goodbye old mate

A few weeks ago I made the stupid mistake of getting involved in a long public argument with a man on threads who was dedicated to the idea that Pauline Hanson wasn't a racist. I know, I know, I should spend my time more wisely. I mean it's not like it really took a long time to reply to him every couple of days, but he did live in my head rent free. 

I gather it was somewhat the same for him but he didn't let on till the end. I was not interested of course in his hamfisted mantra with a rationale that changed all the time anyway ('Pauline is not racist', 'Australian way of life', 'criminal migrants', 'buying votes' etc) but I did want to try and understand who he was and why he was like that. I did suspect at a certain point he might have been a bot, though he was very annoyed at that suggestion. As a bot might. 

One of the things I liked to do was ask how he felt about certain things. He did not directly reply to these kinds of questions, just served up more of the same trash, and then I would say, but you didn't tell me how you felt, and he'd say he had told me already, that X or Y was a good thing. 

Look ultimately it was fruitless and stupid, and neither of us was getting anything out of it really. At a certain point it turned. I said I had lived in Australia for more than 60 years and I was white, and that ON should be trying to get me on board because obviously I was the demographic, and he lost it more than usual and said he was 70 and he knew a hell of a lot more than some 60 year old. Which was funny. Then I started thinking that not only was I spending too much time on this bullshit, also, he was too, and he could actually be out enjoying himself productively and positively, rather than fighting this losing battle. I was one step away from saying this (honest) but I just threw in one more question, which was not about race, but about how he felt about the situation with Malcolm Roberts saying that gay people might (he's not sure) deserve less rights than straight people, and that considering James Ashby is gay, well, he's kind of dumping on a colleague in the party and on top of that, Barnaby Joyce recently said that ON was the gayest of the political parties. 

I left that question hanging for a while and was going to go back and say look let's give this away as it's going nowhere, but then he deleted his account! I don't know if it was me or something else, obviously, but I had brought up the 'gayest party' thing earlier and he'd ignored it, now maybe he just had nothing to say or nowhere to go on it or he found it painful.

In truth I started going down the path of - he came here just to fight about migration, and defend PH as not a racist, not to fight about gayness. But then I thought fuck it, if he's happy to be an aggressor online then he has to take it as well as he can dish it out. But I also feel sorry for him because he's fighting a losing battle, and for people who don't give a loose root about him. 

Can't say I'll miss him. I just hope he doesn't take out his frustrations on the people around him. 

23 aug last bit of getting back to melbourne

This is in Inverloch right

There is a closed up church hall kind of thing in Wonthaggi that looks pretty pristine inside:

Also a little spooky in a way that you would be a little spooked if you were prone to being influenced by post-Lynchian horror scenarios, you know, Temu Lynch.

Few minutes on the beach at Kilcunda. Perry so often looks like he's got a broad grin when really he might just be thinking 'life is pain'. Who knows. 

There were some other drop-ins - Tooradin, etc - but let's leave it at that. You're already jealous enough. 

saturday was frenetic 2 - the meeniyan store & cafe

Meeniyan is a good place to stop. Once again the op shop is good (once again I didn't buy anything but that's just what they're like isn't it). The The Meeniyan Store & Cafe is great, coffee was excellent (did I tell you the previous two days I had been relying on coffee I had put in a thermos on day 1 but didn't drink? Heated up nicely but it was dicey!) and they have comics to read.

This was a reminder of something I knew but was still surprised to be reminded of - that the comics I grew up with sucked. Did I read Richie Rich uncritically in the day? I think I probably thought it was fantastical and that's that, but it is really amazing that Donald Trump exists that this kind of ludicrous shit was, I guess, popular. 

So as you can see, Richie causes a city to exist where no one is ever told 'no', and these kids all embrace it and there are no consequences and they do what they want. 

Look at what happened to Fred Trump Sr's statue! Anyway, there is more weirdness than this... see (below) that boy in the fourth frame?

How did he get black in the first frame of this page? 

Anyway, this ends stupidly the way it started and the way it was all the way through. 

Although I liked the way Richie had a stroke in the last frame. 

So, I know I was not that credulous as a junior reader because I knew this wasn't possible, although I could not imagine what they actually would look like. 

There was also a Donald Duck comic which was about as bad. Whatever, as I would have said when I was five and I will say now, I read 'em! 

saturday was frenetic part 1

We came back to Melbourne the long way from Port Albert and it was, as they say, a trip. We around 9:45 and got home around 6, you do the maths. Our first stop was Welshpool. 

What do you like better, a historic railway? or a historic tramway? I like them equally. I wish I could have gone on the historic tramway though, before it was historic. 

The Anchor park at Welshpool is very artistic. 

Would you like to offer a suggestion of what this is? 

Perry is my drinking buddy. He likes to drink a lot. He likes to drink out of taps, but most of all he likes street water, path water or park water. Especially when it's mud. 

If you ever want to go to a really good op shop, I recommend the Welshpool one. It fits that description. 

I don't know if this dog is there all the time but he's pretty great. 

(or she's)
I'm going to come back with the next instalment later as I am really tired right now and there's a lot of Richie Rich involved. It's pretty bad. 

churchill: head my warning

So Perry and I spent a few hours in Churchill on Friday, always a pleasure, a fascinating town in so many ways. If you don't know the story, it is that the State Electricity Commission and the Housing Commission joined forces in around 1963 to build a town to house workers at the new Hazelwood power station nearby. The original idea was for the town to grow to 40 000 but it stalled in the late 1960s because the state switched its focus to natural gas from coal power. 

This thing (below) is the 'Churchill's cigar' monument which obviously has no purpose other than landmark and is a weird focus for the town because to get close to it (as Perry is, above) you really have to go out of your way. There you will find not only the 'cigar' but a wall, unveiled 1990, with all the early residents' names scratched into bricks. 

The town was originally to be called Hazelwood - figures - but then Churchill died, and so the state government decided to call it that. Clever. There was resistance but a later (narrowly decided) referendum confirmed the name. 

'Who will we get to lease our home darling?'

'How about the Babets, they seem nice'

I'm guessing that the below is the first, what would you call it, terrace? housing in Churchill (rare form), only this end is in this kind of condition, the other end is well-looked after. 

Backyard of above, below. 

Lol! 

Anyway, don't despair because...

hello seychelles

 

Bonzour to my new friends in the Seychelles, which for the first time ever has risen to the top of the hit polls for my blog. There are 121, 000 people in the Seychelles, and my blog has had almost 33, 000 hits from there, which is massive. I am not sure what they are looking for but I hope this extraordinarily high number of visits doesn't mean they haven't found it. Meanwhile, and this is interesting not a source of displeasure, I note that the people of Finland, as always, and the people of Estonia, first time visited by me last month, could not give less of a fuck what I think of their countries. 

port albert 2

The next morning we set out to have more PA experience, but being us, we went to exactly the same places (only in daytime). We did see this duck on a post. In case you're unsure, it's a real duck. 

We saw these people. Locals, I imagine. Looking very wholesome. 

About two blocks from here there's a block of land containing one shed and around 20 kangaroos. 

I don't understand what makes these cockatoos want to cling to the side of this tower but it seems like a pretty strong compulsion. 

A few times lately I've taken a picture that seemed so wrong I wondered if it was AI. For instance, below. 

Below is a snapshot of what people aren't reading in Port Albert (anymore).

Check out the joey's arms dangling there. 

There are quite a few dogs in PA's main street who like to bark but are no way going to get off their comfortable chairs to take it any further. For instance this one. 

OK this was just Friday morning then we set off for Churchill. I'll tell you a bit about that later.