Tuesday 22 November 2016

The Travesty Implodes.


G'day Possums,

It's been an interesting  fortnight with the whole world seemingly reacting with real concern that a sexist, racist bigot and crook has become the American President after not winning the popular vote.

 With more earthquakes in Japan near the leaking nuclear facility of Fukushima and paralleled with another large disturbance off the North Island of New Zealand, it seems that "The Rapture" so beloved  and anticipated of the holy-roller-happy-clappers, just might have arrived.

Jesus better not come back, though.


Bearded men of Middle-Eastern appearance are not particularly popular with Western  Xtians anywhere at the moment.


I have a sneaking suspicion that the Ruling Rabble mk#2 are quietly shitting themselves over Trump. He’s about to blow their democracy cover, big time. 
As Rabid-the-Hun and his chorus line of IPA storm-troopers (including the four Ning-Nongs from One Notion) celebrate Trump's every disastrous move, it may become more obvious to the wider electorate that the Emperor there, like the minor Barons here, have no clothes.
 
Approaching Storm
Approaching Storm
In an muddled attempt to sound plebeian, Truffles sallied forth from his multi million dollar Point Piper pile to inform us he was not one of the elites.
“The people with power and influence in this country are out of touch and not representative of the nation as a whole,” intoned the $200,000,00.00 worth ex member of Goldman-Sachs and Cayman Island and 7/11  investor.
Truffles saved his harshest criticism for the ABC. “You switch on the ABC and all you see is elites,” he told the ABC’s 7:30 in an extensive interview, whilst allegedly looking in a mirror.
“When will it be my turn to have some influence over this country?” asked the winner of the 2001 Centenary Medal for services to the corporate sector  14 months into his incompetent "leadership" of this nation.
It seems that the global political elites are now blaming people like themselves for the problems they have denied existing which are really created by the poor who don't actually exist!
Kookaburra
Kookaburra

Trump’s ascendancy is America’s eclipse but is not Trump’s fault.  
As J.K. Galbraith, the late American polymath, observed 30 years ago, political leadership almost exactly reflects the people who vote for it.
As it does here... and leading fascist of the ruling rabble Bookshelves Brandis has further embarrassed his own thuggish storm-troopers by privately opining over an "open microphone" to Tardis state apparatchik Bulldog Kroger that the Liarbril opposition in The Deep North is "mediocre" and that his own federal rabble is more than a bit concerned with not only One Notion's growing popularity amongst the deplorables but that his own side isn't travelling so well either.
Jeez.... that wouldn't have anything to do with your serial incompetence, would it Bookshelves?
 Isn't it wonderful how the ruling rabble only really see themselves in others?
In NSW, Liarbril Fuhrer Pretty-Boy Baird has succeeded in legislating a limit to ICAC's effectiveness and to stall the handing down of findings on "Operation Credo" that would show the Ruling Rabble to be a as corrupt as many suspect.
If there was any doubt that the Liarbril Party is corrupt to the core then this action is the proof positive.
A Royal Commission into this dysfunctional political group needs calling as soon as possible.
From the refuge for the untalented, unimaginative, third rate intellect came the thought bubble from The  IPA’s Aaron Lane who said there was a ‘‘moral case’’ to abolish minimum wages to allow people to experience the ‘‘dignity of work’’.
‘‘Our position is an ideological one and we don’t shy away from that,’’ he said. ‘‘This position can be seen as heartless and wanting people to work for a low wage.  But it’s about empowering individuals in being able to choose their own employment.’’
A sort of "This will hurt me as much as it will you" attitude of Victorian, patriarchal irrelevance.
I had said in my blogs Petals, a full year before Rabid-the-Hun and the Ruling Rabble Mk#1 were inflicted on us, that things had gone from Orwellian to the Kafka-esque.
It's nice to know that the septic tanks with their "Trumphant" Tea-Party are in a similar place too.  We wont stand out as idiots, as much!
Kookaburra
Kookaburra

Then there was the final episode for the year of QandA  where Indigenous playwright and actress, Nakkiah Lui utterly demolished Vichy Abetz on his IPA inspired plan to abolish 18C, and Chinese Australian, Benjamin Law made much more foriegn policy sense than The Ugly American's minion, Almost-a-Jesuit, Sheridan.
In wiping the floor with them, Lui and Law made Vichy Abetz looked like the tired old Dinosaur he is and Sheridan a hysterical catlic schoolboy prefect. Labor's Terri Butler spoke well, too particularly when she wasn't cut off or interrupted by host Jones or Murdoch minion, Sheridan.
I particularly enjoyed that Abetz looked so uncomfortable but was angered that he again verballed  Triggs, misappropriating and misquoting one of her comments as did Sheridan.... neither of these right-wingers can be trusted in any way except for their deviousness and duplicity.
Hoo-roo Possums,
do you get the feeling that with the budget deficit 8 times larger than when ruling rabble Mk#1 started mismanaging finances, that Truffles' NBN is a shambles and costing more and more to do less, unemployment is growing ,wages are static, manufacturing is in decline, ex pollies are rorting entitlements and free speech is really under attack.... all is imploding?

Shane.

Tuesday 8 November 2016

Libertarian Follies on QandA

Shane with Brushes


G'day Possums,
some more pics from the Archibald which impressed me and a little rant about two amusingly pathetic performances on QandA.






Ohh,  my goodness....  who in their right (sic) mind(s) decided to place two of the most inept, cant driven and lightweight  proselytisers for the Fascist State into public display on national television?

On QandA (7-11-16), the panellists displayed for all to savour were Don Watson, (probably best known as a speech writer for Labor PM Paul Keating) whose droll understated sharpness of wit empathised with the clinical mind of celebrated Canadian social shit stirrer, Noami Klein who was in turn was supported  by Labor leftist, Anthony Albanese.
Clara Adolphs, Terry Serio
Clara Adolphs, Terry Serio

This formidable trio were pitted against two of the most inept lightweights ever to spill from the Coots-With Queer-Ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe, (IPA) kindergarten, the newly minted (and probably one only term) senator, Jimbo, Pasty Paterson  and the (ever present, on ABC, at least) false hope of the Downer political dynasty and failed candidate for the federal seat of Goldstein, Georgina, Gorgon Downer. Both, who seemed determined to adhere as instructed or brainwashed to spout the IPA script much of which sounded borrowed from the both the Ugly American, Murdoch's press and the equally dysfunctional "Tea-Party" currently dismembering the American electorate. These two social vandals conclusively proved for the public that the IPA must be a place only inhabited by the most intellectually barren and empathy deficient individuals. (It's worth noting that the science deficient climate change denier, Mal-Addled Roberts from the One Notion Party is also a member and has received funding from them to travel overseas to imbibe more nonsense to dull his already limited perceptions.)
Guy Maestri, Shattered (Griggs)
Guy Maestri, Shattered (Griggs)

Uncomfortable at being pulled back to relevance to answer audience questions rather than tangentially delivering their rote propaganda pieces, Pasty's impassive face only showed some emotion as a smug sneer split it when Klein correctly called into question his professed  belief in climate change as a lie and that he and his right-wing think-tank ilk were more than happy to stall any progress toward alternative energy than closing down the polluting fossil fuel industry in attempting to save the planet. Gorgon Downer on the other hand, when eventually able to launch into her interminably mangled and stumbling answers gave me the impression that she would be a perfect dinner party guest to close it down through utter, utter boredom.
India Mark, Day at the Gallery with Dane Taylor
India Mark, Day at the Gallery with Dane Taylor

As Jane Caro tweeted, this pair's "confected outrage about freedom of speech and 18C" was also shot to pieces by Klein, who observed that the attacks on Gillian Triggs were very similar to those by other right-wing groups in both Britain and the U.S. who see any restraint on their libertarian ability to smear at will an affront to their rights and also that their faux dismay at Trump's proposed wall against the Mexicans was nonsense and in fact was already in place at the Manus and Nauru refugee concentration camps.
John Wolseley, Peter Wegner
John Wolseley, Peter Wegner

This pair of Cuckoo's in the nest also avoided the obvious reason as to why so many places are in political turmoil. Their adherence and promotion of a capitalist system badly in decline, that disadvantages the majority and is causing the death of the planet not only indicates their limited imagination and lack of social responsibility but also their real fear, that of community.
Hoo-roo Petals,
Shane
Sam Harris, Zoe Young
Sam Harris, Zoe Young
Toni Zeltzer, Sinead Davies
Toni Zeltzer, Sinead Davies

Saturday 5 November 2016

The Art of Lifting and Leaning...

Shane between the Lifter and the Leaner



G'day Possums,

Mrs Wombat and I toddled along to the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery the other day to see the  finalists of the 2016 Archibald Prize.








This year the prize was awarded to Louise Hearman for her portrait titled "Barry." 
Unusually, being behind glass has added to the diagonal depth this finely handled depiction of satirist and artist Barry Humphries. 
Barry, Louise Hearman

A work, like many in this show, of  modest proportions and it's C17th Dutch heritage playing a Baroque space, to project the head  to the front of the picture plane where it is isolated by dual light sources as on a darkened stage. Wearing  a white coat and shirt belying his more outrageous characters you are allowed to concentrate on the slightly bemused but intense look Humphries returns to the viewer.  The bare board in the "unfinished " lower parts of the figure seem to indicate the artifice of both Humphries and the artists professions.


Annie Smithers, Daniel Butterworth
Annie Smithers, Daniel Butterworth
The title for this blog entry came from juxtaposition of the over life-size and adjacent portraits of Annie Smithers and Josh Frydenberg.  Smithers is the chef/owner of du Fermier restaurant just up the road from our burrow in Trentham; and in admirably succinct and honest utterance declared to artist Daniel Butterworth that "...the bottom line for her was that all her hard work ends up down the toilet." 
No such profundity from Frydenberg, though. Smugly comfortable depicted in his blue-tied banality, Camillo De Luca's portrait aims in its materials of charcoal and wood with copper frame to indicate his ministerial position of Resources and Energy with a white halo apparently symbolising his outstanding achievements. Just what these achievements are, I can't think which is perhaps why it's so small. He, Frydenberg, belongs to the ruling rabble which is systematically destroying the country's economy and degrading its social contract so effectively that we are becoming a pariah nation. This "rising star" of the Liarbril Party is painted on two sheets of plywood making a square which not only approximates his dullness but by being split down the middle is probably closer to the truth of his real aspirations than the artist intends.
Polymath, Camillo De Luca
Polymath, Camillo De Luca
The rawness of the ply was to signify a work in progress though I think it more indicative of the conceptual and policy vacuum that is forcing Australia into the abyss. That he considers Frydenberg a Polymath is  more cynical than I can bear. This is  a person whose public function is to support the most nasty, brutish, right-wing rabble this land has ever seen and whose ex-IPA members even advocate dismembering the arts and stopping any funding for it. A place now where any frank advice is met with being attacked, sacked or publicly denigrated and practising the near criminality of rorting entitlements is the order of the day. 

Smithers on the other hand, actually produces food. She prepares food and feeds people. She is depicted streaming with her own sweat and the steaming  rivulets of the kitchen and is seated in the exhausted quiet at the end of a very long day.... whilst mentally preparing for the next. 
Unlike the "Leaner" Frydenberg,  Smithers' is a "Lifter" whose productivity is real, not just "spin."  "du Fermier" 42 High St Trentham  Ph: (03) 5424 1634. French Garden to plate, excellent food but be prepared to book well ahead.

Wandering through the gallery later we came across Patricia Piccinini's  "Graham" but the surreality was not the film prop sculpture but the people standing around listening into head phones.
Plastic Arts
Plastic Arts
One more to finish off,  Alice by William Rhodes a lovely little quiet piece of intimacy.
Alice by William Rhodes
Alice by William Rhodes
Hoo-Roo petals,
Shane