TEN THOUSAND REASONS TO BE PISSED OFF

Readers of the Astonisher may not always understand the twisted logic of it’s editorial staff and can, have been and are sometimes left scratching their heads as to W.T.F is going on.

We recently received, from the State Revenue Office, a cheque for $10,000. After dancing around the banking chamber to deposit my windfall it struck me as to the unfairness of the entire scheme, my anger being increased when reading that most of the money goes to the builders and developers and not to those who should receive the grant.

I bought a second-hand house for $35,000 and had it relocated on to my block. For that I received $10,000 back from the First Home Owners Grant. At the very least I thought I would get a pro-rata amount and would have been happy with half that amount, but no, the grant was the same whether your house cost you $50,000 or $500,000. Almost a third of what I paid for the building?

How this works is beyond comprehension. I buy a house already built and move it. Then to me that is a second-hand house. Fortunately I knew a change in the scheme was coming so thought I was being clever by having the contracts suitably dated so a second-hand dwelling was still eligible for a grant. But, dear folks, a second-hand house moved on to a block is a NEW house. It was not even the first house as I already occupied a dwelling on this same block this was, to my mind, a second-second hand house but it still qualified as a NEW build. Apparently as this was the first grant I had applied for, even though technically I was already a home owner, it was still a NEW home on a NEW block from a NEW owner. This does not compute.

Now at 70+ and on the downward slide to a hole in the ground I could well afford not to be given such an indulgence from the state especially when the very people who need it, young first home owners do not qualify for this largesse unless it is on a new build on a new block and they have never owned a place before. How many young people, couples, newlyweds and young parents would be better off under the old scheme where it was for any new ownership, but no it has to be a new construction, so the idea of young people buying a cheap pre-owned house and working their way up the real estate ladder is just not an option. It’s new houses or nothing.

That’s what makes me angry, an old can’t like me gets the money, a young person starting out doesn’t and who benefits but the developers, real estate agents, builders and investors in new houses and not the people it should go to - the young.

Now you know why builders offer generous Cash-back schemes, it’s not theirs, it’s yours, stolen from you by builders whose hands are polishing the balls of the politicians. They just bullshit you into thinking it’s a FREE bonus from a generous construction conglomerate.

Having said that despite my anger I’m not going to give it back.

WHY DID THE CHICKEN TRY TO SWIM ACROSS THE ROAD?

When will some good upstanding citizens of Linton ever learn that alcohol in cooking is far less dangerous than having too much of it prior to preparing dinner?

Recently it came to our attention that this resident, normally well known for their culinary achievements, went home after enjoying the pub to cook dinner. They removed some large battered pieces of fish from a carton and dropped them carefully into the deep fryer. Stand by. Fish is cooked in minutes.

Cook, think, test and wait a few more minutes. Careful now, you can’t let fish cook for too long. Test. Then continue to cook, and twiddle with the temperature. Test. Still not cooked. Turn up the heat. Twiddle, question your methodology, look for packet to check instructions.

What is the picture of a chicken doing on the side of a fish dinner box? Chicken?

Remove well cooked chicken and enjoy.

GET OFF YOUR KNEES BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE

When it’’s our turn to elect a new Government it might be worthwhile keeping in mind what religious beliefs their esteemed leader may have while voting for it is those beliefs that will strengthen our Nanny State.

Take our present leader. An atheist living in sin who believes strongly in the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman? It’s just as believable as not introducing a carbon tax and not stabbing independent politicians in the back. Don’t get us wrong - at the Astonisher we are all good socialist lefties - we believe in fair and balanced reporting just as long as there is more weight on the left of the scales than their appears to be.

For example this is what Mitt Romney believes - so relax for at least four years……

EXTRACTS FROM STUDIES OF THE WORDS OF JOSEPH BROWN

(Founder of the Church of Latter Day Saints)

My soul delighteth in the words of Isaiah.--2 Nephi 25:5

Wherever he found his speech growing too modern - which was about every sentence or two - he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as 'exceeding sore,' 'and it came to pass,' etc., and made things satisfactory again. 'And it came to pass' was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet. -- Mark Twain, Roughing It, Chapter 16

It only took Nephi and his family three days to travel from Jerusalem to the Red Sea. (A distance of 250 miles) 2:6

After cutting off Laban's head, Nephi puts on Laban's clothes, and speaks to his servant "in the voice of Laban." The servant is fooled into thinking Nephi is his master. 4:19-21

Laban's servant figured Nephi was Laban and that he spoke for the church. What church? The Jews in 600 BCE didn't have churches did they? 4:26

It must have been an exceedingly good costume! Even Nephi's brothers thought he was Laban (because he was wearing Laban's clothes). 4:28

"The plates ... I have given the name of Nephi; wherefore, they are called the plates of Nephi, after mine own name; and these plates also are called the plates of Nephi." Okay, I guess we'll call them the plates of Nephi. 9:2

The Nephites were "white and exceedingly fair." 13:15

(The Native Americans are the decedents of those "who dwindled in unbelief." As a punishment for their disbelief, their skin was darkened and they became "a filthy people, full of idleness and all manner of abominations." 12:22-23.

After 1965 the Elders had a ‘Revelation’ that this was indeed a falsehood visited upon the Church by the Devil. Because of U.S Anti-race laws the Church suddenly permitted ‘other races’ to join.)

A round brass ball "of curious workmanship" leads Lehi through the wilderness. A compass, perhaps? But compasses didn't exist in 600 BCE 16:10, 16

Nephi breaks his bow, "which was made of fine steel." But the technology for making steel did not exist in 600 BCE. 16:18

God told Lehi to look at the brass ball and read the words written upon it. And when he read the words "he did fear and tremble exceedingly." 16:26

The pointers on the ball work according to the faith of its user. And the words written on the ball change according to the faith of its user. So Nephi found his way to the top of the mountain by following the instructions that were written on the ball. 16:30

God "sent fiery flying serpents" to bite people. 17:41

In building the boat, "We did work timbers of curious workmanship." 18:1

Lehi and company didn't have to cook their food because God made it taste good raw. 17:12

Conclusion: If you want to have an even longer laugh visit the Website:

www.http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/BOM/int/long.html

AND SO IT CAME TO PASS THAT THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN EXCEEDINGLY SMALL - JUST LIKE THE BIBLE - BECAUSE JESUS WAS REALLY AN OPTOMOTRIST NOT A CARPENTER.

To borrow a phrase from God Gough

“WELL MIGHT WE SAY

GOD SAVED AMERICA”

THE YOUTH IN ASIA COLUMN

‘for old people planning to go somewhere else’

Working in conjunction with ‘Vegans ‘R’ Us’ a startling new ’crazy’ cigarette plan has been devised by the Medical Lobby to foist upon us yet again another unworkable solution which the Department of Stupidity is about to introduce into State Parliament.

Historically prior to 1965 this Department was responsible to ensure that anyone who successfully committed suicide could face up to 2 years imprisonment, and as recently as 1900 was actually considered so serious that you could face the Death Penalty. In the United States you even had to be proven healthy before you could be put to death.

Since the creation of Solicitors and the Black Death whenever a law has been invented to protect one person it has caused disadvantage to ten others. As a result we have Law Books so convoluted and complicated to sort the mess out that it can take teams of lawyers years just to interpret them. For example the unravelling and interpretation of the Dead Sea Scrolls was done in half the time it took to work out what the Magna Carta really stood for.

Biofuels are a perfect example of one disadvantaging another. Metal-studded, dreadlocked Vegans who look like they’ve been dressed by austistic Chimpanzees have been developing alternative fuels from Corn. The result has been huge price increases and shortages in the supply of corn and maize products. So that one ’environmentally conscious wanker’ can run his car ten kilometres on creamed corn it has meant the potential starvation of ten African children. Like the myth that electric cars don’t pollute, the reality of alternative fuels results in the poor getting poorer as the clawing of fossil fuels from the ground with bare hands provides less and less income. Gina Reinhardt even wants more bare hands to claw her ores from our soil at the rate of ten Caraway seeds to the ton. (I’m not sure that Rich Fat Sluts even know what a Caraway seed is?)

But we were meant to be chiselling about cigarettes. One reason why the tax rate for everyone has risen over the last two decades has been because of the falling revenue from fags. When the government speaks of widening the tax base what they really mean is that revenues from Cigarette Taxes are falling away and they have to raise their salary from somewhere So my argument is that by creating a law that reduces the tax being paid by smokers around ten other Australians who don’t smoke have to take up the slack. Even though the health system may be over-burdened by cancer patients it is those same cancer patients who funded the hospitals in the first place.

And what about the promoters of democracy and freedom, the right to choose and God’s gift of free willy. Democracy means government by the people, not the non-smokers, by the electorate not the religious fanatics, but by the good and the bad, the sane and the mad, the smokers and drinkers and even the fornicators. We all want the right to live and in the future also the right to die. So if we want to live by smoking we should be allowed to die by cancer.

And what about the bans. If we ban smoking we unleash another Al Capone. If we can’t get smokes we will enrich the blackmarket and the Mafia. The cigarette manufactures have al;eady said that they want prohibiton of cigarettes brought on and admitted their profits would double within the year. Prohibition in the United States brought on organised crime with a vengeance, the United States involvement in Vietnam brought on massive drug addiction with even greater vengeance. Are we not all just latent adolescents waiting for someone to say something is bad to unleash that desire in all of us to be ‘naughty’.

What about tourism, the government wants it, but how many smokers will visit when their smokes are confiscated at the airport. At least 75% of Asians smoke and they are our tourist future, or will we like Crown Casino, permit visitors to smoke but not our own citizens. A Smoking Visa?

Like sport and drugs where there is money there is corruption. NSW has a 200 year history of being naughty

Premier Bob Askin or Judge Murray Farquar or entrepreneur Alan Bond all got caught with their fingers in the till.The cost of maintaining law, already more than the cost of crime, will escalate even further and the general taxpayer, you and I, will cop the entire bill for all this stupidity.

Banning cigarettes will lead to a bad case of cancer for the whole country. Will all states agree, like gun laws, like railway lines, like computerised ticket devices.

We already have a cancer in our governments at all levels what about banning them to save our own health? Our health experts seem to have forgotten that smoking raw marijuana is seven times more like to cause cancer?

Tobacco will be illegal but soon marijuana will be legal you can’t smoke a pipe but you can smoke a toke? Something tells me there is going to be a surge in sales for tweezers and cigarette cases.

Earl Grey

THE WRAP AROUND CONCERT

From our Snake Valley Correspondent P. Ness

Ever since my brother Elliott and I were youngsters we have never failed to get excited over the prospect of watching young girls playing cello’s. If you combine this with your organ you are bound to end up giving a very woody performance. So it was with lasts months Organ Recital at the Uniting Church in Snake Valley. Although still called ‘Organs Of The Goldfields’ of the total of 23 different recitals in as many different venues only 14 actually involved an Organ at all. I worry that if this trend continues we may end up with ‘Lutes and Oboes of the Goldfields’.

It was intriguing to hear the ambience prior to the concert as the level of audience discussion rose up and down in unison with the organist rising up and down fiddling with his handkerchief, he certainly wasn’t mining for nuggets, but the symmetry of the sound rising and falling seemed more than coincidental.

Even though the Snake Valley venue has a wonderful instrument (the largest in rural Victoria) fully five minutes was spent between each composition with the Belgian organist Johan Hermans fiddling with his stops and starts and twiddling with his tremolo’s and swizzle sticks ) hardly more than a dozen keys were used in any piece. The arrangement of the Church, although ideal to observe the organ in action left a lot to be said about the positioning of the Cellist Fabienne Venien, level with the audience, and even though one could see the occasional waving of the bow above her head one could not see her lithe legs wrapped around the Cello making passionate music. Someone sitting in the front row directly ahead of the performer made comment that “she had an instrument between her legs that millions could enjoy and all she could do was sit in front of me and slowly scratch it”.

By the end of the first round it looked like at least half the audience had drifted off to sleep. The compositions chosen would have made a funeral sound like a rock concert. I like dirges but even these were too dreary to listen to. The comment that these composers were expert at entertaining an audience brought to mind that their original audiences must have been the marble angles in a cemetery.

The second half commenced with three less audience members. One ran out screaming, one died and the third was last seen digging through the floor into the crypt. The second round picked up a bit with two compositions by the recitalists themselves. One which took eleven years to write and was about as tonal as the music from ‘The Tonal Deaf’. The second piece was probably the best, written for this series and called ‘Ballarat’ it was enjoyable, if you’re into sado-masochism, and seemed to be a cross fertilisation of the music of Mendelssohn's Wedding March played backwards and Peter Sculthorpe played in any direction.

All in all I’m still wondering if the price tag of $25.00 was worth it. At least the rear pews had cushions and located close to the exits.

If you feel like sticking your head in an oven you could do well to go along to next years recital to discover that even if you were in hospital paralysed from the waist down, plagued by a never ending visit from Dame Edna and stuck with hundred year old grapes you would thank God for the fact that things can’t get any worse unless they wheel you into a Cello and Organ concert.

THE ONLY THING THAT STOPS A BAD GUY WITH A GUN IS A GOOD GUY WITH A GUN?

What unbelievable claptrap. What truly dangerous thinking. The NRA in the United States recently uttered these totally offensive remarks after the death of 20 children. Thinking along those lines would suggest that to prevent kids being abused by nefarious paedophiles that we train our children to be kiddy-fiddlers.

As recipients of over $200 million from its 4 million members (who possess 79 million guns from 500 Round per Minute Machine Guns down to simple rapid fire Assault Rifles) and contributions from the gun industry it is truly a dangerous body once fronted by Moses who declared they would have to pry the rifle from his cold, dead hands rather than give up the right to shoot people. A kind of National 007. The NRA also suggested that high school students should be permitted to carry guns the result of which would mean parents prying the guns from their child's cold, dead hands.

They blame violent games and exposure to violence in movies as the reason why there is such a surge in the massacre of innocents. One solution they give is that people with mental issues should be prevented from getting hold of guns ignoring the fact that we don't know who is a mental case until they demonstrate it. Nobody even saw the mad bastards in their own military until they began the shoot-em-ups on their own men, and the number of mass shootings and bombing by ex-military personnel is astounding - no - astonishing.

There are dozens of countries with lax gun laws and just as many mad people but gun deaths in those countries are insignificant by comparison and there are just as many crazies in Australia yet we have less than 0.1% of the deaths compared to the United States. Our gun laws, dare I admit it, really became effective only through the determination of Honest John.

The partisan politics practiced by the unrestrained vagina's in the U.S Congress, where there is a refusal to compromise on anything, means that there remains the fact that more people suffer from gunshots wounds in Washington than in the whole of Afghanistan which is in the middle of a war.

In the State of California, due to the hard work of ‘The Terminator’ a no questions asked gun buyback has resulted in thousands of illegal weapons coming in off the street and, what is great about this is there are now 30% less gun related incidents in five years. Is this not proof enough?

As an organisation the NRA seems to be totally out of touch with a growing number of Americans. With a population of over 300 million how is it that 4 Million are dictating the laws. I suppose it is very similar to the 39 faceless lesbian vegans that dictate our laws.

As Americans declare they are God's chosen race we think that maybe they are following Her words too literally.

“An eye for an eye. A gun for a gun”.

TEEVEE VACANCEES

Sources for this column have revealed that following the success of ‘Australia’s Best Psychic’ the TV show that took the Seer world by storm Channel Ten have released some early ideas about the show they may be calling ‘Australia’s Best Psycho’.

A representative of the production company Dummarse Films has confirmed the rumour but cannot disclose at this time how they will find and evaluate the contestants. Will participants need to be auditioned first and how will they prove to the judges that they are truly Psychotic?

Our reliable source indicated that there might be different divisions in the competition and suggested that Psychiatrists and Psychologists be a separate category from Social Workers and Politicians. It must be said that consideration has been given for both General Prison and Never-to-be-released categories as well

Keep all doors locked for this one.

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Phisting Philms is looking for a replacement for their Porn Film Foley Artist who has decided to come out from his FX Box in favour of that of Miss Cottontails at Pubic TV.

Applicants must be free of any repetitive sound injuries and have a very furtive imagination.

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Following the demise of RAGE on the ABC T-view has been advised that it’s replacement will be the popular RACE program from Community TV.

An offshoot of the successful Rabbit Radio Series this music show will feature such artists as Brer Rabbit and Samantha Fox.

Expect to be hearing a lot of new music as well as the Chart-busters which include Watership Down, Tunnel of Love, Cheaper by the Dozen and my favourite country song Run, Rabbit Run.