This will hurt me...

I am sure by now that you have all come across the tale of the evil gnome that is terrorising the Argentinian province of Salta. If not, The Sun (UK) has more , although I am not sure if the video of the creepy little person gives me the willies as much as the appalling grammar in their coverage! If The Sun doesn't rock your boat, KUTV in Utah has even more . Now Jennifer has assured me that she saw no evil gnomes during her year in Tucuman, and certainly not on her trip to Salta. She did see a few llamas (or maybe alpacas, she can't tell them apart), but alas, no terror gnomes. But back to the story, at the end of the video clip on the Sun Website, one of the boys unleashes a rather girlish scream. Another teenager, or perhaps the same one, was apparently so scared he had to go to the hospital. No wonder they lost the Falklands War so quickly, no backbone! IT'S A MIDGET IN A DUNCE'S CAP!!!! Oh, and now he has his own website: Terrorgnome.com . Although the answer may b...

It has been clear to me for some time that Henry loves music. He likes most genres, but if you really want to get him up and dancing, you can't beat the Motown sound. He's not fussy, Barrett Strong; The Miracles; The Temptations; Stevie Wonder; Jimmy Ruffin; Martha & the Vandellas; the Four Tops; Brenda Holloway; The Isley Brothers; Edwin Starr; The Jackson 5, he'll listen to all of them. His real standouts seem to be two of the all time greats: Marvin Gaye and The Supremes. Now I’ve been keeping my eye on him to try and determine what his favourite song might be, and I think that I’ve figured it out: the sublime Where Did Our Love Go? by The Supremes. I personally put this down to the throaty sensuality of Diana Ross’s vocal, but it could just as easily be the stomping beat that rides through the song. Anyway, it’s a ripper of a tune, and for Henry, I’ve decided to attach a video of the girls themselves doing it live (it lacks the ‘stomping’ that stands out in the sin...

I love pizza. If I wasn't already married, I would marry pizza. Pizza has some many things going for it: tasty; easy to make; easy to eat; available pretty much anywhere; cheap; versatile; culturally inclusive; understanding; forgiving; brave; handsome. It's safe to say that I'm a big fan of the pizza. HOWEVER, this 1959 Chef Boy-Ar-Dee (huh?) model, in which it appears that all the pizza ingredients come canned and packaged ready to go, would have to be the least attractive thing I've ever seen. Fair dinkum, it looks like a bit of red cardboard with plastic stuff sparsely sprinkled on top. Remember, this is the image that they chose for use in their ads, and we all know food never looks as good as it does in the ads. Which kind of makes me wonder of the abomination that a real Chef Boy-Ar-Dee (still huh?) might have resembled.

Worth a gander is the blog of a very interesting fellow living in Westminster, London, describing his daily experiences of music, women, pubs and clubs, the usual stuff. Only this blog is concerned with events that took place 343 years ago. Now, the blog has apparently been going since 2003, but I’ve only just stumbled across it. You’ve probably heard of the diaries of Samuel Pepys, the renowned seventeenth century diarist. Beginning his diary at a critical point in the history of Britain (1660), Pepys left perhaps the most important primary source for the English Restoration period. What makes Pypes so interesting outside of academia is the way that he recorded his daily life for almost ten years with remarkable honesty. No doubt this was made easier with the assumption that his thoughts would not become available for open discussion! Yet he recorded the women that he pursued, his friends, his enemies, and his public and private dealings. As with all great diaries, he reveals his jeal...

I like accents. I like accent archives. I like how he guy from Wellington is trying very hard to say "six" rather than "sex". I would like a beautiful but harsh Germanic woman to tell me how naughty I've been, but that really is another matter for a wholly different website! Try out the the Speech Accent Archive , where the aim is to exhibit a large set of speech accents in English from a variety of geographical and language backgrounds.

C'mon, how could you not want a couple of dozen or so of these baby porcupines? (Pic gleaned from Miss Cellania .)

Look, I just reckon that it is cool that such a gruesome image would be used in an ad. Ideally it would be colour, but hey, we're talking 1940 and red ink was in short supply! Extra points for the startled look on the walrus's face.

I have always had a keen interest in the history of the Soviet Union. My recent experience teaching politics to first year university students has taught me how is difficult to convey to anyone with little or no memory of the world pre-1990 the shadow cast by the Soviet presence. Now, there happened to have been the odd communist in my family, so I guess that the household I grew up in the shadow was felt in a little more sympathetic way than some. But despite the ready access to numerous books, pamphlets and propaganda pieces, the whole notion of the Soviet Union (or Eastern Europe more generally) was an utter mystery to me.   So of course, given my interest in history, the former-USSR still maintains a presence. Yet, unlike much modern history, the history of the Soviet Union has a beginning, middle and an end. Amplifying this, its end does not seem that long ago, even if we are nearing twenty years! To anyone with an eye for history, even its beginning was relatively recent.   What...

Today I have chosen three advertisements that work in relation to each other. Each contains a vital message that every lady must learn prior to entering into the beautiful alliance that is a successful marriage. I can express myself no more eloquently than the first advertisement itself, so I will leave it to them: A man marries a woman because he loves her. So instead of blaming him if married love begins to cool, she should question herself. Is she truly trying to keep her husband and herself eager, happy married lovers? These are wise words and well worth consideration. Indeed, they ask a reasonable and fundamental question. The answer? Complete feminine hygiene . It is just so dreadfully sad that many marriages fail due to unnecessary ignorance around what is an essential issue. The second ad builds upon the concerns identified in the first. The good folk at Zonite are spot on, how can Bill [below] explain all of this to his sensitive young wife? Bill is correct: there are some th...

In the most depressingly predictable manner, bad public policy has won the day again. I can't say that I blame the government, but in their pursuit of a 'fair go for carers', the media's simplistic bombast has only extended a less efficient, more expensive means of delivering what ultimately is a small amount of money. The most shameful part of the whole thing is how wholly unsurprising it has been.

I was thinking about posting on the hysterical reaction of both the mainstream press , as well as the blogging world , to the proposed cut to the one off bonuses to pensioners and carers awarded by the previous government. Aside from the logical incongruity of a 'cut' to a 'one-off bonus', I am sick of hearing about the 'proposed scrapping of the carers pension', which is something altogether different and in no way part of the announcement. If ‘journalists’ or news editors cannot get basic stuff like that correct, then public discussion around important areas of public concern has no hope. Now, I happen to think that the Howard response represented the most cynical type of politics, and is very poor public policy. Addressing some of the previous government's public policy failures – as well as some poor economic management – can only be a good thing. It's not like the present government are not targeting many areas, my day to day job has revealed to m...

Here are a couple of pics to give all motorists the willies. Described as the 'classic traffic jam', this took place on the Moscow Sadovoye Koltzo [ring road] in October 2007. Here it is in the morning: Here is is that afternoon: And here they are, still milling about into the night: Dark Roasted Blend have posted this morning these pictures, and a wide selection of the world’s most torturous traffic conundrums that is well worth a visit .

People might have missed the surprising results coming out of the Malaysian elections held on the weekend. (As usual), the Australian media haven't really captured what happened particularly well, so I was pleased to see Andrew Leigh post the thoughts of his father, Professor Michael Leigh , who has studied Malaysian politics for some time now. For those of you interested, or even if you don't know anything about South East Asian politics, it's an easy and informative read: the Malaysian Election Roundup . [Amended 10:04 am] Trust me to post before looking at all the papers! Michael Leigh has an opinion piece in The Age this morning that expands upon his post on Andrew Leigh's blog, here is the link .

Ronald Reagan certainly knew how to keep friends and family happy. It's this sort of generosity of spirit that got him to the presidency. I especially like the notion of a happy "Christmas Card" carton. There would be nothing nicer than kick back on Christmas morning, cracking open Ronnie's present, and smoking up a storm while watching the kids frolic about on their new bikes. Good times!

I was wondering what to post on the blog, and I thought that maybe I would do something music-related. Now I love music, and am prepared to listen to just about anything. But what to write about? There's so much to choose from. So I've been thinking about this for a while and then yesterday a song that I like came on the ITunes shuffle (with somewhere around 14,000 songs, it could be just about anything), and I found myself dancing around the living room along with Henry, singing out aloud the words to one of my all time favourite tracks. Let me make it clear: I've loved the song Cecilia for as long as I can remember. It's a happy, jaunty little number that was released as a single off the mega-selling 1970 album Bridge Over Troubled Water , and reached #4 in the US charts. Given that I have known the song for my entire life, I'm not really sure when the lyrical content first struck me as, well, interesting . Now, I can remember that the shift from referring to key...

My wife and I have got another baby on the way (19 weeks on Thursday). Now last time, we both agreed within a reasonable period that Henry was a good name, and that it worked well with the last name, and also with taking my wife's surname as his middle name. Thus, our first born is Henry Fitzgerald McCracken. We're both pretty happy with that name, and everyone agrees he's a pretty good little bloke. Here he is looking slightly worried about the prospect of a challenger on the horizon. Here is the anxious little bloke So, my issue is that we've got to find a name the equal to Henry. I think that the bar is high, so the pressure is on. As with last time, we've gone our separate ways and compiled our own lists, with the intention of pruning them down and then merging them for the final master list. We can then 'test' the names to see how they go. I myself have already started testing names on dear little Henry (male and female), which - to be frank - is beginn...

I was browsing Flickr and came across a photo that I like very much, taken this winter in Skegness (in the UK). Apparently the duck was skating across the ice. I guess this isn't such a big deal if you're from somewhere really cold, but we don't get much of this in Hobart.