The Hour Of Power

As the Luddite festival of Earth Hour approaches with much orgasmic anticipation by misanthropists, Eco-Fascists and easily-led twerps everywhere, we announce our plans for tonight:

Nora and I intend to turn on at least one light in every room of the house.

In the living and dining rooms, which feature chandaliers containing 3 incandenscent bulbs, we will select the chandaliers over our single bulb table or standard lamps, especially the one containing a compact fluorescent light we purchased as an experiment a few years ago before we appreciated its deadly toxicity.

In the kitchen, perhaps the 40W range hood light in addition to the 60W overhead. In the bedrooms, the 60 watters all, not the wimpy bedside lamps. And all the outside lights to signal a challenge to the darkness of idiocy sweeping the world.

There's a load of towels left undone from this morning's domestic chores. They'll be going in the washer.

Oh - and mustn't forget to leave the radio on, not so much to keep Asta, our faithful companion animal company as to give that lived-in sound that might ward off burglars.

Because we'll be out having dinner at the nearby home of friends.

And we won't be cycling there as we have on the past two occasions, enamoured as we are with our latest keep-fit fad - we'll be driving. Not in the little 1.4L runabout though. We'll take the 4WD.

And the 2km each way won't even begin to warm the catalytic converter.

Speaking of warming, does anyone know how much carbon a house emits when it burns down from a knocked over candle?

-- Nick and Nora

Panic No More

Actor Richard Widmark died this week. For some reason one imagined he was already dead, but, then again, he was 93 at his passing on Monday.

Widowed after 55 years of happy marriage, the actor remarried only nine years ago.

One was going to link to Widmark and co-star Barbara Bel Geddes capturing the realistic minor complexities of the relationship between man and wife in the film noirish thriller Panic In The Streets but archive.org is currently struggling under search engine and apparent spamming woes.

Panic features Widmark as a former Navy surgeon, now city health official chasing a vicious killer who has been exposed to plague.

It's an unusual example of Widmark's work in that he plays a good guy, a family man at that, but he imbues the role with an edgy, uncompromising and manipulative quality that makes his character the good side reflection of the sadistic dark side offered by Jack Palance, playing the kind of villain they usually cast Widmark as.

-- Nick

It's Friday, But Sunday's Comin'

After seeing this video:



South African band Tree 63 wrote a song and produced this video:



Happy Easter.

-- Nora

Ripper Yarn A Media Lie

Some things never change:

Some popular literature records there having been more killings, but this may have been courtesy of the tabloid press at the time inciting fear and reporting fiction as fact.

The letter signed with the name Jack the Ripper, the first to give a name to the murderer and sent to the central news agency at the time, was potentially a fake written by a journalist. (Emphasis added.)

-- Nick

Not That's There's Anything Wrong With That?

What word, beginning with the letter 'P', do you call people who revel in the sexualisation of children?

THERE were giant candles, dancing koalas, a group of Bindi Irwins and a throng of lifesavers as the biggest ever Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade exploded into life last night.

That's right parade 'participants' at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

Perverted will do just as well.

-- Nora

A Little Agro For Jamie

Queensland morning radio jock and one-time TV puppeteer Jamie Dunn has retired to the Sunshine Coast these days where he's working out his golden years in a less frenetic environment than back in Brisbane.

And he's singing a familiar song:

Jamie Dunn, who was synonymous with on-air humour on Brisbane radio in the 1980s and '90s, said the standard of some radio pranks recently had pulled the entertainment genre into the gutter.

The former B105 breakfast personality said many of the stunts were "distasteful", "lacked integrity" and took radio to a new low. "You read some of them and you think, 'Where the hell is the comedy in that?'," he said.

"Over the years people just go harder, and harder, and harder to get attention, and I don't think that's the key to comedy."

Dunn, who now works on Sunshine Coast radio, said he was embarrassed for the industry that some stations thought they had to be rude and crude to get ratings.

Like a lot of older folk who whine about the kids of today, Dunn misses a vital point - it was the 'envelope-pushing' he himself did in his younger times that got us where we are today.

When B105's content director says Dunn's view are 'out of touch', Dunn is 'just people getting old' and the station simply 'gave audiences what they wanted', one can imagine it's an echo across the years of exactly what some station hack said in defense of Dunn in the '80s.

-- Nick