TheGeoffRe(y)port

Well, the last time I wrote here was before the month of June started, so for the first time since this blog started, I have an entire calendar month with no posts. That’s probably something of an indication of where things have been at for a while with life. Since I last wrote:

• I’ve changed jobs
• Finished up with youth ministry at YVV
• Spoken about youth ministry on a Sunday morning at YVV
• Had my grandmother go into hospital (twice - but she’s doing OK now by all reports)
• Had my sister get married
• Found out we’re getting kicked out of our beautiful little house because the landlord is selling up
• Planned for our trip to the Solomon Islands (we leave later today)

It’s not that I haven’t been wanting to write, but the creativity and the motivation just hasn’t necessarily come to the party. Plus I’ve spent the last week or so fighting off a mongrel of a cold. Of course, for most of you there’s very little of this that will come as a surprise, because you’ll have been following along over at the hub of all earthly wisdom.

Anyway, I’m planning on getting a few thoughts into binary today, but if I don’t, you certainly won’t hear from me until I’ve come back from the Solomons - circa July 12.

In the wake of the Australian Federal Budget delivered earlier this week, The Age published this article demonstrating the disappointment of some families who are earning just over the $150K threshold for “family welfare”. The means testing of the family tax benefit and baby bonus, means that once you’re over $150,000 a year as household income, you no longer receive these handouts from our government.

So begins the whining. From the article:

She and her husband Sam together earn a little over $150,000. They certainly aren’t doing it tough. But with two boys at school and rising interest rates biting, they hardly consider themselves flush.

“I don’t classify us as rich,” she says. “We all want the nice house, but I don’t call my house a mansion. I want it to be a home for my children.”

…”There doesn’t seem to be any reward for people who have put the hard effort in,” Mr Sciberras said.

…

the Government decided $150,000 would be the point at which the family welfare tap is turned off. Mrs Sciberras thinks it should be $200,000. The Brotherhood of St Laurence nominates $120,000.

(Source: “Wealthy? Not us, say this Mill Park Family… we’ve earned it” - theage.com.au)

Well I’m just about over hearing about it. Where does this sense of entitlement come from - that the government should be looking after you financially when you’re earning in excess of 150 grand. It’s pathetic. And you know what, if you’re earning $150,000 a year as a family and still believe that you’re not “rich”, maybe it’s time you got slapped in the face with a big fish called reality. I can’t understand why people would expect that they should receive a welfare payment when they have that sort of earning capacity. Shannon Knoll isn’t the only one in this country singing “What about me”, and the tune is getting pretty freaking pathetic.

Had to laugh at reading this one. So there’s a global food crisis going on, and President Bush recently put out a statement attributing a bunch of the problem to developing nations like China and India experiencing economic growth, and basically finding themselves with a middle class:

During a news conference in Missouri, Bush mentioned India’s growing middle class, and said “when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food, and so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up.” This came on the heels of a similar statement by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that had already upset many in India. (Source: International Herald Tribune)

So the Indians got a little bit peturbed at being blamed for the global crisis, and told George exactly what they think is going on:

“George Bush has never been known for his knowledge of economics,” Jairam Ramesh, the minister of state for commerce, told The Press Trust of India after Bush’s remarks, which he said proved again how “comprehensively wrong” Bush is.

“To say that demand for food in India is causing increase in global food prices is completely wrong,” Ramesh said.

Politicians and academics in India cite various other reasons: diversion of arable land in the United States and Europe into ethanol production; trade subsidies by the United States and Europe; and the dollar’s decline. (Source: International Herald Tribune)

Issues like this are the reason it’s impossible not to wince when you hear comments from politicians (American or Australian) that talk about the importance of “protecting the American/Australian way of life”. Because while there’s a bunch of values tied up in our “way of life”, and probably some values that are worth keeping, it also encompasses a presumption of standard of living which is completely unsustainable if applied to the global population. We’ve got to recognise that the standard of living we have taken for granted in countries like our own are way beyond the resources of the world, and that any effort to “make poverty history” requires a violent reduction in western affluence).

So well done to India for telling the Yanks where they can shove it.

Haven’t quite resolved the big question posed in the title there at this stage, but for the moment I’m giving Twitter a fair dinkum go. It’s taken me a fair while to work out whether or not I really care about Twitter - but after having had fun playing around with Instant Messaging and Facebook status messages for a while, I figured it’s my new chance to be hilariously funny on a micro-type level. So for the time being (at least) feel free to subscribe to my Twitter RSS, or just check out my Twitter page. You might also have noticed the “Geoff is currently” widget on the right hand side, which is obviously being fed by twitter too.

Anyone else using Twitter? Good? Bad? Indifferent? I’d be interested to know.

Thought I’d better wait until they’d announced this themselves, but huge congratulations to Scott and Christina who have just welcomed  Johanna Keren Aitken into the world. A little sister for Jemima, and just an exciting thing to tell people about. Sounds like all involved are doing well.

Photo at Scotty’s announcement post.

…not much happening here. There’s a few things in the back of my mind, waiting for a post. In the meantime,there’s a prediction for 2008 post up on The Wounded Tiger.

(image from xkcd.com)

photo credit: Howie_Berlin

Immediately after Heath Ledger died, especially for the time that it looked more likely that it was a suicide rather than accidental death, the reactions were remarkably interesting. There was the standard fan response - tributes and the like, but there was another response that I found to be remarkably interesting. It came in letters to the editor and blog comments and went roughly along these lines:

• “Why would he do this to himself?”
• “This guy had everything, and yet he’d kill himself”
• “How dare he do this?”

It wasn’t just disbelief - this was an angry response. The very same comments could be heard about Britney Spears’ latest breakdown, or whichever celebrity it is who has been caught drink-driving or checked into rehab. There is a real anger that these people would have everything - and “everything” is the word that gets used to describe it - and yet that’s not enough for them.

It seems to me that this anger doesn’t look much different to the sort of righteous indignation we get from fundamentalists at having their nicely boxed theologies challenged. Celebrity, and with it the concept that fame and fortune are somehow the pinnacle of human endeavour, is the state religion. So it doesn’t go well when someone’s actions come along and challenge that. 

For those of you who skip over the Richmond related posts, help is at hand. And for those of you who only visit in the hope that I’ve written something about our fearsome yellow and black warriors, I can help you too! I’ve decided that the next adventure in my blogging career is to quarantine off the Richmond related posts over to “The Wounded Tiger” - thewoundedtiger.com

From the about page:

The Wounded Tiger is the heartbroken lament of a Richmond supporter who has undergone far too much trauma with his team to ever give them up.

I’m mostly doing it because a) I saw a cheap deal on domain names, and b) most of my Google traffic is for Richmond related content, and I couldn’t handle forcing people who have come to find out about Richo and Browny instead looking at wedding video and theology. So tell all your yellow and black friends: thewoundedtiger.com

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, but I wanted to recommend a great blog. Jess (famous in these parts for things like that engagement story video, as well as being one of Bec’s bridesmaids) is a film student who writes great film reviews at Gold Stars (goldstars.wordpress.com). She’s not always right (she can’t agree with me all the time, but on the whole it is very rare that Jess would recommend a film that’s not worth your hard-earned cash, at least as an overnight rental.

So for really honest and genuine film reviews, as well as a bit of cheerful banter, head on over to Gold Stars and tell her why The Notebook was such a magnificent achievement in modern cinema, or why Daniel Day Lewis is a hack. (Not because it’s true, but it would be funny to watch!)

I’ve written before about my obsessions (and I’m thinking in particular about the whole “stacking thing”), but partly due to the whole being married thing, I’ve become aware of some funny little things I do. So here they are:

1. Once I get home from work, I’m unlikely to have a proper conversation for about half an hour, or an hour if it’s been a long day. Then, I suddenly get a rush of talking-ness and everything is OK.
2. I have a nasty habit of bidding on things cheaply, thinking: “it’s OK - I’ll never win it at that price”. That’s how come I’ve got Original Munchkin which arrived on Friday.
3. I frequently talk back to the news. Worse to “current affairs” shows. Even Especially when there’s no one else around.
4. I think better when I have something in my mouth, which leads to either bouts of obesity, or an inability to lend my pen to anyone other than my wife. I’m flipping between the two.
5. There’s an air freshener in our public toilet at work that goes off periodically and sounds like someone sniffing. Every single time it goes off, it makes me freak out that there’s someone standing over my right shoulder.
6. My Google Reader is currently subscribed to 186 feeds. I know that’s too many, but there aren’t any that I’m willing to give up. Not all of them are blogs: I check the news headlines from the BBC World News, and The Age, and I also get things like IT security notifications just to keep an eye out. But it’s way too many.
7. Despite my football team only having made the finals twice while I’ve been alive, having also won the wooden spoon last year, and our prospects for this looking faint at best, I still bought a membership for my wife and I for the upcoming season.

So there you are. Does anyone share any of my freaky-ness?