Stuart’s got talent

I’m no great fan of TV talent shows like Australian Idol but the performance of one of our local residents, Stuart Biggins from Porepunkah (which is all but a part of Bright) on the Channel 7 show Australia’s got talent, is something to behold. He’s through to the next stage and it’s no wonder. Stuart is a 47 y.o. tiler and part-time musician and was motivated to go on the show by his wife’s recent illness. I’ve met Stuart when I bought some tiles from a very upmarket tile shop he was running in Myrtleford for a while. The shop has since closed (too upmarket for the area I suggest) and now he’s back to doing tiling for a living. Not for long though after this performance. Watch it please – he’s all class and if you fail to be moved by this you ain’t got a heart. Go Stuart:

 

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That’s not “freedom of speech” Amanda – it’s abuse

The look sort of says it all.

Albury councillor out of line & out of control

I reckon when you get elected to public office - be it at Federal, State or even Local Council level – at some stage you are going to cop a bit of stick from your constituents. Some of it might be constructive, some of it might be wrong and some of it might even be nasty. So responding politely to the first two types while just ignoring the third would seem the way to go .. for most.

Not so for Albury councillor Amanda Duncan-Strelec who has now admitted – following a council investigation – to sending an anonymous, abusive letter to a retired accountant in response to his submission on the council’s new rates structure in which she called him “a sanctimonious prat” and “a serial pest”. Actually, the letter was in the form of scrawled, handwritten notes in the margin of a copy of the ratepayer’s submission.

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‘sno people @ the snow

 The time has come to stop promoting this failing industry

Main Street @ Falls Creek today is not exactly 'Bourke Street'.

I’m not trying to be negative here. The ski resorts are always talking up the crowds they attract but go have a look at all 38 Falls Creek snow cams and see for yourself that, despite the excellent coverage (about 45cm of natural snow) and the great conditions … there are not a lot of people out on the slopes today. Maybe they’re all inside at the bars but, somehow, I think not. Over at Mt Hotham the crowds are even thinner, as this photo and all their other snow cams depict:

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AFL round 14 (2011) ‘expert’ tips

It’s pain in the arse neck round

I’m too crook at the moment to write a full post. Torticollis. More about that later. I’ll try to put it up on Saturday morning but meanwhile it’s suffice to say that everyone is going for Hawthorn tonight … except me. Essendon just have to win one, while Hawthorn can afford a loss.

Update: The drugs have kicked in enough for me to finish this post. Click on “more”.
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How does this make front page news?

It’s only an opinion!

This headline to the front page lead story of today’s Bright Observer is effectively an advertisement. It’s certainly not news or even journalism.

The article quotes only one source - being the Bright Ratepayers Association – and even then it’s quite clear that the observations and opinions on the trading state and future of Bright’s IGA supermarket are anecdotal. At best. Why the reporter (or editor) didn’t seek a comment from IGA management is astounding.

This story is a beat up consisting merely of the opinions of a small and somewhat mysterious group. It only belongs in ‘Letters to the Editor’, not on the front page. Here is the full text. My further comments follow:

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AFL round 13 (2011) ‘expert’ tips

It’s ‘Nutter’ round

I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the full moon and the solar eclipse but, for some reason, I’ve been running into a lot of crazy people this week.

And to top it off our EFTPOS machine has packed it in and we can’t accept any money.

Bugger it, I think I’ll head down to Melbourne for the weekend. No nutters down there. Only sane people. Like me!

Over to the ‘experts’:

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Collingwood player gets two operations for the price of one

You'd be screaming too if they cut yours off.

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The AFL & drugs

“I knew coming to Flagstaff to pump ourselves full of steroids would backfire!” ~ Collingwood’s Dane Swan on his Twitter

It’s a logical question to ask: Is Collingwood using performance enhancing substances (be it steroids, EPO or some other banned strength builder) to continue its power-packed performances where they just seem to get better, stronger & faster as a game wears on? I’m not making accusations here because it’s quite clear the drug testers have their suspicions too. Why else would they follow the 3 or 4 Collingwood players over to Arizona in the USA (where they are currently undergoing mid-season, um, training) to make pre-dawn testing raids on the likes of Dane Swan? And the media seems to think so too, reading between the lines of this Age report:

Collingwood’s Arizona AFL training squad have been drug-tested twice in two days, which suggests they are the subject of target testing.

[...]

The mid-year trip is an attempt to build on the success Collingwood have had in taking their entire squad on an annual pre-season training camp to Arizona.

Magpies’ midfielder Sharrod Wellingham said the team credited their phenomenal record in last quarters this season to those trips.

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The Age: Cutting back and dumbing down

Times are obviously tough – and money tight – at The Age newspaper. Not only are they cutting back on editorial staff, it seems they also need to save on cyberspace or bandwidth on their Real Footy website by insisting on reducing the names of AFL teams to 3 letters.

Most of the (unnecessary) abbreviations are okay. For example, I can recognise that STK = St Kilda, WCE = West Coast Eagles. I can even work out that the rather odd looking NMK stands for North Melboune Kangaroos, although surely WBU (Western Bulldogs) should be WBD.

But how do the Gold Coast Suns become GCF ?!?  WTF is going on at the ANP?

AFL round 12 (2011) ‘expert’ tips

It’s ‘F.G.M.O. (For Gay Men Only) round’

(And no, not because it’s the Queens Birthday)

This week I dedicate the round of footy in honour of the Sircuit Bar in Collingwood, which has just won the legal right to ban females on the clearly ridiculous grounds that “predatory women might try to convert them”.

See previous post - it’s not because I have anything against gays, it’s just that I find the whole issue laughable, as (a) the bar is clearly a place where sex goes on in public and (b) I love the fact it’s in Collingwood. Now we know what Daisy does at night.

Enough banter from me. Someone has to bring some levity to a season that just gets more & more predictable.

 Here are ‘the experts’ tips for Rd 12 with … you know the rest:

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Big news: Women banned from gay sex club

 According to VCAT, a gay, um, bar, in Collingwood - of all places! - can now legally ban women:

 “to ensure its patrons are not subjected to attempts by predatory females to turn them straight.”

Well, bugger me (not literally):

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Yea! Cittaslow is NOT coming to Bright

The town of Yea is to become Victoria's first official Cittaslow ('slow town') instead of Bright. Thank Christ for that.

Yea becomes Victoria’s first official Cittaslow

(Italian for ‘slow town’)

That’s good news for them  … and even better news for Bright! :

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AFL round 11 (2011) ‘expert’ tips

Stupid ... and proud of it.

It’s Idiot Round

The leading contender for idiot/jerk/d*ckhead of the month (take your pick) for June 2011 has just got to be 21-year old Swiss tourist Dominic Emmenegger, who attempted to ride his skateboard through the 3.5 km long Burnley tunnel in inner Melbourne - at up to 60 kmh in front of cars and semi trailers – before finally falling off and finding himself in some serious legal shit.

It takes a lot to knock off a cat-meowing Liberal Senator and a misogynist Geelong supporter who wants Paul Chapman to screw his wife (while he looks on?), but this yodeling fool from the land-locked Alpine country of Switzerland has just proven that we should definitely tighten up our border patrols.

Maybe the AFL should invite Dom to the GF replay at the MCG on Saturday night? He could sit next to Andrew Demetriou – they’d make a good pair. From one idiot to another (and a few more) then, here are the ‘expert’ tips for Rd 11 with last week’s results … blah, blah, blah:

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The Chapman banner

Mate, looking at you, I don't think anyone would be interested in your hand-me-downs. Get a life.

What kind of idiot-loser holds up a banner like this one at an AFL footy match? Well, a Geelong supporter … obviously. Take a look at him. How alluring do you think his wife would be anyway – wow, what a prize. Even so – no matter what’s she’s like – I bet she’s 10 times as classy as her d*ckhead hubby is. She should kick him in the nuts and dump him. What an insulting, backwards-thinking, knuckle-dragging neanderthal this bloke is. Maybe he’s a member of Save Bright? The only people more retrograde than this bloke are those idiots putting comments on the HeraldSun article saying there’s nothing wrong with this and it’s just in “good humour”. Humour my arse. Get a tat on your face too – preferably so we can’t see your ugly head. Go back to your cave.

A slow train to nowhere

A passenger train approaches Wodonga station yesterday for the first time since 2008. But it was only a 'test run'.

Rail debacle goes largely ignored

It really surprises me that the absurd state of the Melbourne-Sydney railway line has not caused widespread public outrage. Maybe it’s because most people choose to travel by either car or plane, but wouldn’t you think that having a viable and reliable passenger train service between our two largest capital cities – with a combined population of about 10,000,000 people! – would be absolutely essential and something that we cannot afford to be without? Well, in case you didn’t know:

For the past two and a half years the line has effectively been closed for about 200 kms from Seymour (about 100 kms north of Melbourne) to Albury-Wodonga on the border.

This has meant that train passengers have had to disembark at those points and be loaded onto buses, which obviously makes taking the train a lot less palatable choice. It also severely inhibits rail tourists visiting the north-east region of Victoria including holiday towns like Bright.

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