Sigh...

Iceland's boss just married her female partner. And here?

Gillard's just shown the limits of her tolerance.

Julia Gillard's Personal Opinion on Gay Marriage

How do we get these politicians who are permanently stuck in the 1950s?

A Tip Of The Hat

It should be obvious to most by now that I do not like politicians. With very few exceptions, I find them to be lying, self-serving, fundamentally dishonest, manipulative, untrustworthy, contemptible little people, obsessed and consumed by the game of 'power'. (It is a sad but accurate truism, in my experience, that the people who most desire the power to rule are among those least fit to do so -- and anyone with the sense and integrity to potentially rule well also has the sense to stay the hell away from the job.)

Nevertheless, sometimes one of 'em will say or do something which hints at, perhaps, a touch of truth, or possibly even a degree of honesty. And since hope springs eternal and I believe in positive reinforcement, I will usually make the effort to acknowledge such things.

Our shiny new Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has already disappointed me by not taking Stephen Conroy and making him Minister for Licking Public Toilet Floors in Kings Cross - a job for which he may not actually be qualified, I admit, but which he certainly deserves. I understand the Ms Gillard has a delicate line to walk for the moment. She's in power as a result of a nasty little coup, and no matter how much Kruddy-boy earned his newfound political obscurity (and he most certainly did earn it, yes) there will no doubt be people who look askance at her for taking power at his expense. Some of those people have to be placated. Conroy is part of the price.

I know this. But I remain disappointed, because Conroy is a poisonously stupid human being, whose ridiculously 19th century outlook bids fair to completely cripple our chance at 21st century communications and democracy. Still, there's an election coming up. Perhaps we can convince Conroy's constituents to wake up and smell the effluent.

In the meantime, I am honour-bound to acknowledge that today, Julia Gillard managed to earn a small degree of respect from me. Questioned by the media regarding her religious affiliations, she very clearly explained that she does not believe in a God.

Unmarried but living with a long-time partner, first female Prime Minister - she's already on tenuous territory, in theory. And now, here she is outing herself as an atheist. Yes, fine, she's claimed the moral high ground by professing her tolerance for the faith and beliefs of others -- but it doesn't change the fact that she has quietly but firmly broken away from an image and an idea that few world leaders can escape. (Gough Whitlam did say he wasn't Christian, of course. But he said he was a 'fellow traveller', whatever the hell that means.)

It could be argued that if she'd claimed to be Christian, she would have been found out. But these days, what difference would that make? All she'd have to do would be to claim the others were lying to 'smear her and her faith'. In fact, it would have been easy to turn it around and make faith an issue, what with Tony Dicktogs being something of a notorious fanatic.

She didn't do that. She just asserted her personal stance, and left it at that.

That's not going to earn her a lot of friends in the Jebus camp. But hopefully, the smarter ones will recognise her statement of truth for what it is. And the dumb-ass ones were probably all going to vote Conservative anyhow.

As for me -- well. I haven't changed my mind about politicians in general. I've known too many. And Julia Gillard is still a politician. But as of today, at least, I will give her credit for more courage and integrity than most of the politicians out there. That doesn't make her a decent human being yet, no. But it brings her closer than anyone we've had in government for a very long time.

Birthday Celebrations

Urgh. I'm very tired.

It was one of those things that just seems to happen. We planned a simple tenth birthday party for Elder Son, themed around 'Science Fiction', with a bit of a retro kick. And here's a shot that'll give you the idea:

From left to right: Younger Son is the Robot Sidekick. The Mau-Mau was utterly delighted to be painted green as the Small But Intensely Annoying Alien. (Yes. She loved that bit the most of all.) Elder Son, the star of the show as it's his party, is resplendent in the silver helmet and lightning-bolt T-shirt of Rick Steele, Space Hero. And on the end there is The Time Traveller, who has come forward from the Victorian era - or some equally moustachioed point in history.

It should have been simple. I had a couple of games sketched out. We had the snacks laid on. And we planned to finish up with a really retro SF film on TV so we could all point and laugh at the dopey 1950s stuff.

Well. First, my oldest friend in the world turned up with his wife. They came all the way down from Far North Queensland, where he and I grew up, and they stayed with us Friday and Saturday night. Which of course meant they were here Saturday afternoon and evening, yep.

Now, my old friend Kev is from a big family, and his various brothers and sisters have done themselves proud in the brood stakes, so he gets along well with kids. Very well, actually. That was handy, certainly, because it meant I could slough the Robot Sidekick suit onto him: he and Younger Son spent a couple of cheerful hours in the morning with spray paint and cardboard boxes and scissors and duct tape and sparkly pipecleaners - and Kev's wife Sue kicked in with glue and pictures cut out of various catalogues and magazines.

The real problem was more in the guest list. Y'see, it happens that most of Elder Son's invitees were part of multi-kid families. Families we get along with. Families whose kids play with our kids. And so, instead of inviting, say, TWO kids of roughly his own age from these families, it was only proper that Elder Son invite a total of seven. And then there were the singletons from elsewhere.

So: ten kids who know each other well and play together frequently. (The Mau-Mau's two bestest friends were included in that group. Just to enhance the potential for kid-based disaster.) Plus parents who also drop in on each other a lot. Plus a couple of old and dear friends whose sense of humour closely parallels my own.

In the end, it was barely controlled chaos.

The kids rocketed around on their own for a while. When they showed signs of boredom, I broke out the padded lightsabre/swords, and introduced 'em to the game I called Use The Force, Luke.

In this game, you have two teams of two competing at a time. You could have more teams, but I only had two padded safety swords. One player is the Padawan, who wears a blindfold and carries a padded sword. The Padawan's job is to whomp five kinds of crap out of the opposing Padawan, who likewise has blindfold and padded sword. Each Padawan has their very own... uhh... fuck it, can't remember the Lucas-speak, so I just called 'em "Obi-wan". The job of an Obi-wan is to shout directions to his particular Padawan, so the Padawan can zero in on the opposition.

Of course, that implies that the 'Obi-wan' types are capable of thinking about left versus right for someone else... and that the Padawan players are prepared to listen. What really happened was that the two Padawans would stagger around, waving their padded swords until they hit something. Usually a bystander, but occasionally a tree, a dog, or even a house. At this point, the Padawan would flail away violently while everyone else laughed themselves stupid. Eventually, the two Padawans would finally (generally by accident) blunder into one another, and thwack away until one was declared dead.

Seriously: I nearly choked when a young Darth Maul-painted lad staggered too far sideways, and thwacked the Robot Sidekick. Because, of course, poor Younger Son in his Robot costume had bugger-all peripheral vision, and therefore no real idea of why he was suddenly being clobbered with a padded stick. Young Darth Maul was not to be put off by that, though: he just kept pounding away until somebody managed to drag him off and point him at the proper opposition...

The sun went over the mountain about then, and the temperature plummeted. Natalie started a small cookfire. Meanwhile, the boys decided that even if the game was officially over, they didn't want to play any other sissy party games. Not even with the official Frisbee UFOs I'd bought for the party. Nope. What they wanted to do was go on beating the snot out of each other with padded swords, but this time, without blindfolds.

Okay.

That went on until Natalie's cookfire got going, whereupon everyone charged off to singe marshmallows and wieners. Of course, now that Elder Son is ten, he and some of his older friends are capable of making off-colour 'wiener' jokes that are actually kind of funny, so when you've got a dozen kids and half a dozen adults jostling for position around a small fire, trying to toast wieners...

Actually, the moment that nearly killed me came when I was headed back into the house. One of the younger kids who was quite innocent of all this 'wiener-joke' stuff bumped into me. And he had a complaint. You see, one of the other kids -- his older brother, actually -- had rather maltreated him during the cookfire. The quote went like this: "He whacked my wiener off, and it fell in the fire!"

That really didn't help me with the beer I was trying to drink. When I managed to breathe again, I consoled the youngster, pointing out that we'd have no more whacking of other people's wieners at this party, because that sort of thing is just weird...

The temperature just kept plunging, though. We ducked inside, and turned on "This Island Earth" for laughs. I made a lot of popcorn, and we watched an appropriately square-jawed and deep-voiced scientist get kidnapped by aliens who closely resembled older, taller Oompa-Loompas. These 'Metalunans' had the immaculately forced curls of the Gene Wilder Oompa-Loompas, except their hair was white, not green. But they were tanned to almost the same shade of orange. They also had dangerously epic foreheads.

The movie was satisfyingly crap, yes.

At the end, some youngsters left. But some remained, as did parents, and friends. So we decided to extend festivities to a dinner party. Very nice, yes. By this time, the remaining kids had worked out that Kev was a total sucker, so the four boys were continually jumping on him, trying to clobber him with whatever weapons they could grab. I offered him all the support he could expect from an old friend: I got him beer. Sometimes.

Finally, once we'd finished dinner and cake and stuff, Natalie dragged out the Wii and "Lego Rockstar". And oh, dear. Did I mention my friend Kev is one of the most thoroughly tone-deaf and rhythmically deprived people I have ever heard of?

Let's put it this way: when he got the microphone and began singing, pretty much everyone stopped to stare. Keep in mind that this is 'Lego Rockstar', which is kid-friendly and pretty noncompetitive. And that the difficulty was set on 'Easy'.

Given those pieces of information, you will understand my assessment of Kev's musical talents more thoroughly when I tell you that at the end of his session, he had scored a total of 3%.

Yep. Three percent.

Never seen the like of it before or since. I'm planning to make him a T-shirt that says "Mister Three Percent", just as a reminder.

Anyway. We drank and sang and thumped on drum-simulators and twanged toy guitar-analogues and had a damned good time for a whole lot longer than the kids should really have been awake.

Never mind. Elder Son had himself a fine tenth birthday party. Various parents had a damned good evening. Kev and Sue -- who have now gone on to Cradle Mountain, where they will be freezing their tropical little arses off right now -- seemed to enjoy their visit too... and once I get a solid night of sleep, I expect I'll feel a lot better as well!

Dear Make-A-Wish: For God's Sake, Stop This!

...because my children are now all camped out under the high-tension power lines, trying to catch leukaemia.

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Make-a-Wish Foundation Gives Boy a Millennium Falcon

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It's every little boy's (and computer nerd's) dream to fly the Millennium Falcon. For little Christian Bently, however, this dream actually became a reality.

The Make-a-Wish Foundation granted this 9-year-old's request to have a Star Wars–themed fort in his backyard complete with a kick-ass construct of the fastest spaceship in the galaxy. It was delivered to Christian on Monday and serves as the topper to his illustrious fantasy fort.

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Rest of the article is here. Who knew a simple cut-and-paste could transfer so much? Blogger has become sophisticated...

A Decade Of Dadness

Elder Son turned ten years old today. Which gives me much pause to think.

We're a bit rushed this week. His official party is Saturday, so there's been little preparation for today. That's unusual for us, but as I said: we're rushed. Badly.

Still, I found him a really cool present. I managed to locate a very cheap ($50) DV camera a while back. It records to SD card, and creates AVI files, so it's super-easy to use and to edit. When I got it, I thought it would be good for him to take it to Borneo -- but in the last month, he's been getting really interested in making little 'movies', and since he's got some editing software on his 'puter... well, he was pretty pleased when he unwrapped the thing this morning.

Meanwhile, Natalie grabbed the other two kids and took off for Launceston, to find a few more presents. Naturally, when she came back she had two new pet rats (for the daughter and the Younger Son) plus a new rat-cage... sigh. We needed more rats. Yep.

Anyway. A decade of being Dad. That's hard to wrap my head around, you know?

In that ten years, I have:

- shifted my life and my family to Tasmania

- acquired a house

- assisted in renovating same

- learned how to handle a small rural property (big, big job)

- figured out how to handle babies (another big job)

- figured out how to handle small children (when the babies stopped being babies)

- written three novels (published none yet, though)

- written and published more short stories than I can easily remember

- finally taken my black belt

- taken responsibility for my own (small) ju-jitsu class

- taken up sword training

- acquired an array of new skills too long to list here

- become a father twice more

- kept my marriage together

None of these things has been easy. And I have learned things. I have learned:

- that I no longer have the time to do everything, if I ever did

- that my life is finite, and I have to prioritise

- that it doesn't matter how much you plan, children change everything

- that one's greatest strengths are also one's Achilles heel

- that I can't fix everything

- that there are people I would like to help that I simply cannot, and I have to deal with that

- that I can't be useful to anyone if I'm not healthy and grounded and prepared

- that most people don't notice when one changes habit, or opinion

- that most people actually can't change habit or opinion without major upheaval

- that the ability to change one's habits and beliefs is incredibly important and valuable

I've learned a great deal more, too, but the list tends to include things like 'don't leave home-made ginger beer out of the fridge too long' and 'baby poo turns greenish-black when the kid eats his own body-weight in blueberries at one sitting'. You know: simple, situational stuff like that which really isn't relevant to most people.

I'll finish this post soon enough. Then I'll wander around and gather up the gear I need for tonight's martial arts classes. I've already folded away five bags of laundry, done a bunch of work on the shed, arranged lunch for the kids and Natalie, and figured out how to put together an irritatingly badly designed rat-cage -- but the day is young yet. I've got a lot more to do before I get to rest.

And tomorrow will be even more complicated, judging from the calendar. First day of the new after-school Introductory Martial Arts classes. Oh, and I'm supposed to cook some kind of cake or slice for Elder Son's class excursion tomorrow. And he doesn't get back from that until nearly eight o'clock at night, which makes the evening quite difficult.

Never mind. That's how it works.

Dear Iceland

Dear Iceland:

Mostly, you are awesome. I love all your geysers and your glaciers, and I don’t mind that your volcanoes are occasionally irritating.

Historically, you’re amazing. Your democratic parliamantary arrangement is one of the very oldest in the whole world, going back to the times when you guys were better known for wearing cowhorns on your helmets and singing about Spam.

Your ancient myths and stories are fantastic, and continue to influence modern culture. (Can you believe they got Kenneth Branagh to direct the ‘Thor’ movie? That just has to rock!) Your contemporary musicians are creative, quirky and interesting, even if Bjork occasionally does sound like she learned to sing by hanging out at the dolphin pond at SeaWorld.

Lately, you’ve been really super-amazing. The bit where you decided years ago to use all that geothermal energy and transit to a hydrogen economy: that was inspired. Sure, it’s a bit of a no-brainer since you’ve got no oil, and you’ve got plenty of lava and water, and you’re a long way from everybody else... but you’d think it would be a no-brainer for a country like Australia too, wouldn’t you? And you’d be wrong. So you’re excellent, Iceland.

And I love the fact that you got fed up with your governance after last year’s banking debacle, so you simply elected a professional comedian as mayor of your capital city. That is totally cool. Here we just elect total dickheads and then laugh bitterly when they turn out to be both amateurish comedians, and deeply, stupidly amateurish political leaders. If we had the brains to elect comedians first up, we wouldn’t be looking at a choice between Tony Dicktogs and Mister Apologia right now. But we’re not as awesome as you, Iceland.

But your brilliance doesn’t end there. I was delighted and overjoyed by the bit where your government passed a law recognising gay marriage. Oh, sure — you’ve got an openly gay head of government (and how fucking awesome is that, anyway?) so some people might argue it was always going to happen... but you didn’t just pass that motherhumping law, did you? No: any two-bit cheap-ass tinpot pretender to democracy can pass a big-hearted, liberal-minded, intelligent law (sometimes, anyway. Maybe.) You actually passed it unanimously. Unanimously! As in: not only did none of your elected representatives vote against it, but they didn’t even do the pathetic limpdick cop-out routine of ‘abstaining’. Forty-nine to zero. That is just beyond awesome right there. You win, Iceland.

But that’s not enough for you, is it Iceland? Nope. You’ve gone ahead, forging a path into a mythically delicious 21st century of progress and enlightenment that we here in the rest of the world can only gape at, and envy. Your move to create a true, protected space for modern journalism, thus providing a haven for heroes like Julian Assange and Wikileaks is nothing short of brain-shatteringly tremendous. A country where open dialogue is supported and protected? A nation that stands up for the rights of its people to be informed and to undertake meaningful debate? A state which is prepared to welcome and protect whistleblowers and advocates of truth and openness?

I’m running out of superlatives here, Iceland. I stand — nay, I kneel — in awestruck supplication before your astonishing foresightedness. I would move to Iceland tomorrow if I could convince my wife and children it was warmer than Tasmania... or I would, except for one little thing.

Just one thing.

One question.

What the fuck do you have against whales, Iceland?

What did whales ever do to you? Did a whale kill both your parents in Crime Alley when you were just a little island? Did a giant radioactive whale destroy your home planet, so that your parents had to put you in a rocket-ship and send you to Earth? Did a whale steal your girlfriend, break your truck, take your job and kill your dog? Did a whale give you up, let you down, and run you 'round?

Whatever it was those whales did, it must have been truly terrible. Because I cannot for the life of me understand why else the single most progressive, thoughtful, open-minded and otherwise excellent nation that has ever existed would insist on hunting down a bunch of big, harmless, friendly, ecologically vital animals and blowing them up with exploding harpoons.

You are incredibly awesome, Iceland. But whales are pretty awesome too.

The world is big enough for both of you, I promise. Please stop killing whales. There are plenty of other things you can shoot exploding harpoons at. Why not start with our Prime Minister? That way, we can have a go at electing a comedian too!

Yeah, well, to be fair it would take a LOT of liquor in the first place...

...and thus the Prohibition was repealed. Quickly.