ADVANCE LINTON FAIR

In recent times one would note that the most exciting thing to happen to Linton in the last six months was the kidnapping of Wilma from her Office. When a town becomes totally fixated on a bloody doll then maybe we should think about the sanity of the population. I was just sitting around the other day playing something from J.S Bach on my Shoe Horn when it came to me that Linton and its environs which includes the residents of Clappy Valley need to do something other than make off with life size dolls for some bizarre purpose.

Could we hold a Linton Charity Auction involving all the local community organisations together and for them to divide the spoils amongst themselves according to their input of saleable donations? Is this a good time financially to be drawing on the restricted incomes of our small population?

The Progress Association holds a Firewood Raffle once or twice a year but is that enough? I’m not sure that potential Tourists would stop on the way through to buy wood that may have to be transported back to Kazakstan.

One idea I thought of might be to promote the local Roman Ruins. We have holes in the ground scattered throughout the district that may have been Roman Baths and enough derelict brick structures to explain away as ancient Villa’s. A few old walls, the display of some broken terracotta pots or even some spearheads. We have enough Victorian Iron Lacework to scatter a few pointy bits around and I’m sure several disfigured old Pennies might find their way into the bottom of an abandoned well.

Do we have to have something tangible to draw in the Tourists? What about popular annual events such as an ‘Athiest Conference’ where even Agnostics of Golden Pains, Ballarat and Pyranees could get together to explain scientifically how God doesn’t really exist. Father John could be a Guest Speaker and a Raffle held for a new Stature of the Holy Mother for the Sussex Street Median Strip.

Every year 600 Million Dollars goes overseas in Internet Gambling which sort of ruins the idea of Mandatory Gambling Limits in Australia. Linton could get in on this act. Establish in the Blue Room tables, chairs and lounges and a dozen laptop computers hooked up to Wi-fi and connected exclusively to overseas Gambling Sites. Roulette, Black Jack, and Poker could all be played in a relaxed community atmosphere and we could all lose our money together. This would draw in people from Skipton and Smythesdale to lose their money as well. The $5.00 an hour charge to use the service could then be ploughed back into the Linton Community Groups. It’s a win-win situation for some of us.

A side benefit would be that we could qualify to be a high-rollers site and thus like Crown be exempt from Australian Smoking Laws. Of course we would need to prove we were smoking Imported Tobacco and not locally grown Hemp.

In Malaya they have formed Obedient Wives Clubs maybe we could establish one in Linton. Of course the Leaders would be men as ordained by God. Then maybe I should rethink that idea in the light of the iron laden purse heading for my forehead. Maybe the thought of each man being allowed to have four wives would leave nothing for us fat ugly ones.

Now that the town appears to be awakening from its economic slumber it could eventually lead to us being able to establish one of those popular Fishing and Surfing Shops. With Cape Clear so close it’s a badly needed resource for the area. The new Café 80 could redecorate with a Surfing Theme and Suzie’s specialise in selling Board Shorts knitted exclusively by Country Comforts

NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL ARRIVE

WHAT WE SAW AND WHAT WAS PLANNED WAS NOT WHAT WE GOT

It’s a bit of a mixed bag with the new Town Tourist Precinct. Actually we like the fact that people are already stopping and enjoying the facility and, at least on the day that I was down there, stopping about three or four families and preventing them from having a picnic somewhere else.

It is still to be seen if Kris and Mal benefit from the new facility or whether the highway traffic, still doing 80 kph by the time they ‘hit’ the area, will be slowed enough for pedestrians to cross safely with their Chico Rolls and it will be some time before we notice any increase, if any, in the main shopping precinct atop the hill. Rarely do people stop twice in the same town unless they’re fat lazy buggers.

We got half of the original design. As Golden Pains Council had decided that it would come in on time and on budget and they didn’t have to pay for the States largesse. The project kept getting smaller with each new tender, and from what I hear, it had to be re-tendered several times due to errors. One error being a declaration that there was definitely no water on site but it was later miraculously divined and the replica rooms became much needed toilets. They did not read the Dial Before You Dig publicity.

The horse troughs went, seats went, signs were reduced, the platform reduced in length, a picnic rotunda wiped off the map and imaginative crossing barriers, which could have been a great safety feature migrated up the hill under a set of bushes and only a token of their original size.

Only time now will tell whether the State of Victoria has used its money wisely, or as usual, pissed it all up against the wall inside the toilets. For a newsletter that is famous for its whinging, whining and self aggrandisement I think we should shut our mouth for a while until the town, the tourists and the intoxicated pass their judgement.

TENECE ANYWON

NOW GONSKI HAS GONE AS WELL

FROM THE DESK OF ROLAND ALONG

I’ve got a bit of a bone to pick with Centrelink. I don’t have to worry about that mob of pricks so I can say what I like without retribution.

The latest benefit changes for young people mean that if you’ve got a teenager at home then you’re going to responsible for them until they are 22. I expect that this will change in the near future to say that you are responsible for your kids until you enter either a psychiatric facility or a nursing home whichever comes first. That is of course if you don't die working until you are 70. With the cost of private rental it’s all nigh impossible to throw them out to fend for themselves so you’re stuck with them maybe until they marry or find a life partner.

There is also a requirement that if you have not completed your Year 12 Certificate or an equivalent Certificate II qualification (whatever that means) you will need to undertake study or training to qualify for Youth Allowance. On the surface that looks pretty fair until you realise that the training can be in anything they say it is.* It does not necessarily mean you are being trained for any particular job THAT YOU ARE CAPABLE OF, OR INTERESTED IN but whatever the Training Provider is profiting from most.

Say you are a wiz at computers. Do they find you a job or some training in that field. No. They put you into a Fork Lift Driving Course. (Called Logistics?) But wait for it there is more. The agency that trains you for the Course does not require you to drive a forklift. You can get photographed in one but you cannot drive one. To help you out they give you a Test Sheet in one hand and an ANSWER SHEET in the other. You don’t get to learn to drive one but just pass the Theory Exam. Why is this so? (see also Prof. Julius Sumner Miller). Because you have to be 18 years of age for a Licence. You do the course, you pass the exam but you do not get your Forklift Licence until you are 18. To top it off they say it will be posted to you in 9 weeks (Hand Made Paper?) eventually you have to go and demand your Certificate otherwise it is not given to you. To top it off the Training Providers who I will name—SARINA RUSSO TRAINING CENTRE - DANDENONG** have refused to issue one of the trainees any certificates which are now demanded by Centrelink on pain of losing their benefits. I may also be exposing the inexplicable antics of Job Centres Australia in a later issue.

Now, so say Centrelink, even though you have spent about 3 months of school IN YOUR LIFE, you have the equivalent of Certificate III. Any further training you will have to pay for and that could be upwards of $5,000. What unemployed child let alone a parent can afford this money. I can see why young people are frustrated. I can feel sympathy for them when they drink themselves stupid. I understand why they are becoming increasingly violent towards society in general.

When you see that T.A.F.E's and Universities are being defunded to pour more money into these private money-making companies, many of whom have close contact with the decision makers then it makes me sick to the stomach. Government of all persuasion have one thing to consider and one thing only and that is the welfare of their citizens, and apart from some instances in the A.C.T I see little evidence of that anywhere in Australia. 

You can't get a job without training, you can't get training unless you front up with $5,000 and the training you get is next to useless anyway. What is it with business today? Where a kid starts is usually where they will be most loyal. What does it cost employers to keep hiring and firing half-trained young people?

Now I, and you hopefully, will understand why the young person serving your Coffee is so bloody surly and uncooperative. It's the only sodding job they can get with their University Degree. The next time a Barrister spills coffee on you just remember why they’re so pissed off.

* This is typical of government. It is on the Statute Books that the Commissioner of Taxation has the right to define what is a Tax and what is not. So if you appeal to them about being Taxed they can declare that what you paid is not a Tax or vice-versa depending on whether they’ve had afternoon tea or not.

** To demonstrate how well these slave traders are doing the Sarina Russo Group own at least five commercially valuable buildings in Brisbane which is their base of operations as well as 219 Johnston Street, Fitzroy in Melbourne. The course participants spend their nine weeks not in training but loading water bottles for some African Charity. Is this slavery outside Africa? It’s our taxes that are funding these private concerns to the tune of millions of dollars of Taxpayers money supposedly training people AND placing people in employment instead they are used to increase the profits of the providers. The former Prime Ministers wife is a multi-millionaire from ownership of a group of these same quasi-training centres. I know of one project in NSW which places on the ground 72 employment projects worth around $3,444,000 which actually carried a State Budget of over $7,000,000. More than half of the cost was tied up paying the bureaucracy to supervise the projects.

Post Script: 

Australia only has a stable government and compliant citizenry because the majority of Australians are so complacent they can't even get out of their own way.  You get what you vote for, you cop what you don't fight against.

POOR DOG (OR IS HE ?)

I’m not sure whether we should ever dare to under-estimate the intelligence of dogs. Maybe if our politicians took some notice of them we might have more sensible laws than ever emanated from the Federal Department of Stupidity.

For a brief moment let us just float off into the realms of fantasy and try to imagine, as they sit there looking fondly into our eyes, what these mutts are really thinking.

Dogs do have a stupid side just like we humans. Take for example the day that I installed a Doggie Door. It was this occasion that made me believe that maybe he was a little dyslectic. At first he was happy to enter and exit through the flap and all was good in the world.. However after a couple of days I attached a sign found in the shed which read ‘Beware Of The Dog’.

Well … it seems I had put the non-existent cat in amongst the non-existent pigeons for after that attachment he stood back trembling and unable to use it. Asking him what was wrong his reply surprised me.

“I’m not going in there” he said, “that sign says beware of the God.”

“Don’t be silly”, I said, “that word is Dog”

“I don’t care, even if it’s a dog do you think I’’m going through that flap to be mauled?”

The dog also seems to worry about where he is going whenever we drive away from home he whimpers and whinges and drools constantly all over the dashboard of the car. However, when driving back home he curls up on the passenger seat or his fluffy pillow behind the passengers seat and drifts to wherever dogs drift off to.

While Peppie is out of the room, probably for a poop, I might mention that the poor thing has such a low image of himself and a self-esteem that is almost non-existent, he worries like mad every time I leave the room, he wants to be my constant companion and seems to find great pleasure in nuzzling up against my bag of nuts when he sits with me on the lounge watching ‘Wibbly Pig’.

He will not leave me alone it’s like living with an obsessive compulsive body hugger, and the eyes, the bloody eyes, they constantly follow you around the room either looking sad and depressed as if contemplating suicide or bright and happy as if he just found an endless tube of bone marrow.

Medically speaking dogs must have extremely acidic tummies almost capable of dissolving rocks. He can gnaw down a bone the size of a steers leg to swallowing size in one sitting but it doesn’t come back out that way. I seem to expect that he should be grimacing in pain trying to pass a sheeps shank out his anus in the same condition it went in.

I noticed too that he can be a tad jealous at times if he thinks his position might be being usurped. The day I brought home my first two goats, Mum Donna Kebab and her son Shish, Peppie was eager to hop up into the tray of the ute so I allowed him in. Immediately he was up and mounting Donna to show her who was the boss around here. I separated them and put the goats in the small yard for quarantine.

The next morning, after he realized that the goats did not sleep in the house he was content to let them be. He’s good with the goats although there is the occasional brief confrontation between them over some misunderstanding in the yard. Usually while Peppie is playing marbles with their droppings.

As an aside, I advise readers not to purchase goats from anyone down a Teesdale. The first morning in quarantine showed every indication of a massive infestation of worms in their guts to the point where four week old Shish was a close to karking it just as I am preparing to let them loose.

A good drench a week apart and they are fine again. However I do believe that the impossibly slow growth of Shish was caused by these worms. After six months he is little bigger than when I first brought him to Godfrey Zone.

Since becoming the foster parent of a whippet there are a number of things I have noticed about dogs.

Unlike Alpacas they know when to come in out of the rain just like we humans.

To smell like as Fox you roll in their shit and then come and sit on the Lounge. Fox Poo is particularly nasty.

They know how not to do things for themselves. Even though he has a doggie door I still find I am occasionally opening the whole door for him.

If humans really are at the top of the evolutionary tree how come it’s us who have to pick up their poo.

Dogs know how to give you ‘the eyes’’, little wonder we always run out of the best biscuits.

“Alright but this is the last bickie!””

Yes - Dogs are sometimes smarter than us.

“ I don’t sleep in your bed why do you try to sleep in mine”

I suppose I should sum up this story with a couple more short tales. I have already mentioned that he seems a little dyslectic and I’m sure he’s trying to tell me he has Obsessive Repulsive Disorder, he has difficulty concentrating on the television even when ‘Wilfred’ is on and seems he is overly worried about the fact he might get Procrastinate Cancer if I don’t keep providing him with big bones.

He is presently on a diet having topped twenty kilo’s from his normal sixteen and seems to dislike me calling him Lardarse and claiming he is just big boned. His weight gain was more than likely being brought on by the fact that he had recently lost a couple of gonads somewhere in Ballarat. What a day that was, the moment he realized he was about to lose them he went off like a bloody Catherine Wheel that had fallen off its stick and his tail grabbed at every stick of furniture between the front door and the sleeping theatre.

When asked by his girlfriend Diva where they had gone he claimed that he had hit his head, got percussion and they had just fallen off so as to avoid admitting he had been taken advantage of.

OPERATION THREE STARS

FROM THE DESK OF

ROLAND ALONG

Before this story starts lets first identify who is going to be the Supremo of this operation to rid the country of non-whites. Mr. Rabbit referred to El Supremo as a Three-star General. That’s interesting. Does he know that Australia has no YYY officers, but Indonesia does. Maybe instead of an Australian Field Marshall, which we don’t have, we will be guided by Indonesian YYY General Hoho Yodiyoyo the hero of Timor perhaps. Thank heavens the Governor-General is the Commander of our Military Forces.

We are being invaded by the yellow hoard, the red hoard and the black hoard. In the last ten years at least 0.000001% of our population are illegal arrivals including 457 visa over-stayers and itinerant backpackers that don’t want to go home. Is that reason to scream National Emergency? The point has come where hysteria has overtaken logic and reason, where xenophobia and nationalism, the ideals that most thinking Australians abhor, threatens to strangle us in our beds and steal our kittens.

Maybe we should be reminded that it is us, the Western World, that is invading these countries and destabilising their region and creating the very rod with which we now beat ourselves.

Not long ago we all believed that Pauline Hanson was an uneducated right wing nationalist bigot, today many Australians are beginning to look and act just like her. Yesterdays political terrorist today’s political hero? As Great Leader Howard said in his famous speech. “We will decide who comes to this country and under what conditions, we will let America decide who we attack and under what conditions and we will send our troops all the way with L.B.J ?”

Lets get serious. Are we determined to destroy the existing good relations with our neighbours? Can we sustain Papua for the next half-century with Australian Tax money? Are we prepared to waste our money in Papua given their endemic crime, tribal wars and corruption problems, not even mentioning the fact that the Papuan Opposition Parties want squash the whole idea? Liberals put the cost of their policy at $10 million but in the last decade we have spent $3 Billion on the problem, is that a realistic estimate.

Labour has signed agreements with Port Moresby to take the boat people. Now that the Liberals are in will they be willing to maintain that back-rubbing agreement? There are a lot of questions still to be answered that neither party has even thought about yet. A billion dollars went up in flames on Manus Island and for another billion dollars they’re rebuilding it. May not that be better spent on housing for the aged at home?

Port Moresby via Thursday Island is much closer then West Timor. If I was an advisor to people smugglers I would be suggesting they move to free and open Port Moresby and re-ship the refugees to Australia. Papua won’t mind, once they have the money in their pockets who is going to care?

The itinerary from SMUGGLETRAVEL might look something like: - Fly to Malaya - short boat trip to one of 7,000 Indonesian Islands - bus across Indonesia to West Timor - leaky boat into Australian waters - sink the boat - Australia rescues and transport free of charge to Christmas Island - free trip to Port Moresby - short trip to Thursday Island - BBQ lunch - and afternoon trip to Cape York - and welcome to Australia, mind the step up. There is an alternative too. The refugees could move across Indonesia to West Papua and then walk across the border. No need for boats and no need for people smugglers. The one drawback is running the gauntlet of warring tribes of head-hunters in the ungovernable area between East and West Papua.

Can we tow vessels back into Indonesian waters without a diplomatic incident? Laws of the sea don’t apply to us unless you’re an English speaking sailor on a sinking yacht near Antarctica. Can we expect Indonesia to respect our Territorial Waters if we ignore theirs. Fishing boats for example? This should have been called ‘Operation Sovereign Attack’ for that is what it is. A cold war is about to kick off with our neighbours and we have started it.

How can Mr. Rabbit of the Liberals say that he was advised by retired military experts that this was the way to go when only ten years ago Mr. Howard of the Liberals stated that retired military experts were out of touch with present day trends and should not be giving advice. You can’t have it both ways.

We predict that the new trend for people smugglers will be, on sighting an Australian vessel, begin the process of sinking their boat with a rescue boat exclusively for them standing by, and to leave the refugees to their fate. It’s already being done and it will continue unabated. As the war on drugs has failed due to us not addressing the root cause, so the refugee ‘crisis’ will fail unless we help stabilise the countries they are coming from.

Finally we going to eventually need these illegal entrants anyway. The promise to create 2 million jobs by the new Liberal Government (for US readers read ‘;Republicans’) when the unemployment figure is only 635,000 . To meet their target we will need an increase of at least 250,000 migrants a year. It doesn’t make sense to us but apparently made sense to enough of the electorate to replace the incumbent morons with new cretins.

ON ART

Everyone admires Art differently. One can almost walk into any Gallery and find some of the most unreal interpretations of life from birth to death, in paint, metal, plaster and even old recycled gladbags.

To me to look at a red circle on a white background, or watch a light go on and off in an empty room every five seconds is not ‘Art’. Any dope can do that and win prizes. But Art in the form of country scenes and portraits is not Art either, it is merely a reproduction, a photograph if you like, of what can be see in the everyday world around us.

So why do thousands of people Oooooooooh! Aaaaagh! and sip Champagne whilst moving themselves around in the right circles at the latest exhibition of Peter Prozac’s ‘Things Stuck To Things’, or Margaret Mogodon’s ‘Works in Junk from Vinnies.”

Is it a way by which the rich can bullshit to each other? Does it keep people, who can’t paint or sculpt in employment just by talking about them?

“You can feel the drama, sup on the juices of angst, imagine why he hated his Mother when he did this piece. He must have agonised over this for years until he could get it down right.”

So the bald little poonce with the beret and oversized cravat was telling the transgender person in front of me at the latest showing of Alistair Duck-Fountain and his marvellous rendition of “Australian Voters”.

When I got to the painting all I saw was an immense scrotum being screwed tight in a carpenters vice. Where was the drama and the angst? Did he hate his Mother because he was born with these things? Did she screw them into the vice? It certainly would have not taken me years to scribble a pair on a piece of paper. Some people can draw them in seconds on the back of dunny doors and throw in some very creative poetry at the same time.

Is Art the skill of reproduction, the skill of making tangible that which is intangible, or is just a way to fill in time for someone? You have to be dead as well as dead lucky to make any real money from Art, so what use is it to the individual Artist?

Lets face it the Art Gallery is a gathering place for a whole lot of people who need to get a life. Then why was I there? Was it the challenge of surviving intact closely packed in with all these sexually ambiguous men and women? Was it because I was a bit depressed and needed a good laugh?

No … It was an attempt to explore another realm in the kingdom of life and to challenge my deep down antipathy for abstract Art.

Art comes from the heart. It is something in ones soul. It is not reproducing the existing but to explore ones inner self. So someone else may see something with meeting when all I see is a monstrosity. So maybe the little poonce was really saying something with a bit of truth in it. But I don’t know if I would want my privates on display for posterity clamped in a vice.

The Art of sculpting requires a lot of skill. Had Michelangelo made one slip on the Pietre he may have had to turn them into two little musketballs at the foot of the sculpture?

All of us, every man, woman and child, have the ability to be artistic in some way.

The Art of painting is open to all, whether it be on canvas or on a wall. The Art of writing is something that I desperately seek to perfect. It is probably more pleasing to be read by some than to be seen or heard.

‘Art is only Art if someone tells you it is’