Farken loved it. But Nev, you would have surely been squirming with rage. All that 'foreign' pronunciation (as Ma has pointed out). "Plew-tong" for peloton. Christ - how awful. (And I never knew L'Equipe was pronounced "leekie".) So much ace footage I'd never seen. In some ways though, tres disappointing. I have read, over and over, that Jacques was the most glorious, artistic, smooth, gracious rider. Evar. But I didn't get that impression after watching tonight's footage. My Bride said, "Oh, I ride like that!" A style I've always referred to as "push-push". But then, that was just up the hills. In the TTs... well, like a beautiful timepiece. Flawless. Jacques was a mercenary ****. And an appalling human being. Just can't bring myself to like him, no matter how hard I try. I reckon Eddie was stiffed a bit. Surely the bestest evar rider deserved a lot more time and coverage? No? I think my favs are still the Italian riders pre and post World War II. I love le Tour. I know many of you dream of the Giro, but for me, le Tour is the embodiment of all that is the best and worst in humanity... the suffering, the corruption, the nobility, the futility, the meaning and the meaninglessness. Our vicarious raison d'etre and yet, at the same time, the exposé of all that is flawed about our humanity. Vive le Tour.
I'm gonna struggle to get this one into words properly, I know.
I'm finally watching the first Lance and Oprah interview with the fartographer. I'd successfully avoided it until this evening, and oddly chose to put it on while waiting for the SBS 100 year TdF doco that we never got to yet.
Despite having explained all of the tawdry saga in detail many times in the last three years, I was constantly pausing and explaining the same things over and over again, and yes, in response to specific questions at least as often as my own spontanteous interjections. Until I got cranky with that process. And foolishly I started to make the simile to our modern democracies. Uh oh.
So.
Yes I've paid too much attention to the banality of Australian politics this week for my own good; but I got to....
Sure Julian Assange might have a case to answer. Fine.
That NSA contractor who was recently brave enough to expose that the USA gov't is breaking their own laws 24/7 across the board by illegally tracking people's every digital utterances is in my opinion a whistleblower. A brave one. Who is about to be locked up quickly and quietly if the gov't can manage it. And who is NOT being defended by the free press in democratic countries.
And yes George Orwell and 1984 got brought up, and I'm afraid that 2013 is such a long way further down the track from 1984 that surely both he and even Kafka would be swooning at the knowledge that
everyone in our 'free world' is so addicted to our cosy metropolitan digital system, and so inured to actually illegal constant surveillance from our own public servants, combined with such incrementally and increasingly banal lawmaking, and fearmongering, that we all actually assume we're all just criminals in the first place;
and are so self serving that we can't even be bothered to defend what's left of our so called freedoms. In case we get outed for something we've obviously done wrong so far which might be on a hard drive somewhere. We're pretty much just mindless fearful plebs.
Even when a martyr spells it out for us. Jesus Christ. Are we so pompously ****ed in the heads and obsessed with our expensive digital toys that we assume there's nothing wrong with the system just because the big corporate news agencies are themselves too scared to bother to defend the guy these days?
We're ****ed. By the sociopaths in positions of power who know how to 'control the story' as Lance put it.
I'm finally watching the first Lance and Oprah interview with the fartographer. I'd successfully avoided it until this evening, and oddly chose to put it on while waiting for the SBS 100 year TdF doco that we never got to yet.
Despite having explained all of the tawdry saga in detail many times in the last three years, I was constantly pausing and explaining the same things over and over again, and yes, in response to specific questions at least as often as my own spontanteous interjections. Until I got cranky with that process. And foolishly I started to make the simile to our modern democracies. Uh oh.
So.
Yes I've paid too much attention to the banality of Australian politics this week for my own good; but I got to....
Sure Julian Assange might have a case to answer. Fine.
That NSA contractor who was recently brave enough to expose that the USA gov't is breaking their own laws 24/7 across the board by illegally tracking people's every digital utterances is in my opinion a whistleblower. A brave one. Who is about to be locked up quickly and quietly if the gov't can manage it. And who is NOT being defended by the free press in democratic countries.
And yes George Orwell and 1984 got brought up, and I'm afraid that 2013 is such a long way further down the track from 1984 that surely both he and even Kafka would be swooning at the knowledge that
everyone in our 'free world' is so addicted to our cosy metropolitan digital system, and so inured to actually illegal constant surveillance from our own public servants, combined with such incrementally and increasingly banal lawmaking, and fearmongering, that we all actually assume we're all just criminals in the first place;
and are so self serving that we can't even be bothered to defend what's left of our so called freedoms. In case we get outed for something we've obviously done wrong so far which might be on a hard drive somewhere. We're pretty much just mindless fearful plebs.
Even when a martyr spells it out for us. Jesus Christ. Are we so pompously ****ed in the heads and obsessed with our expensive digital toys that we assume there's nothing wrong with the system just because the big corporate news agencies are themselves too scared to bother to defend the guy these days?
We're ****ed. By the sociopaths in positions of power who know how to 'control the story' as Lance put it.
I'm sorry Beepers, I have no time for these treacherous ****s. If you want to change the system - get elected and change it from the inside. Go the long way round and do it like a real man. Be fair and do it by the playbook. Being a dobber (and betraying the oaths you took to get access to the what you know and later use to crucify your masters) is like taking EPO. It;s a pissweak coward's game. Be brave. Be honest. Be honuorable. Don't be an Assange. Surrender yourself to the courts and face justice. Face your accusers and make your case. Don't hide like a coward in some pauper's embassy.
**** hate and all the haters. The last thing we need is more hate in the world. Win 'cos you're better. Win 'cos you train harder and love the prize more. Not because you hate your adversary more. Win because you've: trained harder trained more regularly trained smarter trained more scientifically raced harder racer smarter raced fair Train and race like llama. He doesn't hate ANYBODY (despite what you might think - he is a guileless human being). He's a LOVER. He LOVES to: suffer train suffer train race train race win win race train Don;t be a hater. Be a lover. You'll be a winner.
Treacherous.
Who is treacherous? The soldier who actually shot the innocent civilian or the officer who encouraged it? Or the politicians and advisors who made the war up in the first place?
The last people who are ever going to get the chance to get to a position of high enough power to change the system are the people who criticise it. It's a conga line of **** licking selfpromoting liars who will rip the **** out of anyone not of their ilk long before they get anywhere near the reins.
The whistleblower is not the coward in that system.
If I took an oath to protect the sovereign welfare of the state of Beepers, I would honour it. Even if the state of Beepers had flaws. I would honour my oath. If I wanted to fix the flaws in the State of Beepers, I would get elected - or take some office of reform - and prosecute my cause, my goal, my philosophy. The coward is the dobber. The noble man is the one who faces his accusers on his accuser's terms and makes his case. Be a Socrates. Be truly brave and face the Senate. Defy the gods with honour, even if it means your demise. Be "better off dead"... "Socrates purposefully gave a defiant defense to the jury because "he believed he would be better off dead". Xenophon goes on to describe a defense by Socrates that explains the rigors of old age, and how Socrates would be glad to circumvent them by being sentenced to death. It is also understood that Socrates also wished to die because he "actually believed the right time had come for him to die." Xenophon and Plato agree that Socrates had an opportunity to escape, as his followers were able to bribe the prison guards. He chose to stay for several reasons: He believed such a flight would indicate a fear of death, which he believed no true philosopher has. If he fled Athens his teaching would fare no better in another country, as he would continue questioning all he met and undoubtedly incur their displeasure. Having knowingly agreed to live under the city's laws, he implicitly subjected himself to the possibility of being accused of crimes by its citizens and judged guilty by its jury. To do otherwise would have caused him to break his "social contract" with the state, and so harm the state, an unprincipled act."
The dept I work for is looking at a new funding model. The registration part of the business recoups its cost six-fold, and subsidies the regulatory side of the business, which doesn't even come close to covering its costs. i.e. small business subsidies the big end of town. But you know what I reckon? The government, whoever that may be, won't let it happen because it will **** itself the likes of Palmer, Reinhardt, multinationals and blue chip companies will squeal like stuck pigs, lobby, advertise, undermine and sook like you would not believe, just like they have on the carbon tax and super profit taxes. So those treacherous ****s who allegedly run the show will roll over to hang on to power. I don't ****ing trust them. I'm mostly with beepers on this. You see it in the office, those ambious sycophantic suckholes who'd do anything and follow any directive who wrap themselves up in the righteousness of meeting targets and outputs by crawling over the bodies and livelihoods of those who actually do the work, continually lying, and the shitty justification about it. I ****ing hate them. It's just a version of what happens in government except the stakes are different. ****s.
Dude, eBay some of that massive stash of bike components that's been sitting in a box in the shed for two decades that haven't been used and stuff an SSD and some more ram in the laptop that had the drive take a ****.531Aussie said:Yeah, I didn't know that until the other day. Â I used to throw mine around like it was a mobile phone, which could've been what killed it.It'd be nice to get something super-new and fancy, but I'll probably be getting another freebie, refurbed Toshiba Tecra from my dad's old stash
Watched a rather crappy "100 years" of the Tour documentary this week. The early years were interesting just because the event looked so damned hard - tough bastards indeed. Massively overgeared in the mountain roads that seemed more like gravel strewn footpaths. Ok, gravel was an understatement - more like rock strewn. The storied rivalries during the years were brushed over and received less time than socioeconomic twaddle of the time. Oddly, the program finished with a narrative on Voeckler mid way through the 2011 race - no mention of Evans and his historic win and the 2012 edition was just ignored completely. Maybe it should have been called 98.5 editions of the Tour de France.
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