http://whyismarko.com/2011/27-worst-nativity-sets-the-annual-growing-list/

heathenscripture.wordpress.com

Thanks to Eug for the link – this dude’s going viral as we speak.

By the way, hope you’ve all seen the footage of the Cream Pie Incident, complete with Wendi Deng getting airborne on the way to delivering the culprit an extremely fast-response whack. Priceless.

I hope she’s a little less volatile with her children.

Fortunately its heyday is over, as the Wikipedia entry tells us.

Discussing trade, he said he would tell China’s leaders, “Listen you motherf——, we’re going to tax you 25 percent.”

“If I run and if I win,” he told the crowd, “we will have a rich country again.”

Americans fall for this shit in great numbers. Sit back, folks, and grab the popcorn - the circus has begun.

including an imminent party to which you are very probably invited – read on…

It may have been the last thing on my mind, back a couple of months ago, but the terrace was much in need of a gardener (as Mirjam could tell you). And then I went for a holiday by a quiet beach in Hipparkia (the) Kombi, and bumped into one. Organising a music event, he was. Hard and nut-brown in nothing but a pair of cargo shorts. Jawbone you could cut your tongue on, silver-dark hair. Used to be a surfie. Likes a smoke.

What’s a girl to do?

Been spending a lot of time talking, laughing, cooking, walking, swimming, much of it unclad. Idyllic, wot? That quiet beach (the locals told me not to tell anyone about it) is becoming quite a distraction.

But you should see my terrace. Nut-brown gardener and I have been doing some night gardening (since work still keeps me to vampire hours), and by some arcane magic there is more space, more greenery, more flowers and features, more fairy lights and, blow me down, a very sweet fountain. We must, I said weeks ago, have a party.

Yes I did, and so we set the date of the party, Mirjam and I and the green magic man Al, but we left the details loose, and my vampire hours confused me in my intention to have at least some of the party in the garden in daylight although I’m only up in the morning and in any case the rain seems to have set in.

*sigh*

I’d put the whole thing off, I’m so disorganised and the long-range forecast is shite, but Mirjam, very reasonably since it’s only a week away, has already invited people. Oh, and we did kind of agree it would have some kind of Mad Hatter’s Tea Party theme, so she told them that too. Which means a party of that persuasion is happening in my house a week from tonight and I’d better get my head – and my friends’ heads – around it.

SO HERE’S WHAT I FIGURE

The party will go from 9pm till around the middle of the next day. These are my normal waking hours, so I can look after late-night trashbags of all sorts and see things through smoothly. There’ll be several stages.

The evening will be themed most strongly – this means, according to our house rules, that if you turn up before midnight you must be dressed to theme or consent to be dressed by the house. After midnight this service is optional.

The theme

Through Looking-Glass with Tea Party

(I know, I’ve been reading too many headlines lately)

9pm

I wish to reclaim the tea party from those evil, right-wing Americans, partly by adding various superior intoxicants. There will, for example, be punch. Schnapps. Assorted teas of course, good coffee, finger food. Lewis Carroll’s two Alice books as a dress theme should further add, what can I say, a scholarly respectability. Think rabbits, kittens, cards, chess pieces, top hats and perverse Victoriana. Walrus, Carpenter, Wasp in a Wig. Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Jabberwocky, if you dare. Bandersnatch.

4am

Parties usually simmer down to the hardcore somewhere around 4. We’ll have braziers on the terrace, so smokers and talkers will be cosy, and inside there are plenty of soft places and spare blankets for any who want to crash here rather than on the road. There will also, according to theme, be cards and a chessboard.

7am

For those other night creatures arriving from work after 7am, we have the Grand Weekend Legless Breakfast – beer, wine, cocktails if there’s any left. Weather permitting, this will centre on the terrace (free vitamin D with every drink), and roll right on into…

10ish am

A late-morning bacon-egg-and-vego feast. Daytime folks who did or didn’t come the night before are also welcome to the big brunch…

And… simultaneously we will have, for those still in Wonderland or wishing they were, Afternoon Tea in the Morning – assorted teas, espresso coffee, bread and butter, fruit – cake, if you’re lucky. Mix and match. Put your top hat on.

It’ll only get messy if it rains and we all have to crowd onto one big table.

All contributions to table and bar welcome.

If you want to play a set or share an idea, get in touch.

If you want to be there and haven’t been smsed or emailed, get in touch.

Otherwise, see you through the mirror.

Costume ideas

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice%27s_Adventures_in_Wonderland

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through_the_Looking-Glass

I’m having trouble with their website; let me know if you have similar. On my Mac laptop, any type of sign/send operation clicks through to a blank page.

Bravo Jamie McCartney. You gotta respect a man who drives a custom pink East German Trabant.

As of last March, it appears they feel the need to reclaim Mt Ainslie.

I eat kangaroo because Aboriginal people do, and because it’s delicious. And like most Aboriginal people, I presume, I don’t do it often and I don’t do it unmindfully. I really like the idea of a large kangaroo mob maintaining a bareknuckle defense of Mt Ainslie – or, for that matter, the idea of one big irascible grey powering up the hill, sideswiping and then laying out some random male human, out of sheer angry contempt…

Russia wants him nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize; it may be an idle political sally but we should definitely start with Australian of the Year. Click on the link, then fill fields and select buttons as the choices dictate until you get to the big window for ‘tell us about your nominee’. By the way, Assange’s home if not his residence is Parkville, Victoria, and towards the end of the form you will need to nominate a referee.

Here’s what I put for the case. Copy, adapt, extract as you please. Or write your own.

Aside from his formidable technical skills, Julian Assange has shown unparalleled courage in the face of some of the most powerful, arrogant, and merciless opponents in the world. His determination and capacity to enforce government transparency is nothing short of revolutionary, and as a revolutionary he will be hated and hunted by those powers he challenges – even though, or perhaps because – the principles he is enforcing on them are their own.

Justice, democracy, integrity, open-handed diplomacy: the marks of civilisation have become meaningless logos on the sides of global juggernauts. More than anyone has been able so far, Julian Assange has shown the world how the Internet can intervene in the hypocrisies of power, and since this intervention is a necessary step on the way to true justice and even ultimate human happiness – indeed, to much of a future for the human race at all – he should be lauded as a hero.

Moreover, the man is an icon already. In many ways this twenty-first-century larrikin, so dry he’s astringent, could only have come out of Australia. The Sydney Morning Herald called him “the Ned Kelly of the digital age”, Amnesty and others have given him awards, Russia suggests the Nobel Peace Prize, but Assange remains razor-sharp, dead-cool, totally fair and exquisitely modest. Julian Assange is a true Australian hero – he does us proud, he makes us proud, and he deserves to be Australian of the Year. Furthermore, he is increasingly and urgently in need of our support.