inflammatory editorial

The Australian published this editorial yesterday Work, not welfare with this lead line No Australian can be allowed to rot in indolence. No, it wasn't about K Packer's corpse, it was about Aboriginal Australians, and the difficulty of finding meaningful work.

Actually, no, it wasn't about that, it was about "hey, let's dump a shit load on people who live on less than the minimum wage in extremely remote communities, because they're never going to read our newspaper, and people that DO read our newspaper will say 'mmm, yes, you're right, it's an outrage! pour me another cup of orange pekoe please dear, and we really should renew our subscription to The Australian, become US citizens, and buy into another very small country so that we don't have to pay any tax to the US or AU.' etc etc so on and so forth".

Just for reference, The Australian also published this Aborigines choose welfare over work by Michael McKenna, and this Business in the bush means the end to the welfare trap by Shirley McPherson on the 22nd of February.

this one's for all you smokers out there . . .

Fruehstueck
Originally uploaded by Sebastian Wendler.

This morning I started rereading Frank Moorhouse's Forty-Seventeen. It's SO good. The first sentence is:

After lunch over coffee and stregas at Sandro's the poets showed their pens

Super fantastic eh?!

Later in the same story

Australians wrote with the greatest freedom there is - writing without fear of being read.

Just like blogging really.

old geocities blog

I've been getting emails saying that someone's signed my geocities guestbook. "Don't remember that." I think to myself. Today being Saturday I decided to investigate and found that my old geocities blog is still online: au.geocities.com/athousandthings

It's even got a dream page.

saying "No" to smoking

I've just come across a website devoted to Youth Smoking Prevention. It's put together by Phillip Morris USA. I came to it via a banner ad on a site for vegetarians - the ad said something about 5 ways for your child to say "no" to smoking. I like way number 1 best

"I was at a party and somebody offered me a cigarette," says Sarah, 14. "I said 'no thanks,' and it was cool. I thought it would be a big deal, but it was so easy."

This always works for me when I'm offered dope, but I'm 41, and really people just offer a joint around to be polite. So they're quite relieved when you wave it away.

The thing that puzzles me about Phillip Morris is - if they're really serious about this, that is, kids not smoking, then they'd have to be phasing out their tobacco production and cigarette manufacturing capabilities and phasing in something else . . . and I wonder what that is?

It's all somewhat bizarre given that I was looking at a recipe for eggplant sandwiches, and at least two of the vegetarians I know smoke, and don't like eggplant much . . . I guess Phillip Morris USA would say that they are its target market " . . . products intended for adults." Maybe Phillip Morris USA doesn't like eggplant either.