Was that Whacko Jacko doco full-on creepy, or what? I didn't watch all of it, but I saw enough to make me feel both disturbed by and sorry for the poor prick. I mean, he's known by bloody everyone in the entire world, yet he's completely and utterly alone. Watching him lope dopily around the joint pursued by legions of gawking, prodding fans he reminded me of John Merrick, the "Elephant Man" -- except that Merrick wasn't a mega-deluded, psychosexually twisted friggin' nutbar, of course. (Er, and his nose was in better shape, too.)

And re all them creepy goings on in the Jackson bedroom: Of course the Whackster's stubborn refusal to understand interviewer Martin Bashir's horror was cause for alarm. But what about the complicity of the kids' parents or guardians? Either they're being paid to let their children stay there (a possibility) or they're completely under the spell of his celebrity. Either way that's a bigger worry. I mean, it's sad enough for an abused, lonely, neurotic multi-millionaire to seek refuge from reality in Neverland, but it's worse when lots of "normal" people indulge his bizarre fantasy by offering him their children.

For people interested in the turmoil in Zimbabwe, here's a good collection of articles. It includes a story published in The Oz (it's the fourth one listed) about an interesting doco made by a former resident of Zimbabwe called Chloe Traicos. Not only is Chloe a film-maker, but she's also an actress and playwright. Yet she's only in her mid-twenties! Keep an eye out for her.

Anyone who thinks that the United Nations possesses a moral authority greater than Seppolia's should have a squizz at this great article.

Another fictional character is causing offence. Apparently a bunch of Moscow silks are a tad shat off about the character of Dobby in the latest Harry Potter fillum. They reckon he looks too much like their leader, Vladimir Putin.

Here's Vlad. Here's Dobby. You decide.

Apparently an MTV cartoon called Clone High has caused a ruckus. It's all about a school chockas with the clones of famous people throughout history. Gandhi is presented as an out-of-control horn-dog. Understandably, the people of India aren't too happy about that!

The irony is that the characterization probably isn't too far off. Gandhi was a class-act, of course, but he was still human. And look at the lives of other gurus like Koresh, Jones, and Bagwhan Shree Rajneesh. All of them used their power to extract sexual favours from women (and sometimes children). In fact, I suspect that's why they set off on the "spiritual" path in the first place.

And it's well known that Gandhi loved the company of spunky young babes. He would get them to spend the night with him, starkers, so as to test his ability to resist temptation. He was getting his rocks off, by keeping them on! Don't know about you, but that seems extremely kinky to me.

Dirty bastard!

More silly squittering from Susan Sarandon. Now she's carping about Tony Blair's position on Iraq. But why was she speaking publicly in the first place? To promote The Banger Sisters, a silly, mediocre and inconsequential fillum about a couple of superannuated tarts!

Gawd, she should make up her mind about whether she's an actress or an activist. If she does settle decisively on the former career, then the ol' bimbo should start choosing better scripts before she loses all her hard-earned cred in that area, too.

This fillum Confessions of a Dangerous Mind looks interesting. It's based on a dodgy autobiography by Chuck Barris, visionary creator of early reality TV shows like The Gong Show. This piece makes a few interesting points about how what was seen as decadent, degrading and shocking then would be deemed tame now.

Makes me wonder what reality TV will be like a few years hence. I reckon we'll see desperate bachelors lining up for blind dates with goats and chickens and the weekly loser on Big Brother being slaughtered and eaten by all the other inmates. When people complain the defence will be the same: "Oh come on, the show's all in fun. We all know that. Don't be such a kill-joy."

Gawd. Now stalking is considered a "cultural" issue. The West today is a relativist's wet dream.

I'm a bit of a net and blogging newbie, so please don't roll your eyes when you read this. But I've just found this amazing page on Google which maps all the searching trends. This is fantastic, because not only can I learn about the contemporary zeitgeist (love that word, don't you?) but I can also use it to get more hits for my site.

For instance, some top searches for early January were "Iraq", "Clonaid" and "Joe Millionaire". So, if I keep whopping in these names, I'll get my hits up. The problem is, how do I put them all in the one post (er, aside from merely listing them like I just did)?

Give me a while to think about this, I'll get back to you...

This story, about a SNAG slowly discovering his inner lech, is an absolute classic.

If you thought that the man-hating feminazi is merely an invention of appalling misogynists cop an optic of this. It's a story about Mary Daly, serious advocate of the "gendercide" of men. She's just the kind of bizarro creepoid this tosser would adore, I reckon. Needless to say she's way cool amongst the twisted sisterhood.

Good to know that Dubya is sticking it to tiny-minded tyrants at home as well as abroad.

There's a pithy post from Tex at Whacking Day on the drug legalization debate. I concur with a lot of it. But I'd like to make a couple of dissenting points.

Firstly, he says: "You're seeing the picture here: drug prohibition makes everything worse, legalisation makes everything better." Can't buy that one. Nothing's that simple, surely.

Another point: Nowhere in the post does he say that drug-taking is often stupid, wrong, and destructive not only to the person who does it, but also to people around him.

At the risk of sounding like a tight-arse, whingeing wowser this point should be made occasionally at least. I mean, you should invoke morality at some point in these arguments. Otherwise, what's the point? My view: you can still make something legal, or permissable, while simultaneously discouraging and condemning it. It's like abortion. Abortion is wrong, no doubt about it. But often it is the lesser of two evils.

(By the way, please don't see this as me being indecisive; having a bob each way. Or maybe you can, I suppose. But I'd rather you didn't. Er, but either way I don't want to judge you for it... Look, it all depends on the context, doesn't it?)

Faaaaark! I'm becoming a fluffy wuffy!

Gawd. Another glitz-orific circle jerk for the flashbulb addicts of Tinseltown. Crikey, it's like there's one of these bashes every friggin' week! I'm amazed they even have time to sleep, let alone make the fillums they are constantly congratulating themselves for.

And why do these people take themselves so seriously? They're just emotionally retarded egomaniacs playing pretendies, after all. Sure, fillums are enjoyable, and occasionally even thought-provoking. But they're never actually important.

Any celebrophilic fluffy wuffs out there who don't believe me? Okay, try and think of any fillum which actually had an impact on society and demonstrably changed the world in the same way that a great invention like the dunny did, for instance.

See, ya can't, can ya! Because there aren't any. Art is a mirror. Not a hammer. Stick that up yer arse and smoke it, fluffs.

And here's another excellent piece of lefty-bashing by Chris Corrigan. In it, he shows how destructive the unionist cult of mediocrity is by transposing it to the footy field.

You could so the same thing in Artsville, I reckon. If you hired arty wankers on the basis of talent and skill, rather than on political allegiance, then there might actually be a few Australian plays and fillums worth seeing!

Here's a lovely piece by Peter Ryan, ageing lefty-basher. It gracefully encapsulates what I've been thinking a lot lately, that Howard's persistence is finally paying off, and that the jackbooted fluffy wuffies really are on their way out. More and more people are finally realising that Howard really has got his lucid, humane eye on the truly Big Picture. (Unlike Keating, who had his reptilian, gimlet eye on one the size of a friggin' laptop screen.)

In the future, Howard, along with Reagan, Dubya and his old man, and Maggie Thatcher will all be remembered as great leaders. But Clinton, Keating, Whitlam, etcetera? They'll all be forgotten almost entirely. If they are remembered at all, it will only be as bad examples.

More on that infant-ingesting clown from Beijing: As this article states Mr. Zhu, the alleged artist -- a Christian -- is shown explaining to the doco maker "that he set up the baby-eating performance after realizing that no religion or secular law expressly forbade cannibalism".

Yeah, well, I reckon no religion or secular law expressly forbids shoving a live taipan up yer blurter while rollerblading back and forth along the top of a train as it rapidly approaches a tunnel, but that doesn't mean you should fucken do it!

Ugh! The pure, distilled idiocy of it!

Fuck but it shits me.

Here's a pretty unequivocal piece on how best to deal with terrorists from a former Seppolian soldier. It's as funny as it is persuasive.

Bob Ellis pads out a really threadbare piece on the cloning kerfuffle. His argument: because so many bubs are born in different ways, what's the difference if some are cloned?

But the sad old sot doesn't understand. There is a big difference. A cloned child is completely unlike any other that has come before, because it, er, has come before. It's a copy, not a unique being. It has no real parent, only an original. This is the unalterable fact from which so many ethical risks emanate.

These include the possibility of people using cloning for spare parts, or the rich and powerful using it to further increase their advantages (as a leftie Bob should be pissed off about that one).

And what about being the clone himself? Imagine knowing that you are in effect the twin of your "mother" or "father". Imagine realising that the only reason you exist is to replace your long dead twin, because your "parents" still can't get over his early death. That'd do your head in for sure.

Yep, there's enough about the mere idea of cloning to creep out any reasonably intelligent, compassionate person. No wonder the fluffs don't have a problem with it.

In this article about the fallout from a notorious doco about a baby-eating artist in China (see my post of 1/1/2003), the peckish performer in question is quoted as saying that it was his "duty as an artist to spark debate about morality and art". Yeah, well it's my duty as an artist to say that this guy's a fake and a tosser, not to mention an extremely sick fuck.

Talk about the end of civilization. Just do something truly revolting, call it art and the squitterati will herald you as a friggin' genius. (And moral considerations aside, where's the skill in what he did? If he'd expertly diced and fried it -- or perhaps juggled the body parts while riding a unicycle -- then he might have scored a few points for acumen. But nup. Couldn't be bothered. Just wolfed back the infant raw. What a talentless prick.)

This particular "performance" did take place in China, but it's just a matter of time before it happens here. My guess is that at the next Melbourne Whinge Festival some bong-suckling barbarian in a beanie will out-bleck! the Chinese cannibal. He'll pull about six titanic cones on the trot, get a ferocious attack of the munchies, then completely devour some poor bastard in the front row.

The cops will show up and arrest him, but not before he dismembers at least one or two of them. The Age will run a story about police brutality, and Barrie Kosky will be seen on Lateline quacking on pompously about "the death of creative freedom under Howard's totalitarian regime".

Fuck. I'm an atheist but I'm considering becoming a Christian just so I can pray for lightning bolts to strike these fucking tossers and turn them into piles of ash!

Now that would be a work of art. (Wouldn't get a grant for it, but.)