Perth and now 1 against the Central Coast. But is it enough? They looked okay in the first half, with fast breaks from the halfway line involving two or three players, whereas the Mariners farnarkled about a lot between halfway and the edge of the area with the whole team involved. The Coast didn't look much more penetrating than that, but for some reason they looked like the better team. Maybe it was just the advantage in possession. (Or maybe it just looked that way because I watched most of the first half on x2 speed?)

Maybe Newcastle's first-half running and wayward shooting left them worse for wear; but in the second half, the Coast finally took advantage of always having the ball. First, however, Central Coast goalie Danny Vukovic was called on to make what may have been a crucial save. May have, because I'm not really sure what Newcastle would have done one goal ahead and with most of the disappointing crowd of 10,236 at their backs.

But we won't know. Instead, from about the 10th minute of the half on, the Coast just ground Newcastle down with possession until they scored twenty minutes later. The goal looked like Newcastle in the first half, sure touches from five players, starting in their own half of the field.

Continued pressure couldn't bring a second goal, so the Central Coast takes a one-nil lead and a precious away-goal into the second leg at home next week.

The FFA may not be pleased with the crowd. It was high, but lower than the game against Queensland a few weeks ago, and 30% lower than the first-round record. Not good for a home semi-final. There were more away-fans than I've seen (and heard) at a game before. (Still with only 80kms to travel, this is the league's local derby.) When the goal was scored it sounded great.

It always throws me that Central Coast aren't the ones wearing the sand-coloured jerseys. I think coast, I think sand. And it's hard to remember that it's actually the home team, Newcastle, in sand/gold; probably because the stadium is decked-out in the red and blue strip of the NRL Newcastle Knights. Of course it wouldn't matter if there were enough fans so you couldn't see the coloured seats...

Sunday: Adelaide 2 Sydney 2

And talking of the colour of teams' jerseys, finally both teams were wearing their home (coloured) jerseys today. All year, the league have made the team playing away wear their mostly-white alternate strip, which has lead to comments that one of the teams is the same in every game that's played, that team in white. Even when both teams could wear their home jerseys with no chance of a colour clash. Tonight, finally, they did and it looked like a real game of football, the reds v the blues.

It's a shame that it didn't sound like too many away fans made the trip because Sydney, the away team, took the lead early. What the hell was Adelaide defender Michael Valkanis doing? Waiting to see if the ball would bounce back to him off the post? Kosmina might be a tool, but he's right to be unhappy with his central defenders after that effort.

Dwight York should have scored for Sydney twenty minutes later, with the clock on 30:01. After what seemed like an eternity, but was only the previous twenty seconds, of thwarted runs into the box and ineffective clearances, the ball is cut in from the right to York in the 6-yard box. York's first mis-kick helps him wrong-foot his defender and... this is taking too long to write, because - while York's eventual shot was harmless - Adelaide scored a wonderful goal on the counter-attack. Travis Dodd stepped both his defender and the goal-keeper to score. The clock was at 30:20. Then while I was still writing about York's miss, Adelaide scored again at 32:35 after two minutes of pressure since the previous goal.

In two minutes and thirty-four seconds, Sydney went from nearly 2-0 up, to 1-2 down. But it was kind of okay 5:54 later, when Sydney equalised again with their second away-goal.

And the Hindmarsh Stadium A-League record crowd of 15,001 (!) went quiet! Unfortunately, the game did, too.

Someone was robbed of some time at the end of the first half: what about some added time for that injury? It seemed like I was fast-forwarding for hours through vision of some Sydney player writhing about on the ground. But whoever was robbed of a those couple of minutes of play, (the viewer?) Sydney's Petrovski was robbed too; in the last play of the half. I've freeze-framed it myself. He wasn't off-side and he was away.

Sydney 3-2 would have made for an exciting second-half. Unfortunately, instead we got bitty grinding football from two teams that had played an entire game in the first 45 minutes.

So now Adelaide go to Sydney (And Newcastle go to Gosford) for the final leg, where away goals don't count double.

What actually happens is that away goals count 'extra'. First, the aggregate score of the two games has to end up in a draw. (If not, the team with the most goals wins.) Second, they look at the number of goals each team scored in the tie during the game when they were playing away from home. The team that scored more goals away, wins.

For example, let's say Sydney and Adelaide draw 1-1 next week, the aggregate score will be 3-3. But Sydney will win, because they scored two goals in the game in Adelaide, but Adelaide only scored one goal in the game in Sydney. If away goals counted double, Sydney would win 5-4, but they win "3-3 on the away-goals rule".

>>>Alex Brosque has left the Queensland Roar to Join Sydney F.C.

[END]

Global Flyer Update 10

I assume you've heard they made it.

[END]

Global Flyer Update 9 - They're going for it

8.26pm AEST. They've passed the point of no return and they're going for it.

The updates on the website seem to have now reverted back to older messages, saying the PNR (point of no return) will be W40. Well, they've passed that now (they're at W38, N51 now at 8.40pm) and they're still going.

The website says that the scheduled 'landfall' over Ireland is at 1700 UTC (3.00am) and landing at Kent Airport (which is at 1.33 degrees east, by the way) at 1900 UTC (5.00am), so I've written all this crap and I won't even see the end, unless the news does a story on it tomorrow. Do you think they will?

Again, I say, I don't know why I love these things.

[END]

Global Flyer Update 8 - a heading for home?

7.15PM AEST: LATEST. The Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer website is reporting that the "point of no return" decision will be made around 1030 UTC, which is in 75 minutes. They have 1800lbs of fuel left, but I don't know what that means. They quote someone named Kevin Stass as being "cautiously optimistic".

EARLIER: 7.00pm AEST. It's technically decision-time. They're about to head out into the Atlantic over the Flemish Cap, which is the lighter-coloured wedge shape in front of the right wing in this picture (again, stolen from the website):


In one of those cases where the book and the film made of it are totally different kinds of beasts, Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm is pretty good book which tells you all you ever wanted to know about fishing off Newfoundland and the north-eastern United States; and how the fishermen had to keep heading further and further offshore.

After reading it, you think about things differently when you hear that someone is beyond the Flemish Cap. That's getting into deep water.

STILL EARLIER: 6.00pm AEST. Well, according to the tracking page on the website, the plane has reached St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada, and they've changed course from about 52 degrees to around 67, which - by my reckoning - would point them straight at the U.K.


It's only 0800 UTC, which is an hour before the expected decision point. But if they've almost got enough fuel to get across, then they should have the fuel to get almost half-way across and then turn around and come back*, so the go/no go decision might not be made for a few hours yet. Watchers of the tracking page should be able to tell if they've turned back within a few minutes of them doing so.

*Wasn't there a Marx Brothers routine like that in A Night at the Opera?

[END]

Global Flyer Update 7

3.45PM AEST: The go-no-go point has been shifted forward to 0900 UTC, which is 7pm my time.

And, because he's going north from around 30 degrees N to 51 degrees N, it isn't really a matter of saying x degrees to go. Maybe we need the x and y axes: 63 degrees E and 9 degrees N to go.

EARLIER, at 12.15pm AEST:

About half an hour ago, they passed the same longitude from which they took off: Cape Canaveral.


When I first checked-in this morning, the plane was over the middle of Texas (I'd just missed seeing Midland drop off the map). That seems to be around the time of the most recent update on their website. Fossett is quoted thusly:

"The decision of whether to go for it or turn back is looming, currently I would say the chances are no more than 50/50. I will have until around 11:30UTC, a couple of hours into the final leg across the Atlantic, when I reach the point of no return and will be forced to make this crucial decision."

That's in around nine hours, at 9.30pm Australian Eastern Standard Time.

He's currently flying at a heading of about 44-46, which means pretty much due north-east. (North is zero, east is 90, south is 180, west is 270.) But the U.S. east coast also seems to curve to the north-east up to Cape Hatteras, so he's tracking along off-shore at present. My point is, I'd say he's already started the "final leg across the Atlantic", but maybe he doesn't consider himself to be going "across" yet until the coastline recedes.

EARLIER, at 10.00am AEST:

They're about as close to Pensacola, Florida, as they're ever going to get.


Apparently, he's altered his route; but I hadn't heard of the route they say he was originally going to take, so I don't know when this 'alteration' occurred.

87.87 degrees to go.

[END]

Global Flyer Update 6 - breaking radio silence

They're at west 145 degrees, approaching Mexico; but that's something like four or five hours away when I'm in bed.

Aren't these [stolen, not copyright-free] pictures purty?

I hope they will still be flying over America when I get up tomorrow so there's something to see on the close-in view, otherwise it'll be another bloody ocean.

[END]

Brosque and Dilevski in Socceroos 18-man squad

Out of eight A-League players in the 18-man squad to play Bahrain later this month, two of them, Alex Brosque and Spase Dilevski, are currently with the Queensland Roar.

It's a mid-week game on a non-FIFA-sanctioned date, so the Europe-based players aren't in the team.

[END]

Global Flyer Update 5

Within the past hour, they've passed 180 degrees east, and now the longitude counts down from 180 west. Landing near zero west makes it all nice and easy to work out. 172 degrees to go.

[END]

Global Flyer Update 4 - Look! Up there!

Way up there. They're at 153 or so degrees east, right up there north of me now.

Surrounded by nothing.


But it's such a big plane, you wouldn't think getting down would be the problem from here...


[END]

Global Flyer Update 3 + a plane flys into mountains.

The plane has just passed 139 and a half degrees east. The equivalent of Mt. Isa.

A little further north from where they passed is the site of the world's deadliest single-aeroplane crash, that of JAL123. If you've never heard the sound of a fully-laden 747 crashing into a mountain, listen to the end of this. (Takes a while to load on dial-up connections. Takes a while to get over, after listening to the whole thing.)

[END]

'Dacking' proudly re-enters the language... or does it?

I was going to write a short post about how good it was that the word 'dacking' had re-entered the language and was being used as a normal word. (And possibly how sports reporters get a lot more leeway than real journalists.) The Sky News sports report on the Sydney Swans high school dacking incident (see links below) used the word twice in three sentences without explaining what it meant or using any different vocal stress, and there are no apostrophes around the word (as in my subject line and first sentence) on the Sky News Active sports screen.

But then I looked on Google News - gee, I wonder if people will be able to find that if I don't provide a link? - and there are several stories from News Corp papers. The stories 10 hours ago don't have apostrophes but the one two hours ago does.

And the Adelaide Advertiser not only uses apostrophes in the headline and story, they use the phrase "pulling a teammate's pants down" more than dacking. Wimps.

So, I'm not sure if the word has proudly re-entered the language or if news editors have had a rethink this morning and have decided that we are not yet ready.

[END]

Global Flyer Update 2

They've just hit Japan. 240 degrees to go.

In Australian terms, that's the middle of Western Australia.

[END]

Global Flyer Update

They've passed 60 degrees east longitude and are heading for Pakistan. I hope that airways clearance has been obtained way in advance, otherwise things might get hairy flying up there above Karachi. Three hundred degrees to go.

>>> The Prime Meridian that's what that Greenwich mean-time zero degrees east latitude thingy is called.

[END]

Yes, I'm okay.

I'm a bit sore like I've done a long hard weekend of gardening; and I've got a few cuts on my knees and fun-looking bruises, mostly on my fleshy bits (upper thighs, belly.) I was going to post a photo - using the camera since now both our new phones are busted. Frickin' Panasonic. Don't buy Panasonic mobile phones, don't even accept them if they're free - but I couldn't get a good view that didn't also get a lot of me in the picture.

My helmet and glasses came off, but it only took me a few moments of wandering around after I'd clambered off the lady's bonnet to realise what was wrong with the view and find my glasses, so I figure I'm okay.

The big contusions are slowly moving with gravity, and since I've been mostly sitting on my arse for the last two days, they have now joined and spread rearward to cover an area larger than my hand. Fun.

There are still clearly visible triangular marks in the middle of the bruises, though. I can't remember what part of the front of the lady's car I hit. The hematomas are a nice share of maroon, just in time for the start of the Super 14s.

Oh, yeah... and my suspected broken hand turned out not to be.

[END]

Internet Explorer 7 beta 2 is out...

Now, I'm not a big fan of IE. I was willing to leave it on my desktop for Boycat's Mum to use, but she likes Firefox now, too. But work uses IE exclusively, and the product I write for is delivered to the user's browser over the intranet, so maybe we can start planning for some of these features that are finally coming to Internet Explorer.

I could see us delivering news of updates via RSS. I can't wait for tabbed browsing at work. I'm not familiar with the thumbnail extension for Firefox, but I've downloaded it and I'll check it out tomorrow.

But of course, given the time it takes our I.T. people to security check new software for use on the network, it probably won't be until IE8 is out.

[END]

I'm savouring my last Doctor Who

I'm only up to the end of episode one of Survival at the moment, although I'll have plenty of time to watch the rest now.

I'll just say that people rarely manage to make pussy-cats scary. The X-Files couldn't do it either. Showing a picture of a cat on a wall and playing ominous music over the top just ain't gonna cut it. Especially, when it looks like Salem from Sabrina.

Despite what's said about it in the show, Perivale seems happy to be associated with Ace.

[END]

Flap those wings, Steve

I gotta admit that I'm a sucker for things like Steve Fossett and Richard Branson's latest world record attempt. 80 hours in a plane; lots of will-he-make-it, won't-he-make-it moments... And I especially love it when I can follow it easily because the Virgin Global Flyer's website has a frequently updated map tracking where the plane is. I love maps.

Hey, I'm off work until next Monday, this will be perfect: cable news coverage (because we all know they love something like this, too - three and a half days of being able to fill airtime with just some dot in the sky or glitchy video) supplemented with the net.

He's just crossed the zero-degrees line, whatever that's called. Y'know, the line where you go from some number of degrees west to zero east, due south of Greenwich U.K.

Only 360 degrees to go, give or take.

[END]

What do you get if you cross a 50cc motor scooter with a family station wagon?

Really sore, with minor cuts on the legs and some interesting bruises.

This (left) is what my bike used to look like.

Very Mod.

I'm not sure what it looks like now. We last saw it when we dragged it behind the ice freezer at the Beenleigh Ampol to wait for the insurance company to arrange a tow out to their assessment centre.

The accident happened Tuesday on my way to work.

[END]

Queensland Roar Wrap

The end of the A-League season was pretty much as you'd expect from a new league with a salary cap. Perth beat Newcastle 3-1 to move into fifth place, so the Qld Roar ended in sixth, three points behind fourth-placed Newcastle but only two points above seventh-placed Melbourne.

In fact, six points was the difference between third and seventh; and four people shared the 'golden boot' award for most goals in the regular season, with eight. (Qld's Alex Brosque was one of them.) All of which serves to refine my impressions of the first year of the A-League: there are two top teams, then Central Coast and Perth, then the rest, and New Zealand. I'm not currently impressed with Newcastle at all, they look like the Roar did in December.

But the crowds were good, and excellent if you exclude New Zealand. We got 13,000 at Suncorp for the dead-rubber and almost 10K at Newcastle. You'd hope the ground is full next Friday night in Newcastle, but whoo... the part-time fans might not like what they've seen recently.

And apparently, the merchandising sold well for the Qld Roar, at least, so things are looking good for the future, especially if coaches get to settle in and learn how to cope with the particular constraints of the league.

So, my tips: Central Coast and Sydney. Adelaide over Central Coast and then... what did I say last time? I'll just do it with my eyes closed... Adelaide.

[END]

Blogger ate my homework

I posted three posts yesterday that all disappeared after they'd gone on line. (And one at the other place. The re-post seems to have stuck for that one, but I'm afraid to hit refresh.)

The blog ate my homework... honestly!

Luckily, for the last post, there was a copy cached in my browser so I could re-do it, but the other two appear gone. And they all appeared online, so it's not like they all got lost when I hit 'post' and were never there at all.

Of the two posts that I couldn't reconstruct, one was about Courtney "I Killed Kurt" Love getting out of home detention. I thought the other was about the Rocket Racing League, but I see that post is still down there.

LATER: After a little bit of googling, I discovered that it affected everyone, you know, even blogs that people read.

[END]

Queensland Roar, Queensland Roar, I ain't gonna do this rhyming thing no more.

Originally posted on Saturday, February 04, 2006, but something is very wrong with blogger.

Well there you go, the end of the season for the Qld Roar. 2-2, one man down for a lot of the game, against third or fourth-placed Central Coast. Two wins and a draw with an aggregate of 9-3 in the last three games against the teams that ended up second through fourth... not bad at all.

Miron might just keep his job after all -- even though we didn't reach the mythical 30 points he's been going on about -- but will we keep the team together?

Because I hear that Baird is going to play in the Romanian slave league. Now, when I first read about this, I thought Baird's transfer was just a temporary thing to cover the big gap between now and the new A-League season next September; but SBS says it's for four years and the Fox commentators were talking like it was goodbye to the Roar for one of our best goal-scorers. And there's always that chance that Brosque will be leaving...

We ended up with a good team there, we don't want to lose it now that we've found some strikers (even though the two above have been there since the beginning.) Reinaldo doesn't seem to achieve a lot but it seems that something happens just by him being there. And... and the fact that I can't name another striker says it all, I think. I'm not saying we don't have loads of great attacking mid-fielders, but we have no strikers to spare.

Let's see now, if Newcastle win in the final regular season game tomorrow, we'll end up in fifth place four points behind fourth. But if Perth win, we would only be three points behind fourth, but we'd be in sixth. A draw would be the same as a win for Newcastle. I think I'll go for one of them, because fifth is better than sixth.

>>>And should Miron keep his job? Well, on the one hand, we don't sack our coaches that often here in Brisbane. Unless it's the Qld Reds. And he did manage to get a dangerous team together, but it was a little too late. But then again, he was the one who reminded everyone of the 30 point target and we did end up with only 28. Give him another go and let's review it next November.

[END]

Today, we are offering half-price on all broken items...

One of the reasons I went into such detail with my wasteful consumer-lifestyle updates previously was, of course, something that I forgot to write about at the time. I'm not sure if it's interesting enough to actually write about now, but hey, it's my blog, etc.

Way back in the history of time when I was a lad -- you know you're getting old when you start to make jokes like that, by the way -- a friend and I once recorded a sound-piece (it certainly wasn't a song) and we got someone else to do some vocals over the piece. This person either was working or had recently finished working as a pleb at a store like Target. Anyway, over this soundscape-thingy he launched into this great ad-lib like he was doing an announcement over the store P.A. and it began with something about offering "half-price on all broken items".

I still remember that bit, and it often floats into my head. Dealing with the girls at the return counter was one of those times.

[END]

To fly. The dream of man and flightless bird alike.

The Rocket Racing League is due to start in 2007! Currently, though, they've only flown a prototype and are just now building the first 'production' model, out of a planned ten X-Racers.

But I don't want to be cynical. While I think 2007 will be a stretch, I really want to see this. It'll be like Star Wars: Episode I, except, you know... good.

[END]

A-League Finals

I bet the FFA kinda wishes that Sydney hadn't won tonight. Now we know the top two will be Adelaide and Sydney, which means neither Central Coast or Newcastle have really anything to play for in their games this weekend; they aren't even playing each other which would have added a bit of spice. Still, we're playing the Coast, so the less enthused they are, the better.

And the FFA -- like me -- probably wishes that the final four hadn't been decided last week - the crowd at Suncorp for a dead-rubber will be interesting, so will the size of the fickle Newcastle crowd -- but at least it didn't affect tonight's record crowd of 25,557 in Sydney. And the best thing about the crowd, which still looked anaemic in the expanse of the stadium, was that they sounded like a football crowd. The atmosphere for the few minutes surrounding the handball, penalty and first goal was actually like it was a real football match...

And not only do we know that Sydney and Adelaide are the top two, we know that they will be playing each other again next week, and the week after, and then most probably two weeks after that. I don't know if I've written it down here or in the other place, but it seemed obvious from early in the season that there were two standout teams (guess which ones,) a bunch of average teams, with the Central Coast as the top of them, then some mediocre teams (of which we were threatening to be the only one for a while there,) and New Zealand.

So, the arrangement of the semis... Adelaide vs. Sydney and Newcastle vs. Central Coast over two legs. The winner of the first fixture (the major semi-final) gets a bye, the loser of the second fixture is out. The other two play each other. The loser is out and the winner goes on to play the winner of the major semi in the final.

My tips? Toss a coin for Sydney v Adelaide, but the stats listed below say Sydney has the edge. Central Coast over Newcastle, unless Newcastle can turn around from last week's drubbing. Then Adelaide over Central Coast and it's back to Sydney v Adelaide for the final which this time, I'll say, will be won by Adelaide.

>>>Ahh, New Zealand, poor suckers. I read an article a while ago about the problems lone Kiwi teams in Australian competitions have, most notably that every second weekend there was no game of that sport played in the entire country which made it hard to for supporters and sponsors to get behind it, but it's so long ago that it would take too much effort to find again*. But now I'm reading in the NZ Herald that there's speculation that they'd try to get Bleiberg if Qld hired Farina.

*why do people keep putting up money to back the teams? Greed. Dreams of the big pay-off in the Australian market.

>>>One thing I was saying last week was that Sydney vs. Adelaide would be interesting over a two-legged match. Tonight, I saw the scores for the previous matches this year and they were Sydney 2-1 at home and Adelaide 3-2 at home, which makes an aggregate of 4-4, but Sydney have one more away goal, so they would go through.

>>>And if anyone is interested in 'what my heart felt' (see last week), I was going for Adelaide tonight so that it would give one of the other teams a chance to make number two.

[END]

Hang the DJ

A British station, xfm London, have hired Andy Rourke, former bassplayer for The Smiths. He's going to be playing "indie anthems" according to an article in the Media Guardian which I won't link to because it's behind a registration wall.

[END]

Queensland: Baseball Champions of Australia

...so, by U.S. standards, doesn't that make us champeens of the world?

I like Baseball: as American sports go it's fairly non-boring. I went to Suncorp this year to see the Queensland Roar, but the last time I was at Lang Park it was many years ago to see the Brisbane Bandits play someone in the baseball.

[END]

The Psychic Battlefield (of crap)

I haven't said much about Doctor Who recently. There hasn't been much to say; it's sort of been the kind of TV that fans don't really want to draw any attention to.

The Psychic Circus, or whatever it was called, well... to quote Burt Reynolds talking about Fireball and Mudflap on The Simpsons, "It's... garbage."

Battlefield, too, is the biggest load of old tosh. And dragging the Brigadier back in for one last hurrah! isn't going to change that fact.

Bleedin' King Arthur again... Jeez, these English. How convenient, mistaking the Doctor for Merlin, "He has many guises..." oh, yeah? Convincing Mawdwyn of the same... "Er, yeah, I see: it's Merlin," says he, not wanting to be laughed at next term when word got back to Hogworts.

This is the one where Ace almost drowns in a tube. I remember this one. Didn't Sophie Aldred almost die or something?

Still, I'm only at the end of episode two. It might get better.

[END]

Queensland Roar, Queensland Roar. Next year, we'll be in The Four

Well, Sydney didn't lose, so that means the Queensland Roar can't make the final four in the A-League. Despite what I said the other night, it was not best for us if Perth lost to Sydney. But, I did pick Sydney; and with my New Zealand pick, I got one and a half out of three.

But 'twas no good, alas, in the scheme of things; we can't make the finals and I'm not in any tipping contests. The Queensland Roar are now on 27 points, with the current third and fourth teams (Central Coast and Newcastle) on 31. There are three points for a win. Sydney are now on 33 and Adelaide is way out there on 43. Worthless Adelaide, I hate them so much, etc.

Still, that takes the pressure off for the final home game of the season. And the pressure will be off for Central Coast, too, so hopefully they will relax and we can trounce them, too...

And the stuff I said previously about the best 11 for the Roar still stands, if we can keep what we've got and work on it, we'll be right. I realise we'd rarely ever have that actual eleven on the field at one time. Only two out of three of the strikers, Osvaldo Carro somewhere in there in the middle and Remo at the back.

>>>As for the finals, I'd be supporting Newcastle and Central Coast over Adelaide and Sydney. If it came down to either of the first group or either of the second group playing each other, I'd have to see what 'my heart felt' during the game. By that I mean, sometimes I tell myself that I don't care who wins, but when I'm watching the game, I'm like 'yeah, it'd be good for Wests, first time merged and all; but I'd really prefer North Queensland'.

I'm not sure who plays who in the semis (e.g., first v fourth, etc.) because, out of SBS, the A-League and ABC websites, only the ABC lists the semis - the rest just stop at round 21. And the ABC only says "To Be Decided v To Be Decided" at "Venue Unknown". But they do say that the semi-finals are a full two-legged away-goals-rule fixture, and y'know, I'm not sure who I'd chose out of Sydney v Adelaide in that situation. Adelaide can obviously beat anyone and everyone anyday, but Sydney can't be written off. And over 180 minutes plus of football, it'd be interesting.

If Central Coast played Newcastle, it would be a ripper of a home derby. You might actually get that thing common in overseas football games of being able to tell when the away-team scores a goal because you can hear people cheering. Instead of the deathly quiet we get now because there only ever seem to be 20 away fans at any game.

But in the end, who could tip against Adelaide? They will end the season somewhere between 7 and 12 points clear at the top of the table, depending on next weekend's results, and they were the best team in the league all year. Shame their coach is a tool.

[END]

Queensland Roar, Queensland Roar; I kind of wish it had only been four.

...instead of 5-0, so I could say "Queensland Roar, Queensland Roar. Four? Are you freakin' kidding me? Four?", but I managed to use the rhyme anyway; so, no biggie...

5-0: that's us -- the number six team -- over number two Newcastle.

I haven't been writing much about the Roar recently. I'm a pessimist, so I always expect the worst and the expected eventual heartbreak is easier to take if you haven't been gloating about apparently promising temporary successes. (I'm pretty quiet around NRL State of Origin time.)

But I don't care. One round left in the season, against Central Coast at home on February 4, and it doesn't really matter what happens. Of course, we'd like to win, not just because it's the season-ender at home but because we have to, to have any chance of qualifying; but I think they've finally put a team together that has gelled, and that's got to be good for next season. (Of course, now we'll discover Brosque is leaving for Sydney...)

Richter has been fantastic all season and Brosque has finally got on the end of a few. Last week against Sydney was great. It was good to see Jonty getting a goal finally. Same for Merdocca - he's a favourite of Boycat's Mum ever since we went to see a game in September.

So: Brosque, Baird and Reinaldo near the front with Richter, Merdocca, Dilevski and Seo behind them. McCloughan, McKay and Gibson at the back. How many is that? Ten? Okay, Higgins in goal. I like Tom Willis, but Higgins has been there for the past two weeks.

>>>The best results for us out of this weekend's remaining games are if Central Coast lose to Melbourne and Perth lose to Sydney. I'd also like New Zealand to have a win. Those results would leave us one point out of the four, but it would also leave us one point above seventh.

The final round is too hypothetical at present, but we would want Melbourne and Perth to lose and of course, we have to win.

[END]

Subtly, all aeroplanes are different

And subtly Qantas are using a different language from the rest of us.

So I've flown Qantas a few times recently. They have a video which runs through the safety procedures while the cabin crew wave arms and put on dummy life jackets in the aisles. The video does the commentary, which overcomes the incomprehensibility problem when the head steward would do it live into one of those telephone-y things.

To make the point that even people who travel all the time should pay attention, the video points out that procedures are different on different planes. Perhaps only slightly different; I think, since the video begins "Subtly, all aeroplanes are different..."

No, it's "all aeroplanes are subtly different". A tiny thing, I know, but it drives me crazy. It's like it's a DVD player instruction book translated from another language.

AND because, apparently, the New York Times couldn't find any business traveller bloggers, here's some things: the meals are crap...

I got a flight the other day, due-in to Canberra at 11.25 am. We got two biscuits. Morning tea, that seems okay you might say, except think of this. Due to daylight saving time, the flight left at 8.35. To get to the airport to check in the hour before the flight that they want and to take into account any potential first day back from the holidays traffic, I had to leave home at 6.45am. How about some breakfast?

On the way home it was a dinner flight (only one hour delayed, but at least I was travelling with a Qantas Club member, so we could go into their lounge.) Dinner was gelatinous steamed chicken with some kind of gooey yellow sauce. It had rice with it and flat white kinda crispy stuff cooked into it that I think was supposed to be bamboo shoots, so I think it was trying to be Asian food of some kind. But it was hard to tell.

At least it was better than one of the meals I got on a previous flight - 6 crackers and a tub of "nacho dip", a weirdly hot (I know chilis and this weren't they), runny, cheese and tomato based thing that you couldn't eat without getting all over your fingers.

But there was a Beef Ravioli that was nice, which might be no big achievement since I read in CJR Daily that the Beef Ravioli is even pretty good in military MRE meals, so it must be hard to screw up.

[END]

But remember... we are invincible to your cricket balls

How about the Cybermen vs. Sri Lanka - they've got the right gloves.

[END]

I knew I shouldn't have eaten that packet of powdered gravy I found in the parking lot.

So I'm at a conference and several people came up to me to comment on the Simpsons quote I have at the bottom of my work email. One person requested a "weekly turnaround".

Yeah, I've been lax, but I do like the absurdity of Homer's "You'll have to speak up: I'm wearing a towel."

[END]

Worthless charity bins! I hate them so much! I spit on them!

If there is actually anyone who reads this who doesn't already read syme's blog, there's a post you've got to read.

Yep, I agree totally, Chuckmeister Desmond.

Especially the bit about thinking there are a lot more of them out there than there actually are, I know exactly.

Unfortunately, the most convenient bin for me is just across the freeway at one of those wanna-be minimegachurches whose buildings look like converted sheds, and often are. I'd much rather donate clothes to the Salvos -- we buy our sofas there -- I don't care which branch of the service gets it, Salvation Army, Navy, Air Force or Marines...

[END]

Happiness will prevail!

I'm glad you're happy! I'm happy you're glad!

Doctor Who is getting really stupid now. And cheap.

But, gee, it's big dumb fun. You do have to sit through a bit of crap to get to some of the really interesting stuff, like the unlikely deep philosphical discussion the Doctor had while distracting a guard in a recent episode and the two old guys in The Happiness Patrol.

Speaking of THP, if they put the last Doctor on trial for interfering with stuff, gee they've got Sylvester dead to rights for what he did this time.

I've been away for work and I was in an ABC Shop today. I saw the TARDIS-shaped box set of the new episodes. $150, are you kidding? Not even with travel allowance; I'm married.

[END]

Seriously, how pissed was Harrison Ford?

[END]

Wasteful consumer lifestyle update.

We took the broken DVD/TV back to the store yesterday. We didn't have the receipt, but the product was made exclusively for this particular retailer in their sweatshops in China, and we had had a raincheck, so there was a docket sticky-taped to the box with our name and the price on it.

So we get to the customer service counter and there are two teenaged girls running the show. The one looking after us is fine with the whole thing, especially since the treatment upon return is the same whether there's a receipt or not - replace it, no questions asked; leading me to suspect that these crappy cheap things breakdown all the time. Unfortunately, we have a disc stuck in it, but it's a DVD-R we recorded ourselves, so it's not a real big loss.

But there aren't any left in stock, so she has to do a credit voucher. When she swipes the doovy over the barcode, it rings up as $379. We paid $249. She knows we paid $249. "We'll pretend we didn't see this," she says, pulling the raincheck slip off the box...

So we had $379 to replace the bedroom TV and DVD player. We spent $80+$229 in the end. We were only looking for a mega-cheap DVD player - with one specific requirement - it had to be multi-zone.

I was a little impatient, so we got a bit of a bad deal - the TV only has one audio input! What TV sold in 2006 is mono? Apparently this one. There was a TV we liked better for $20 more, but they didn't have any out the back. There might have been some at other stores, but we were at that one, and really, I just wanted to get it over and done with; we'd gone back to the store once - twice if you count the original time when we were issued with the raincheck.

And the DVD was multi-zone, so we can now play half our collection again.

Now, the lounge room DVD player, which we bought for $50 at Aldi when everything else in the house crapped it is starting to freeze up on some DVD-Rs we did. Oh, the problems of needing so much stuff...

[END]

Eddie Jones to Coach Queensland Reds

Let's face it, even if he's useless, we can't do much worse than we've done recently. For Queenslanders, the Super 12 was usually over by the end of the second round. Let's see how we go in Super 14.

[END]

I've just discovered Sage!

Yes, yes, I'm very slow, but I've only just selected the option on Firefox that says 'Sage'. It's awesome.

[END]

The Doctor is better, the theme music is worse

Yeah, I like Sylvester McCoy better than the last one. It only took 5 minutes to get used to him. It took 5 episodes for the last guy.

But the opening credits are awful.

[END]

R.I.P., Andy

Boycat's parents were big fans.

[END]

Sometimes the Headlines rip off stories from Law and Order

There is an interesting story by Warren St. John from somewhere* (I've cut and pasted the article into a word doc, so I have no idea of the original source until I google it) about an author who survived being a male prostitute in West Virginia only to end up a junky in San Francisco with Aids.

Authors, publishers and celebrities offered the man help with his publishing career, as well as general support. He's written three books and at least one article for the New York Times.

Oh, yeah, and he doesn't seem to exist. Photos of him look suspiciously like the half-sister of a member of the couple who 'rescued' him from the life when he was a teenager. His writing is suspiciously similar to some documents that the other member of the couple asked someone to type up and fax once.

Various authors, publishers and celebrities are now pissed off...

Neither of these are the article that I read, but here are pieces on the story from The Australian and The Washington Post

Disclaimer: None of this should be construed to suggest that Ms Albert and Mr Knoop ever killed anyone a la the L&O:CI episode.

*The New York Times

[END]

Monday's Miscellany

Would a Jaws reference be in bad taste?
With reference to the weekend's shark attack, Boycat's Mum points out that Amity was also the name of the town in Jaws. This hasn't been mentioned in any news reports, but it was the first thing that came to mind for us. Are we just sick freaks who watch too much TV?


Cheap Chinese DVDs... this is why you don't buy them.
(Y'know, along with all the driving down wages over here and stuff...)

Our TV/DVD player stopped working last week. The TV bit works, except that where we live you need an outdoor antenna or a precious cable-TV cable to get a useful picture. The DVD bit won't even power up, so there's a disc stuck in it. Luckily it isn't a rental.

And my Panasonic X-700 phone (with the camera) also stopped working over the weekend. WTF is going on?

This is the sort of thing I'd do
Miffed Canadian pays bank bill a penny at a time.

Why do politicians just say "families" when they are actually talking about "families with children"?
It really pisses me off to discover that, although we are in a supposedly sacred heterosexual marriage, Boycat's Mum and I apparently aren't a family. Wayne Swan, I'm looking at you. (For today. Other pollies do it all the time, too. After all, look at the criteria for Centrelink's "Family" Assistance...)

Tolls on the Pacific Highway
I'm not sure what I think about this, but I know I'm against it if there is no way to drive from Sydney to Brisbane without paying a toll.

Medium, median; who cares?
I do.

As much as I love the Qld Police's media update page, I really wish they'd learn what a median strip is called.

Can a cigarette butt cause a bushfire?
According to an article I read a couple of years ago in a firey's publication, the answer is no, no matter how strong the wind.

[END]

Miner Miracles

Written Thursday 5/1.

The mine disaster communications disaster is one of the most interesting things I've seen on TV all year. (Or all last year, whatever.) But I'm a breaking-news-junkie, so this was my idea of entertainment.

What's going on? Who got it so wrong? Will the media do its job or will it take some blogger to track down who originally said what to whom?

But by my count it only took about an hour from the discovery that only one was alive until the post-mortems started (sorry for the language, but that's what people call them). By the time the company man got up to do his press conference, you could hear from the tone of the questions that journalists weren't happy.

It seems the news that the 12 miners were "alive" broke while I was at work. It was all over the cable news channels when I got home. It lead the 5.30 pm Sky news bulletin, but then they broke in at about 5.57pm to say that only one was alive. Sky cut to Sky UK.

We watched that for a few minutes, but because it was 6pm, I checked out the two free-to-air channels. Neither was leading with the story, but Seven got to it before 6.15, but they ran the outdated "miracle rescue" story. I didn't see what Nine ran.

After a while I switched over to CNN, which was showing Anderson Cooper 360 from CNN US. Anderson was doing his usual "people are upset about this so I will be, too" routine, but he was the first I heard to raise the important point, which was that the company shouldn't have waited three hours to come out - they should have hosed down what they knew to be speculation as soon as they realised what was being speculated upon. I can understand the company man's reasoning when he says that after the first news, they didn't want to make an announcement until they had the facts, but that presupposes that there are only two courses of action. It doesn't take the preferred "We just don't know, we can't confirm that" into account.

Around 7pm, I checked out some websites, too see what they were saying. The New York times was still reporting the miracle story (in fact AFP/ABC/Reuters report that the New York Times print edition led with this story the next morning, too.) Topix.net showed the problem with automated news aggregators: it had both the "all alive" and "all dead" stories from different sources, but the all-alive story was placed higher on the page probably due to more links or page-views or however their ranking algorithms work.

It was instructive being able to read the NYT's story after the true facts had started to come out. The NYT sourced the story to "family members" and a "State official". They quoted the official in the third par, but his words did not confirm that the miners were alive, only that they had been found and were being medically evaluated.

I think this is where the whole confusion came from - if you hear someone is being medically evaluated, I think you would think they were alive, but their condition beyond that was unknown. It now seems that the 'evaluation' had not even reached the basic stage of 'alive or dead?'.

The family members said they'd been told people were alive, but no one has traced the chain back yet.

The Columbia Journalism Review's CJR Daily will have a field day with this. Even the NYT runs a story sourced only to family members who had heard things from unidentified people and a state official who only says vague things?

But then again, the Governor of West Virginia was calling it a miracle. In situations like this, it would be reasonable to expect that a high official is plugged into the official networks. Thus the fact that he is celebrating and no hosing down speculation would been seen by many reasonable people as confiming the truth of what was said. After all, he could always have said "I don't know. I've heard what people are saying but no one has told me officially."

LATER (09/01/2006): As predicted, CJR Daily did have a field day. They, too, were asking where were the journalist's sources. And speaking of Anderson Cooper, one of the complaints about the whole thing was that there were too many celebrity anchormen there and not enough actual journalists...

Harry Shearer, writing at the Huffington Post, also asks similar questions. Harry's been focussing on New Orleans, so his questions are in the context of why, after the many retracted 'New Orleans is falling into anarchy' stories, weren't they more careful this time.

[END]

Googlemania

The Guardian has a story on Google (Awestruck Wall Street ups Google share target to $600). Choice quote:

"It is easy to forget that Google was forced to reduce the offer price of its initial public offering in New York just 18 months ago and pare back the number of shares on offer because of lukewarm demand from investors."

Yep, I'd forgotten all that fuss about the Dutch auction.

[END]

Stuff

Gladstone wins New Year drunkenness award

The police report

"The most concerning drink driver this campaign was intercepted yesterday in the Gladstone district on the Dawson Highway. The 56-year-old male driver was apprehended with an alcohol level of .305%, six times over the legal limit."

Cat tails

Cat survives 100kms clinging to 4WD

Cat dials 911

[END]

Dirty animal sex amongst the ruins

It seems the surviving animals in the ruins of New Orleans are gettin' on down.

[END]