Horse 2749 - Fragments XII: Wash Your Filthy Little Hands

C22 - Beauty of the Coronavirus

If you look at a bunch of viruses under a scanning electron microscope, they tend to look like a tadpole which is suspended atop a camera stand of many legs. If I can draw you a better mental picture, think of Humpty Dumpty from Play School sitting on a six legged camera stand. 

Since it is debatable about whether or not a virus is alive or not, it is also debatable about whether or not they have any actual desire to do anything. Setting that aside (please ignore the obvious logical hypocrisy here), just like every living thing they like to make more of themselves but lack the ability to do so; so they have to recruit some other thing to become a factory for them. Our Humpty Dumpty Camera Stand virus finds a living cell, stands on top of it, then winds down a spike from in between its legs and then injects the instructions for that cell to become an involuntary factory to make more Humpty Dumpty Camera Stand viruses.

Our maybe/maybe not living Humpty Dumpty Camera Stand virus has the ability to jam its stinger into actual living cells and get those things to do its work for it; because by itself it lacks the ability to do so.

COVID-19 is mechanically different and dare I say it, almost beautiful. As a  coronavirus, it is built like an Adidas Telstar football. It is a round structure (hence the reason why it is called a coronavirus) and at each of the intersections, it has almost little suction cup devices that it can attach itself with, to then use its wee little stingers to recruit its involuntary factories.

It is a little bit more fragile than regular Humpty Dumpty Camera Stand viruses and those suction cup devices can be gummed up with fats (wash your filthy little hands, people) but because it isn't sensitive about which direction it is oriented, it can bounce around inside a human body like the happy little bouncing ball of death that it is.

To say that your enemy is almost beautiful is rather gauche but as a piece of engineering, I think that it is brilliant. As a piece of engineering which has a job and does that job elegantly, I think that I am allowed to appreciate that; even if it is a nasty death monster.

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R13 - Resentment

Let's go all the way back to the most fundamental question of what money is. Money is within the confines of a nation, a catholic coupon system for the exchange of goods and services. It is a coupon system in the sense that of itself money has no intrinsic worth and it is catholic in the sense that there is only one system which everyone agrees upon. I live in Australia and if someone gave me Euros or Sterling Pounds or even New Zealand Dollars, all of those things while they might be fun are still useless to me. As someone living in Australia, I need Australian Dollars; not because they are intrinsically better or worse than other national coupon systems but because they are the only coupons acceptable here.

The second fundamental thing to remember is that money is exchanged for only five reasons.

- Either for the sale of goods and services; of which labour is included.

- As payment for the rent of land, buildings, plant and equipment.

- As the reward for lending out money; which is paid back in the form of interest.

- As the reward for running a business: which is paid back in the form of profit share (which is called a dividend).

- As given to people by way of government transfer payments, lottery winnings, of other spontaneous gifting like inheritance payments.

The problem which is extremely evident during the pandemic is that the same kinds of people who do not really want to pay people proper wages, also resent the fact that the government is paying people in the form of transfer payments because someone somewhere will have to make up for the shortfall in the government's books by the means of taxation.

This is the roundabout way of saying that the people who felt as though they have no responsibility whatsoever to the people of the nation and wanted the ability to do whatever they wanted, really hate the idea that the pandemic has brought into sharp focus that the people who live in a nation actually are responsible to each other, to some minor degree.

The real fear is that at some point, the government will come cap in hand and ask politely for the debt which has been incurred to be repaid. The government can not ask very poor people to pay for the debt incurred since they have no money, owing to the fact that they weren't given much in the first place; this means that the government will have to ask richer people, who are the same people who derive the most benefit from the proper functioning of the economy and are also less likely to want to be responsible for it.

If there was some common enemy who was backed by the force of arms and soldiers, then those same people would be the first to press others into conscription, for the purpose of the physical protection of their stuff. It should come as no surprise to anyone that apart from an officer class who saw honour and valour as intangible prizes worth fighting for, which also translated into becoming pilots, the bulk of the boots on the ground people who spilled their blood all over the fields of Europe in the two major disturbances last century, were all from the working class. When it came to the upper class actually fighting in the trenches, they were far less likely to be found and perversely, also more likely to be rewarded with medals as well. 

This unseen enemy, is more or less treated with that same spirit except that this is a war which is impossible to avoid being in and unlike a physical war, there are no rewards for valour or honour to be won. Poorer people are however still very much expendable and some commentators border on psychopathy in demanding that poorer people just get out there and die for the vague notion of the economy.

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M19 - Aloneliness

I think that I am better prepared for this period of awkwardness and social isolation by virtue of having trained for it for 41 and a bit years. Before I was born, I was blissfully unaware of the world outside although exactly what kind of awareness an unborn baby has is perhaps unknowable, and having long since established and being repeatedly reminded that I am different from everyone else in the world (in some instances in entirely unfriendly terms), any sense of minor social isolation which we are currently going through is magnitudes smaller than my abiding sense of cosmic existential loneliness. Once you accept the base premise that it is impossible to see the world from any other perspective than your own, then the physical distance which might exist is positively microscopic in comparison with the vast gaping distances which exist between people's minds.

I was asked the question about who I have been in close proximity to over the past few months and the number of people whom I have spent more than ten minutes with (apart from commuters on public transportation) is exactly twelve. Even interactions with clients have been minimal. 

I find it to be one of the cruel ironies of 2020 that after having waited 30 years for Liverpool to win the football league, witnessing a league win for a club with the words "You'll Never Walk Alone" on the club crest, has been an experience which was very much alone for me.

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C7 - Cantona Was The Best 7

The reason why Cantona was able to control the centre of the pitch with such authority was not due to his physical strength (although that helped considerably) but rather due to the way he read the game and then moved before the game shifted. I do not think that Cantona had either the deftest of touches or was necessarily the most accurate of passers but he more than made up for that by being where he needed to be before he needed to be there and then had a sufficiently large personality to be able to direct traffic around him; so that everyone else around him was also able to be where they needed to be.

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B2 - Bath Bombs

Bath Bombs as far as I can tell, were invented in 1989 by a lady in the UK called Mo Constantine; who was inspired by looking at a Berocca tablet effervescing in a glass of water, after a particularly large night out on the town and on the tiles. She would go on to co-found the company Lush; which is also as far as I can tell, the world's largest producer and seller of bath bombs.

The reason why I have no strong opinion one way or the other when it was to bath bombs, is that I have almost no opportunity to take a bath and even when I do because I am on holiday, the enduring problem of trying to fit my six foot tall stature into a five foot four space, makes taking a bath less than the pleasant experience which is enjoyed by others. In fact, the only truly enjoyable bath that has lived in my memory, was when I was in the Nikko Winds Hotel in Narita in 2003. That bath space which was outside at night at just after midnight, in ambient temperatures that were barely above freezing, coupled with a very hot bath in a garden; was simultaneously wonderful and kind of heartbreaking because I realised in the moment that I would never have anything like this ever again.

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L16 - A Stroll Across Lafayette Square

Before 1824, Lafayette Square in Washington DC was a saleyard where people bought and sold other people. Those other people, were legally considered as only 3/5ths of a person for statistical purposes and 0/5ths of a person when it came to extending the rights which you claim.

Where were you when in 1789, sweaty white men (they were all white, they were all men, and given that it was the summer and they were stuck in a small room before the invention of air conditioning they were all sweaty) argued about what form of government that the new nation would adopt and who to exclude from the rights which you claim?

Where were you in 1824 when Lafayette Square was transformed from the market where people bought and sold other people, into a public park? Those other people who were still deemed to be worth only 3/5ths of a person for statistical purposes and 0/5ths of a person for rights considerations, were still excluded from going into the new public park, which was now demarcated with a small fence to indicate that it was a public park and especially that these other people were excluded from it.

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New States that should be added to the United States:

The Great State of Denial

The Great State of Confusion

The Great State of Disorder

The Great State of Happiness

The Great State of Mind

The Great State of Emergency

Someone who has many abilities:

Barbie Nine Jobs

Jack Of All Trades

Xi Of Many Chickens

John With Many Hammers

John Who Plays With Steam In Alleys

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BT 70 - Why Do We Need Even More Batman? Isn't Batman Done?

The world does not need any more darker and edgier Batmans. Arguably every Batman beyond Michael Keaton was absolutely unnecessary and has added nothing to the character. The only reason that we are getting this Batman is because of The Joker movie; which someone has deemed necessary to produce a sequel to.

The only Batmans that the world actually needs are the Adam West Batman because that series trod the line of silliness and earnestness so very very well and the Will Arnett Batman from The Lego Movies because that plays with the idiocy of the idea of Batman in the first place.

If I was Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else then I would recast Batman as a detective, like he originally was in the 1930s, give him a Ford Mondeo and put him in Gotham, Nottinghamshire. Have Batman solve actual crime instead of this weird insane fever dream. 

The Joker, The Penguin, Mr Freeze, the Catwoman etc. are all perfectly serviceable villains but if they came from the Home Counties, Yorkshire, Merseyside, Manchester etc. then they'd be far more believable. 

Horse 2748 - No, I Won't Watch The RNC - It Is Pointless

 I have previously written that I had no intention of watching the Democratic Party National Convention; which history ended up proving was the case. I have seen at most maybe four minutes of footage from it in total and as a non-US Citizen living outside of the United States with no voting rights whatsoever, then I hardly see what benefit that I would have got out of it anyway.

Likewise when it comes to the Republican Party National Convention, I also have no intention of watching that either; for mostly congruous reasons. Although having said all of that, I do find the lineup of speaker for the Republican Convention to be rather intriguing.

Of the initial twelve headline speakers of the Republican Convention, six have the surname of Trump. Now rub my nose in the dirt and call me 'Stinky' but the only other show that I can think of that had so many performers with the same surname was 'The Von Trapp Family Singers' from The Sound Of Music. If that doesn't scream 'Nepotism!' from the rooftops and cause a six bell fire alarm for anyone who cares about democracy, then I don't know what does. Donald J Trump as the 45th President Of The United States had a total plan as far as I am aware, which extended as far as the 8th of November 2016 and no further. His whole entire administration has been run as far as I can tell, as an extension of his own mad reality TV show, except that the United States citizenry is paying for it and unlike other reality TV shows, it isn't all that entertaining (actually I don't much find reality TV shows all that entertaining either). 

Although there have been announcement that the other speakers will include Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and former Governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley, and former New York City Mayor and Trump advisor Rudy Giuliani, it doesn't really have any of the party's up and coming talents and most telling of all, it doesn't have the endorsement of the 2012 nominee for President, nor the 2008 nominee for President (he is dead though; so perhaps he gets a free pass), nor the President from 2001-2009, nor the 1996 nominee for President.

In fact the most telling thing about the 2020 Republican Party National Convention is the absence of the Republican Party. If visibility is the central measure by which we are going to measure the direction by which the compass of policy is set, then I think that it is pretty obvious that the Republican Party has decided to abandon the 2020 election as a lost cause. I think that it is also fair to say that the policy mix which is being proposed by Donald Trump is exactly the same as it was in 2016; which can be summed up in two words 'Donald Trump'.

https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/media/documents/RESOLUTION_REGARDING_THE_REPUBLICAN_PARTY_PLATFORM.pdf

"RESOLVED, That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda." 

"RESOVLVED, That the 2020 Republican National Convention will adjourn without adopting a new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention;"

- GOP Platform, as at 24th Aug 2020.

That is to that that the Republican Party in 2020 (and possibly for the first time), has no official platform. 

Maybe this is about positioning one of the clan for a run at the 2024 election; maybe this because the Republican Party has already abandoned the Trump family and let them run the reality TV show on their own; maybe this is just the natural outworking of narcissism writ large, that it can not see anything beyond itself? I do not know.

Mr Trump has previously spoken about running for a third term, which assumes that he would have to win in 2020 first but as someone who says a bunch of stuff without thinking it through, this could be just him blowing hard. The Constitution was changed after the death of Franklin D Roosevelt to limit people to serving two terms as President; so him serving a third term would be impossible under the law. Or course were Mr Trump to lose 2020, then he wouldn't be operating with that as a hindrance and could serve another term from 2024 onwards: though whether or not the electorate would elect him again is another question and one that would be highly unlikely.

The general reason why I do not want to watch the Republican Convention is mostly congruous to why I didn't want to see the Democratic Convention; only more so for the Republicans. The Democrats basically have no policy strategy or vision in this election cycle because the Republican Party didn't either. The Republicans when they controlled all three branches of government from 2017-2019 didn't really do all that much with the power that they had and this time around, thy haven't even bothered to keep up pretense that there is any policy agenda or vision. Mr Trump himself is now famously reactive to the point that he appears to form his opinions based upon whatever the last person in his office said and more importantly, what he thinks will increase his personal glory and fame.

I do not see in all honesty how this Republican Convention can be any different to the rest of the substanceless rallies that Mr Trump is fond of holding. This American Carnage has now performed the experiment in democracy of what happens when the United States installs a cult of personality as the executive. It turns out to yield no legislative agenda and no purpose; likewise I fail to see the point of watching the Republican Convention if that's what's on offer.

Horse 2747 - No, I Didn't Watch The DNC - It Is Pointless

 I was asked what I thought about the Virtual Democratic Party National Convention by someone and when I told them that I hadn't seen it and that I hadn't really intended to either, I think that they were quite surprised. I think that they thought that as someone who openly admits to watching politics like sport, that I would find the DNC and RNC interesting. 

While I will admit that the virtual DNC had the sort of lineup who you would expect to see and that they probably displayed skill in oratory, my thoughts about the virtual DNC and RNC are generally in line with what I think about a lot of the political apparatus of American politics. My general opinion is that the conventions may have been useful once upon a time but not now. So, re the virtual DNC:

I think that it is archaic and serves no point any more.

The overarching story of American politics is that it is generally glacially conservative in the way that it does anything.

In fact you can go all the way back to the formation of the nation to see this in action. If we assume that the American Revolution was over by about 1777, then from the end of the revolution to the adoption of the US Constitution was 12 years; with the first election taking place another three years after that. The Congressional Congress which had seven presidents before George "Wooden Teeth" Washington got to be President with a capital P, was more or less explicit designed to be impotent except for the ability to raise armies.

From when Boston Harbour became the world's largest cup of tea, to the day that George Washington took the oath of office, was just under 18 years. To put that in perspective relative to us, that sort of timeframe takes you back to before the Second Gulf War.

The reason why I mention any of this is that the Constitutional Convention which argued out the final form of the US Constitution, actually became the model upon which both the Electoral College and the subsequent political parties' convention systems were based.

The Electoral College as laid out in the US Constitution is a sensible option for 1789 in deliberating the final outcomes of an election. If you are in a vast and unwieldy country like the United States, in a pre-industrial nation with a pre-industrial transportation system, then holding an election and reporting the results to the presiding officers, takes exactly as long as it takes for someone to physically move across the country and if you want a secure result then sending a person is actually safer than sending written instructions and results.

When you further consider that the Democratic Party which was the party of Andrew Jackson began in 1828 and before commercial railway transportation and the Republican Party began in 1854 and in the gathering clouds of the Civil War, it makes sense that they would want to hold a nomination convention.  The First Democratic Convention was held in 1832 and the first Republican Convention was held in 1854. That made sense in principle then but not any more.

However, the idea that the delegates would actually bother to listen to the wishes of people who weren't paid up members of the political parties, is an amazingly new development in US political history. Open primaries weren't held until 1976; and this came after the disastrous 1968 Democratic Convention which saw actual brawling and fistfights on the convention floor and after the impeachment and subsequent resignation of Richard Nixon.

It would appear then that holding a nomination convention is more to do with political intertia more than anything else and just like objects in physics, political parties will keep on doing what they are already doing unless acted upon by a very big force. I put it to you that COVID-19 is that very big force which has changed the behaviour of practically every institution.

What does any of this have to do with the virtual DNC Convention and what will be the virtual RNC Convention of 2020? The whole election process is so drawn out and the ability to report is so fast, that the necessity to hold the convention for the original purpose is functionally non-existent. We've already known who the candidates are for months and thanks to the 24 hour news cycle, name recognition, face recognition, and the political platforms, are all known and have been analysed and argued ad nauseum. 

At this point in time, the parties' conventions serve no other purpose than political theatre. That's fine if you like that sort of thing but since the media is already organised into echo chambers, then I don't even know what purpose that political theatre serves at this point. 

The conventions in 2020 aren't even about laying out policy or a political agenda. It was clear from about March of 2017 that Donald Trump's entire political career was about occupying the seat in the Oval Office and that that was the full extent of why he wanted the job. Even when the Republican Party controlled all three branches of government, there was no actual agenda and the entire administration has been directionless.

In contrast, the Democratic Party which spent 2016 actually having argument and debate about policy, has been forced to arrive at the 2020 election with an equally vapid agenda to the Republican Party. 

For everything that Michelle Obama, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocassio-Cortez, Jill Biden, et al might have to say, the even bigger and more pressing mission for the Democratic Party is to unseat Donald Trump. Likewise, the Republican Party Convention will have even less to say but it will do so with an air of authoritarianism. 

The 2016 Election Cycle had the Democratic Party discussing actual issues such as a $15/hr minimum wage, and the idea of Medicare for all; ultimately that was all for naught as it became obvious that the superdelegates had already rigged the game. That made Hilary Clinton the nominee. Meanwhile the Republican Party found that it had no answer to pure empty rhetoric and selected a candidate who has been on a Hitlerian style of campaign rallies ever since. The 2016 Republican Party Convention already served no other purpose than the continuation of spectacle.

In contrast, the 2020 Election Cycle ceased to actually be about discussing policy, when the COVID-19 pandemic invaded everything. Sanders suspended his campaign and with it came the end of the discussion of policy for the Democrats. It is simply impossible to wage a campaign of policy against a wall of insane rhetoric. The one thing that Donald Trump has succeeded in doing is getting the politics out of Washington. The two conventions are thus rendered pointless as there basically are no politics any more.

It is a pity because the United States needed universal health care before the pandemic and as deaths exceed 175,000 people, even the very idea of implementing it after the 2020 Election Cycle is over has been taken off the table. On that front, the United States is still yet to join the 1950s. Now that's glacial politics.

In my opinion, both the DNC and RNC Conventions are like HAL's remarks to Dave Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey - This conversation can serve no purpose anymore; Goodbye.

When it comes to me watching the DNC and RNC Conventions, the reasons for me not watching it and never really intending to either (in a country that I don't even live in by the way), are pretty logical. If you want political theatre, go and watch Hamilton on Disney+. If you want the laying out of policy, then do not look here. 

Horse 2746 - I Saw The Sign And It Opened Up My Mind; I Saw The Sign

 It seems so obvious that it shouldn't need to be said but literally everything in the world that isn't part of the natural environment has to some degree been the result of deliberate choices by humans. Always somewhere in the built environment, is the evidence of choices and decisions made by a human, to make a thing look the way that it does.

I know that should be obvious but it still amazes me how very little effort that some people put into those design choices. Among my pet peeves which matters so very much because it is of no consequence at all, are the diamond signs that people put in the rear window of their car which read "Baby In Car". These are made all the more terrible when you realise that the original sign read "Baby On Board", which has a nice alliterative ring to it because of the repetition of the B sound. The signs "Baby In Car" or even "Child In Car" which I have also seen in people's rear windows are neither alliterative nor funny; which is doubly confusing as for someone to put such a sign in their rear window, also required a deliberate choice. I do not understand what kind of logic would drive someone to make that particular choice.

This brings me to the following sign which I have seen many garbage bins at railway stations, which I think is glorious because whoever made the sign also made some very deliberate choices; one of which I am amused by because I really don't understand what's going on.

Three of these things (the chip packet, yoghurt/pudding pot, and plastic bag) are entirely rational and reasonable things to put on a rubbish sign. These empty bits of packaging belong in the garbage bin. This is well done.

There picture of the soiled nappy is, I think, excellent. I do not have children and so have never had the experience of changing an emergency nappy in public; so while I don't immediately empathise with the experience through having shared it, I can very much imagine an accompanying sense of terror which would come after wondering what to do with the package of excreta. 

It's probably obvious that a soiled nappy belongs in the garbage bin but if there is one thing that I have learned, it is that you can not underestimate the mindlessness of people and so the act of placing the obvious on a sign, is reasonable to me.

The one outrider on this sign is the picture of the pie with one bite taken out of it. This element of the design of this sign, is in my not very well paid opinion, utter genius.

Readers to this blog come from many places around the world but putting a picture of a pie on a sign for a garbage bin, would probably only be thought of in three countries: the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia. I know that the United States has a strong pie culture but in context, this can only be a meat pie. General Motors ran the advertising jingle "Football, Meat Pies, Kangaroos, and Holden Cars" on radio and television for many years; which is directly equivalent to "Football, Baseball, Apple Pies, and Chevrolet". Given that this is a sign which is on garbage bins in Australia, I don't know if whoever made this could have come up with a more Australian Australian thing.

The other reason why I think that this is a work of genius is because the immediate story is just so inexplicable.

This is a meat pie with one bite taken out of it. What I want to know is, what was wrong with that pie? To be fair I have eaten some pretty ordinary pies but I do not ever recall being so repulsed by one that after one bite, my thoughts were that I should throw it in the garbage bin. I can not think of a pie so terrible that after just one bite, I would think about banishing it to the depths of gehenna. For a pie to make me throw it away after just one bite, would have meant that it was so incredibly awful that it would have had to generate an immediate visceral response. In fact, it would probably have to generate the same kinds of emotion in me, as having that soiled nappy does for that parent.

That's why this sign works so excellently. If in this brave new world we are crediting the recall to memory of five things as the work of presidential genius, then Chip Packet, Yoghurt Pot, Plastic Bag, Soiled Nappy, and Meat Pie With One Bite Taken Out Of It, has burned itself into my memory. 

The purpose of a sign is to communicate something in a hurry. The purpose of advertising is to communicate something in a hurry that stays with someone and will hopefully persuade them to buy whatever it is that is being sold. This sign, if it wasn't immediately obvious, is communicating that this is the garbage bin and that garbage belongs in it. For me at least (and quite possibly at most) it sold me a story with no rational explanation that I can think of.

Just like a sign which used to be on the M4 to Penrith for Museum Of Fire which had a graphic of a fire truck that was itself on fire, or the little graphic which was in the manual for the Sony PlayStation which had an angry kid pouring water into the device and a cross next to it, or the defaced signs which used to be on Sydney Trains which when altered read "Please eat a disabled or elderly person if required" and "At night, rave near the guard, naked with a blue light", this sign with the pie with one bite taken out of it, will live for a long time in my memory. That meant it worked.

Addenda:

Dogs shall be carried? But what if I don't have one? Do I need to go and get one?

There's some strong 'wahey' energy here.

WAHEY!

Horse 2745 - Copywrong

I am not the first person to notice this by a long shot; in fact, the argument about how long copyright should last for is probably as old as the idea of copyright itself. The argument in favour of copyright is a noble one and I think that it should be self-evident that people who make stuff and create stuff should have a monopoly on the right to say what happens to the stuff that they have made and the right to profit from the stuff that they have made. The argument about how long copyright should last for, is not an argument against the creator's rights to derive benefit from their stuff but rather the ability of people who follow to be able to transform and carry on working.

Perhaps the most famous protagonist in the fight to extend copyright is Disney Corporation. I think that this is ironic given that they themselves derive massive amounts of income from works which they themselves didn't invent and have transformed and intellectual property that they have subsequently acquired; partly in the wake of the manipulation of copyright legislation which they have argued in favour of and benefit from. Disney Corporation apart from taking a bunch of fairy tales and pre-copyright intellectual property, was started probably on the basis of another piece of borderline theft; with the mouse being a derivation of another animated rabbit (allegedly?).

However my speck of irritation today is not about the mouse (because quite frankly I think that he is boring) but rather that juggernaut of culture, Star Wars.

The Star Wars space opera monstrosity with nine numbered movies and a bunch of other adjacent movies and television series, is possibly the most valuable piece of popular culture in the last 50 years, outside of sport. Yet the past two decades have produced three abysmal movies and three adequate movies. I think that this is partly the result of the action of copyright legislation.

I was born in 1978; which was before the age of widespread home videotape and way way before widespread home access to the internet. The world was certainly a different place. For instance, if you wanted to talk to someone far away, you needed to find a device attached to a wire in a wall; which I bet that modern kiddos would recognise as a telephone because of skeuomorphism but not be able to use if confronted by one. Likewise, the only way that you saw a movie, was if it was in the cinema or if it was on television.

From after the end of The Return Of The Jedi, the movie set of three was the complete set for a long time. Naturally Lucasfilm released the movies on video and then DVD but that was it. 

I want you to cast your mind back to 1999. George Lucas is sitting in his room as the only one allowed by copyright law to do anything with the intellectual property. The beautiful nerds of the world are all sitting around waiting for the next thing and then when Episode I was released they all get really excited before they all collectively come to the awful realisation that it is objectively rubbish. Then Episode II happens. Then Episode III happens which is probably worth about half of a good movie. All of the beautiful nerds are now scarred and scared.

I want you to imagine for a second that there is no such thing as Episodes I, II or III. Let's pretend for a second that copyright legislation was never poisoned by the mouse. Had copyright legislation remained at the original 30 years, then as early as 2007, all of the beautiful nerds could have had at it and made their own movie. I ask the question, would a movie in 2008 which had been produced by people who care and without any knowledge of Episodes I, II and III have been better than what George Lucas inflicted on the world? I suppose that such a movie could have been worse but given that there might have been more of them, the marketplace of ideas would have killed off the terrible ones really quickly.

I think that this general line of argument can be applied to a bunch of things. Let me take the example of Batman. I have seen the 1960s television series with Adam West and I will admit that the only movie that I have seen was the 1989 Tim Burton movie. Nevertheless, I have read the entire run of comics from 1939-1949 thanks to a public library collection.

Somewhere down the line, someone decided to change Batman who had appeared in Detective Comics, into a superhero whose superpower is spending money while  undermining public discourse. Had Batman drifted into the public domain in 1969, then independent comic writers could have imagined Batman as a detective, doing detectivey things. Batman as a detective in the town of Gotham, Nottinghamshire; with the entire cast of no-goods being reimagined as vaguely dodgy English racketeers, would have been far more interesting than the darker and edgier and darker and broodier thing that we have now.

Can you imagine what we might have had if characters from different universes had been allowed to inhabit the same space? Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown and Perry Mason would have solved the Jack The Ripper cases. Speed Racer could have gone to Le Mans to race Michael Valliant. Walter White would have been caught by Van Der Valk. I do not like knowing that we have missed out on something just because copyright legislation prevents people from running with what they love until the creator is long dead.

When it comes to issues of copyright surrounding sport, I am grateful that there have been really old motor races and football matches that have evaded the copyright strike algorithms. If you want to look at old stuff, or perhaps independently make a documentary, then having the footage available is really useful. It is sometimes hard enough to find footage which exists, let alone whether or not the current rights holders are going to strike your video off for copyright infringement.

When the agitators for extending the period of copyright in legislation were busy poisoning a future so that it could never be, in their rationally selfish pursuit of profit they left behind a wake of unintended consequences. Copyright legislation as it applies to fast moving technology like computer software is a personal bane of mine. If you are trying to resurrect an old device, then software which sits behind a copyright wall can render what you need both impossible and useless because the publishers in addition to not supporting the software anymore also don't want you to have access to its use. That might very well suit them but it is beyond annoying if you can not get inside files to extract what you need to.

I am grateful that one particular computer game that I like, not only became abandonware due to the company going bankrupt but that the developers released the source code as open source. I am running a 17 year old computer game in 4K and with a myriad of customisable updates, thanks to a community of enthusiasts. Admittedly this is a pretty unique set of circumstances but it demonstrates in principle why the expiration of copyright on a particular piece of intellectual property is just as important as the need for the original creator to be adequately compensated for their work in the first place.

Don't get me wrong. I do not wish to suggest that copyright of itself is a bad thing. People who work and create things should be adequately compensated for a thing; especially if they make a living that lots of people like. However, the invention of copyright which was originally itself designed to stimulate the advancement of creativity, actually stifles it. In general, I think that if you haven't been able to monetise a thing in three decades, then you have blown your chances. You should have moved on in all seriousness and let someone else have a go at it.

The lightning rod for my annoyance in this instance and the reason why I am addressing this though, is because someone asked me what I thought of Star Wars Episode I. It's objectively terrible and its existence was aided and abetted by stupid copyright legislation.

Horse 2744 - It's The Saturday Pull-Out Ad Section!

The Evils of Advertising - because it's all about the ₱enge!

 Do you feel unnaturally happy all of the time? Do you spend your days with glee and merriment? That could either mean that you are either abnormally well adjusted, completely oblivious to the world around you, or alternatively a willfully hateful person who derives enjoyment from the misfortune of others.

If you are none of these things, then why not try A General Sense Of Existential Dread. A General Sense Of Existential Dread could be about climate change, racism, poverty, sexism, a mistrust of psychopaths or sociopaths, or even about the realisation of your own mortality.

Try A General Sense Of Existential Dread - only ₱499

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Dear Karen,

Things are rough for you right now. Your name was once a fairly boring kind of middle of the road, white bread with mayonnaise, kind of name but now, you are the object of universal derision and scorn. Have you considered being nice to people and not going to see the manager? Have you tried being excellent, lovely, and trustworthy?

If not, you can change your name. Changing your name: for when you don't want to change your behaviour and attitude - only ₱19,999

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If you have an unexplained vortex to another dimension which has opened up in your house (usually in the spare room) and you don't want the creatures that lurk on the other side to come through, may we suggest our simple solution?

An Exclamation Triangle.

Just like that triangle which you can put behind your car when you are changing a tyre or when broken down on the side of the road, an Exclamation Triangle in your spare room when set up in front of the unexplained vortex to another dimension, is almost guaranteed to stop aliens, spictrums, nebulous energy blobs, and bodiless mind-control entities from coming through.

The Exclamation Triangle is the multi-purpose multi-versal sign for everyone and everything to keep well away and since everyone and everything everywhere and everywhen is obedient, they will obey the sign.

Exclamation Triangle - only ₱1999

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Do you suffer from madness? Do you quite enjoy madness and don't want to be cured from it? Are you so mad that you are completely hatstand? We recommend Dr von Wonderhorße's Wonderdrug.

Will it cure you? We don't know. Is it highly addictive and dangerous? You bet!  Will it kill you? We asked the 95% of people who died as a result of taking Dr von Wonderhorße's Wonderdrug and they said nothing. 

Dr von Wonderhorße's Wonderdrug: It is simultaneously the cure and the cause of many of your problems and will both cure and cause them by removing you entirely from them. 

Dr von Wonderhorße's Wonderdrug - only ₱799 per packet of 20. No repeat course necessary.

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Do you fall asleep at night? Do you get hungry in the afternoon? Do you sometimes forget where you have left things? You could be suffering from Zealandia without even knowing about it.

Zealandia is a disease where the symptoms are unknown and where the people who have it might not know that they carry it. People who have Zealandia could be sitting next to you on the bus right now, they could be handling food, they could be operating heavy machinery, and they might even be in positions of power.

Zealandia is a serious disease with no known cure, no known symptoms, and no known treatment. What we do know is that every single day, thousands of people are passing it on to other people who are then turning into new carriers. We call these people New Zealanders.

Please send your non-tax-deductible and non-traceable donation to the End New Zealand Forever Fund and together, we will end New Zealand.

End New Zealand - starting from ₱2000

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One slice of bread, a scrape of Vegemite, not quite a quarter of an avocado, one toaster, seven column inches in a national daily newspaper, a hefty amount of generational indignation, combined with a large amount of class warfare - these are the necessary ingredients for creating a self-righteous cultural storm which manages to provide thousands of people with a healthy amount of satisfied smug. Never mind that several components of the story are internally contradictory or that the people who will end up suffering never actually read that newspaper in the first place.

Smashed Avocado Toast - ₱2195

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If you have a desire to yell at strangers at 3am in the morning but lack the courage and have too many inhibitions, if you like the taste of a mahogany cupboard, if you want to talk about something and have an air of authority whole actually knowing three-quarters of diddly-squat, then you need Jessie James' Tennessee Bathtub Whiskey.

This unique blend of whatever hooch can be found that afternoon, matured in pine barrels, and triple distilled, is the perfect amount of cheapening the product wherever possible while being barely drinkable.

Bottled in Bar Fight County, Tennessee, Jessie James' Tennessee Bathtub Whiskey is unlicensed, illegal and probably dangerous. 

Jessie James' Tennessee Bathtub Whiskey - ₱3795

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For over 30 years, John Berk has been the only radio host who has dared to ask the hard questions. John Berk asks the questions that nobody else was thinking of. John Berk asks the questions; they provide the answers.

The John Berk Show - He's the biggest Berk on radio. 6pm to 9pm on The Falcon 621AM. 

Horse 2743 - In These Uncertain Times

In these uncertain times, in these crazy times, which are unprecedented in living memory, in which we do not know what the future will hold, we all need to come together even when we are apart, by uniting for freedom and hope and look forward to a time where the new normal will be different, in an unknown future, in these uncertain and crazy times.

In this scary time, we should remember that what scares us helps to make us more prepared. Preparedness makes us powerful.

We need to come together while we are apart, in a new wave of unity, because we are all in this together and together we are one. In times like these it has never been more important to consider the future and each other. Together we will beat this. Together we are strong. Together we will find a way in these challenging times. 

In this time of crisis, many of us are thinking about how to uplift those who need it most. We have to think the new normal.

In this new normal we need to remember that we only borrow this dream and that tomorrow, we will wake up to a new dawn. This too will pass. We should all enjoy this moment in time because although it is terrible, it also might be as good as it gets.

We need to remember what it is that we remember about each other because it is only the memories that we make which we will carry forward into the future. This isn't a restart, it's a rethink. We need to change how we work. Let's put smart to work for us.

In these challenging times, we need to remember who is for us in times of need. It is only by remembering who we need that we remember who we are. You have to believe in a dream if you want to have one in the first place. If you don't believe in the dream even the ones that can come true, won't.

In these hard and confusing times, people might not be feeling happy. We want to make people feel less confused and anxious by creating more fun. It's all about creating the fun. 

In these crazy days it is important to remind yourself of who the most important person in the world is, you. You need to do what is best for you, even if that means not doing what is best for other people. You need 'me time'. 

Could anyone have imagined that days like these could have brought so much chaos and adversity? That is why we need to stay strong in the face of adversity so that we can face the days of success ahead. 

Today we're rethinking how to move forward, so that today's destination is tomorrow's starting point. Today is unpredictable and unprecedented but it doesn't have to be unknowable. Today we are rethinking emotion and heart so that we can invent creative ways to attack the future.

In these unprecedented times, it can be all too easy to think that they will last forever; that is why we should try to imagine a new future. What do you want tomorrow to be?

Let's be alone together. We have learned that we don't need people, we need to be smarter. You can have staff, or you can have smarts. Let's put smart to work. One hour will give what another has refused and in these hours, we want to pay it forward because it's later than you think.

No matter how much things change in an uncertain world, some things will always stay the same. We need to hold on to what we know is certain in these uncertain times and make sure that we aren't blown away by the winds of change.

Some times we need to look at how far we've come to see how far we'll go in the future. If we know where we've come from and who we are, then we can know how we will go in the future. Keep walking.

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All of this is genuine copy from advertising. All of this has been said with a calming music bed underneath it and all of it was said in a calming tone with a very particular cadence which sounds almost like the questioning intonation but falls short of having a rising terminal.

I don't know if I am predisposed to want to pull apart what is being said but having heard almost exactly the same kind of broad gibberish many times over, I really question how genuine any of it is. Advertising in principle is designed to make you want to feel something so that you will part with your money and buy stuff. I suppose that this kind of approach must be working if it keeps on happening to the point of becoming a trope.

The only thing that any of this makes me actually want to go out and buy, is a kebab. If you're going to repeat a message of how uncertain everything is, then what could be more uncertain than what's in a kebab and how you are going to feel afterwards.

Horse 2742 - You'll Never Walk Alone

To say that 2020 has gone as far as anyone expected it to, is a lie. This year has been of anxiety for some people, of deep sadness with sickness and death for others, and of great annoyance and self righteous grandstanding for others. The grand question which is being asked of us is one of what kind of obligations do we owe to our fellow citizens; with the answers being returned ranging from concern to none at all. 

The present time is one of those rare moments which is shared by all of us; which has meant that you can refer to 'this' and 'it', while being completely understood. It has become a descriptive which needs no definite object while at the same time, there is one one object. Naturally you'd expect that people have retreated to their happy places of culture; with 90s sitcom having a resurgence on streaming services like Netflix, as well as songs which have reentered the public consciousness such as 'We're All In This Together' by Ben Lee from 2005.

As a football fan (a rather long-suffering one at that) and a fan of Liverpool Football Club, the song 'You'll Never Walk Alone' has never really been that far away from my consciousness, considering that it is sung at virtually every Liverpool home game. What's made this extremely weird though, with the 2019/20 season extending for more than twelve months because of the present pandemic, is that 'You'll Never Walk Alone' has been absent from the terraces because the crowds were also absent. The story of how we got to this song as the anthem for a football club is somewhat complex and is itself quite interesting.

You have to go back to 1909 and the play 'Liliom' by the Hungarian playwright  Ferenc Molnár. The play which was a commercial failure, was then shopped around to be put onto a bigger stage and Molnar even went so far as to reject an offer by Giacomo Puccini. It was however picked up by Rodgers and Hammerstein who turned it into the musical 'Carousel'.

The titular Liliom which is the Hungarian word for "lily" a slang term for "tough guy" (his name is actuallu Andreas Zavocky) is the spruiker for a carousel at a travelling circus. He falls in love with a woman called Julie and when Julie falls pregnant, Liliom  attempts a robbery in order to help support his new family. However, he commits suicide after failing at the attempted robbery. He ends up in purgatory.

The song is sung twice during the play. The first time by Julie's friends immediately after Liliom has died and it is sung by way of encouragement by Julie's friends, as she is newly widowed. The next time it is sung is when Liliom  and Julia's now sixteen year old daughter Louise, is going through her graduation ceremony from school. Liliom  who is still in purgatory is allowed one day on earth, on which he visits his daughter. Louise is upset and doesn't want to join in but somehow she can feel her father's encouragement despite him being invisible to her and she begins to sing as well. In 'Carousel' Liliom became Billy Bigelow.

The song which was part of the musical came out in 1945 but it wasn't until the 1963 release by the Liverpool band Gerry and the Pacemakers, that the song was taken up by the supporters of Liverpool Football Club who began singing it at Anfield. It became part of the soundtrack for Liverpool's glory years as well as it's darkest days. The really weird thing about the song is that in spite of its ridiculous cheesiness, it works in both times of great success and in times of hardship. It followed Liverpool Football Club right through the success of league titles and FA Cup and European Cup wins in the 1970s and 1980s, and then was rereleased by Gerry and the Pacemakers following the crowd crush at Hillsborough Stadium in which 96 people died.

Liverpool Football Club soon acquired a new reworking of their club crest with two flames either side of the shield for both the disasters at Heysel and Hillsborough, and the complete lintel of the gates which were named after the famed manager Bill Shankly; which also bears the legend 'You'll Never Walk Alone'.

Liverpool's string of success came to an abrupt end in 1990 after the British Government placed a ban on English clubs competing in European competition for five years and Liverpool specifically, for ten. Those conditions were eventually lifted but not before significant damage had been done. During Liverpool's ban from European competition, the Premier League was formed and the European football association UEFA reorganised the European Cup into the new European Champions League; which also meant that Liverpool were specifically banned from competing and missed out on the extra revenues that clubs like Manchester United and Chelsea were getting. Liverpool's own internal squabbles didn't help and it wasn't until this year that Liverpool won another league title; being 30 years after the previous one.

Perhaps one of the strangest ironies about Liverpool's 19th league win is that the song 'You'll Never Walk Alone' has not been heard around Anfield because of lockdowns and lockouts of fans because of the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 has visited Liverpool's 19th league win. I was immediately struck by the thought that Liverpool winning the league came at a time when thanks to various kinds of restrictions, we are alone from each other. For me personally, it has meant that virtually nobody in my exceedingly small sphere of contact cared. I do not think that it is beyond the realms of possibility to suggest that since March 23, the number of people who I have had an in person conversation with for more than 10 minutes who wasn't a member of my family, is 5.

I was standing in line for the bus this morning, when it was 6°C outside according to the electronic clock thing on the other side of the street and someone must have seen me standing there shivering when they started singing 'You'll Never Walk Alone' loudly as they walked off down the street. It was only then that I realised that the end of my scarf with the club crest and the legend 'You'll Never Walk Alone' was sticking out. 

He could have obviously been a Liverpool fan but given what we're all going through, he equally might not have been. I was reminded that back in April, yet another cover  version of 'You'll Never Walk Alone' featuring British Army Captain Sir Tom Moore singing with theatre star Michael Ball and the NHS Voices of Care Choir was released to raise money for Britain's NHS. I find it interesting that a song from a musical, which is sung after a character commits suicide; which was adpoted by a football club, has now been readopted by people in this pandemic. Maybe this is a time of heightened anxiety, worry, sadness, sickness, and death but if we are supposed to learn anything from this, it should be that people do things and build things better while in community.

Horse 2741 - We Don't Need Glib 'Mateship', We Need Big Practical Love, Mr Morrison

I heard the Prime Minister on the radio yesterday, basically trying to tell off the Victorian Premier Dan Andrews for trying to take measures to stop further community transmission of COVID-19. Victoria has gone back into a lockdown of sorts and Scott Morrison was doing his best to paint Dan Andrews as some kind of pantomime villain; by trying to suggest that the measures aren't necessary and that people needed to be reminded of the value of 'mateship'. 

Now I realise that Mr Morrison likes to play the character of the daggy dad but here, he was trying to recall the not so distant past by using the same kind of language that John Howard used. To be honest, I don't know how well that resonates with a public which has moved on twenty years; nor one that has the actual capability of remembering the past that Mr Howard was alluding to. It is worth remembering that within three years, Mr Howard sent this country off to war upon the basis of a convenient pack of lies.

Mr Howard as Prime Minister played identity politics and culturally appropriated the terms of ‘mateship’, ‘battler’ and the ‘fair go’ etc. as a kind of secular religion. What might have previously been shibboleths of the political Left were repackaged as individualist and culturally conservative. At the same time, his government was busy selling off government assets (most heinously Telstra) and redesigning the tax system to make poorer people bear a bigger brunt of the total effective tax burden. 

All of this together was actually followed by the cultural left and because they were able to recast those things as decidedly masculinist icons; while at the same time, they were given permission to bash religious institutions. The Same-Sex marriage debate was probably almost deliberately left out there for the Left to win, while the Right went about smashing the apparatus of the state while nobody was looking. It is perhaps only now that the cultural Left has woken up and realised that while they were off fighting the culture wars, the Right already won the economic ones.

What this means for me personally is that someone who is broadly culturally conservative but economically leftist, has been politically homeless for more than two decades. 

If the economic left is going to win anything out of this pandemic (because it will change what normal is) then I think that it needs to claim the political ground that nobody has been playing on for almost a century - love.

Yes, I said 'love'. I don't mean in some romantic sense but in that hard definition of brotherly and sisterly love which the ancient Greeks called Philos. I say this not out of some patriotic love of country because quite frankly I haven't yet heard a sensible story or mythos of Australia that I'd like to buy into but rather, the broader notions of Commonwealth that people like Henry Parkes hinted at. Whatever this project of Australia is that we've either been signed on for or conscripted into, the idea that a commonwealth can do bigger things than individuals, is the basis of every organisation since the beginning of time.

I remember the words of John Franklin Kennedy "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" and I cringe.

By assuming that the country can do nothing for us, we repeatedly vote accordingly and then wonder why after having stripped it of its capabilities it has become so incapable. We should ask what the country can do for us and then work accordingly to make sure that it can do what we expect.

I think that what we should expect a country to do, is love its citizenry by demonstrating that through practical work. Hard love expresses itself through the work that it does. I don't want to hear empty rhetoric about 'mateship' or whatever else kind of secular semi-religious claptrap that Mr Morrison wants to employ, religion if it is to be worth anything expresses itself through practical love for people. It should look after the elderly, it should look after children, it should look after people who have come to us in distress. The hard practical love which cares about the citizenry of the nation looks at education policy, housing policy, justice, as well as providing enough of a subsistence if life doesn't play out as hoped. I do not know how you can claim to have love for the people of your own country, if the instrument of government is used make sure that the have nots still do not have, while taking what little that they do have to give to the have mores. 

Sure, you can frame the debate around 'mateship’, ‘battler’ and the ‘fair go’ etc. and even speak in terms of the economy (praise it), then what's the point? You may as well be banging a gong like a four year old. What if you have economic models which stretch into the future and yet still enact policies which don't care for people, then what? You can bang on about giving people tax cuts, franking credits, changing the rules on capital gains, even reforming the entire tax system but if you don't use the state as the instrument for big practical love, then so what?

You build a nation by being patient. You don't necessarily look to who else is doing well because that doesn't really help. A nation is made great by being kind to its citizenry. It doesn't need to trumpet about itself on the world stage, it certainly doesn't win by weaponising a sense of nationalism and sticking its nose in where it doesn't belong. 

In a political sense, you don't win by tallying up wrongs or waving around the injustice that you've perpetrated on the front pages of newspapers. You even engage in truth-telling and confronting the injustices of the past and then demonstrate love by correcting them.

We can make glib statements about how we're all in this together but big practical love just quietly puts up with anything and everything that comes along and does what it needs to. Of course it trusts in the citizenry, shares their hopes, and endures no matter what because in the grandest of political discourses, practical love is the only thing that can be absolutely guaranteed to never become obsolete. 

That's why I do not understand Prime Minister Morrison's rhetoric. You can't mine the memories of people who have already died and the people who are suffering don't really benefit from fancy words. The people who are hurting don't need to be reminded of some nebulous value like 'mateship', they need big practical love. If you are running a government, you will be remembered for how you showed that big practical love.

Horse 2740 - OPERATION CHAINSAW!!!

Anyone who has studied Australian history should be familiar with the idea that Australia is a federation of unfriendly powers who inhabit the same island continent. Indeed it was quite possible that instead of having one country occupy this continent, we could have very well had several. Admittedly that might mean that we would be at constant war with each other but that's not a lot different from what happens now at every COAG meeting. During the process of arguing about federation, both Fiji and New Zealand decided that they didn't want to be part of it after all and so didn't send any delegates to the final constitutional convention.
Contained within the history of Australia, is the story of the colonies becoming separate from each other. In fact, prior to 1829, it might have been legally the case that the entire continent belonged to New South Wales. Thus the history of the various proclamations of the colonies which finally became the states and territories, should be properly seen as a bunch of inferior ne'er-do-wells deciding that they weren't good enough to be part of the glorious state of New South Wales. It is not by accident that the number plates of New South Wales have borne the legend of "The First State" or "The Premier State"; in part because we're too modest to tell the truth and put "The Best State" or "You Are All Inferior" on our number plates.

Also, we have seen since 1788, the borders of New South Wales gradually shrink as the inferior ne'er-do-wells decided to claim their own bits of dirt. Naturally we as the magnanimous ambassadors of truth and justice, we let them have at it but to be honest, we don't really want to be reinfected with stupidity. Hence why New South Wales embarked on the noble project of Operation Chainsaw.

Operation Chainsaw is quite simply, the cutting off of all the bits of Australia that are clearly useless and pathetic.

It should be noted that we the people of New South Wales were the ones responsible for cutting off New Zealand and Tasmania from the mainland. Although history records that Abel Tasman circumnavigated Tasmania, we now know that that was impossible for two reasons. Firstly that he was Dutch and therefore probably on drugs and was lying and Secondly, history doesn't happen until the British Empire does it.  That's the reason why Tenzing Norgay isn't credited with being the first person to climb Mount Everest, despite probably having been up hundreds of times. New Zealand also used to be attached to Australia before we the good and noble people decided to cut it off as well.
This is why both Tasmania and New Zealand have just sort of floated off into the ocean. There isn't really much of a point to those things and so if we let them float away, then we don't really have to worry about them any more. New Zealand has floated so far away that they became their own country and to be fair, we're fine with that.

This brings us nicely to the subject of Victoria and Queensland. Queensland is interesting because it knows that it is useless. In fact, in 1922 the Queensland Legislative Council (that is the upper house) voted itself out of existence; which is why Queensland only has a unicameral parliament. Victoria on the other hand, had a eureka moment once but hasn't quite worked out exactly what it is for. I suppose that this is what happens when your creation myth involves someone called Batman.
This is what Operation Chainsaw is about. Quite simply, we the people of New South Wales are using giant chainsaws to cut off both Victoria and Queensland in the hopes that they'll float away like Tasmania and New Zealand already have done.

The straight lines on the map are the proposed cut lines. One should remember the wise saw from carpentry which says that you should "measure twice and cut once"; which means that one should double-check one's measurements for accuracy before cutting a piece of wood; otherwise it may be necessary to cut again, wasting time and material. While that might be easy to say, in practice it is very hard; especially if you are using a giant continent cutting chainsaw. The proposed lines are straight but it's all gone a bit wiggly.

Of course to hide the fact that we are trying to cut away to clearly useless bits of this island continent, we have labelled our chainsaw lines as rivers. Legally speaking, the border between New South Wales and Victoria is the southern bank of the Murray River and the border with Queensland is the northern bank of the various rivers. The reason is that they're not really rivers, they're just the cuts between the states that have filled up with water.
Eventually the plan is to cut all the way to Cameron Corner and then turn downwards and in the south, cut right through the mountains to Cape Howe. It's just that cutting through mountains is hard; which is why we had a test go at it and accidentally invented the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Scheme.

Hopefully we'll get this done sooner rather than later because Victoria is clearly a virus hotspot with all of their latte driven insanity and Queensland is just downright bonkers; having been responsible for inventing Pauline Hanson, Barnaby Joyce and Clive Palmer. I don't know what kind of biological program that Queensland is undertaking but if that's the result, we are well advised to get our chainsaws operating faster. Queensland also doesn't believe in Daylight Savings time; which because of the time difference, if it is 8:30pm in Sydney, it is the mid-1970s in Brisbane.

Note:
Some parts of this post are lies. Actually, lots are.