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WHEN DO WE START MOURNING?

Nothing stirs up bizarre rumors in Linton than something fairly major happening without warning or explanation. It certainly didn’t make the ABC 24 hour News or the pages of the Miner so it is still unclear why the Grocer Shop doors remain firmly closed.

Have costs, corporations, conspiracy, councils, competition or complacency caused the closure? Only recently we took two steps forward when businesses began opening in Linton. Craft Shops and Hairdressers among them.  After 150 years (there was a grocer style business here in 1860) another icon of Linton looks headed for listing in both meanings of the word. Listing in the records of the Historical Society as yet another business that ‘used to thrive’ and listing in a register as a significant village building.

Maybe it could open again in another guise. I would like to think that there is still some life in the Economic Store as it was known for a long time. Some of the forebears of the Grocery are still around and may be mourning the loss of what in the past was their livelihood. We have to ask what is the future of small businesses in Linton. I’m optimistic that with the increases in on-line trading and the NBN maybe coming through Linton this decade that the village reduces its dependency on passing trade like the ’Cars That Ate Paris’ to really concentrate on Good and ServicesTrading On-line if we can create or find our niche market.

My idea for a Tea Cosy Museum fell flat at the last attempt so this time around would the idea of starting up a Cryptozoology Gallery wave anyone's flag?

In today's economic climate where the supermarket vampires are sucking the life out of small business maybe the return of Jesus has more chance of being successful than a resurrection of another grocery shop in the town.

As an eager supporter of anything positive about Linton the Astonisher is always on the lookout for Australian made widgets and fizz-gigs rather than something produced for Apple by a worker on a 60-hour week for 30 cents an hour. We need to create employment in Linton not in Long Jowl.

Real - Chinese Garlic at $6.99 a kilo while Australian Garlic is $19.99 a kilo. Something's got to give. Protectionism anyone?

HURRAH for the DEPARTMENT OF STUPIDITY

No - surprise, surprise this is not another story about the Progress Association you can read that one on the next page. This is a story that if it were any more silly might make for another series of ’Yes, Minister’.

All governments (Local, State and Federal) have a small room at the end of a long corridor where all the public servants who cannot survive in a civil society are sent to ruminate over problems and come up with solutions. It does not matter that we don’t have these problems. We could conceivably have these problems. So ’The Department of Stupidity’ has been created to come up with even more stupid ideas for the likes of Rob Oakshott, Nick Xenophobe and  Andrew Wilkie. Hey! They’re all Independents  isn’t that odd. Just when I thought they would be a good thing for our governments.

RESIDENT FACES CHARGES OF STEALING RUBBISH.

Well it’s a start. Police were called in to investigate a man who stole a broken washing machine from a pile waiting to be collected on Hard Rubbish Collection Day. It seems that the moment you put shit on the footpath it belongs to somebody else. I have not heard the outcome of that but now I know that when Peppie next shits on the footpath I won’t have to worry about it because it’ll now belongs to somebody else.

A PRE-COMMITMENT TO GAMBLE?

Andrew Wilkie started out a pretty good guy. He stuffed up his perky little government job by going public about the lies being told by the Bush Triumvirate of Neoconservative Nasties in the United States of Paranoia.(U.S.P).

The guy had a conscience. Now apparently he has gone unconscience with the idea, reluctantly supported by some redhead just to stay in power, that before you play the Poker Machines you make a promise to limit how much you gamble.

OK…. let’s see. How much have I got on my credit cards.

Oh! ...Look $14,000. Alright. I’ll pre-commit to gambling no more than 14 grand.

Or maybe the idea that ATM’S near Poker Machines will not allow you to withdraw more than $250.00. Alright that paid for the meals for me and my guests now where do I get the money top play a Pokie or two. I’ll withdraw that on my way at an ATM that will dispense up to a $1,000 or more. No problem.

Go on line and gamble overseas—let them get the tax revenue.

Will the T.A.B be next? I wish the moral minority would just  stay glued to their pews.

GOVERNMENT WILL NOT SANCTION GAY MARRIAGE

With our ‘Great Leader’ being an atheist and living in sin why is she so intent on pandering to the conservative religious lobby.

In an April edition of ‘TIME’  in a section entitled World Briefing

I have no issues with people of ’Faith’  not even though they are still stuck back in the Stone Ages as they are in the Middle-East (which Dept.of Stupidity came up with the concept of having a middle-east on a sphere?)

It is when they force themselves upon my obsessive-compulsive misordered person such as ‘you’re taking the Lords name in vain again’  that riles me up.  The absolute  belief in the intangible idea that homosexuality is the work of the devil and can be cured by people who blabber away in ‘tongues’ or where Christians gather at the funeral of a U.S Marine killed in Iraq and ‘Praise the Lord for killing him because he was a poof’ and then have the absolute hide to call Muslims barbaric?

THE MONARCHY?

I am not ashamed to say that I am a Republican first and foremost. The idea that I should pledge allegiance to someone who has to be British, has to be a Christian, and an Anglican at that and has to be a Male born in wedlock to someone God said had Royal blood. (a female only reigns when her Daddy didn’t help give birth to something with a penis.)

So for the moment the Republican issue lays dormant awaiting Malcolm Turnbull to ascend to the throne.  Only he and not a Bloodnut or a Papist will see us move out of our Dark Ages into a true Australian Democracy.

AN UPDATE

Since these stories were first published there have been some minor changes:-

The Prime Minister has renegged on her promise to curb problem gambling. Faced not only by a revolution from the public and the pubs/clubs she had to explain to the States why they should lose millions in tax revenue.

Given that the States are addicted to gambling, like unrestrained Coke Addicts they don't want to give up a good thing.

Besides who would provide them with $3,000 a night Hotel Suites if the Casino's stopped donations to the party?

In America - Gods Country (after all didn't Jesus ascend into Arkansas from the Cross) more and more U.S States are sanctioning Gay Partnerships and Marriage. Seeing that our governments head is so far up America's backside we believe it won't be too long before our politicians have a 'revelation' that not only is greed good but buggery as well.

Considering the U.S President speaks for us on the world stage, that the U.S keeps dragging us into unwinnable wars and expects us to spend billions on military hardware we will never use I wonder why we bother to hang, draw and quarter old KRudd and worry about having a spy service or a foreign affairs department.

PLAYING WITH THEIR DANGLY BITS

NEVER IN MY LIFE did I ever imagine walking into the Box Office of Her Majesty’s and asking the kindly box office lady for two tickets to watch two guys play with themselves.

Yet a month or so back there I was with dollars in hand and a grin on my lips. The Ancient Australian Art of Genital Origami.

PUPPETRY OF THE PENIS !!!

So exclaimed the sign over the Marquee outside the theatre. World famous! They’ve performed in front of the ‘crowned heads’ of Europe! 2 men 2 dicks and 2 much spare time. With all the double entendres splashing around I was quite relieved when there was no sign that said ‘Come one come all’.

A week later and there we were, thankfully in row 14, two guys behind thirteen packed rows of  women, all women, all ages and sizes, some with binoculars, a few women with probably less well-endowed husbands with telescopes.

The only spoilly bit of the show from my point of view was the excruciatingly loud head-banging music at the start. If there was going to be a lot of head-banging on stage why did we have to listen to it as well.

While we waited I was reminded of the only other time I’d paid to see anybody’s naughty bits. It was back in the 60’s in King’s Cross when I was taken to a strip club and from the front row was given an extraordinary view of what a woman could do with a banana both peeled and unpeeled.

Last Christmas I was outside what I thought was the same club and there stood maybe the same doorman. Intrigued I stopped and asked the guy if the girl was still performing with her bananas. His response was ‘Yes, but now she’s doing the same act for the old guys in the nursing home where she lives.’ He went on to say that now she’s on a pension the old guys have to pay for the bananas.

The show started and brought me back to reality. A local comedienne pulled off a few reasonable jokes about guys and there dangly bits and lots of sniggers about what girls get up to in bed but nothing that you might not hear in any pub amongst a group of happy women.

I won’t go beyond the bit where Simon Morley and David Friend come out in lengthy robes and perform their warming up exercises for I wouldn’t want to spoil it for you going to see them yourselves. A large video screen gives you all the close-ups you need, a bit much for us men but of great delight to the women with the telescopes.

The Bulldog, The Wristwatch, The Eiffel Tower, The Windsurfer, The Pelican and the Atomic Mushroom. These were just some of the many and varied tricks the two men performed to the ooohs! aaahs! and ouches! of the audience. On leaving the theatre there was a long line of women waiting to buy books, DVD’s and other penisphanalia so much so I had to wait 15 minutes to get the guys autographs.

I would recommend the book. It explains with pictures quite clearly all of the tricks that one can do even in the comfort of your own bedroom and much to the delight of your partner.

The only thing that I felt hard was the bloody old seats at the venerable old venue. Yet another thing Ballarat Council can’t get right. They can be hard-nosed but do we need to be hard-arsed.