BARROW ISLAND: “My missus has many relatives here… shite! There goes one now, a Perentie,” Payton L. Inkletter said, then called out “Anna! Go Anna!!”

Be all that as it may, meanwhile:

In other news…

05^th May 2009:

Tuesday: Yet another day from paradise, wonderful and a gradual disaster at the same time, as the rain we so badly need is going to have to come in a shorter space of time, if indeed it comes, or in the amounts we need, or, if in the average or greater amount, coming in less time can have its problems also, particularly for the farming community. The enervated eel woke me at five, having spent the entire afternoon and part of the late morning taxi driving Pa pree here there and everywhere, and shopping, and whatnot.

The poor old debilitated duck had had enough, for much bickering had been in the air, and Pa pree’s doctor’s appointment had been cancelled when they arrived, to top things off, due to, wait for it, the doctor being sick. So, arriving back alone, my meritorious Moloch horridus, or otherwise known as the (t)horny devil, had to get cracking to prepare for the visit for din dins by The Babies tonight, who were to call first in to Pa pree’s to return his poota which Baby Peggletter had reformatted and jazzed up to try to get it to work better.

I titivated like crazy, waking up and beautifying myself, plus doing a job or two out in the backyard before complete dark, as well as adding oil to and wiring down the boot of the Swift which gave up the ghost today while the delinquents were gallivanting. Part of their gallivant took in a call in to UltraTune the brum brum you can really feel, to book the Swift in for $600 worth of rear shock absorbers replacement on Thursday. The boot lock is another job they’ll have to attend to for us. A certain person got angry about everyone slamming the boot hard, but it was a case of the kettle calling the pot black, or even calling the white teapots black, if you get my meaning.

I watched My Beloved and Mistah O’Brien’s The 7.30 Report, and it was Thea Dikeos’ report on the impending Senate inquiry into gene patenting that caught my attention and got up my goat (thanks Kath and Kim). I find it painful to be apparently in some kind of agreement with that prick N.S.W. Senator Bill Heffernan, but on this I do. Firstly, those sisters Jill Regnis and Lynne Rais and their complaint about the unfairness of breast cancer striking Jill and their mother: well, sorry that you’ve had that experience, but fairness has utterly nothing to do with, obviously. Melbourne’s Genetic Technologies, who hold licenses from American company Myriad, the owner of patents for BRAC1 and BRAC2, backed down fortunately, from threatened legal action against the Peter McCallum Cancer Institute. What bastards in the first place! The greedy grasping leeches and the idiots involved in the patent granting procedure (and it would have to have a major input from lawyers) who ever okayed patenting genes in the first place should be embarrassed and shamed. What a non-comic travesty. I couldn’t agree less with the spirit of Fatima Beattie’s, Commissioner of Patents, remarks ‘An isolated gene sequence that has a specific use identified, such as a diagnostic or a therapeutic, satisfies the definition of invention and may be patentable provide it satisfies all the other patentability criteria’, and I couldn’t agree more with Graeme Suthers, of the Royal College of Pathologists remark ‘It is absolute nonsense to consider that the gene could be patented. It's a naturally occurring substance. It would make as much sense to patent a gene as it does to patent the moon.’

The Babies arrived with Pa pree well after eight, having spent some time setting the poota up at Pa pree’s, and we had a delish nacho meal courtesy of the bootylicious bobtail, while watching Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa on DVD courtesy of The Babies. It was a lot of fun. They left about ten, and I took Pa pree home and spent over an hour trying to set up his internet connection, having a run around with the modem setup in particular, but eventually I chose a different model name to the name on the modem, and it worked – thanks Netcomm.

I watched Letterman on my return, the exhausted eel having gone to bed and already being asleep. Donald Trump was a good sport doing the Top Ten, I thought. I cleaned up some in the kitchen afterwards, before doing some writing here on the poota. I struggled with some health issues, then set off on a walk on this almost cold night, and as still as the ethical portions of the average lawyer’s mind.

I came back to watch some Aunty recordings from when I was working on Pa pree’s computer, specifically Lateline and Lateline Business. The former: Tony SilverToes Jones looked very dapper in his dark suit, but that’s less important than the report by Karen Barlow on Pakistan apparently being poised to launch a military offensive upon the Taliban in their Swat Valley stronghold. Should we be concerned about the Islamic fundamentalists’ threat of obtaining nuclear weaponry? Certainly. And I’ve written here before of my great disinclination to waste Australian blood in Afghanistan while its Government is corrupt, weak, and anti-western value supporting, and while over the border Pakistan is a safe haven for Islamic fundamentalists from which to interminably attack our and Afghanistan’s people. Admiral Michael Mullen, U.S.A.’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said ‘And we all recognise obviously the worst downside of - with respect to Pakistan is that those nuclear weapons come under the control of the terrorists. I don't think that's gonna happen. I don't see that in any way imminent whatsoever.’ Well Admiral Mullen, what do you know that we don’t? Here’s a truth: you must know what you’re enemy respects, and when you’re dealing with an enemy that only respects brute force, indiscriminate killing, ‘success’ at ANY cost, as is the case with Islamic fundamentalists, among others, then you may have to meet them all the way before they will be stopped. I don’t like this fact any more than any other peace preferring person, but I am mature and savvy enough to understand it. Does the political will exist in Pakistan? In the U.S.A.? Did Neville Chamberlain understand what Hitler respected when he infamously waved that piece of paper conceding the Sudetenland to Germany, declaring “peace for our time”? Pussy footing with those of such mindsets only makes the cost greater later on when their excesses and effronteries cannot be ignored any longer.

SilverToes’ interview with lawyer Philippe Sands, the author of Torture Team, was sobering, especially for the topknots in the Bush Administration, I am sure. I wouldn’t like to be Cheney, Bush, or Rice, or several others, who were involved in the decisions to authorise what amounts to torture of the enemy combatants and adversaries caught and held by the U.S. and its allies. Yes there are excruciating shades of grey in this whole field of the quite proper attempt to extract information from captured enemies, but I’m on Obama’s side in saying, if he’s saying this – and I think he is – that regarding torture, the end does not justify the means. Great creativity is preferable in catching prisoners out with crucial information, including granting them particular freedoms under surveillance in the pursuit of which they can slip up, such as communication with the outside world and so on. Very difficult and fraught, yes, but let’s not torture our fellow man; we can do better than that. I am not blind to the fact that in the previous paragraph I have just advocated severe force to match severe force, but it is surely preferable to die and kill cleanly than to inflict drawn out extreme suffering upon each other, which degrades and changes for the worse all of us involved. By the way, SilverToes and Philippe got on so famously I was almost going to email them to give my blessing to their booking of a room.

Ali Moore’s Bluescope Steel $1.4 billion capital raising story is of especial interest to me because Janny’s brother works on the factory floor for them in Forrestfield. I have yet to watch this episode, though, and so I hope to and I also hope that the blasted DVD recorder successfully caught the program for a change.

The mendacious monitor had difficulty sleeping after tinkling at about four in the marnin, and at a second getting up toward dawn she indicated she’d be needing a certain Bessemer pot for cooking later today, so I set to and got it and the rest of the kitchen clean up almost done, for an easier start for her later in the new day. I slipped in beside her about six, but it took me quite a while to drift into sleep, feeling a bit unwell in a way I can’t quite explain clearly.

+paytontedwithlove+