Gianna still hasn’t dropped her sprog, but blogs a great little vignette about a nosey, attention-seeking neighbour.
Paul Watson’s last 3 posts don’t mention Generation X even once!!! Could he be losing that chip on the shoulder, I wonder? Somehow I doubt it.
Meika the Dolebludger is still unemployed, and his blog still loads a truly irritating piece of double-tracked out-of-synch Meika poetry every time you open it. Pity, I used to quite enjoy visiting his neck of the Tasmanian woods from time to time.
Meanwhile, the left’s least interesting blogger Niall Cook has effectively passworded his blog (except the front page which contains only the first sentence of posts), presumably so RWDB’s can’t read his pearls of wisdom. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to this intellectual powerhouse that most general readers (whatever their ideological orientation) aren’t going to bother seeking permission to read Niall’s predictable rants either. I confess it doesn’t worry me in the slightest, because I seldom read his stuff anyway: now I won’t need to bother at all. Actually I’ll qualify that last statement. I’m not bothered by anything done by blokes like Niall as individuals, but I am bothered in general by the intellectual ghetto mentality of which it’s a perfect (and all too common) example. If we confine outselves to discourse only with those whose opinions we find congenial (and therefore unchallenging), a lot of the point of blogging is completely lost IMO.
Wogblog hates feminists, which isn’t even remotely surprising, but she expresses it in her typically acerbically entertaining way:
Every feminist I know has a fat arse, a filthy house and is disgusted that tax payers won’t let them dump their kiddies at day care for free, and preferably right next door.
That is the great triumph of the feminist icons, Frieden and Steinem and Summers and now Wolf – that generations of girlies are now liberated enough, if they want to be, to have no shame about being pains in the arse. To have no shame even about making ‘girle ads’ of their own.
Tony the Teacher hates reality TV shows, not to mention The Bill. So do I. Actually, I quite liked The Bill once upon a time, but it should have been put out to pasture at least 3 or 4 years ago. Come to think of it, TT’s overall list of TV pet hates is remarkably similar to my own. I don’t know who should be more worried.
Ken, you sure The Wogblogger is a she? I’ve always wondered.
Ken, you sure The Wogblogger is a she? I’ve always wondered.
Stewart,
That notoriously unreliable source Tim Blair assures me Wogblog is a sheila, and the context of the post about feminists that I linked is most consistent with that proposition: “Why does it give me the shits so much? Cos wog women know a little something about real patriarchal society, real machismo, the horror of being chatted up by a Turk bloke. Ewww.”
I think the point made about intellectual ghetto mentality is good, although in my experience of blogging the only interest a lot of political bloggers have in engaging with the ideas of their ideological opposites is in destroying those ideas. There’s very little real engagement going on.
My TV prefs aren’t that different either. I suspect that the obvious ideological differences are less significant than the fact that we’re all uni-educated men of a certain age (I”m guessing here with TT, but I don’t think I’m far off).
As you may recall, I gave up The Bill a year or two ago and haven’t watched since.
Dolebludger works fine for me on Safari. Then again, Barista is STILL moving the links down the page on newer versions of IE.
I’m afraid, Ken, you fail to understand the reasons behind my restricting access to my blog. It has nothing whatever to do with only indulging in discource with those who’s opinion I find congenial. It has to do with not providing blogspace for those, who James so succinctly points out, have no intention whatever in engaging anyone who they find incongenial. My blogspace has been used as an ideological wall for vandalistic tagging for the last time. I am certain that were your blogspace subject to the same ignorant abuse that mine has, you too would adopt a similar method. For the record, Ken, I don’t regard you as a ‘jerk’ and never have. It’s a pity you choose not to engage, as you indicate that you would prefer to.
Ken: To confirm or disprove your supposition, and that of Tim Blair, on the balance of probabilites, you might try this option, orginally sourced from Crooked Timber
I’m afraid, Ken, you fail to understand the reasons behind my restricting access to my blog. It has nothing whatever to do with only indulging in discource with those who’s opinion I find congenial. It has to do with not providing blogspace for those, who James so succinctly points out, have no intention whatever in engaging anyone who they find incongenial. My blogspace has been used as an ideological wall for vandalistic tagging for the last time. I am certain that were your blogspace subject to the same ignorant abuse that mine has, you too would adopt a similar method. For the record, Ken, I don’t regard you as a ‘jerk’ and never have. It’s a pity you choose not to engage, as you indicate that you would prefer to.
we’re all uni-educated men of a certain age
Actually I think it’s about time I admitted the truth: I am, in fact, an uneducated 75-year-old sharecropper’s wife from Kentucky.
Well… no, I’m not, not really. I am, however, a uni-educated man of 29, which I suspect is somewhat less than the certain age John’s thinking of. I’ve never liked The Bill, however, loathe reality TV with a passion and the only thing I really care to watch at the moment are the Doctor Who repeats.
Hey Niall, comments are still open on all the blogs on my domain, despite the fact that an increasingly large number are based on idiocy.
And if that’s your ‘reasoning’ behind making it password based, you’d still allow people to read your whole posts and restrict the commenting/trackbacking. The “i’ve been abused on my blog so none of you fuckers can even read my genius without a password anymore” story is cute, but pretty shitty dude.
Also, I quite like Belgian waffles. With maple syrup.
Ken, now that you mention it, my record run (?) of not going on about GenX may have something to do with having recently scored a job :)
But you are probably right re your not-about-to-lose-that-chip-on-the-shoulder comment. With an income that’s now a bit above the poverty line, my next mission in the name of inter-generational equity will be for housing affordability for GenX first home buyers. On a long-run house-price/average incomes basis, Melbourne prices need to fall by about two-thirds for equity to be restored. Here’s hoping!
Niall,
My use of “jerk” in another blog comment box (Yobbo’s?) was intended to refer solely to your decision to password access to your blog, not to your personality in general. I agree with Bailz. If you’re sick of being slagged in your own comment boxes, why not just restrict access to them? Why restrict access to people who might want to read your blog as a whole? In any event, most of the “flaming” you’ve suffered recently sprang from your extremely ill-advised (not to mention racist) Vietnamese driver rant. Frankly, the slagging was well-deserved.
Moreover, your general style (both in your own blog and others’ comment boxes) tends to be fairly self-consciously combative, so I don’t really see why you should be surprised when it elicits predictably aggressive responses. I’ve mused before about keeping blogs interesting by using some “tabloid” journalism tactics, but how one simultaneously maintains something vaguely resembling intelligent and civil discourse is more difficult. There’s a danger that tabloid techniques simply provoke people to adopt entrenched, extreme positions and shout past each other, instead of engaging in genuine dialogue.
However, I suspect that most of us only ever modify strongly-held opinions slowly, and that probably applies whether we express them in moderate, restrained academic tones or in “take no prisoners” mode like Tim Blair. Moreover, where participants in a comment box debate are just shouting past each other, it may be that this is actually a better way to maintain the attention of the average unengaged blog reader because it’s more entertaining and exciting than a turgid, respectful academic debate: – political tag team wrestling. That’s why I think it’s a shame you’ve decided to restrict comment box participation to only those prepared to be polite and respectful.
You like Belgian waffles too?
ooh, there’s a few issues in there, that Ken has been worrying over. Are we out there trying to gain the attention of the average unengaged blog reader? Change each other’s minds? Or use the stimulus of debate to think something through for ourselves?
To me the most exciting moments are when ideas get fluid and are modified in the thread. I am bored by insult unless it is witty and affectionate. I am stimulated when people bring in their own experience. I celebrate clarity. I am inspired when people post in order to learn and work things out. I go in hope that we are finding a way forward which is not just the same old same old left v right, empathist v technocrat stoushes.
That’s what I think is the real entertainment, and how to find lively language. Be about something. But that’s just one fragment of a much longer meditation…
Ken, JQ & James, my brother keeps telling me The Bill was grouse in it’s early years with Burnside in full swing, unfortunately I missed it then.
I always found it boring. And is it possible the actors have had any trace of personality surgically removed?
Now my main gripe is that it seems to be on all the bloody time. Sat night, weekdays, fill-ins, and wall to wall on UK-TV. How many bloody eps did they make anyway?
I’m forever saying: “Not the bloody Bill again!”
And I certainly am of a certain age. I think. And educated! Phwoah! Now I’m an educa-TOR! The system is doomed.
As for mine and yorn TV tastes concurring, Ken. Let me put it this way: I like CSI because it’s well put together, skips along and tells a simple story without taking itself too seriously. Most important, I like the characters.
What I don’t like about most TV “shows” — as opposed to sport and docos — is the contrivance, pretention and sheer bloody remorseless vacuity.
PS: I wonder if Kim Cluisters waffles.
I have utter contempt for the vacuity of “The Bill” premise and anyway, I’m much too busy leading a life rich in eclectic artistic stimulation to watch. Still…I find the current character development of Inspector Gina Gold totally riveting…….
Must be quiet in Sydney Town if your rivetted by Inspector Gadget, or whatever her name is :)
The Bill was good in the early days and consolidated around the Burnside era. It was edgy and often inventive writing. The early minimalism dating from its documentary origin often created compelling drama from a two-hander police interview, often showed sympathy to the plight of the ‘underclass’ – the petty criminals and ‘battlers’, and was unsentimental. A police friend was not able to watch it – too close to home. The rule about not seeing the characters’ private lives enhanced the work-driven drama, and I think was empowering especially for the women characters. Only defined by their work – for once.
One of the best episodes I saw was a PC losing it on point duty one day. The traffic suddenly could not be controlled. Simple and powerful.
Current Bill is a parody of a travesty.
Yes, my police ‘friend’ unable to watch the Bill – too unlike the nasty reality, he reckons. And too ‘issues’ driven. He has the same problem with many police dramas – if they’re not as ‘edgy’ as Phoenix or the more recent Blue Murder they’re just not close….This often presents a television viewing problem as I’m quite partial to the Sherlock/Morse/Dalgliesh genteel ‘amateur’ detective tradition – which he particularly despises. I’m willing to concede that it’s complete fantasy, but what’s wrong with that?