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Opinion of the Drum – Rejected
07 Thursday Apr 2011
Posted in Emmjay
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Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle %d
07 Thursday Apr 2011
Posted in Emmjay
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They’ve got thes great new blogs over on ABC . It’s called, ” Be the first to comment”. There’s fucken thousands of em!
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Sometimes the “Be the first to comment” just disappears.
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Ha ha. Yeah, there pretty strict with that one. They moderate you before you can write the post…chuckle.
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This is an all time classic, Hos. Pre-submission moderation.
Log in here to whack yourself over the head …..
I suppose being the first to comment probably appeals to people who queue up for days waiting for the latest Apple gizmo.
Ummmm Der.
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Oh well, I can laugh myself to sleep now;)
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A classic post Emmjay, but doesn’t it really belong over in ‘Leashed’?
🙂
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Yes, I thought so for a minute there. Until I realised I wasn’t totally up to speed about posting pictures in comments 🙂
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I realised (yesterday sometime) that your rejection notice was odd or almost miraculous. My two comments went up immediately – and I mean immediately as in hit the button and bingo it appeared. There was no time for anyone to read or moderate it. So – how come this happened to you? Did they suddenly have an email address or name marked for rejection?
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Your guess is as good as mine, Viv. Voice probably has the lowdown on how they know. I used a range of pseuds and fake Email addresses. Jules reckons you actually didn’t need to put an address in, but I suspect that they fixed that loophole. I wonder whether they can filter on IP address – or even MAC (mot as in apple, but as in “Media Access Control” address – unique for every PC. Dunno how they would do it, but I have come to expect that everything is possible.
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I never put an email address in, no matter what nickname. About 2 years ago I found that it was unnecessary.
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There is a beaut new one on Bolt – been there since sometimes this morning and still no comments published. I commented as soon as I saw it – or rather found it.
If their aim was to give one the shits they are certainly succeeding – good thing I had the tank pumped out the other day! (okay – erk erk)
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Channel 10, reverting to prior form, has hired Bolt for his own Sunday Morning Analysis program.
That’s right, Bolt and news anaylsis from Bolt. I’m opening a book on Piers Akkerman being one of his first guests along with Albrechtsen et al.
It really is too much to even contemplate. What credibility does Bolt have? He can only be being hired to pander to a growing audience of Australians who’d rather have their thinking done for them. Right up ten’s audience demographic.
And this in the same week that Glen Beck, America’s version of Bolt, has been taken off air for failing to reach an audience.
Makes ya think don’ it?
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No, it makes Bolt think for me. And what a relief that is. Quite akin to punching a grogan.
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Andrew Bolt with is own in depth analysis program ought to be a hoot. I can see them queueing up now, Piers Akermann, Ray Hadley, Steve Price, Alan Jones, that goose from WA and some all important navel gazers from Melbourne, why you could even thrown in Kyle Sandilands for some entertainment. The list is just endless.
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How great -not grating- it was to watch Insiders this am!
No #$*ing Bolt!
Even though you are in total disagreement with almost everything everyone says, it is still a blessed bliss not to have that constant background barking from the wildest animal in the media! Not a single interruption, not a single insult, not a single raising of the voice, not a single blood-curdling competition to be heard!
I didn’t reach for the remote once and I didn’t head for the vegie patch until well after the show was over!
Blessed bliss! Equanimity is returned to the inner sanctum of the skull.
Now if we can get Barry tossed out as well… ah, but that’s too much on a pleb’s wish list!
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How true Ato, one can only hope its the last we see of Ackermann as well , though I do see him as the village fool he is when David Marr is in the same lineup.
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One learns a lot at the swine bar.
I hadn’t heard of Bolt until about 6 moths ago in UL.
Now: In Here; you have thrown in Ackersman and David Marr.
Who are they ? Are they (Liberal)TV personalities, or writers?
And who is Ray Hadley ?
Why don’t I know of them??
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..And Barry-and Steve Price?
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Ackerman writes a column (sic) in The Telegraph, his views tend to be myopic Liberal. Just give him a word and he can spin Liberal rhetoric around it and why the Labor party is so bad for the country. I mean you could be talking about concrete driveways and he’ll regurgitate the same crap.
David Marr writes for the SMH and The Age (I think) tends to be a little leftish. On insiders he’s very good at amplifying Bolt and Ackerman to show what geese they generally are.
Steve Price was bought to Sydney by 2UE to replace The Parrot when he left for 2GB failed miserably. Likes to think he’s a shock jock. He’s on a Melbourne radio station now and sticks his bib in on the 7pm project on Channel 10.
As for Ray Hadley he’s the knuckleheads friend on 2GB after The Parrot. Knows very little about nothing.
I’m sure Queensland has its equivalents Vectis.
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Algy, wasn’t Ray Hadley a former controversial rugby league referee or some such rocket science ?
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Commentator Emm, lacked the intelligence or skill to referee tiddly winks let alone a game of league.
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I think he did have something to do with sport. Years ago Hadley used to stand in for Lawsy when he wanted a day off. The radio station in Albury had his stuff on the radio and I sometimes listened when driving to town to do shopping. Hadley was learning the shock jock trade and wasn’t fully developed in those days. These days I either listen to one of my CDs or tune into the Conversation hour.
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They are obviously Sydney or Melbournites.
I suppose that one would think that I knew of Bolt,* seeing as I am the resident (token) capitocialist–but I don’t, nor Ackerman.
Naturally as these blogs are kept for eternity..’gulp’, I wouldn’t write that if it wasn’t true.
They’ve just passed me by.. Or maybe I’m not (locally) political enough. My eyes go straight to International news. OR, salacious gossip 🙂
* Well, I’ll qualify that! I do now, of course through the bleating in The Drum.
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Believing that responding to a moderated blog run by a major institution, whether The Murdoch Moloch or Moloch Lite, Scott’s ABC, can be anything other than raw materials for the furtherment of their agenda, is to engage in a kind of naivety that borders on the culpable.
Given the amount of griping about the ABC that goes on here I’m constantly left wondering why you bother at all. Unleashed/Drum has been crap for years now, as are all similar sites. The real debate is out there but you have to look for it.
These days there are more than enough “privateers” with real intellectual rigour and socio-cultural clout, that bothering with the trogladytes the ABC licenses seems counterproductive; the IPA idiots, tenured wide boys from this bank or that insurance co, the fatuous self serving PR hack opinionators, and lets never forget, David Barnett, the poor old dear, spending his dying days inflating and deflating; these people are not part of any solution. They are however a significant part of the problem.
As Noam Chomsky would have it, the ABC has now become part of the mechanism of compliance, a major feedback forcing consent by limiting the debate to an Orwellian simplicity.
All that having been said, Unleashed was fun back in 2007/08. At that time the respondents were more important than the contributors and the lively back and forth was not only fun but illuminating. You learned things. Now it just seems like an edifice groaning under the ponderous weight of its own irrelevance, made even more dysfunctional by the almost complete lack of editorial probity, the lack of effective and timely moderation, but most importantly, these days it has no effective reason for being, no rationale, no point. It’s just more noise, more distraction while the real game goes on somewhere else out of sight.
The ABC under Scott has become just another media sewer with much the same kind of rats as infest the Moloch, Fairfax and their related electronic organs. Fit for fluffing a dazed consumer public as they lie flaccidly bored on a metaphorical stained couch scratching their privates, occasionally allowing their hand to stray a little more vigourously.
Fin de siecle?
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Fin de quatre mains?
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Reject or be rejected…shrug…
(LOL for your last paragraph, Waz) . I remember when it took some adjusting to be called, Waz, Gez, Bunter by our dear Emmjay… I’m a mere letter H now.
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I remember the instant the Jones boy referred to me as Waz over on Unleashed. I came over with an itch and I quote, “adjusts to being called Waz, and wades right in….”
But seeing as he had asked me quite sweetly to explain certain aspects of AGW, I decided that correcting him might seem both churlish and possibly lead to him rejecting my comments.
Apparently I have been Waz ever since. Its an interesting thing. Makes me feel part of a group; a group I have never been seen as fit to be part of in the past. Those whose names can be so reduced as to obviate the stranger in them.
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This is of course the highest honour, H. I used to me referred to as “M” but my ex-wife now refers to me as “Michael” – a name I have grown to see signifies that I am in big trouble. So, Less is more, in my opinion. And Gez is more than Gerard, and Waz is more than Warrigal although I know that Waz and Gez also deserve to be unified as well 🙂 HOO is a man after my own heart…… Viv, T2, ‘Mou, Algy, Jules, VoR, ‘Shoe …. We live in a fairly truncated circle of friends…… Maddy, Mads, Big M – to avoid confusion with other Emminence, FM !
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Emmjay is right of course, Helvi… the diminutive is (among the working classes) always used affectionately. (Among the upper classes, however, it’s just another form of patronism).
I knew I’d been accepted as ‘one of the gang’ as soon as I saw my then pseudonym reduced to T2… and of course, the fact that it came in the sentence, “The Pigs Arms Welcomes an old mate: T2” didn’t hurt any either…
However I usually prefer to use people’s names, even in abbreviated form, rather than reducing them right down to a single initial, after having recently been made to feel like Franz Kafka’s ‘K’ in ‘The trial’… (’nuff said!)
So, although I may use the diminutive, I don’t really like the notion of reducing people to single initials… or even double or triple initials, as this is the kind of practice which goes on in offices where office politics predominate, and is perhaps not proper procedure for the porky patrons of the Pigs arms, for whom the Kafkaesque is just too… well… too gross and just downright wierd not to mention far too reminiscent of certain political realities it is perhaps much better not to think about.
(Cyrus says ‘take no notice of granpa Asty; he’s just dribbling’…)
😉
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Asty, T2 and H are lovely Pseudos, the capital H is fine, I would not be happy though if someone started using lower case ‘h’, that looks like a children’s chair….
I hope Hung does not read this, he might just start calling me ‘h’ 🙂
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Agreed, Warrigal.
.
.
But, I keep going back for a peep ── like a naughty boy .
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Stop it or you’ll go blind.
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A pleasurable piece of sledging, Waz. Fin de siecle indeed !
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My husband and I had dinner with Noam Chomsky – just the three of us – here in Albury of all places.
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I sometimes think that he’s the only slightly left person in America. I have read bits and pieces of his writings. I would be fibbing if I said that it was lively and entertaining prose, but I guess that might not have been his intention. Particularly in the case of the work about 9-11.
Is he great company in the flesh ?
Can I also be so bold as to ask why he was in Albury ? Checking out suitable post-apocalyptic accommodation as far away from the big apple as possible ? 🙂
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Vivienne, that is incredibly interesting. I don’t agree with him 100%, but I do admire his tireless efforts.
I read some of his work–and a lot about ‘him’, a couple of years ago. I went through a stage of studying his upbringing, path and philosophy. Well tried I suppose. I also found him irritating; incredibly informed, but, from memory, fractious too.
Yes interesting. I guess if you want to elaborate, you will.
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My husband was writing his thesis on psycholinguistics – we have had a tertiary institution in Albury since 1975 (it is now Charles Sturt University) and Chomsky was visiting very briefly on his way through. He was just here for the afternoon and part of the evening and we needed to entertain him for dinner. So we did. Hubby and Noam chatted away on the subject of psycholinguistic insights into the reading process – it was all very fascinating and he is a very nice chap. Obviously a deep thinker but we didn’t get on to his other areas of interest which at that time were not as well known.
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Viv, I was working in Wagga in 1980-82 and I attended Riverina College of Advanced Education RCAE or RivCol) – was Albury part of that ? I studied American Literature for a while for fun more so than a qualification. As a single bloke incompetent in the ways of the kitchen (what’s news) my lecturer took pity on me and used to invite me around for meals with he and his wife – quite often. Many animated discussions and fine glasses of red went west.
I heard he’s only recently retired. What a gig ! Reading huge amounts of AMlit and teaching the odd student and enjoying a lovely rural lifestyle. Bless him. He was one of two academics in my past who encouraged me to write. The other was a prof at UNSW History of Science (well and truly retired if in fact still with us).
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OMG Emmjay – we may well have met. Yes it is the same institution – in the beginning Albury was called a study centre but it grew and grew and is big time. Wagga campus was of course headquarters. Hubby lectured at Albury and Wagga – he was originally in Teacher Ed (teaching teachers how to teach, upgrading their quals etc.). Before we came to Albury he lectured in Teacher Ed at UNSW (!!!). Hubby moved into Communication and Marketing when they withdrew all Teacher Ed to Wagga. Yes, the rural ‘lifestyle’ – wine and spit roast pigs and lambs were a regular thing at a Wagga lecturer’s home way west of the town.
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If you go to the Drum via the homepage and then hit Opinion on the top line you wind up back to something much like the old Unleashed. The editor has pulled the comments on new format completely.
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Sounds like too much trouble. I’d rather do something interesting like count my freckles.
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I totally never thought of you as having freckles.
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Pure blood ranga me, from both sides. Got oodles of the little brown buggers. They counterpoint my otherwise pale and pasty appearance.
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WHAT was that idiot on your article going on about, Lehan? Honestly, I’m so use to formulaic fatuousness, repetitive ridiculosity and blind belligerence, that I usually don’t bother. But really!
[Sorry this comment is in the wrong place, too lazy to move it.]
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Warrigal – the image I had of you in my mind – tall, long dark hair, handsome and well built and tanned. Did I get anything right?
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Oh that’s right, I’m impossibly handsome, but in a ranga kind of way. University tests have proved it.
In the past I have been likened variously to Steve Winwood, Daryl Hall and even Ron Howard in his Happy Days; but the truth is these men are mere sundry grotesques when compared to me. While they age into decrepitude my fabulous physique, my implacable charm and hilarious wit go on.
I am the boy in the Lynx ad, Harvey Keitel in the Johnnie Walker ad, I’m the new Jag in a green/grey grade climbing a windy mountain road, I’m the bonus tracks and never seen before footage, popular without being populist. I have sexual allure to burn. The girls gasp, women swoon.
It’s tough being me.
I am Adonis, Appollo, I am Yggdrasil, Ahura Mazda and Zeus in the body of a male catwalk model, I am Anubis, Animikii. I am Mirriyuula, polypotent creation being, shaker of worlds, harbinger of change. I am the essence of spontaneous eruption, the Heraclitean fire.
I am become destruction and regeneration in continuous cycle. All falls before me to rise again behind my tread, renewed, invigorated, vital, vibrant,
…..and freckled.
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Yes, you are all of those things, I imagine, Waz.
But yggdrasil does sound like an anti-fungal drug to me.
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Mirriyuula, just ONE picture,it will say more than all those many words…
Then we will judge if you are a man or a mouse 🙂
The Brave Men’s club already has many piglets, Emm, Gez, Hung, Jules, Nev, Big M, and baby Ato…
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Do you have a brother?
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Hey Wazza!
You’re the top! you’re the Coleslaweum,
You’re the top! you’re the Louvre Museum,
You’re the melody from a symphony by Strauss,
You’re a Bendel bonnet,
A Shakespeare Sonnet,
You’re Mickey Mouse!
You’re the Nile! You’re the Tow’r of Pisa,
You’re the smile, of the Mona Lisa!
I’m a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop!
But if baby I’m the bottom,
You’re the top!
You’re the top, you’re Mongrel Gandhi,
You’re the top! you’re Runt’s best brandy,
You’re the purple light, of a summer night in Spain,
You’re the National Gallery, you’re Garbo’s salary,
You’re cellophane!
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Hadron, don’t you dare to take my Mona Lisa away from me 🙂
As for freckles, I don’t see them being very ‘Wasabi’, mine cost me my very first boyfriend in primary school…
The object of my infatuation shouted loudly, so the whole class could hear: I don’t like you ‘cos you got FRECKLES!
I cried to my pillow that night, and so my lifelong but oh so futile, quest for beauty began 🙂
Freckles faded with time, but it took me a long time to see them as nothing but ‘prakash’.
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So, Warrigal, I got you all bar the red hair and the freckles! Seems we have a lot of spunks at the pub.
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I can recommend a good optician for you Viv 🙂
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Oh, gosh – he’s having me on then ! I’m shocked.
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Got to agree with everything said. Seems really hard to establish a thread. I got one going only to find that they wouldn’t publish my reply which made the whole thing pretty meaningless.
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That certainly sums up the entire mess (which they have made of Unleashed). A few of us said much the same thing on the Editor’s note. I am hoping that they will take note and mend their ways. I will keep an eye on the buggers.
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They appear to have a glass jaw where critisism is concerned.
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I sent them another story, but I didn’t hear back from them. Sigh. I just wanted something to occupy myself, I was kind of hoping that I could reach a stage of saying “oh god, what am I going to WRITE? But it seems that my first one was just a fluke. Do they tell you if they don’t want it?
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Not in my experience, Lehan. It just disappears without a trace these days.
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When they don’t respond, they won’t publish. You hear nothing, no acknowledgement whatsoever ever. That sems to be the way things are at ABC. Not as much as a ‘thank you’. It is a harsh world.
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Lehan:
As long as you know that the acceptance of your article or not has nothing to do with your quality writing, which is of a much higher standard than the average of the silly U/L (Opinion) . They like to stick to their own club just buttering and browning each others bums before sticking and extinguishing their cigars in them.
Its a hard unjust slog, enough to drive one to kardonay.
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It’s a shame, I thought it was quite good. I’ll post it here next week, see what you guys think.
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My sentiments exactly and fully, Emms!
It’s such an agony even to the eyes, looking at that page. Where is everything? Where has everything gone? Who could be bothered writing a response to any of those stories, if they’re going to disappear ten seconds later, or if your response won’t even hit the page?
I feel there is the sinister hand of Murdoch working here.
Flood the ABC with bullshit until it reaches exactly this level of chaos and chasm and then it shall die. New Ltd (and, let’s not think any more kindly of the rest of the media) will shine again -not by its content but by its comparison with the chaos and chasm.
We should all copy your letter, Emms and send it to them; not because I think anything will come of it -the demolition squad is now unstoppable- but because they’ll know that we know and that we don’t take it lying down.
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Thanks ‘Mou. It’s a pretty sparsely manned barricade and it’s nice to have company 🙂
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You didn’t post at The Drum as Conroy’s Watching perchance, Emm?
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No, I didn’t Algy. But I did feel some sympathy for his / her comments.
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As a ‘Pig’s Arms fashion writer’ I tried to tell the unleashed that the colour pink ought be left to darker skinned girls and that we, the pasty , freckly anglo scandinavians might choose something else.
I’m deeply hurt that they chopped that bit off… I was only trying to help…. 🙂
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Helvi:
If it is any comfort, the ‘haute couture’ of the Pig’s arm is miles ahead of anything or anywhere.
I spotted Hung One promenading in a pair of pink thongs along The Bennalong Boulevard, holding his head very high, oh so dapper and brave. A giant amongst the fashionistas.
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Pink is very fashionable this year
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Part of the problem might be that so many journos, writers and bloggers are desperate for jobs. They are all clamoring, clawing their way to try and crack it big time. The electronic media has killed off their jobs by the thousands. It is a race to the death now.
On the Unleashed a new editor took over and his job is as un/secure as those that are a bit higher in the hierarchy. The regular Drum contributors are forever keeping their eyes on the next chance of getting their bit in, fighting and biting, pushing others down.
The new editor wants to be seen as doing it differently, leaving his own stamp on things. With Unleashed, I don’t think the new stamp is working. Far too many articles per day. It has just become a confused hotch pot. A bit like the Dutch Huts Pot or the English bangers and mash, even haggis from Scotland.
Unless you write down the time and article you responded to, you get lost in a jungle of deletions, disappearances, cut offs, scrappings, or worse, put into the bowels of being completely ignored.
I get sometimes lucky but submit 3 or more articles to get 1 published when J.Green goes to the loo or blinks, takes a ciggy break and a kind soul schedules the article in.
I still enjoy it when that happens. I can’t deny that.
PS. There might also be a preference for those piece writers if they have a degree or doctorate behind them. Perhaps, and this is my own take on things, the qualification from Granville tech, might just not cut it.
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I think you’ve gotten a pretty good handle on it Gez – and I think you’re far more generous than I am. Writing for fun is a luxury when writing for my clients – and getting paid is the dominant consideration. So getting one in three submissions published is not very satisfactory – nor is the lack of decent communication / editor writer relationship that makes for better work.
In advising my web clients, I always make sure that they appreciate that success is judged from without. And if Unleashed knew what it was doing, it could see that making it hard for commenters to maintain the thread is just plain dumb. If I have to hunt for stuff, and time is short, I’m afraid that I just don’t bother.
And publishing so many rehash articles that flog the old familiar dead horses is also dumb and boring. Thank goodness they publish you from time to time. But I miss Sheridan, Ian, Donald and co. And I despise the self-serving barrow pushers and apologists for narrow sectional interests. Robust, it isn’t. Bullshit it so often is.
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And more and more vicious too. How do they allow those like Milne or Donnelly to regurgitate the same shit week after week.
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“Unless you write down the time and article you responded to, you get lost in a jungle of deletions, disappearances, cut offs, scrappings, or worse, put into the bowels of being completely ignored.”
An excellent description gerard.
At the risk of repeating myself (oh well, I will), I believe that they have made a rod for their own back. There are far to many articles; meaning that after a couple of days, current blogs seem to be stale. And all one gets is energaetic posters coming up, who have probably posted fifty or so to get four up. And as you rightly say gerard, ‘there is no continuance of thread’.
Another repeat: The Muted Drum.
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For good?
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Correct .
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