Obama, what the?

Obama won. I just want to know one thing - how seriously inflamed are those red-necks?

That's no rash, that's no excema, but keep scratching mother fuckers. Maybe it'll go away in several years.

Fuck me this is a sight for sore eyes.

In my grade 6 end-of-year play, we enacted a scene of the fucked up treatment of African American's, singing negro spirituals that stay with me today, with paper and balloon ball-and-chains, lyrics mourning a life of cotton-picking, and worse.

I'm not so much pleased Obama won, I'm just over the moon at the thought the ignorant hate-filled bastards in the US have to face a serious reality-check today, as their pathetic ancient neanderthal traditions have been officially declared a minority opinion. They will feel older than they ever have - the dinosaurs that are dying out.

Happy New Year

What a year, Howard gone and Hicks out. Will post more next year. Celebrate good times, c'mon!

It changed.

We have a new Prime Minister. That's pretty cool.

Plant a sapling day.

(Photo courtesy of eBay....)

It's World* Tree Day tomorrow (29th July - 27th for schools).

Tree's are pretty nifty things - they supply food, homes, wood, refuge, solace, oxygen, prevent erosion, strengthen embankments, create stable micro climates, etc. Only 1.5% of Australians had a go last year, planting just over 5 trees each.

It'll be nice to be able to point out to your grand kids "see that tree there little Timmy? Right next to it is a block of flats, and your old Pa planted a native blackwood there. Before it was 'dozed and turned into the very same paper used to make your report card." Timmy: "Wow! Your occasional bouts of lucidity really undermine the rampant senility!" You: "Ya-huh, just get in the hover-car."

Or something like that. I don't imagine the tree you plant can withstand the urban expansion for too long - not much is held sacred these days. You don't have to hug it, just plant it - because trees can't plant themselves y'know.

* - actually it's just an Australian thing - Planet Ark's National Tree Day - not official or anything.

Bracks goes.

At the ripe old age of 52, Steve Bracks, Premier of Victoria, has retired - as well as some other ministers no one cares about. I hope he manages to find employment with one of the many companies he allowed to rort the PPP's, because I doubt the parliamentary pension will be enough for the poor lad.

I'd like to thank him for the Upper House reforms, even though it was in their own interests, and seemed to turn the ALP into a Greens hating machine.

GOOD THINGS:
Upper House reforms.

BAD THINGS:
Continued privatisation of public transport.
Bay dredging.
Public-private partnership scams.
All that logging.

BEST THING I CAN SAY ABOUT HIM:
The last Premier was worse.

Making demons.

The media seems to be continuing to use the grainy photocopied image of Haneef, The Age has it on the front page as I type. The real image, as seen at DeadRoo, (courtesy of TVoTAY) shows Haneef is, well. A complete dork.

Dork's cannot look evil. You can't take them serious enough to consider them a threat. Maurice Moss from the IT Crowd is a great example. But can he be made evil with selective images? Let's try!
First step, grey scale, and cropping. Obvious in the Haneef photo.

Next step, to simulate the nice quality deterioration of repeated photocopies, duplicate the main layer, add some edge enhancement, and adjust the opacity of the layer to around 14%.

Next up, add another layer, fill it with noise, soften it, switch the blend mode to hard light, and adjust opacity to around 48%.

Now adjust the contrast to lose some of the finer details that make him look human. The almost-smirk has gone, the near-dimples have faded, and he looks less rediculous and possibly more sinister. It's hard to tell.
His afro and double-chin add too much to his character, so we can crop those out, and voila! A plausible suspect.

(As a site note, I can understand why the photo would lose quality when photocopied, but that doesn't explain why it's cropped, removing his dorky features.)

John Howard YouTube

I couldn't resist. But then again, I also couldn't tolerate his voice any longer to produce anything decent, so I uploaded it as-is. Enjoy.