Marriage and other rides of my life.

A roller coaster.
Appearances.
All happy.

Concentrate on the laughter.
See only joy,
buy a ticket.

One Way, no return,
no worries.
Safety in numbers.

Watching ahead.
At the gate,
smiles, excitement, easy.

Nearby, others leaving.
‘Been there-done that’.
Fake laughter, disappointment.

No, not me,
I’ll be OK.
The queue moves.

Pressure.
Abandon caution, take the step.
Seat for two.

Sharing with a stranger.
Bumping bodies on the way to the high,
differences refreshing.

Overcompensating,
repeating the mantras.
Hoping for satisfaction.

Pregnant pause.
Seat belts tighten,
brakes off.

Control gone.
Noise, excitement, fear,
We drop.

Pressure of twists and turns
Ups and downs, grinding together.
Hurting, threatened sanity.

Then for some, lost ego.
Too much,
And we jump.

On the outside again.
Looking in at laughter,
crying and living.

We toss a coin
and buy another ticket.

Image Source

Greens are good for you.

Responses to my 'Katter for Speaker" post indicate a desire, particularly among my American friends, for a new deal. So why is this on my blog? It is a fact that unless America comes on board, the rest of might as well give up. So read on and please take the links. It could empower you and bring you joy, even in the sea of political anger currently surrounding us.

I could quote maybe fifty comments from Americans, but have chosen the three most recent.

"...lucky you to have a 3rd alternative...we just have dumb and dumber mixed with questionable finances, dubious behaviours and racial bigotry...what a mess"
"...they are so good at dodging and weaving, double talk and deceit."
"Here, the powers that be are under so much tax paid protection, they don't have to admit to ANYTHING. It's the rest of us that have to live with paranoia."

There is anger and frustration at disempowerment in these comments. That is good, but only if it can be channelled into a positive outcome and it can. This should help concentrate your anger (and Bob Casey is one of the 'good guys'!)

Greens here are funded by members and citizen donations so we are not under any obligation to deliver for an interest group. Policy is decided by grass roots people like you and me, not Wall St or Pat Robertson. We ran our whole campaign (in my electorate) on a $3,000 budget. Both major parties had budgets in the tens of millions nation wide, but we still managed to poll 18% here. Under our preferential system, the Green vote doubled our Federal representation from five to ten. Our 9 Senators now guarantee that no major party can pass legislation without Green support.

That does not mean Greens are running the country, it just means we can now negotiate amendments that push bills closer to what we want. To see what we want, click onto Green Party and to see what Greens are doing in the US, click on American Green Party.

You will be told "Green parties are bad for the economy", so you need to think about that. It helps to know who is saying it and why, then consider that the greenest country in Europe is Germany with over 40% of its energy from renewable sources and growing. It is also the strongest European economy and the only federal government in the world that includes Greens. If labor forms government here, Australia will be the second, albeit with only one Green in the Legislature.

So it's up to you guys. Contact your local Greens and have a look at them. If you like what you see (a bunch of gentle malcontents who laugh a lot while plotting peaceful revolution), join, have your say and slowly, slowly, change how politics is done where you live. "A thousand mile journey starts with one step." (I wish I first said that!) But this I did. What would a post from me be without a limerick!

Translation: Libs=Republicans, Labs=Democrats. Greens='what you see is what you get'.

The Libs care for little but wealth
And Labs seek the same, but by stealth.
So, if you care
For the trees, streams and air,
Vote Green. It’s good for your health!

I dare you. Make the call, check it out then use blogsville to create change!
Pics: Courtesy Bob Casey and American Greens web sites.

Katter for Speaker

State of Play. Austalian election, 2010.

I hate to bore you with more local politics… no I don’t.
We still do not have a government. We have Adam Brandt (Green, Melbourne) and Andrew Wilkie (independent, ex spy) from Dennison Tasmania, supporting Labor and three independents still to decide which party to support so no party can yet claim a majority..

I say the only sensible outcome now is Tony Windsor for Speaker of the House, Bob Oakshot joins Labor and Bob Katter stays out in the hot. He can’t be included because no Prime Minister could ever meet all his demands. But then again, if he isn’t included he could, at a whim, bring down
the government. So what can be done with him?

In the interests of stability, he must be offered the position of Speaker!
Then imagine how he, self confessed paranoid, (five locks on his doors and a gun under every bed in the house, I was told), would handle the job.

“Mr Speaker…”
“Are you talking to me?”
“Yes, Mr Speaker, I was merely following procedure by addressing the chair. What I was…”
“Well, don’t waste my time on bloody procedure, get on with it!”
“Yes Mr Speaker, as I was saying, Mr Speaker, there is a matter of…”
“Listen mate, what’s your name again?”
“I am the member for O'Connor, Mr Speaker.”
“How hard is it mate? I asked your name, not where you live in fairyland. What’s the name your mother calls you. What’s your name?”
“My name is Wilson Tuckey, Mr Speaker.”
“So your mother calls you Wilson Tuckey?”
“No Mr Speaker, Mum calls me Bunnykins.”
“Wilson, I am tempted, but in here I will call you Wilson and you call me Bob. OK?”
“Yes, Mr Speaker.”
“Wilson, listen to me. I never wanted to be a Mr Speaker, I just wanted to be Bob Katter, rough head from the bush, shit stirrer and good old boy totting up my super. So humour me and call me Bob.”
“Do you want me to call you Bob in here, Mr Speaker?”
“Yes, Wilson, I do.”
“All right then, but what do I call you at the pub?”
“Mate, at the pub I need to impress, so you call me Mr Speaker!”
“OK Bob. Now listen Bob, I reckon it’s time to get the big retailers off the farmers’ back. I say we line the bastards up and shoot a few and the others’ll soon get…”
“Point of order, Mr Speaker! The member for O'Connor is using unparliamentary language and…”
“Sit down wanker! Bunnykins has the floor! (I could get used to this!)”

Just kiddin' Bob... er Mr Speaker.
Note: I am fairly certain nobody, not even his mother was ever brave enough to call 'Iron Bar' Tuckey Bunnykins, so I assure him this is all in fun. Pity he lost his seat this election. His commnets were always worth a wince or a laugh.

Pips and all!

My father told me this story.
During the Great Depression, his large family could never afford luxuries, so one time at school, he begged a bite of his friend's apple.











My dad said:

"Please give me a bite, nothing more,
Or maybe the core, I implore."
But his friend kept on chewin’
And said; "nuthin doin"
"Cos there ain’t gonna be any core!"

Prompted by Magpie Tales

Cutting your teeth.

Until I went to high school, I never wore shoes unless it was absolutely necessary and there were two. Church and trips to town on the train. Town was either Parramatta or Sydney, now categorised as the CBD. So while splitting wood for the stove at about eleven years old, when the axe glanced off the wood and came down on my big toe. It hit bone and I was taken to Liverpool Hospital for stitches.

After a few tries at pushing the needle through, the doctor left and returned with a pair of engineers’ pliers, then after bending a few needles he eventually got the job done. No anaesthetic those days, so it hurt. Of course back at our chook farm it soon became infected and was a problem for months, treatment being to pour raw Dettol over it every morning and night, burning the skin and delaying healing. Apparently there was no fear if tetanus so one trip to a professional was considered sufficient. Despite that setback I always hated shoes and still prefer to go barefoot.
So it was that I had sympathy for Brother Francis. Don’t ask. It is his real name, so I can only guess that his parents had such poor imaginations they used their only name on Frank, so Frank’s Brother was named Brother.

Since he left school at fourteen, Brother worked in the forests, starting when they used bullocks to haul logs out of the Watagan forests. Up until a few years ago when he retired, he still harvested pit props but when I first met him, he worked at the last timber mill in the bush. Brother knew timber like few others and was a great asset to any employer in the industry. But about twenty years ago he was sacked on the spot and sent home in the middle of the day.

A Health and Safety Officer, probably lost, wandered into the sawmill in his yellow high visibility hat to inspect the mill safety record. The boss was caught off guard or he would have told Brother to stay home that day, but this bloke was a stickler and turned up unannounced.

He must have thought at first that Brother had taken his shoes off for a rest because he said nothing while the boys were having a tea break, boiling hot, four sugars and no milk. You can’t have milk without refrigeration and this camp didn’t even have a dunny. A long handled shovel with a roll of Sorbent threaded onto the handle was the toilet and a roadside soak was the washing facility.
When they walked out to get back to work he asked brother where his shoes were.

“Where are your shoes?”
“Shoes? Ain’t got no shoes!”
“But you don’t work like that?"

“Like what?”
“Without shoes.”
“Never worn ‘em. Don’t like em.”

Mr Hard Hat called the boss over.
“Are you aware this man works without shoes?’

“A course. Why?”
“He can’t work without shoes, it’s dangerous.”
“He can’t work in ‘em and he’s never had a problem in fifty years.”
“What if he falls and his feet come into contact with a saw? He could be severely injured.”

“Mate,” the boss laughed. “I wouldn’t be worried about Brother’s feet. I’d be worried about the bloody saw!”

Planet bites back.

If, like me, you thought the current Pakistani flood was a natural disaster, think again.

This arrived today from my friend and Green activist Elizabeth Perey in Tasmania:

“I did not know about the deforestation of Pakistan, so assume at least some of you did not know either.” (Take the link).

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/world-news/a-land-left-to-drown-by-the-timber-mafia-1.1051230

Greed, and the corruption it creates, poisons everything. I posted this limerick a few weeks ago, but figure it’s worth another run!


"It's only one tree," so they say,
"It really is quite in the way!"
But, permission given
To every one livin',
Would leave the world bare in a day!

‘Think globally and act locally’ was never more urgent!

Pic: Clearfelling in Australia, 1905, when to not clear land of trees attracted a tax.

Herpes Zoster

Down in the dells and the dingles,
Its beauty still gives me the tingles.
But my old pink house
Is becoming a grouse,
With a serious case of the shingles.

Prompted by Willow at Magpie Tales.

Bogie's bogey.

'Humphrey Bogart smoked his way through the 1942 classic Casablanca and a generation of men in the 1940s learned a romantic move when Paul Heinrich put two between his lips, lit them both and handed one to Bette Davis in Now, Voyeur . From: Smoking on the decline in films'

I did that when I was young and impressionable before I became old and impressionable but now, with the cost of tobacco related illness climbing, there is debate here whether cigarettes should be sold only in plain brown wrappers and in the US whether films depicting smoking should be given an R rating.

Smoking at the dinner table.

Bronchial tubes blocked with foul matter,
My poor heart more pitter than patter.
At dinner I wheezed,
Coughed, farted and sneezed
And there were my lungs on the platter!


Oops! Won't do that again.

Dear Fellow Greens,

Here is mail from Eve Plant, our branch secretary, that quotes the results to now.

"What a result! 9 senators & 1 in HoR, -- 50% increase from 8+% to average 12% nationwide! In Fairfax, Narelle achieved 18%. We are knocking on the door. We all thank her for her wonderful effort. Wow!
All that effort paid off & we are on first name terms with our very own senator. How good is that! Keep smiling. We are on a roll."

For the information of non Aussies, we have preferential voting. That simply means we can have a first choice of candidate/party and if that candidate does not poll over 50% primary vote, in our case Narelle, we can indicate our second or third choice and so on and control where our votes should be applied. Because of that system, new parties can be created and new dialogue initiated on issues not important to major parties.

Examples of such issues are climate change, not politically attractive to major parties because of their links to high polluting industries and their down line industries, voluntary euthanasia and gay marriage and many more. Both major parties have always been influenced by religious groups despite Australia's official guarantee of separation of church and state and therefore loath to remove politics from other people's bedrooms.

However, it does make counting votes a time consuming business. So in a close poll, a final result can be weeks away. As I write, it appears our Labor Party will form a minority government with support from at least half the four independent members. However, it is the Senate vote that is exciting for the Greens. That allows us to push for more aggressive carbon reduction timetable and have the numbers to approve such programs once it has passed through the lower house.

I disagree with the 'on a roll' statement. Green support was taken mainly from Labor, so if and when Labor gets its climate change act together, that support may decrease.
But, having said that, Labor will have problems standing up to special interest groups and may not be able to satisfy public demands for more action.

Well, that's that for now. Thank goodness we can get back to more importantly stuff like poetry and fun! :-)

The Abbot with loaves and fishes.

Fishing: You want to fish more? Don’t worry, I’ll create more fisheries!
Mining: You don’t want to pay? Don’t worry. No tax and I’ll create endless resource access!
Business: You want to pay lower wages? Don’t worry, I’ll create a bottomless labour pool.
Climate change: It’s bunkum. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure it’s business as usual.
Mothers: Paid maternity leave? Don’t worry, I’ll pay wealthy women three grand a week for six months. Working women? 'Over my dead body'. Don’t worry, they don’t vote for me anyway.
Asylum seekers: Desperate people on leaky bloats? Don’t worry, I will personally ‘turn back the boats’ but keep the well dressed ones that come by plane.
Global economic crisis: Don’t worry. It never happened.
Broadband: You want it on the cheap? Don’t worry, I’m working on a pedal wireless version.
Policies: Trust me, I’m a grown-up. My promises are all fully costed by a bloke I paid to say it. Vote for me.

Sigh!


Pic. Pedal wireless. Australian outback