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So, today we left Lee Vining, drove around the June Lake loop, and then drove through the Sierras to Las Vegas.
There were mountains. And more mountains. And a pass through the mountains to a flat tundra-ish plain surrounded by mountains, until we got to the mountains, and drove through those mountains too.
There was also the steepest and squiggliest section of road I have ever seen in my life. If you want to get an idea - although it just does. not. convey the true, staggering twisty ear-popping chasm-riddled nature of the road - look on Google maps for Highway 168, heading east from the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest.
... no, seriously.
After the last few days of raw beauty and wonder, I'm now in Las Vegas. Las Vegas is not a place of raw natural beauty.
:America:
The first cultural difference between California and Nevada seemed to be this: In California, not one road sign I noticed had bullet holes in it.
In Nevada... yeah, pretty much all of them.Current Mood:  sleepy Current Location:
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Today I shall post an actual photo from the trip. (Photos taken so far: 473. No, I'm not posting *all* of them ever, but I want to get started.)
This was the very first actual-sightseeing-type photo I took, on the J20 (I think) towards Highway 120 near Yosemite National Park. My home country, and in particular my home state, is flat and in no way geologically excitable, so I always find hills and mountains to be quite stirring to visit.
As I progress through the images, I'll start posting shots with more story to them, but... you know. This was the first.
Today was a highly successful day, in that we combined both resting for the management of physical and mental health and endurance and also some very satisfying tourism.
We had breakfast at a reasonable hour, for once - ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) velithya went to the market next door to the motel and bought milk and disposable bowls (made from wheat stalks, but the packaging hastens to assure us that they are totally gluten-free), and we had cereal in our motel room. (The cereal we brought from home, because acquiring gluten-free cereal that I'm not allergic to and both of us like is not an easy task.)
After munching a bit, we sort of loafed for a bit and discussed potential plans. I had slept really badly and was very tired, though, so I had a nap for a couple of hours while velithya poked her computer in some fashion, and felt much better for it afterwards.
The one error we made in our day was that we were still a bit slack about getting out of the motel and starting our afternoon plans, and by the time we got lunch, both of us were pretty shaky from low blood sugar.
Still, we had a quite nice lunch at the Mobil station on the road between Lee Vining and Tioga Pass. (You can tell you're in a small town when one of the best restaurants is... the gas station.)
After that, we went out to another part of Mono Lake - the part with tall spires of tufa and, curiously, a distinct lack of gag-inducingly horrible smell. It smells like brackish water - not surprising for a body of liquid more than twice as salty as the sea and ten times as alkaline - but not the nauseating stench of rot at the other place where we approached the water.
We took many pictures. Here is one, to give you an idea of the curious, almost alien aspect the area has.
Part of why the tufa is so high, it seems, is that the lake used to be much, much deeper than it is right now. There are sign placards on the trail as you approach that show where the lake edges were in something like 1959 and 1963. Too much water was diverted from the lake's tributaries to serve Los Angeles and other places, and the lake was drying out; water has subsequently been returned. The target appears to be the boundaries of 1959 (which are slightly lower than the '63 boundaries, but not far).
The paved trail from the carpark to the lakeside gives way to a path made of wooden beams at that point, which I find rather charming. On either side of the path is a seemingly endless scrubland of low bushes I dubbed "spinifake" - because we don't know what it's actually called, but both velithya and I found it put us strongly in mind of spinifex, even though it obviously isn't spinifex because, you know, America.
As I approached the edge of the water, I had a rather startling moment that made me glad I tend not to have massively flinch-like reactions to surprise, as a rule, since I was standing on uncertain footing amid sharp rocks.
I was walking towards the water pooling amid the forming tufa crystals and suddenly it was as if the ground surged around me, with a sudden loud buzzing that was pretty much straight out your less-appetising film selections. It turns out the alkaline flies that are a significant section of the lake's ecosystem were present in vast swarms, and I hadn't noticed until I approached close enough to startle them.
After we had our fill of the tufa, we left and set off to find Panum Crater, one of the many craters in the region, which has an extensive collection of (geologically) young volcanoes. We took a wrong turn first, but it got us some spectacular views, and then went back and found our way to the crater's carpark.
From the carpark, there's a steep sand-and-gravel slope to walk up in order to get to the rim of the crater itself. From there, there are two trails - one around the rim, the other to the volcano's lava plug.
The first steep slope had been rather an acute effort for me, and the lava plug trail was a long path with more steep slope to climb, so I stayed there while velithya went up and on.
I enjoyed my time sitting on the rim in part with the fascinating and funky echo effects the crater seems to produce. A sharp clap from me would come back to me like a roar that ripped around the crater from left to right.
It was a highly satisfying trip, but quite exhausting. I think it will take more photo-posting to show why, but I am quite, quite tired tonight.
For dinner, we went low key - some turkey slices and cheese from the market with crackers I still had in my bag from when they were packed as potential travel snacks on our flights. We ate them as a picnic on my bed.
(It was dark by then, so having a picnic outside was not an option. It seems that there have been a number of sightings of bears around the town in the last couple of weeks. Having food out and about... not a great idea.)Current Music: Sleepy Hollow (FOX11 Reno) Current Mood:  drained Current Location:
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This morning (after poor velithya had spent about an hour on the phone with Verizon trying to get our phones to work) we checked out of our motel in Buck Meadows, had breakfast, and headed off towards Mono Lake, via Yosemite National Park.
We set out in buoyant moods, but were soon quite thoroughly sobered as we began to drive through parts of the forest that had been affected by the recent fires. Our light-hearted chatter became comments like, "Looks like here is where the fire jumped the road."
Driving along with burnt-out stands of trees by the road is bad enough, but then you get to the parts of the road where the vistas spread before you, of the hills and mountains normally carpeted with trees and suddenly you see entire hilltops are just blackened and dead, and you realise the air still smells like ash even now.
To me, the smell was strangely alien - I'm familiar with the smell of bushfires, but the Yosemite wildfires burned different woods, and the smell is different, unfamiliar chords behind a painfully familiar melody.
Eventually we reached Yosemite itself. At the park gates the ranger asked us our destination, and we told her we were headed for Mono Lake; she nodded, and handed us a leaflet explaining, more-or-less, that everything was shut. (It will be among the many, many photos I will eventually be posting to elaborate these posts, but I'm too tired to do the photos right now, but want to write about my experiences while they're still fresh in my memory.)
She also warned us that there had been an accident about eight miles ahead, which was also the cause of us missing a turnoff and driving through quite an extensive section of the park that we weren't, technically, supposed to, and then having to turn around. (On the bright side, I got to glimpse Half Dome and Bridalveil Falls.) velithya, who was driving, was edging around the emergency vehicles, and I was in awe of the scenery and also sort of averting my eyes from rubbernecking at an accident scene, and both of us managed to fail even to register that that particular spot was, in fact, a turnoff, and the turnoff for Highway 120 to Tioga Pass at that.
Eventually we realised we were going the wrong way, turned around, and came across a couple of park rangers standing by their parked car and confirmed where we were going with them.
Parts of Yosemite are intact, of course, and are stunningly beautiful. But there are such swathes of destruction still left from the fires that I would struggle to comprehend if I hadn't seen them - hell, I did see them, and I still struggle to comprehend them.
I wonder if it might not have been worse still were it not for Yosemite's extensive collection of granite outcroppings - nature's own firebreaks that are just not going to burn.
I think I missed appreciating some of the true majesty of some of the taller granite peaks and features of Yosemite - somewhere above 10,000 feet I seem to get a little vague and spacy-feeling. Nonetheless, I can assure you, I appreciate quite a lot of spectacular and majestic scenery today.
Eventually we reached the Tioga Pass, and were waved through by the park ranger at the booth there. We headed onwards, discovering that at least one section of Highway 120 is somewhat terrifying, but I'll go into that more when I post the photos, because I don't know words could do it justice, at least not without at least a full conversion of the thousand words value of a picture.
We got petrol at a station with a sign outside apologising that the government can't do its job, then finally rolled on to the town of Lee Vining. (velithya and I still can't agree on how this town's name is pronounced, and have yet to get around to asking a local.)
We had lunch (and later, dinner) at Nicely's Restaurant before going to the Bronze Bear something-or-other gift/souvenirs/etc shop, outside of which is, well, a bronze statue of a grizzly bear, about eight feet tall, with a cute legend placard behind it. The idea is that you have three tries to put a coin on the bear's tongue and get it to drop into the container below; if you succeed, rub his nose and make a wish.
I had a go. My penny went in on the second try.
After that we checked in to our motel, chilled out for a bit (we'd done a lot of driving), then went down around sunset to see Mono Lake. It's a beautiful and eerie location, although - we discovered - it also smells absolutely disgusting. The water level is low at the moment, so we came down the path and, like other people who were there, walked out across what is sometimes the lake bed to get closer to the water's edge.
And then the wind shifted, and the water started coming off the lake, and we both gagged and hastened to get more distance again after all.
I took some photos I have reasonable hopes for, and then we noticed that we were being swarmed with (at a conservative estimate) ELEVENTY BILLION mosquitoes, and fled outright. We went back to Nicely's for dinner, and then returned to the motel... where we are now.
It turns out that Las Vegas is only 5-6.5 hours away (depending on route), so we're staying here for two nights and then heading to Vegas in one shot rather than going halfway, stopping overnight, then going the rest of the way another day.
This means, I think, that I can skip going into more detail about Mono Lake, because I'm sure we'll have more on the topic tomorrow.Current Location: Current Mood:  tired
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So, today!
Last night I talked velithya into staying here two nights, so we could recuperate a bit from the journey here. We more-or-less slept until noon, and then were sort of dozy and slack about getting showered and dressed etc, so we finally wandered over to the restaurant for breakfast at about, oh, 2pm.
We'd last eaten at 5pm in LA. I'm currently running, foodwise, on a schedule where every meal starts out with OOOH, FOOD and then halfway through I have a moment where my body is like, wait, food? and I have to take a moment while it remembers that yes, eating actual food is something that we do.
We had a nice chat with the waitress, since it was quite quiet there - between it being mid-afternoon and the distinct dropoff in visitors to the area due to the closure of the parks, things are pretty quiet around here generally right now, I gather.
Not to mess up the chronology of this account in any way, but when we went to Groveland a bit later, and stopped to look around the antique store there, the lady in the shop was thanking customers very effusively for shopping there, and pretty much *everyone* around here seems to be really very distressed about the shutdown.
They're only just recovering from the fires, and now... this. It's pretty bad for them.
I think that's part of what some people seem to miss in the idea that closures that stop tourists doing their fun, touristy things aren't important - after all, it's just tourists doing holiday stuff, it's not a big deal, right?
Except that it is. Sometimes because the tourists are doing something that's incredibly important to them, that they've planned or worked for for a really long time, but also because those tourists are the livelihoods of real Americans, as well. The people in this area I've talked to - they love this place, they love Yosemite, they love the forests and the land here, and this is really hurting them.
Not just financially. After lunch, as you may have gathered, we went to Groveland, where we poked around the antique/gifts/home decor store, then we went to the Information Centre. The woman there was rather lovely.
First, because this: We walked in, and she swung around from the desk she was at, and asked if she could give us information about anything.
Me: "Hm. Astrophysics?"
... at which point she told us about how once she attended a lecture by Carl Sagan.
I like it when people can roll with my sassypants moments.
We did then get more pertinent information, and I tell you, that woman is passionate about working at the Groveland Yosemite Information Centre. She gets the brochures, and marks them up, highlighting important places to go to, and the tips she can offer, and telling you all the things. One place she pointed out to us she described as an "oasis of green" because it's in an area which was badly hit by the fires, and she told us about how the thousands of firefighters converged to save every business, every home, and every life in this area.
She got choked up. I for one don't blame her.
There are signs all over the place - mostly quite home-made-looking - all dedicated to thanking the firefighters. It's rather touching.
Partly it's a cultural thing, I think. One of the things that I suspect Americans don't realise is that they are an incredibly demonstrative people. It might be what's behind a lot of the ways in which Americans don't tend to understand other nations and nationalities as well as they might - I suspect Americans assume that certain feelings aren't present in other peoples because they're not expressed, and certainly not expressed as visibly and as vocally as they are here.
Because things like putting signs all over the town with gushing, heartfelt gratitude to the firefighters who saved so many people's lives and livelihood, and so much of the forest, too - it's not something I can imagine being done in Australia. It doesn't mean that we don't appreciate our fireys, and especially appreciate the work they do in bushfire season. We are grateful for their work and we acknowledge their heroism.
Just... not like that.
So I wonder if a lot of cultural misunderstanding, and especially a lot of the assumption some Americans seem to make that America is the best country ever and the rest of us are just jealous because we don't love our homelands like they love America, and all that - whether that might actually, in part, stem from the fact that in America, declaring your love for America, displaying American flags everywhere, all of that stuff is a thing that happens, a thing that people do, that truly heartfelt sentiment is something you proclaim to the world.
And for much of the rest of the world, it isn't. In some ways, the strongest feelings are the ones you don't express, because it's sort of, I don't know, gauche or tacky or something, the same way it would be to start a long, public speech about just how much you're in love with your wife, how you adore the way her nose wrinkles up when she laughs and how cute she is when she first wakes up and all the intimate, private emotions that you feel that you wouldn't talk about with strangers because it's too personal, too real, too important.
Love of country, love of homeland, the gratitude and awe we, too, feel for our heroes, our firefighters and our soldiers, the people who make themselves the line between us and destruction and pain and chaos - these are feelings too powerful to proclaim.
And it's odd, because I don't know how I really feel about this, in general. I think Americans' declarations of patriotism and love of country, especially those of American politicians, are kind of cringe-inducing. They trigger sympathetic embarrassment.
But the expressions of thankfulness to the work of the firefighters? I'm a little bit in love with that.
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We have arrived! A few minutes ago. Because we landed mid-afternoon, had to get through Customs and Immigration, then pick up car, then get food - real food dear God not some weird stuff on a tray that you pick out the edible parts of then give up on - we went to In-N-Out and got omg gluten-free "protein style" burgers (no bun, it's wrapped in lettuce, it works surprisingly well) and chips and went OM NOM NOM FOOOOD and then we had to drive here, and we hit LA rush hour traffic (rush two hours or so, at least, imo) and then the route the GpS decided would be "fastest" was a super, super-twisty road that was basically one endless switchback.
so my further thoughts on Arriving In America (and also, possibly, Passing Through Japan) can wait until tomorrow.Current Mood: tired
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Things done: Most of packing.
Things to do: Buy stuff to wear to wedding thing in Vegas, because I still haven't, but I have a plan for this: order it from a site I already ordered clothes from to be delivered in America and Meg can bring it with her because WHERE THE HELL DID THE LAST TWO MONTHS GO.
(There was... a lot of stuff, actually. But still.)
Acquire - i.e. see if the boys have a spare, or else arrange to pick up - a jar of Vegemite for Amy, because apparently the Vegemite she can buy in America is not the same as Australian Vegemite, and she likes it. It seems weird to be taking someone a Special Australian Delicacy and have it not be Tim-Tams, but someone on a ketosis diet probably shouldn't be snacking on Tim-Tams anyway.
Download some more e-books, not required, but I will probably be happier and calmer. Historically I have trouble sleeping on outward bound flights, though. Need enough stuff to read to pass the time.
Pack my cabin bag, and some accoutrements - chargers for camera equipment, pencils, sketchbook(s), that kind of thing.
Photocopy my ID and travel documents. Photocopy velithya's. Make packets of our own and each other's for us to have in our own baggage, and also a set to leave with olivermoss or someone. (Not that I travel slightly paranoid, or anything.)Current Mood: how is it October already
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ahahaha I fell behind on reading my reading list already.
In my defence, I'm leaving the country tomorrow night and there have been things to do.
On today's list is: scouting for new things to do for a few days in the vicinity of California, since we had planned, for those days, to be visiting Yosemite National Park, which is closed now.
Because America SHUTS DOWN ITS GOVERNMENT WHAT
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I picked up a new pair of glasses today. Slightly different prescription from my last pair, and I appear to have been long overdue for it - I'm finding the precision and clarity with which I can see everything suddenly incredibly disorienting. It's disconcerting precisely because the feel is as of having blurry vision, except... I can see with crystal clarity.
I went into the optometrist's to collect them with velithya, since we were on a sequence of errands. Fortunately, she was driving - the guy at the optometrist's office asked if I was, and warned me not to drive wearing these glasses today.
He's right. I'd be positively dangerous on the roads - the act of seeing is in and of itself distracting right now.
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I think I am going to declare reading list bankruptcy. Four months is just not feasible to catch up on. This means that all of you are new and exciting to me in certain ways.
I'm reading a lot of GK Chesterton at the moment. It's interesting and fun and lovely, but also fascinating in a way I hadn't expected: the racism.
More to the point, the part where most of the time, it's the lack of racism, given the era in which he wrote. (Note: This is not flawless, unless you're taking into account quite a bit of nuance in the writing, at certain points, and if your familiarity with a century-old dialect of English is imperfect, some of that nuance is going to burn. Plus, though it's never attributed as any kind of worthy sentiment, very occasionally certain words and phrases occur which some would deservedly find offensive and painful. The fact that Chesterton uses certain vile epithets in an ironic, "are you noticing how stupid these people are, here" sort of way doesn't mean it won't retain the capacity to hurt.)
( Possibly slightly incoherent, definitely mildly spoilery, might as well cut. )
Father Brown is also the first fictional quasi-detective I've found in fiction since Lord Peter who is actually, genuinely likable. He's not smug or superior about things, and he's not out to be right or to get into other people's business for his own sake; he cares about people, and is often called in to their personal business by reason of his being a priest.
And he's not too perfect, even in his general tendency to be nice to people and try to think the best of them and be friendly. You get lines like: "But Father Brown had to tell himself sharply that one should be in charity even with those who wax their pointed beards, who have small gloved hands, and who speak with perfectly modulated voices." Just a little reminder that thinking kindly of people is not necessarily purely a native gift, so much as an attitude one can hold deliberately.
Oh, actually, there's also the lack of sexism, in curious ways. For example, in one of the first stories I read, there's a male character who is compared, at a number of points, to an old maid, and aspects of his behaviour and personality are referred to in terms of being "feminine"...
... and these are positive attributes, of a man who, in the story, is a VC and an unquestionable, absolute hero. He's just not a glory-seeking hero. His is the heroism of: "Someone needs to do this dangerous and frightening thing. I guess that someone should be me."
He even ends up marrying the beautiful woman who features in the story.
Most of the significant characters in the stories are still men, but in an odd way, it tends to seem like the women aren't involved as much as they might be because they're not silly enough for such foolishness.
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So I haven't posted or read DW in a few months. This saddens me a little, but more of a problem is that I've started wanting to post again, but I keep not doing it because I'm all, "But I haven't posted in months! I can't just post now!"
This is silly.
So this is me posting.
Rough updates:
- Going to America for October. Fortunately, our planned accommodations for the first few days didn't burn down. (Being that they're in the vicinity of Yosemite, this was a concern.)
- I bought an eReader the other day. For this reason I'm back to haunting Project Gutenberg, because now I have a non-annoying way to read eBooks, so I want to catch up on a bunch of classics and such that I have long wished to have read, and I don't see why I should pay money for them when they're available free (and legal).
They currently host a review, by the webmaster, of the new Kindle Fire, which can be summarised as "don't get one". His alternative recommendations include the phrase, "If you can live with an e-ink screen."
I had to look up what the Kindle Fire was, that it didn't have one. Turns out it's a tablet. I made a face, I think. I don't want a tablet, I don't like tablets... and e-ink is the best thing ever.
Not just because it's so readable (but it is SO READABLE you guys, SO READABLE), but also because it provides for a battery life that borders on the sarcastic. I have intercontinental flights ahead of me; I take joy in a device that will last the whole time, while containing multiple books - more than enough for the whole flight, with options to account for variations in mood - despite weighing less than one.
Anyway. Hi, everyone. I missed you. I'm sort of back, but it's going to take me a while to catch up on things, I suspect.
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So, some Australian soldiers formed a group sharing a bunch of misogynistic crap around by e-mail and stuff.
That is not why I love my country right now.
This is.
The response by the Chief of Army that stands absolutely clear on this issue. A video statement to the Army that was also uploaded to YouTube.
Statement goes:Earlier today I addressed the media, and through them the Australian public, about ongoing investigations into a group of officers and NCOs whose conduct - if proven - has not only brought the Australian Army into disrepute, but has let down every one of you, and all of those whose past service has won the respect of our nation.
There are limits to how much I can tell you, because the investigations into this network, by both the New South Wales Police and the ADF Investigative Service, are ongoing. But evidence collected to date has identified a group of men within our ranks who have allegedly produced highly inappropriate material demeaning women and distributed it across the internet and Defence's e-mail networks.
If this is true, then the actions of these members are in direct contravention to every value the Australian Army stands for.
By now I assume you know my attitude to this type of conduct. I have stated categorically many times that the Army has to be an inclusive organisation in which every soldier - man and woman - is able to reach their full potential and is encouraged to do so.
Those who think that it is okay to behave in a way that demeans or exploits their colleagues have no place in this army. Our Service has been engaged in continuous operations since 1999, and in its longest war ever in Afghanistan.
On all operations, female soldiers and officers have proven themselves worthy of the best traditions of the Australian Army. They are vital to us maintaining our capability now and into the future.
If that does not suit you, then get out.
You may find another employer where your attitude and behaviour is acceptable, but I doubt it.
The same goes for those who think that toughness is built on humiliating others. Every one of us is responsible for the culture and reputation of our Army, and the environment in which we work. If you become aware of any individual degrading another, then show moral courage and take a stand against it.
No-one has ever explained to me how the exploitation or degradation of others enhances capability or honours the traditions of the Australian Army.
I will be ruthless of ridding the Army of people who cannot live up to its values, and I need every one of you to support me in achieving this.
The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.
That goes for all of us, but especially those who by their rank have a leadership role.
If we are a great national institution, if we care about the legacy left to us by those who have served before us, if we care about the legacy that we leave to those who in turn will protect and secure Australian, then it is up to us to make a difference.
If you're not up to it, find something else to do with your life. There is no place for you amongst this band of brothers and sisters.
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Going down south for the long weekend. (Visiting myfyr's parents at the farm.) Housemate.Dave gets the house to himself for a few days - must remember to tell him no wild parties.
We plan to visit Albany. I've somehow never been there before.
Am unlikely to receive e-mail or comments, etc, until latish Monday.
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I've never liked Eddie McGuire. He annoys me and I say that to acknowledge a bias in my view of this story. Also, I have disliked Collingwood for some years, to the extent that my team allegiance in the AFL is generally: "The Eagles, and whoever's playing against Collingwood."
Okay.
So, last Friday a Sydney Swans player named Adam Goodes was subject to a racist slur.
Background: Adam Goodes is an Australian Rules Football player at the national level, a star of the Sydney Swans team, and I have never heard anything to suggest he's not an entirely decent young man. He's won the Brownlow Medal twice - the "best and fairest" award, given annually to the player who has performed best that year who has no disciplinary infractions - and is a four-time All-Australian.
For team partisan reasons I have a mild grudge against the Sydney Swans, and Barry Hall in particular, but the only thing I have against Adam Goodes is that he has been known to play really well against my
He's also an Indigenous Australian.
Last Friday, at a match, a Collingwood supporter called him an "ape". Goodes was shattered.
( Side note on Goodes being so very upset about it. )
The initial public reactions of various figures were good. Collingwood club president Eddie McGuire spoke up in support of Goodes, as did many others.
There was a lot of national criticism of the thirteen-year-old girl who launched the slur. AFL president Andrew Demetriou struck a careful line, condemning the use of racist slurs while still criticising the media for hounding a child and her family over it. (Fair, I thought.)
General consensus: What the girl said was horrible, Adam Goodes deserves sympathy for his pain and admiration for the class he showed in response. All the high-profile people in the sport have publically agreed that it was racial vilification, and that that is bad, and that would probably have been that. The comment wasn't made by someone who's in any way a public figure, and all the public figures have responded reasonably appropriately.
Aaand then came Monday. Eddie McGuire, he who has been called Eddie Everywhere because he's all over the media hosting game shows and footy shows and award shows and who therefore is more than accustomed to talking into microphones that are broadcasting to public audiences, appearing on his own regular program, said in response to the topic of a stage production of King Kong... that they should get Adam Goodes for the promotion. Explicitly referencing "the ape thing".
McGuire's explanation so far is that it was "a slip of the tongue". Which is not enough. (Especially since the transcript shows that when he first brought up Adam Goodes's name, his co-host replied, "No, I wouldn't have thought so, absolutely not," which, Eddie, should have been a hint, and McGuire continued the theme after that.)
The AFL's racial vilification process requires the parties involved to speak, either directly or through mediation. Displaying what has happily been acknowledged as far more class and grace than the situation warrants, Adam Goodes took McGuire's phone call; the Swans as a club have shown undisguised disgust. Criticism of McGuire is even coming from within the Collingwood team. There may yet be significant consequences for Eddie McGuire's career.
We can only hope.
Sometimes, there are times when the correct public response to something you've done is to grovel.
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1) Keep all poll and focus group results away from Julia Gillard. Tell her that she's not allowed to say anything in range of a microphone unless she means it.
2) File all suggestions from the NSW Right in the shredder.
3) Reinstate Kevin Rudd as Foreign Minister.
4) Respond to the Coalition entirely through the medium of "quotations from Hansard that make Tony Abbott or other notable figures in that Party look evil, hypocritical, stupid or all of the above".
5) Try not to let them replace their Chief Whip. A blatantly lying, spectacularly stupid (in that he lies about things that he wrote down in correspondence with the ALP's Chief Whip, which, you know, MIGHT THEN GET OUT), petty nasty jerk like that is definitely to Labor's advantage.
Also, seriously. Lying to try and get out of looking like an arse is one thing, but you're just going to look like a bigger arse if there exists written evidence of your arsiness in the possession of the people who will get the most possible advantage out of showing the entire country that you are, in fact, an arse.
(For non-Australian/non-news-following readers: The Opposition Chief Whip refused to allow a pair so that an ALP parliamentarian could go be with her sick child. When criticised for this, he claimed he didn't know it was her child who was sick... despite having referred to the MP's sick child in the letter to the Government Whip in which he refused the pair. Naturally, the Government Whip's reaction was to publish that correspondence, because why on earth would you not.)
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Home!
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May. 15th, 2013 @ 12:01 pm
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Out of hospital already yaaaay.
My roommate was non-annoying!
My knee is Not Too Bad (tm). I currently have very mild pain (sitting on the couch, no weight on it) but then the Panadol will have worn off - it's worth noting that my pain is currently manageable even when walking on mere paracetemol.
It also no longer makes crackling sounds when it bends, which pleases me and which the surgeon said was a good sign.
Apparently there was some developed roughness under my patella, so they shaved that off all smooth or something. Then they did the "lateral release".
I am tired, due to not sleeping that well in hospital, although more than I did last time due to non-annoying roommmate (although someone a couple of rooms down needs to see someone about his sleep apnoea) and also having had velithya and myfyr bring my pillow from home to sleep on. My pillow is nice, I'm used to it, it's the right firmness and the right thickness, it smells right and not of hospital laundry, and also, isn't plastic.
(The pillows at StJoG Subi are decent, for hospital pillows, at a good point between soft and firm, etc, but they still have plastic casings because otherwise they'd have to burn them after single-patient use due to risk of infection transmission. So their nice, soft cotton pillowcases are still nice, soft cotton over plastic, which is never, ever going to be as pleasant to sleep on as My Pillow.)
So I managed to get actual sleep, despite things like being woken at 2am to have my blood pressure checked.
(The saga of my b.p. during my stay: Slightly high for the first few, then 124/87, then something like 120/57, and then I was released. >.>)
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Sooo, GetUp sent out an e-mail with a list of small would-be political parties trying to register.
One of them is the Australian Sovereignty Party:
Stand for "no carbon tax", "no personal income tax", and "no GST"; "no more wide open borders", and "no treaties without referendums," among other policies.
... no. Just no.
First of all, the carbon tax is a good thing. I agree that the GST isn't good, but I'm not sold on the removal of income tax until you declare that you plan to replace it with. (Besides, I like a progressive income tax, tbh.)
However.
We don't have wide open borders, except, perhaps, in a purely literal sense, and I don't think walling off the entire coastline of this continent is realistic, a good idea, or in any way not moronic. Our borders aren't wide open, and never will be.
Even if the world reverts to a pre-WWI era state where passports aren't a thing and international migration is largely unregulated - unlikely - Australian border controls will still exist, because even if you don't have to deal with Immigration, you will have to deal with AQIS. The Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service does vital work in entirely non-political ways. (You can tell, in part, by the way that there are what amounts to Customs checks even on domestic travel between the mainland and Tasmania. In the same way that Australia needs to protect its ecosystem from hazards from other countries, Tasmania needs to protect itself from some hazards that have reached the mainland but not the smaller island. Our airports have sniffer dogs trained to find fruit.)
But the truly, amazingly stupid part is no treaties without referendums [sic]. Seriously? Seriously?
In the first decade of this century, Australia signed 347 treaties, meaning it averaged, approximately, three treaties a month.
Holding a national referendum three times a month MIGHT CAUSE SOME PROBLEMS, since voting in a national referendum is mandatory. If we ditched mandatory voting for this, voter turnout would become laughable, and that's assuming that the AEC managed to keep running the damn things successfully at all, when they were having to bust out the entire apparatus practically every week, and all the schools and libraries and suchlike venues where elections tend to happen might start to object just a little bit.
Never mind the other ways this is stupid, it's just not even slightly practical.
I try to be an informed and thoughtful voter, personally, but to take a treaty largely at random, I don't think I have an opinion on the Agreement Establishing the Terms of Reference of the International Jute Study Group, 2001. I also don't really want to consider how to deal with Agreement by Exchange of Notes between the Government of Australia and the Government of the United States of America to Amend and Extend the Agreement on Cooperation in Defence Logistics Support (CDLSA) of 4 November 1989 getting voted down.
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I'm not necessarily going to succeed at catching up for another few days at least. On Tuesday I'm having surgery on my knee. It turns out my kneecap is in the wrong place and needs to be moved.
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Idly: I am still bitter about Terrence Howard getting dropped for Don Cheadle as Rhodey.
Terrence Howard has presence. He is perfect Rhodey and perfect War Machine. In the first movie he looks, speaks, and moves like a hero.
Don Cheadle is a weeble. He manages to look dorky and daggy even in an Air Force uniform, which should not technically be possible.
Terrence Howard will always be Rhodey in my heart.
Why the hell did they recast him, and why, if they had to recast him, couldn't they get anyone better than Terrence Howard? I refuse to believe that the entire list of heroic-looking black actors is "Terrence Howard and Idris Elba".
Before anyone asks why I don't know anyone else to suggest, a) I liked Terrence Howard and would therefore nominate him to be Rhodey again, dammit, and b) I pretty much don't watch movies and I watch very little TV, so I don't know, you know, actors. Unless they're in Avengers-related movies.
Although, having said that, I've been on a West Wing first-couple-of-seasons nostalgia-sort-of kick lately, and Dulé Hill could probably do Rhodey justice. He had a certain gravitas when he was, like, 24/25, I don't doubt he could be War Machine now.
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... way behind on reading journals. I was keeping up, but there was a whole thing, that upset me, and I was all journal-aversion again for a while. If I loved you before, I totally still love you.
I had an MRI last week. It was distinctly painful, because the problem being investigated is my knee, and a major symptom of the problem with my knee is that I can't lie on my back with my leg straight, it makes my knee hurt, and the MRI was 20 minutes of lying on my back with my leg straight and a sandbag on my shin to hold it still. Which also means it was not even just straight, probably, it will have been bending slightly backwards, because I am mildly hypermobile and my knees bend slightly backwards and always have.
And I had to pay $95. After pension discount etc.
After the MRI I had a pelvic x-ray. The tech asked if this was checking on my hip replacement(s). I'm 32. (Also, the initial setup was done by a trainee, who was very nice, but I had to tell her that no, I didn't mind if she pressed more firmly locating my bones, because her carefully gentle touches tickled. She had made sure it was okay to touch me at all first, that was fine, but I hate being tickled and also it kinda makes it hard to hold still.)
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(Because seriously, Britain's government is terrible and has been for at least the last forty or fifty years.)
The European Union is set to impose a two-year ban on three pesticides suspected of contributing to the global decline in the number of bees.
It didn't get universal support. One of the major countries to oppose it: the United Kingdom. Because they're siding with chemical companies saying that the scientific evidence is inadequate, despite that being kind of obvious bullshit.
"Having a healthy bee population is a top priority for us, but we did not support the proposal for a ban because our scientific evidence doesn’t support it," UK environment minister Lord de Mauley said.
[...]
"We will now work with farmers to cope with the consequences as a ban will carry significant costs for them."
You know what else would carry significant costs for farmers, Lord de Moron? Having to hand-pollinate their crops. The bee population crisis is a serious problem. And neonicotinoid pesticides have been shown to cause serious harm to bees. Conclusively.
Saying the scientific evidence doesn't support it is like saying the scientific evidence doesn't support the suggestion that smoking causes cancer. (After all, lots of people smoke and don't get cancer, right?) Only with consequences that actually manage to be more serious, because while, yes, smoking kills people, the overall damage of the total collapse of bee population sustainability would be borderline apocalyptic.
Plus, we wouldn't have honey any more. And honey is magical. Where antibiotics and the best of modern medicine are failing us with drug-resistant infections like MRSA, honey can treat them. Honey may be a cure for some forms of cancer.
And honey is also delicious. I'm just saying.
It is, therefore, basically more important than just about anything else governments can do to protect the honeybee populations of the world. Honeybees are the foundation of the ecosystem, responsible for an estimated 80% of pollination of plants, and also, are magic.
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