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Whacking Permalink Archive 31 October 2004 "Fuck you, Santa!" -
The Sopranos
There are certain groups in the world which right now are working towards the goal of wiping out a major American city with a nuclear bomb. Given this fact, isn't it a relief to see how the Department of Homeland Security is spending its time? Christ
almighty....
A happy birthday to my friend and uberchick Cantinera. Cantinera
always wants lots of mail to tell her how much she rocks. Send some to
me at tex <at> whackingday.com and
I'll forward it to her.
Me and my transexual pigs (Ummah and Osama) were doing some quiet web-browsing when we happened upon the friendly, helpful website of Hamas Online. My weekend is complete. I was rather impressed with their collection of touching poetry. I really liked the "Mohammed-al-Durra" effort...
I guess no one told them that Mohammed-al-Durra was actually murdered by Palestinians. Not that truth and the Palestinian cause ever have much to do with one another. Anyway, enough of that, let's go back to see what else the child-murdering Hamas monkeys have to offer. Hey, how about a martyrdom poem?
Nice. Enough poetry, how about a look at the Hamas Covenant?
Well, according to lots of enlightened leftists, this actually means that these fellas want to co-exist with Jews. Oddly, the Hamas boys don't seem too keen on peace conferences and such...
And there's a lot of Zionist conspiracies...
Mmmm...OK. But no fear, Hamas assures us their motives are benign:
Elsewhere, there's an interview with the late, unlamented, and thoroughly BBQ'd Dr. Abdel Aziz Al Rantisi:
How dare the Israelis build a wall to seperate themselves from these people! If only those bastard Jews would let themselves be slaughtered by the pack of homicidal chimpanzees, all the problems in the Middle East would be solved. (Update:
I wish to apologise for my language: I mean no insult against monkeys
and chimpanzees)
Yesterday, for the first time, I rode the legendary Vespa Scooter. The GT200 four-stroke model to be exact.
Jumping from a regular motorcycle to an automatic scooter requires a considerable mental adjustment. Bloody fun though. This sucker might be the perfect urban commuter, and is a great machine for learners. You need to ride a scooter very differently to a regular bike..... - there's no clutch, so the bike never stalls and you never change gear. You just twist the throttle and the bike moves. - there are no foot controls. The left handlebar lever used used to control to rear brake instead of your right foot, and of course you no longer change gears with your left foot. - the automatic transmission means there is little engine braking, which requires a very different corner entry technique. For the first few minutes, I was all at sea. Going into corners, my right foot kept moving to activate the non-existent foot brake. I kept thinking the bike was going to stall as the revs dropped, and rather than kicking down a few gears, rolling off the throttle, and using a bit of brake to go around a corner, I had to use the brakes alone to slow me down. Thankfully, the little disc brakes are excellent and are more than up to the task. Once I got used to it, the Vespa put a big smile on my face. It's very comfy, the engine is terrific (easily up to the task of highway cruising), it's very easy to steer and it looks fantastic. Ironically, a learner would probably get to grips with a scooter quicker than an experienced motorcyclist. There are few more practical city vehicles than the Vespa, despite its $8400 on-the-road pricetag. First, fuel economy is phenomenal (my guess would be around 30km/l), registration and insurance costs are low, as are servicing costs. The tyres will last until The Resurrection, you'll never, ever have a problem finding a place to park, and the engine has enough grunt to take a pillion passenger on the back. Cost of ownership and the fun factor aren't the only strengths of his great little machine. There's tons of storage space under the seat and in the glovebox underneath the handlebars, both of which are lockable. Which means there's space to store the groceries, and there's a place to store your riding jacket & gloves when you're off the bike, which is especially a blessing during hot weather. Carrying riding gear & luggage around during summer shopping duties is not fun. The one glaring flaw is that the under-seat storage will not take a full-face helmet. You'll need to buy the optional accessory topbox for that, though I'd advise doing that anyway as it's very handy. When
it comes to cheap, enjoyable transport, the mighty Vespa is hard to beat.
I love watching lefties agonize over the election results. Here's "Serge" from aus.politics pining for his Labor heroes. After posting bunch of reviews about the new book on Paul Keating, he waxes lyrical...
Yeah. Keating was so visionary and luminous he was voted out in a landslide. With
true believers like this, is it any wonder Labor has lost 4 elections
in a row?
As I expected, my statement of fact a few days ago has made serial dimwit Niall Cook rather cranky:
One could point out to Niall that none of those empires were free democratic capitalist societies, but I doubt he'd understand the relevance of that. Dictatorships, commie suckholes and absolute monarchies eventually decay, but the capitalist-democratic engine makes the USA more powerful as time goes on. Nor is the USA an "empire" - there are no vast spaces America is trying to permanently hold. It's not going to be taken down from the inside, and there certainly isn't anyone outside America capable of defeating them. He's
right about one thing though: Canberra is a den of dumb-dumbs...
it's full of people like Niall Cook. No wonder it's a safe Labor seat.
There's an exception to every rule.... I have a theory which makes a lot of people very upset: old movies suck. The actors sucked (sorry, but Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant and John Wayne couldn't act their way out of a shithouse), the scripts sucked (modern daytime soaps have better dialogue) and they had the most godawful musical scores imaginable. I think the oldest movie I've ever liked was Sidney Lumet's Twelve Angry Men with Henry Fonda. Other than that, anything made before the sixties is like a trip through hell for me. So it was a rather big suprise to see an old classic on DVD which I not only enjoyed, but loved.
There was no 50's histronic cheesy dialogue, very little of that excruciating 'old movie music', and it has one of the best bittersweet final scenes I've yet seen. The plot: Anne (Hepburn), a spoiled Princess of some ficticious European country, runs away from her entourage during a tour of Rome, and winds up crashing at the home of second-rate journalist Joe Bradley (Peck), who only discovers her identity when he sees her picture in a newspaper. They basically hang out together in Rome with Joe's photogrpaher pal Irv (Eddie Albert), who secretly takes pictures so that they both can get the press scoop of the century. Anyone who has ever watched romantic comedies can probably guess how the rest of this gem of a movie develops. It's sweet rather than sappy, often very funny, has a few wonderful Italian character actors and the Roman locations are terrific. Oh, it also has the best-ever appearance of a Vespa scooter in movie history. Check
it out. This film got to me. It'll get to you too.
A while back I raved about a small local Chinese restaurant, The Oriental Express, saying it was the equal of any Chinese cuisine anywhere in the world. A while later, I expressed my disappointment that the restaurant has changed owners and chef, and their version of a particular dish wasn't as good as before. I really must have had my head up my arse. Subsequent visits to The Oriental Express have seen me experience Chinese & Malaysian cuisine as good as any food on earth. On the last visit I consumed a dish of Sambal Chicken with Roti Cannai bread. I think I nearly creamed my pants gulping this stuff down. It was food worthy of the gods. The Chili Plum Beef ordered by my friend was equally sublime. The owner & chef - Robert Wong - may be the friendliest restauranteur in the Southern Hemisphere. We always get a enthusiastic greeting and he'll happily talk for ages about various kinds of dishes. If
you're in Canberra and you want some seriously kickin' cuisine in a small,
quiet establishment, you simply must give this place a try.
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Roman
Holiday, made in 1953 with Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn is everything
50's movies aren't: well-written & well-acted, beautifully made, with
clever, economical dialogue and wonderful, restrained direction.
