because it worked so well with Mexico

Mission Accomplished-er

Looks like Mission Accomplished is about to get a bit more Accomplished-er as the US military force takes a page from the pornopropaganda piece 300 to bring peace to shattered and splintered Baghdad by…

building a big wall.

The US military is building a three-mile concrete wall in the centre of Baghdad along the most murderous faultline between Sunni and Shia Muslims.

The wall, which recognises the reality of the hardening sectarian divide in Baghdad, is a central part of George Bush‘s final push to pacify the capital. Work began on April 10 under cover of darkness and is due for completion by the end of the month.

The highly symbolic wall has evoked comparisons to the barriers dividing Protestants and Catholics in Belfast and Israelis and Palestinians along the length of the West Bank.

And, of course, East and West Germany. You know the Americans are proud of this initiative. That “work began under cover of darkness” thing might be significant…wait, where have we heard that before? Hmmm, what do you say? Sounds to me like the missing Berlin Wall might just be in the process of being “re-purposed.”

No word on whether they’re using Persians as mortar.

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guess what time it is!

periods are fun! Yay!

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my hunch

From the twisted genius that brought the world Hinterland’s Who’s Who: The Crack Spider comes this new masterpiece, a heartwrenching ballad of juvenile tuburculosis, deformity, unrequited love, and sanctuary. All more or less to the tune of My Humps by the Black Eyed Peas. See also Alanis Morissette‘s angsty, emo effort.

lyrics over the jump…

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Continue reading

when parents fail: parrots!

macaw, y'allPolly want an honorary degree, consulting fee and reality show?

Well it IS the Twenty-First Century. Even parrots have gone upscale.

It seems that there’s this kid Dylan, and he was, not unlike the great Tennyson, moving forward in age while showing no respect for some of the great milestones of childhood such as learning speech. Indeed, from our vantage spot somewhat farther along in space/time, we ourselves tend to think that such activities are highly overrated; all our alter personalities agree.

So language was all like, Dylan, learn me, and Dylan was all like, talk to the Lego and his parents were all like, OMG he’s autistic! Let’s get a parrot, and that solved things.

Dylan Hargreaves, four, has severe learning difficulties and had never uttered a single word.

But after listening to macaw Barney, he can now say “Night, night”, “Dad”, “Mum”, “Ta”, “Hello” and “Bye”.

And experts think he is close to his first two-syllable word

Michelle reckons her son’s first two-syllable word will be Barney, because he loves his pet so much.

Hell-O?

Okay, so it looks like the gene pool isn’t very deep here, but what is the excuse for A) these so-called “experts” and B) the hacks at the Sun who presumably know the meaning of the word syllable?

HELLO???

Dylan, boy, when you grow up to be Poet Laureate, please remember raincoaster was in your corner back in the early days. Good luck; with a team of supporters like this, you’re going to need it.

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pic o’ the day: the Big Dry

Australian Drought 2007

Click on the picture to go to the Guardian‘s slideshow of images from The Big Dry, the worst drought in Australian history. They’re well into year ten, and to give you some perspective, the above image was taken at Wivenhoe Dam, which is now holding back nothing more than air when it was built to contain enough water for all of Brisbane.

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