Beyond The Fringe

Snitched from Gday World Podcast Network, purveyor of fine web products.

Thanks to @trib for this tipoff.

Enjoy some more zany humour and mend your broken heart at Dr. Zionstein’s.

“In South Lebanon we struck the civilian population consciously, because they deserved it …the importance of Gur’s remarks is the admission that the Israeli Army has always struck civilian populations, purposely and consciously…the Army, he said, has never distinguished civilian [from military] targets…[but] purposely attacked civilian targets even when Israeli settlements had not been struck.”
— Israeli military analyst, Ze’ev Schiff (Haaretz, May 15, 1978).

Still applicable today.

Sadly.

Jewish Women Occupy Israeli Consulate in Toronto

Toronto: Wednesday January 8, 2009 Time: 10:25 am

A diverse group of Jewish Canadian women are currently occupying the Israeli consulate at 180 Bloor Street West in Toronto. This action is in protest against the on-going Israeli assault on the people of Gaza.

The group is carrying out this occupation in solidarity with the 1.5 million people of Gaza and to ensure that Jewish voices against the massacre in Gaza are being heard. They are demanding that Israel end its military assault and lift the 18-month siege on the Gaza Strip to allow humanitarian aid into the territory.

Christmas is an annoying time of year, what with cards to write, the yearly screed of trivia to interest others to be emailed or posted to the last few remaining computer illiterates, stuffing and cooking turkeys in the heat, enduring folks’ screaming, spoilt offspring, sniping rellies in your face, receiving presents one doesn’t want to be recycled months later for others’ birthdays, and after Boxing Day, all those dishes and floor mess to clean up.

Every year we say, never again, next year we’re going overseas to somewhere not nauseatingly Christian – perhaps the Celestial Mountains in China or Mozambique or even Bali – risking rabies and religious fanatics of other ilks would be worth the escape from the parochial, consumerist Sunshine Coast.

Here’s an early Christmas prezzie to the Fringe from the twitterverse – chuck a shoe at Bush. That Dubya will be history in January is the best prezzie of all.

Fresh from the talented pen of Joel Watson from HijiNKS Ensue – his efferverscent comics are well worth following. [Republished with permission]

Wonder what Obama thinks of Oz’s rather more fiercesome drop bears?

From one of our favourite and very whimsical cartoonists, Doug Savage, comes this delightful visual comment.

It’s our view that kids primarily learn violence modelling ignorant, thuggish parents and other adult social contacts.

Media is scapegoated by adults unable to understand or control their own tempers, politicians and powermongering self-righteous lobbies who benefit from the preservation of an irrational, unenlightened polity.

Nuff said

Be afraid, be very afraid …. this fearsome furry denizen feasts upon unwary visitors to Australia.

Q: I have a question about a famous animal in Australia, but I forget its name. It’s a kind of bear and lives in trees. (USA)
A: It’s called a Drop Bear. They are so called because they drop out of Gum trees and eat the brains of anyone walking underneath them. You can scare them off by spraying yourself with human urine before you go out walking.

(supposedly posted on an Australian Tourism website.)

No point waffling on to the blurgaverse when one is overwhelmed by post-viral horrors, a foul, swampish sense of being shafted by the abdicated Peter Beattie over the forced and greatly despised council amalgamations, predictable stock market slumps and recoveries, and mammoth work and play commitments. It’s not as though one has millions of avid readers complaining about the Fringe’s absence, and neither does the Fringe care.

Of all these tribulations, it is Beattie’s intransigence which most peeves us. For nights we pore over the dry old Australian constitution and conclude the only solution permissible in our defence is to form a new state to encompass our local water resources. A friend however points out that we would have no chance of defending our precious water should the profligate hordes further south whine that their swimming pools need filling. They could simply send in the military. Still, as a media event, and as a protest against the scything of our grassroots democratic representation and mutilation of our local identity and sustainability, for which Noosa just won a UNESCO award, it needs to be done.

Rudd’s popularity sank with the impact of Beattie’s ill-considered attack, and has now recovered, helped by little Johnny Moron’s pathetic flailings about the hospital systems amongst other gaffs. People have had enough of their irksome prime monster and all going well, and a few marginal seats lost, and even his own seat to Maxine McHugh, Howard will be out on his ear, dumped like a dead cat with no bounce. Then again, who knows what the malevolent rodent will pull out of the hat at the last minute. Nothing has turned out well for him of late though. At APEC, an event where his mighty miniatureness rubbed shoulders as he so loves, with the doyen of world leaders, he was joyously upstaged by the wonderful Chaser team, who will face charges this week for successfully and mischievously crossing the barrier between the people and those who rule from afar.

Our best wishes are with them this week – and may humour triumph over all adversity.

On the Queen’s pseudo birthday, we’ve finally had a chance to go through a mammoth swag of emails – those ones people proliferate compulsively round the net to share their idea of humour or to prove they know how to forward email, whilst we sanitise our inbox from an even greater dung heap of awful sickly friendship chain emails requiring one to send them on to ten people or you will suffer a painful fate. Some friends.

We couldn’t resist this animation which reminded us, as we resisted the urge to swat our screen, of certain Lib party pollies.