Tetherd Cow Ahead

The Sony PlayStation 3 was launched to scenes of mass apathy in Sydney last night, with the anticipated clamouring hordes of customers being outnumbered by press, security and salivating retailers.

Sony must have been disappointed, as would have been the stores, but where did the tragedy strike hardest? Let me quote a little from the Sydney Morning Herald coverage:

At midnight, about 40 PS3 buyers had arrived to collect their consoles, causing distress for the army of camera crews who turned up expecting to capture launch mayhem.

Distress? Awwww. Poor paparazzi poppets. I guess they stayed up well past their bedtimes and, dang, it was a fizzer!

I can only imagine the scenes of sobbing and consolation going on around water coolers in press offices all over Sydney this morning. I hope they’re getting proper counselling.

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At the $999.00 that you’ll have to fork out for a PS3 in Australia, Sony will need to do a lot of convincing to compete with Xbox & Wii… Good luck chaps.

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Police in Broome, in northern Western Australia, are on the lookout for five stolen lamb shanks after learning the meat has previously been injected with drugs.

The lamb shanks were stolen from a bar fridge outside the Kimberley Aboriginal Medical Service Council in Broome.

They were being used to train Aboriginal health workers and had been injected with anaesthetic and stitched.

The officer in charge, Darren Seivwright, says 55 millilitres of the drug Lignocaine has been injected into the meat and could be fatal if consumed.

“They’re pretty easily identifiable, they’ve got stitches in them. So if someone offers you a lamb shank that’s got stitches in them, then my strongest advice would be to stay away and if you’ve already consumed them, then I suggest you get yourself to the hospital,” he said.

I’ve had some offputting meals in my travels out west, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t really need Officer Seivwright’s advice to ‘stay away’ if offered lamb shanks with stitches in them…

UPDATE: A few moments ago it occurred to me that we might have a Half a Bladder situation with this story. Specifically, why were the lamb shanks injected with anaesthetic? Think about it: trainees practicing their sutures on some lamb legs, fair enough, but what the hell were they doing injecting Lignocaine into them? It’s not like the deceased lambykin legs were going to feel any pain or anything. And if it was just to hone injection skills, why use (presumably costly) drugs? Why not just use water? Hmmm?

I think there is more here than meats the eye.

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Thanks to Nurse Myra for reminding me of this story (which I heard on the radio yesterday, but forgot…)

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Coroner Blames Lack of Sleep and Worm-Heavy Diet.

The news in Australia over the last few days has been headlined with the scandal of the findings handed down by the Cole Inquiry into the behaviour of the Australian Government and the Australian Wheat Board and their ethically despicable trading deals with the Iraqi Government just before the 2003 invasion.

At that time there were (in theory) severe sanctions placed by the world community upon trade with Iraq, an accord to which Australia was a signatory. However, for reasons that are still unclear, the AWB considered that these sanctions didn’t apply to them and they carried on business as usual, a situation that encompassed significant bribes to officials in the Iraqi Government in order to lubricate the machinery of commerce. This was, we are to understand from the AWB, normal business practice.

The Howard government in its typically weaselly manner has managed to slip like a greased pig from the grasp of the Cole Inquisitors, avoiding the allegations of Corruption directed toward it for its part in the debacle, and settling for the questionably safer judgement of Incompetence (with which it evidently feels quite comfortable). This is not a surprise for thinking Australians. We’ve become used to this over the last decade or so. This Government is not ‘responsible’ for anything except winning the cricket.

But the full force of the law has landed on the AWB, which has been found in Australian law to be about as rotten as any capitalist venture can be. The punitive effects of this are yet to be decided, but they are likely to be severe.

The extraordinary comment of the day, however, came from the former Managing Director of the AWB Andrew Lindberg, who made a philosophically booby-trapped statement to the effect that he did not believe that AWB acted with evil intent.

Aha. No, Mr Lindberg. Of course you didn’t. Very few people, except for psychopaths and Satanists actually set about acting with evil intent. That’s the really tricky thing about Evil, isn’t it? It kinda sneaks up on you when you thought that all you were doing was just fudging the truth. Just telling a little white lie. Just looking after the interests of your shareholders. Just giving a few mill to Saddam because, y’know, if we don’t, someone else will.

Evil isn’t a big cackling sulphur-smelling demon, Mr Lindberg. Evil is an obsequious little bespectacled man with a ledger, who keeps pointing at the bottom line and telling you your market index has dropped by half a percent. Evil is a little voice that whispers “Go on, just one little signature won’t hurt – they’re a backwards country run by towel-heads: no-one will care…” Evil is a lot of little moral compromises that really don’t matter all that much…

A deficit of evil intent does not mean a deficit of evil.

And you always know when you’re doing the wrong thing.

(It’s not like you were trying to cover your tracks or anything. Right?)

Today in the suburb of Cromer in Sydney’s northern beaches, in terrible hot, windy and dry conditions, a bushfire is burning out of control. It is almost certain that the fire was deliberately lit. Every year in Australia, a significant percentage of our devastating bushfires are purposely started, for inexplicable reasons, by idiots.

On tonight’s news this exchange took place between the ABC newsreader and the New South Wales Rural Fire Chief, Commissioner Phil Koperberg:

Newsreader: Commissioner Koperberg, do you find it surprising that someone was lighting a fire under these conditions?

Commissioner Koperberg: Yes, I do. These conditions provide an exceptionally bad fire risk and fires start easily and spread quickly.

This is how it should properly have gone:

Newsreader: Commissioner Koperberg, do you find it surprising that someone was lighting a fire under these conditions?

Commissioner Koperberg: No I don’t. People are moronic and thoughtless and don’t possess even an ounce of common sense. It’s happened every year for decades and I predict that these cretins are likely to be doing it for decades to come.

It never surprises me these days, and I know that Commissioner Koperberg has a lot more experience in this field than I do.

Arrrrrr! Avast! I hope ye all have ye pirattitude on and ye ringtones set to sea shanties for International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

For me own part, a hearty ‘Thank Ye’ to Pirate Jimbo the Badly Burnt (aka Kirke) for sending me a bevvy o’ wenches to enjoy with me breakfast rum. Arrrrrr!

So ye bilge-sucking dogs, belay that dilly-dallying, keelhaul the landlubbers, brace the mains’l ‘gainst the wind and ply the Sweet Trade!

Arrrrrrr!