Category Archives: Emmjay

We’re All Going to Die from Skin Cancer – the ABC Said So

19 Saturday Nov 2011

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By our Medical Interpreter in the Sports Bar

I read a piece over at the ABC the other day by a reporter I usually trust – Sophie Scott.

The report was that some research dudes have discovered two genes that predispose people to melanoma – as we know – a fairly dangerous and hard to treat if it gets away – kind of cancer.

These genes increase a person’s risk of death from melanoma before age 85 by a whopping 250 percent.  Jesus – we’re all goners – rush right out and get your DNA screened – and bloody stay indoors until you get the all clear.  This means all the Pig’s Arms patrons who live north of Mawson’s Base.

But then I started to wonder what percentage of people in Australia actually get melanoma.  Answer:  Men – 1:15.  Women – 1:24.

Since men live on average now to just 79, I reckon I’d be pleased to fall off the perch from melanoma when I was 85 – man, that’s 6 years over the odds.  Women who live – on average until the age of 84, don’t get such a good deal, obviously.

But the reality is that something else is more than likely going to get you before the big M (sorry, Big M).

Another way to play with the stats is to suggest that amongst the dudes who have these dodgy genes, (and we don’t know who you are – so please drop by the Pig’s Arms and we’ll give you a protective Trotter’s Ale (this protects you by keeping you indoors indefinitely)). (Voice – notice the perfectly balanced parentheses !) The risk of you getting the Big M (not OUR Big M – the other Big M), rises from 7% to 17% for blokes .  Have another Trotter’s Ale.

And for the ladies your insignificant risk of 4% rises to 10% – so if I was you, I’d definitely have another Pink Drink.  Slip slap and slop – but not so much that you don’t have enough Vitamin D – and get ricketts  or osteo or whatever bone things that a lack of Vit D causes.

While we’re talking about drinking, there are heaps of other risks that impact the likelihood that you’ll be pushing up parrots due to melanoma –  apart from two dodgy genes that you may or may not have.  These include things like whether you have red hair and that kind of Celtic skin that freckles up and burns rather than tans, whether you have more moles than Wind in the Willows, whether you smoke (in which case you shouldn’t waste time reading this article) and whether you drink inferior beverages to excess.

It really matters whether your melanoma (in the event that you do get one) is diagnosed and removed while it is a stage 1 codger.  If the hackers dismiss it before it spreads to the nearest lymph node, you’re in comparatively good shape.  If it’s in the first node and they remove that too, your odds don’t look so flash. but are still worth a decent punt.  Beyond that it’s pretty touch and go.

So if you see anything suss, – or more likely, your partner – who is very used to giving you one of those rather extensive all over caresses, spots something untoward,  it’s far better to risk being accused by your GP of being a big wuss, than it is to tough it out and ignore it.

There is no evidence of a causative link between melanoma and wedges – with or without sour cream and sweet chilli sauce.

Oh dear, I’ve come over all thirsty again.

Appalling Reporting at the Quaker’s Hill Nursing Home Fire

19 Saturday Nov 2011

Posted by in Cricics, Critics, Everyone's a Critic, Emmjay

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This morning I opened the door to the SMH’s screaming headline “Owners have record of failure” – by renown journos Linton Besser and Saffron Howden.

It was all downhill from there.

The front-page story was about the terrible nursing home fire in Sydney’s West – now said to have more than a dozen old people in serious condition in hospital and five deaths.  The story is at once awfully sad and also a tale of heroism and bravery that ensured that the casualty list was not longer.

However the tone of Besser and Howden’s piece is unrelentingly accusative –pointing the finger at the Quaker’s Hill nursing home – and its parent organisation Domain Principal Group – owned by, AMP Capital Investors.

Amazing, it was that within 20 hours of the blaze being reported, the police arrested a male staff member and charged him with four, then five counts of murder.  They had some fairly solid clues – that the fire broke out in two places – suggesting that this was no accident.  And second that it happened just before five am – calling into question who would be up around in a secure facility at that time.

My criticism of Besser and Howden’s article is that they seek to hang the nursing home and it’s parent organisation for many trivial reasons as well as because of a previous problem three years ago when ten old people died from gastroenteritis in another Domain Principal nursing home.

I need to put my credentials on the table here.  My 87 year old mum has been in care in a nursing home for nearly six years – first with dementia, then latterly also with frailty – she can no longer walk, stand or sit up un aided and she has to be fed, bathed, cared for medically, dressed, toileted, undressed and helped into bed every day.  FM’s dad is 85, is in another nursing home and has much the same care needs.  We visit every fortnight. So I have some experience in the field.

When old people can no longer feed themselves, perhaps cannot chew or swallow reliably and are incontinent – as well as having unreliable immune systems, they are always at high risk of gastroenteritis, no matter how strict the nursing home’s hygiene protocols.  More often than not, infections are brought into nursing homes by visiting relatives who do not use the handwash provided, do bring in food treats and certainly do not wear sterile gloves as the staff do.  In our folks’ time as residents, we have seen three outbreaks of gastro in the two locations – providing care for about 250 people.  There were thankfully no deaths as a result of these outbreaks, probably due to strict quarantine – no visits unless these were absolutely necessary – and mandatory disinfection of visitors’ hands.

This is impressive care – particularly when you realise that demented people with incontinence can act in ways that are highly counterproductive to safe hygiene.

But returning to the SMH article.  Besser and Howden cast aspersions on the Quaker’s Hill nursing home and the parent organisation for various failures in government inspections including not having background checks on prospective staff that were valid – and revalidated every three years including proof that staff had no convictions for murder or any form of assault.

There are two things that need to be said about this.  First, it is incredibly challenging for nursing homes to recruit carers – first, nurse-qualified carers (who can earn a lot more money working through agencies temping in hospitals) are always in very short supply and less qualified people who are amongst the lowest paid individuals in the workforce – who have to work shifts and do personal hygiene tasks for old people that would turn most relative’s stomachs are not exactly beating the doors down demanding jobs.  The people who work there are in my estimation and experience, mostly saints.

Second, a police check that an individual has a “clean” record can take an eternity – especially when you realise that many of the carers come from overseas and take these jobs because they do not have a huge amount of choice.  If I was a nursing home manager, with a desperate need for staff now – because I have patients who need care now – and not in six months, I’d take new people on, train them and manage them carefully and let the police do what the police do – in their own time.  They have no choice.

Moreover, a police check that says a person has a clean record – so far – does not predict that a person will never go bananas tomorrow or the next day – which could well be the case with the alleged killer in custody for the Quaker’s Hill fire.  Arsonists are usually not the outgoing socially aggressive violent types.

These kinds of regulatory inspections are risk minimisation exercises – and nothing more.  They are not in any way iron-clad guarantees that will always prevent bad things from happening.

The last bit of ridiculous trash reporting was, in my opinion, the assertion that in the previous case of deaths from this unrelated, three year old gastroenteritis outbreak, the cause was unproven, but there was a suggestion that there might have been a strong association with eating pureed food (what like a huge proportion of old people with dementia who can no longer chew ?) …. and – and get this, that the residents who died from gastroenteritis “were already deteriorating from their underlying health conditions” – like the ones that landed them in the nursing home in the first place ?  Give me strength !

Besser and Howden finished by saying that the management of the nursing home and the parent organisation had cancelled the planned meeting with the SMH and were refusing to comment. Surprising ?  Not when the police and coroner are involved – or when the reporters churn out such unhelpful rubbish.

I’m not suggesting that the nursing home is definitely blameless.  I just don’t know.  Neither would I seek to be unsympathetic to those who lost their lives, their loved ones or those who suffered terrible injuries.  I do think that tremendous praise should go to the fire-fighters, police, staff and neighbours who saved so many lives.  These folk did a magnificent job.  The same cannot be said about the SMH reporters.

The Big O Visits Australia – O-mania Rocks Canberra

16 Wednesday Nov 2011

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A Huge wave of excitement washed over the unwashed press gallery. The Big O is in town !

Only the Lonely, Dum Dum Dum Dum-dy doo-wha.

The Pig’s Arms rock critic – with a nose for news – Glen A 20, rang in today with the exciting news that the Big O is in town, scorching rumours that he hasn’t been amongst the quick for years.

Princess PowerFox – the president of Australia is eagerly awaiting her next instructions – after setting up a new US base in Darwin (and raising the hopes of all those US Marines who have grown tired of molesting the women of Okinawa), we look set to be told to export Uranus to Indira – but our correspondent is having a bet that there is no way Pakistan is getting a load because, you know, they’re dodgy and anyway they fix cricket games and that’s not cricket.

Fixing games IS cricket, but getting caught is more like getting caught doing cricket commentary and jumping out of hotel windows because you got very agitated and all those bastards mumbling “kiddie fiddler” can get well and truly sledged up deep middle off.

Let’s hope the PowerFox has more luck with setting up a base for the US Marines than she has had getting up a processing centre for asylum seekers.

Where was I….. oh yes the much delayed and much anticipated drop-by of the Fuhrer of the Free World.   One can only imagine that having stitched up the oil middle east for democracy, the irony sands of the Pilbara and the gassy North West shelf will be the next to be liberated by the sons of Columbus.

From the Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli

From the antarctic up to Alice,

We’ll be free, we’ll be free, we’ll be free.

Indian Call Centres – Fighting Fire with Fire

11 Tuesday Oct 2011

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Simulated Emm-tel Call Centre

The other day I made the mistake of trying to work from my home office.  The phone rang.  It wasn’t my mobile.  It was that piece of Bakelite artistry up the end with the Neolithic dust and the desiccated cockroach carapaces.

I answered it.  Pause.

“Hello – can I speak with the home owner”
“She’s out”
“Who am I speaking with ?”
“Who’s asking?”
“My name is Darren”
“Hello Darren – who are you with ?”
“I’m calling about your mobile plan”
“Why are you calling me on the landline?”
“Is this your mobile number xxx-xxx-xxxx?”
“Might be – what interest is it of yours?”
“I’m calling to offer you a better plan?”
“Why don’t you just give me the better plan?”
“…. something garbled…….. Telstra…….”
“Where are you calling from, Darren ?”
“ I am calling from the Telstra call centre”
“Where?”
“The (somewhere in India) Telstra Call Centre”
“I thought so”
“I am able to offer you an improved plan for your mobile”
“I sincerely doubt that, Darren”
“Do you want to hear about the plan ?”
“No, I was trying to earn a quid to pay my phone bill”
“OK, thank you for your time”
“No, the pleasure was all mine”

It seems that two of the most frustrating timewasters in modern life are accepting rubbish marketing calls – and the other side of the coin – complaining to Telcos when something goes awry.

But I chanced to let the two pains in the arse stew awhile together and in the manner of the old aphorism that if it doesn’t kill you it will make you stronger – or that a tiny amount of some poisons are actually useful, and I think I have come up with one of the great inventions of the 21st century.

I plan to set up my own call centre in some place that’s cheaper than India, – let’s say Chad- but which costs a shitload of money to call from anywhere, but especially from India – maybe even Tierra del Fuego) – and I rent a slice of it out to you.  Well, I rent out a very special service that I can offer you for a very reasonable price.

Here’s how it works:

When a call centre calls your phone, the service switches the call to my call centre where it is answered on your behalf.

“Hello, this is Gez and Helvi’s service, how may you help us?”
“Is this Hung One On’s mobile number XXX XXX XXXX?”
“No, this is Gez and Helvi’s service, how may you help us?”
“Can I speak with Warrigal?”
“No, he’s busy at present”
“When will he be available?”
“Who, Hung ?”
“No, Gez or Helvi”
“I thought you wanted to speak with Warrigal”
“You said that Warrigal is unavailable”
“I could find out if Neville Cole is available”
“Is this his number?”
“No, perhaps you would like to speak with Voice or Vivienne”
“Are they there?”
“No, this is Gez and Helvi’s service – how may you help us ? – I might be able to put Big M or Jayell on”

Of course we would get a cut from TeleChad or TeledelFuego – and we would pay you a dividend for every call that went over half an hour.

But it gets better.

Suppose you need to complain to Telstra about your ADSL line dropping out.  Only a mad person would want to call Telstra directly – otherwise you get to spend an eternity in hand-offs amongst every call centre in the western and eastern worlds.  And I for one love the good people of the Philippines, but their telephones, well, ………

So here’s how my outgoing call service  helps you.

You write your complaint on a crisp $10 note and send it to Emm-tel, briefly detailing your issue / problem / complaint.

We ignore the words and bank the $10.  Then our Chad operator calls up Telstra and complains that your service is not working and that you want it terminated immediately.  We say words like Telecommunications Ombudsman.

We demand a full refund of all monies you have paid for the service and say that we will be phoning Ellen Jones – using our neighbour Sandshoe’s phone.

They offer a full refund and a superior plan.  We say that we will consider their offer after we have had a chat with Optus.  They offer an even better improved plan.  We say that we will consider it.

They say that you can have x amounts of free stuff.  We say we will get back to them.

We call Sandshoe and she asks you whether the deal is a goer or not.
It’s your call.
Nobody recontacts the Emm-tel Chad.
They go ahead anyway.

Note, we suggest (but not strongly) that you only use this service if you have a genuine complaint – otherwise that wouldn’t be ethical, would it ?

Stay tuned we plan to offer a premium service where we call Microsoft for you.

Pig’s Psalm 20 – On Saturday Arvo They Rested

30 Friday Sep 2011

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Blessed be the tireless workers, Our Merv,
For they shall inherit the Long Weekend
At the end of the footy season and
Before the wasteland before the Cricket
And in the morning, it being sunny,  the beach will beckon

But not the beach where the post-season footy tour goes.
Especially the losing teams.
Our Merv, grant everyone their wish for a great season.
Deny only the massed highway patrol their double demerit points.

And the virtuous supporters and the valiant players will walk with thee
Out of the change-room and into the sunny upland of the Sportsman’s Bar.
And restesth there for evermore, with bent elbow and laconic smiles.

Greek Hills

16 Friday Sep 2011

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from The Fiesta of Men by Mark O’Connor (pub Hale and Iremonger, 1983)

The goat-summers are over, the eternal noons
Virgil, Theocritus and Horace wove
into a timeless myth.  You cannot find
those heat-hushed slopes, where goat-herds
whittling notes from reeds (while willow
twigs are thick with drinking bees) observe
the rank male-smelling beards at work for ever,
rasping the scented broom and heather.

Three thousand years have almost seen the end.
Infertile soil has nothing left to give.
But still they lick, those rough-tongued flocks
whose mouth’s the busy grave down which
whole hillsides pass.  They gnaw the thornbush
from the cliff and chew the mossy clay
like dough.  The Nymphs are Nereids now,
washed down by floods to roll
in the gasping sea; their fern-green haunts
a sunstruck canyon where cicadas
die of heat.

Yet olive and eucalypt stalk the stone redoubt
with tough guerilla troops in neutral green, will tread
the rock to pebbles, loess, marl and make
anew the chalk infertile soil.
 

I found this book of Mark O’Connor’s poems in Berkelouws while FM and I waited for a glass of red and a cheese platter to emerge.  Wine bar bookshop.  Perfect.

I encountered Mark – although he would not remember – in the mid 1970s – another denizen of Forest Lodge near Sydney Uni and a habituee  of the Forest Loge pub – otherwise known to us as the Forrie Lorrie – a fore-runner of the Pig’s Arms.  I used to share a house with Phil B in Annandale.  He was a mate of the Mark O’Connor and another great poet (now late) John Forbes.

Looking back – how lucky were we to be able to share a schooner and occasionally hang with people who would later write poems like these two.  And then I was reflecting on how we as callow youth so often do not realise important treasures in our world until later – with hindsight – after they’ve moved on.

Thank goodness for the printed word.

White Rabbit, Mad Square and “The Guard”

11 Sunday Sep 2011

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White Rabbit Gallery’s new exhibition – Beyond the Frame.

Lu Zhengyuan's Mental Patients

As always, White Rabbit have produced a thought-provoking and very powerful exhibition, but this time it’s also a dark exhibition.  Sometimes the art displayed at White Rabbit is bleak – reflecting artists’ disenchantment with different aspects of Chinese contemporary life.

Lui Di (born 1985) produced a series of graphic images in 2008 (Animal Regulation), depicting gigantic animals posed in urban settings – amongst the drab and dreary blocks of Beijing apartments.

Ai Wei Wei, recently released from custody has a work in this exhibition too  – with an assemblage of a series of large porcelain blobs – called, unsurprisingly, “Oil Spill”.  The work is amazingly convincing.

But in my view, the most powerful, and profoundly sad work is the collection of photographs of inmates in Burmese prison camps by Lu Nan.  A close second is Lu Zhengyuan’s life-size grey sculpture – mental patients.

The Mad Square

Grosz's "Suicide

But if you really need to be cheered-up after this White Rabbit exhibition, it’s going to be a mistake to go to the much-hyped exhibition now at the Art Gallery of NSW – “The Mad Square” – German art from 1910 to 1937.  I found it grim and disturbing – notwithstanding that it does include some important material from the Bauhaus school and (for me) a couple of small colourful paintings by Klee.  Clearly the lead-up to WWI, the war itself, the aftermath and the inexorable march into WWII were profoundly chaotic hyper-violent periods – strongly depicted in the art in this exhibition.

FM and I found it grim going – from the massively deformed faces in ink drawing graphics of WWI severely wounded soldiers, to blood red paintings of murdered prostitutes, it was unrelentingly grim.  Grim indeed.

Some time ago I complained about the Sydney Theatre Company’s War of the Roses (apart from the poor production), the tone of murder and mayhem accurately reflected the chaos of more recent times with the global financial meltdown and ongoing wars in the Middle East.  That show was an A-grade downer.  I found the Mad Square a downer too – but not for its quality, moreover because the content was very confronting.

The context in which this exhibition is experienced is a relevant factor – for FM and for me – yet again, a less-than welcome disturbing and even distressing experience in a world that seems up close and at a distance to be accelerating and falling apart at the seams – unutterably violent, mad and pointless.

The Guard

Which leads me to a very welcome balance – provided by the marvellous black comedy – “The Guard”.  Yes, there is more death and mayhem, drug smuggling on a massive scale, police corruption, more prostitution, a mother dying of cancer and a country policeman wading through a complex existential crisis.

It is truly hilarious – with the laconic wit and mirth of the  Oirish at its best.

The boofy psycho baddy is a wonderful counterpoint to the genuinely threatening and ice cold members of the drug-smuggling trio– driving along discussing arcane points of philosophy.  My favourite line amongst many great lines was when one of the baddies asked why he always had to do the murders and the reply was “Because you’re the psychopath !”; to which he protested and insisted that he was not, “I’m  a ‘sociopath”’.  The second crook says “What’s the difference” and the reply was “They told me inside the asylum, but it’s kind of tricky !”

The interplay between the ‘smarter than he looks’ Irish cop and the slick fish out water FBI man is a treat.  “Have you ever been shot ?”…. Yes…three times…. “Does it hurt ?”

It’s a wonderful movie written and directed by a chap called John Michael Mcdonagh and it stars Brendon Gleeson as the Irish policeman and Don Cheadle as the visiting FBI operative.  It’s a magnificently dry comedy and it’s a must-see.

The Right and Noble Thing – an update

07 Wednesday Sep 2011

Posted by in Emmjay, Gregor Stronach, Politics in the Pig's Arms

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Story by Gregor Stronach – updated by Mike Jones

Gregor wrote this when Saddam Hussain was tried and executed- 20 December 2006, but with a bit of tinkering, it works well for Osama Bin Laden and it will still work when Muammar Gaddafi takes the big step into the unknown. 

“To Hell with you!”, he screamed.

I, personally, would have gone with something more along the lines of “To hell with this!”, as I scarpered out the front door of the court / compound. Yes, he was shackled, and yes, he was wearing a 90 pound beard (seriously – that beard is a masterwork, and will probably go down in history as one of the Greatest Beards of All Time). But that shouldn’t have stopped him from making a break for it. It would have been a more dignified death than being hanged / drilled by US Navy Seals / bazooka’d into the next world by Libyan rebels / freedom fighters / detergents.

I speak, of course, about Saddam Hussein / Osama Bin Laden / Muammar Gaddafi, horrible tyrant, brutal dictator and any one of the hundreds of two-word epithets he’s been assigned by the world’s media. He’s the world’s biggest bad guy, the troll under the bridge of Freedom and Democracy, the bogeyman America uses to make sure the rest of the world eats its veggies and goes to bed by 10pm. And he’s been condemned to death. Many believe that this is perhaps the most prosaic ending for the man responsible for the untimely demise of millions of people. He was killing his own people, along with the countless thousands of men, women and children who died as a direct result of his paranoid ravings and rash decisions. Make no mistake – the man was a cunt nasty piece of work.

However, the judgement handed down by Abdel Rahman has prompted a range of different responses from around the world, and – as horrified as I am to say this – I actually agree with Europe’s two surrender monkey nations in their wet outlook on the penalty. Both France and Italy have come out simpering, calling for the execution of Saddam not to go ahead. It can easily be argued that they are merely taking the moral high ground (as I like to do whenever I can…) – after all, they have little to lose by calling for a reprieve from the noose for Saddam. Were they spokespeople for the United States, such a statement would be tantamount to strapping an explosive vest to their political careers and wandering into an opposition convention.

I have been extremely concerned by the reactions of Australia’s Prime Ministers, John Howard / Kevin Rudd /Julia Gillard. You can see the delight at the verdict writ large across the sizeable chunk of vacant real estate around his/her forehead region. But… and here’s the rub… (s)he speaks of this verdict out both sides of the mouth. On the one hand, (s)he’s vehemently opposed to the death sentence. Look at the hand-wringing and crocodile tears at the impending fate of the Bali Nine – a group of Australian twenty-somethings that have found themselves on the wrong end of the death penalty for smuggling heroin out off Indonesia. But on the other hand, when it suits our PM, (s)he’s all for it. Whether it be Saddam Hussein or Amrozi (one of the Bali bombing masterminds, for those of you playing at home), if it suits the political ends, our PM doesn’t mind if people are put to the drop, or in front of a firing squad. At least Tony Blair had the nuts to stand up and say he was against the death penalty… he won’t do anything about it, but he’s against it. So… erm… go Tony. I guess… but he didn’t have the nuts to say no to Rupert Murdoch and Wendy Deng when they asked him to be godfather to their daughter……

Further afield, the reactions are predictable at best. The United States has wriggled into an orgy of high-fiving, as the judgement became common knowledge amongst a populace due in the polling booth just a couple of days later. The timing of the death penalty decision and the assassinations – a major talking point – will forever be criticised by many as a transparent attempt to boost votes for an ailing administration. But dead dictators win votes, and GWB and BO’B have had this little apple land right in their laps. Down in the polls and steadfastly refusing to withdraw from an increasingly unpopular war, Bush has claimed the verdict as vindication of his decision to invade Iraq to get rid of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and for B O’B it was to swat Bin Laden … or rather SEAL his fate. Or get rid of Muammar Gaddafi. Or free the Libyan people. Or whatever reason it is this week – I’ve honestly lost track.

But the main places that the verdicts will have effect is in Iraq / Afghanistan / Libya. And it doesn’t take a geopolitical genius to see that Iraq / Afghanistan / Libya / Syria / Yemen / Egypt / etc’s are in desperate trouble at the moment, and that things will only get worse when Saddam  et al do meet their makers at the gallows or in their own bedrooms. The already fractured Islamic world will have yet more massive wedges driven between the sparring factions. The Sunni loyalists are even still lining up behind their deceased leader’s party. Fighting between them and the Shia, who now have control of the legislative process in Iraq, continues to escalate. And the Taliban against everyone else in Afghanistan and the pro and anti-Gaddafi forces in Libya and the pro- and anti-Assad people in Syria ….. And stuck in the mix are western troops.

I fear for the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Southern Sudan ……. Yes, they’re getting themselves a “Democracy™”, but they’re each just another government born of violence and baptised in the blood of their former leaders. The sectarian violence doesn’t need another excuse to continue – but the bloodthirsty shouts of the elected leaders of the western world won’t go unnoticed.

George Bush was smiling when he announced that Saddam Hussein will be executed. He was glad that a man is going to die.  Obama was less overt with the assassination of  Osama Bin Laden…… but who in the West will not quietly cheer the demise of Gaddafi and Assad ?  The message sent is painfully clear… You are bad men, Saddam, Bin Laden, Assad, Gaddafi. You killed people, and killing people is Very Wrong. Ergo, we will show you the error of your ways by killing you. And we’ll be thrilled at the prospect of seeing you die.

No matter which way this debacle falls, the people of of these middle-eastern countries are in some deep, deep shit. Their world will be one of violence for many, many years to come and there’s not a damn thing 99 percent of them can do about it. If Saddam or Bin Laden or Gaddafi had copped a reprieve, the outcry would have been heard for all eternity. And with their deaths will come fires in the Middle East so huge that they will turn the desert sands to glass, stained red with the blood of the many that have died at the hands of the powerful few.

But that red glass will offer the world one thing – the perfect material to fashion the rose-coloured glasses the western world will need to wear when we look back on these events in 20 years, and try to convince ourselves that we did the Right and Noble Thing.

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The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs

31 Wednesday Aug 2011

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Mike Daisey Returns to the Sydney Opera House.

24 September to 2 October.

Mike Daisy and Friend

Some of our regular patrons of the Pig’s Arms might remember a review I wrote a while back on the great raconteur – Mike Daisey who performed at the Sydney OH last year – his monologue on cargo cults.

Mike returns to this year’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas with his new work – the Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.

Here’s a taster from Tech Crunch……

http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/01/the-real-story-apple-and-foxcon/

This piece is coming to you from my Macbook Pro ….. the black Apple on Mike Daisey’s machine in the pic is a nice touch, though 🙂