For regular donors, the Blood Bank will send you a letter a couple of weeks before their mobile branch visits your area. Then if they haven’t heard from you, they ring you up in the week before. I never seem to find the time to ring them before they ring me. The problem is by ... [More]
It seems some students at Xavier went over-the-top in their end of school celebrations, ties used as G-strings, with one student injured, food fights on trams, jumping on cars, firecrackers let off at Balaclava Station, and all year 12 classes cancelled. (Some newspaper reports say the entire year level was suspended, but the principal was ... [More]
I don’t know what’s wrong with The Age web site, but frequently the online version of the Letters page leaves big slabs of text out of people’s letters. They did it with mine this morning, which is a response to a letter in yesterday’s Age. Given the heading they gave it, the missing first paragraph ... [More]
There must have been cutbacks at the ABC. Apparently they can’t afford a dictionary anymore. Or maybe host Virginia Haussegger can’t spell. (Not that I’d be having a go at her, oh no.) It flashed up a few times during the ACT election coverage on Saturday night. (For some reason it seems a version of ... [More]
My sister Susannah is lovely. Kind and funny. Thoughtful and smart. Full of empathy when it matters — always up for a whingefest session on the phone, and understands what it’s like to be time-poor. Her kids are nice, her husband Adrian’s a dude. She’s successful — she’s made her business work, they seem to ... [More]
Remember a month ago when I noted the tree planted in the middle of the taxi rank next to Bentleigh railway station? The tree forced taxi drivers out into traffic to move up to the front of the rank. Today I noticed the local council has fixed it, moving the tree back to between the ... [More]
Now THIS is car culture. Come to Kingston Central Plaza! Bring your hulking great four-wheel drive! In fact WE DON’T EVEN ALLOW compact cars in our car parks! Yes, we’ve built a shopping centre just for you, where we wanted it, on cheap land. Why stick to the designated activity centres in the Melbourne 2030 ... [More]
If there’s one thing I miss since moving to the middle burbs, it’s the trams. Some people talk about public transport culture vs car culture. Car culture is where the default is to jump in the car to go anywhere. PT culture is where the default is to go to the local tram, train or ... [More]
A while ago I did a little digging for the purposes of quantifying the audience for different media, for a discussion within the PTUA about how many people see which outlet. I’ve recently skimmed through and grabbed some new figures. (Obviously it’s not just about the raw numbers — the demographic of the audience is ... [More]
Ever see the film Nine Queens? It was very enjoyable Argentine movie about a couple of conmen. I’m not sure where my copy is at the moment, but anyway… (SPOILER FOLLOWS)
The pictures in the Heckler section on the back page of The Sunday Age this morning may look familiar… I originally posted them here.
Had to laugh at this AP report: Palin pre-empts state report, clears self in probe ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – Trying to head off a potentially embarrassing state ethics report on GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, campaign officials released their own report Thursday that clears her of any wrongdoing. … That’s pure genius. Why did ... [More]
Facebook wants to know if I speak “English (UK)”. And they want to know if I want to be an interpreter for them. You what? What a strange question. Since when do non-US-English speakers need to have translations from the Americans? Anyway, why isn’t it asking me if I speak English (AU) ? And if ... [More]
1. Superparma is gone… but parma.com.au has arrived to take its place. 2. I’ve talked before about how kids inherit traits and behaviour and interests from their parents. I was struck by this clever alcohol awareness advert which shows it well. 3. To the self-confessed lurker lady in the red raincoat yesterday in Collins Street: ... [More]
Helen Razer has been sacked from 774. I’m a reasonably frequent listener to part of her Sunday morning show, only because I’m often in the car driving at that time. She can be reasonably entertaining. I don’t remember hearing the controversial interview with Stephen Berkoff, but regardless of whether she deserves her fate, I wouldn’t ... [More]
From everything I saw and heard of her, Marita’s sister Rose was smart, kind, feisty, funny, and happy with her job and her life. She died on Friday in a car accident near Shepparton, aged 29. Just tragic. Rosemary, 1979-2008 Rest In Peace Update: Herald Sun notices