Cat-less

I'm writing this about 20 minutes after finding out that the cat has died.

We all knew that this was coming soon, she was old and deaf and we think she was going blind.

I'm not really a cat person, I've always preferred dogs but Moosbach has always just been there. The strange name is because she was named after a character from a Loriot sketch.

Getting her is one of my earliest memories, we got her as a kitten from on of my mum's friends over 21 years ago. She was a Devon rex cross moggie with a grey coat with black stripes on it.

One of her favourite past-times was annoying me. It wasn't that I was scared of her, I just didn't like her sitting on me, something that she tried to do often. She finally did succeed a couple of weeks ago though so her life wasn't a total waste.

She did find a use for my cupboard though. She loved sleeping in there as my room was typically quiet enough for her to take one of the 8 or 9 naps needed to get enough energy for her main snooze. She did find, however, that my bed wasn't the best place to sleep on, until she would inevitably forget and then sleep on my bed. I was woken up a few times by a cat pawing at my feet because I moved and knocked her.

And now she's gone.

It will be strange being cat-less. I guess it's because she was just there, one of those constants that will be around forever.

Storm

If you haven't seen it yet you should check out this video of Tim Minchin's "Storm":

Rebecca Black

Aka "How I'm jumping on the bandwagon really really late just because I really should update this blog".

So I first heard about this song on Triple J. It was a talking point on the Doctor's show. And then I just learned that Simon Cowell likes her by which I assume he means he can see lots and lots of money because she is infamous.

So then I decided to watch the damn video. I did learn one thing, apparently Youtube updates likes and dislikes in real time since while I've been waiting for the video to load the number of dislikes went from 399,500 to 400,080 when I just looked at it then and it's still climbing. The number of likes is climbing very very slowly.

So what do I think of a 13 year old girls music video?

Well I'm more or less going to kind of liveblog this. The time stamps are where I pause the video.

0:45 One of the things I knew about this song was that Black didn't have anything to do with writing it, I also know that she's more or less been crucified for this song. Right now I think that Clarence Jey and Patrice Wilson should face charges of some sort for the lyrics. I get the feeling that this song is probably a violation of the Geneva conventions or something.

1:08. All the people in that car look like they are about her age. So how the hell did the boy get a license to drive this car? I'm probably over analysing this to keep my sanity.

Well it looks like the flash plugin broke while writing the above. I guess I now have to wait for it to load again. Current dislikes: 401,325

So while I wait I found an acoustic version that she sung on ABC News. Well, I'm going to go on record and say that I "liked" this acoustic version. By "liked" I mean I pressed the thumbs up button on the video. Perhaps my brain has melted from the minute of the other version but this version is at least 100 times better.

Having said that I would say that Black shows some promise as a singer.

1:16. Why are they driving around at night? Where are they going? Where can they go, and if they were going somewhere shouldn't they be there already? And isn't it dangerous to sit like that in a moving vehicle?

1:38 Why are you still deciding which seat to take? You're clearly in the back seat. It's where you've been since the first chorus. Didn't the ARK Music Factory director look at the words before filming this?

1:43 Why does California have so many under age drivers? What are the Police doing to stop this plague of under age drivers? And how the hell are they getting insurance for these cars?

2:26 Lyrics written by Cpt. Obvious. And I'm also a little confused. Should I be thankful that I don't have epilepsy or should I be cursing the fact that I don't because it would make this song end sooner.

2:36 What's with the black guy? And I had a mondegreen moment there. I though he was continuing a theme by pointing out that he was black. So I listened to that bit again. I then thought that he was saying that he was Rebecca Black. Turns out it was "R. B. Rebecca Black". In a way I wish that I didn't learn that, it would have made the song so much more enjoyable.

2:51 "We gonna have fun". That sounds creepy. Maybe he's one of those chaperone guys who's just a little too enthusiastic.

3:48 The song is over. Finally.

So what have I learned. Well that Ark Music Factory must have a pile of cheap songs that were written for entrants in the Eurovision, or the children's Eurovision. And continuing on the Eurovision theme that Black is like Sweden in 2009, she has talent but it doesn't fit with the song. Then again with those lyrics I can't think of a single artist that could turn them into anything remotely adequate.

And having said that I appear to be wrong. See when I wrote that it was about 1am yesterday. In that time I've found a pretty good fake Bob Dylan cover of this song.

Having had that time to think more about the song has let me draw the following conclusion. This song is hilarious. I personally think that it's something that is So Bad It's Good. Although of course Your Mileage May Vary.

I don't really agree with the whole "worst song in existence". There are plenty of worse songs out there. For example if I was forced between this song and anything by Justin Bieber then I'm going with "Friday".

So in conclusion:

1. ARK Music Factory really needs to invest in better songwriters.
2. Rebecca Black needs to find her own singing style instead of being forced into one that doesn't suit her.
3. It's hilarious because it's so bad.

Juliar Gillard?

So Labor decided to implement a carbon tax. Oh no the world is going to end. Yep, soon we'll see our mining industry sent overseas because it'll be cheaper to mine Australian uranium in China or something.

So of course our leader is now being called "Juliar Gillard" by some people. Stupid people.

To call her that shows such an ignorance of pretty much everything to do with politics at all. Maybe the tax is a stupid idea, maybe it isn't, but in this sense it's beside the point.

The whole "Gillard is a liar" thing is the stupid bit.

It's clear that the whole carbon tax thing is a concession to the Greens. And the reason has nothing to do with saving the Earth, or at least appearing to. It's simply political. By saying that they are going to introduce a carbon tax it ensures that the Greens will support Labor, and that support is actually pretty crucial.

In July the new Senate will convene and the balance of power will change from Xenophon and Family First to the Greens. For Labor to pass legislation they would have to deal with other parties, and the Greens are the logical choice.

So of course Gillard had to come up with some sort of incentive to get them to side with her and proposed this carbon tax. By the looks of it the Greens are happy and Gillard will have an easier time running the country.

I think people must forget that we have a hung parliament and a Senate that can be potentially hostile when they go about calling Gillard "Juliar". A situation like this is one where you need to do quite a bit of politicking to get things done. Would these same people be complaining if Abbott had won and declared that the Liberal government would be implementing such a tax?

Would these people be saying that it's fine politicking from the Liberals or would they be just as vitriolic?

Somebody to Love

If someone talks about the song "Somebody to Love" which band do you think of?

I think of Jefferson Airplane.

My parents think of Queen.

A few people I know would think of the Boogie Pimps, which was a cover of the Jefferson Airplane song. It's an okay cover, but the film clip did have Natasha Mealey in it.

Someone called Leighton Meester also wrote a song by that name.

Now if you typed in "somebody to love" into Youtube what do you think the first result is?

Well it's none of them.

It's Justin Bieber.

Justin. Fucking. Bieber.

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with people these days? Jefferson Airplane was a pioneer in Psychedelic Rock. Queen is one of the worlds best selling artists.

Yet Bieber gets top spot on Youtube.

Dwell on that for a bit.

Andrew Bolt, Muslims and Australia

I don't read too much of The Advertiser when I'm not at Uni. At Uni I can get the paper for free, so I get it. The Internet has allowed me to get my news from sources like the BBC and the ABC (the Australian one obviously). If I go shopping I'll usually pick up a copy if there are any available, since sometimes it's good to get some idea of what is going on in the state.

Anyway, I seem to have missed something very interesting. It seems that there has been some debate about multiculturalism since David Cameron made his speech saying that it had failed and some people read an article by Andrew Bolt. I'm assuming that the Bolt article is this one.

Of course Andrew Bolt being Andrew Bolt has of course managed to tie this to Muslims because, well I don't really know, they... do... different things? It really is more a rant against Sheik al-Hilali and Muslims in general then actually discussing "multiculturalism".

The only real comment I want to make about the article is that "they teach funny sounds that aren't English" is not a reason to be angry at a group. Seriously, it isn't. Maybe Bolt is happy to live in a monolingual world but other people aren't. It doesn't mean that they're going to not speak English.

I honestly find this really ironic that The Advertiser decided to publish this. Islam has a pretty long history in South Australia. The camel drivers that were brought to Australia in the 1860's were Muslims. They transported goods through the outback to the various towns there and were vital to the development of the region. Of course they needed places of worship and built mosques. The first mosque was built in Maree around that time and the oldest mosque in a major city was built in Adelaide in 1888.

There have been Muslims in this state for about 150 years and clearly they've utterly ruined it. Oh wait, they haven't. They've been here living their lives peacefully and helping to build the country and there wasn't a problem.

Then we see everything change and all of a sudden they're a bunch of people who refuse to integrate at all, won't learn our language and want to destroy our way of life. That's not the case at all. History has shown us that it's quite the opposite.

I missed Monday's letters in the paper. I'm glad, however, that I got to read yesterday's. At least enough people who had their letters published showed that we aren't all morons.

Meryl Dorey on 2UE

2UE's Tracy Spicer "interviewed" Meryl Dorey, president of the Australian Vaccination Network over the British Medical Journal calling Andrew Wakefield's "research" as fraudulent. If you can't listen to the 2ue version, the audio can be found here on Youtube.

I say "interviewed" because it's probably better to describe it as a slaughter. Spicer slaughtered Dorey and that was that.

Refreshingly instead of allowing Dorey to pimp her website Spicer decided to just hang up.

If the Australian Vaccination Network sounds familiar that's because they were accused of harassment by the NSW HCCC. One of the results of this accusation was that the AVN was supposed to put up a nice big disclaimer saying, basically, everything that they write is biased as fuck and you shouldn't trust it.

Incidentally the disclaimer that they're required to have isn't on their website as of writing this post, you can check it here and if you happen to find it leave a comment.

So back to the interview.

Dorey seems to be living in some sort of parallel universe where what she thinks is correct. That, in my opinion, is the only possible way that when Spicer mentions that Wakefield's research has been discredited she responds:

No it hasn't

I can't think of any other reasons. Oh wait, I've though of a more plausible one. Meryl Dorey is some kind of moron.

Now there is a post up on Dorey's website that says some crap about something (seriously I don't really know), entitled "Andrew Wakefield - the Kangaroo Court has spoken. It mentions the interview and has a nice transcript. As a side note on the transcript the missing words that Spicer said between "...saying there is no link..." and "...misinformation" was "...and here you are on metropolitan radio spreading your...".

But when Spicer says:

Under the heading measles, mumps, rubella, she states that these are all non-threatening illnesses in early childhood.

Dorey has said:

(note from Meryl – I’m not sure what she is referring to. On the MMR page, I have a quote from Dr Peter Baratosy that says:

Measles was a common childhood disease prior to the introduction of widespread vaccination, and up until about 30 years ago was generally described as a benign illness. The difference today is that children seem to have become weaker due to drugs, pollution, vaccinations and poor nutrition” (Dr. Peter Baratosy)

Funnily enough when I went to the MMR page and clicked on the read more under "MMR" I found (albeit in magenta):

Unlike vaccination (which offers only temporary immunity), the natural occurrence of each of these diseases (all non-threatening illnesses in early childhood) generally results in lifelong immunity.

Now I added the bolding to the text there. Sure sounds like Dorey is claiming that measles, mumps and rubella are non-threatening. I guess Dorey is too disingenuous to mention that, or perhaps she's too lazy to quickly check what she wrote on her own website.

Looking over the comments on the 2UE website I'm pleased to see many comments that say that Dorey is an idiot. Hopefully the view that anti-vaxxers are unscientific fools can spread.