There are strange things in the air at Casa del Tribune. Jane’s been reading a lot of mid-70s lesbian separatist sci-fi, so she’s spouting all kinds of stuff about psuedo-Amazon space warrior princesses crushing the evil male oppressor monsters. Which is fun when the kids ask for an after-dinner treat. I, on the other hand have just watched about fourteen hours straight of Sons Of Anarchy, a US drama about an outlaw motorcycle crew, that makes The Shield look like the Gilmore Girls. There’s a constant mist of pure testosterone floating around the Mac.

If you’ve never heard of SOA, you are hereby most strongly urged to give it a look. Despite the fact that it’s about a lot of bad men doing very bad things, there’s a Shakespearian feel to the storyline (Hamlet in particular) and the acting and writing is stunning. Ron Perlman is the aging bull of the club, Katey Sagal (remember her as Peg Bundy?) is truly amazing as his wife, club matriarch and mother of the young up-and-comer, and there are some other inspired casting choices. Henry Rollins appears as a white supremacist, and Adam Arkin, who I’m pretty sure is Jewish, plays his reptilian boss. The only thing SOA compares to is Deadwood, and you know how big a call that is coming from me.

Speaking of bloke stuff, this weekend we’ll probably be seeing Iron Man 2, which has gotta be the sexiest thing imaginable. Well, maybe not as hot as Katee Sackhoff chauffeuring you up the French Alps in a Bugatti Veyron, but it’s certainly up there. Iron Man just ticks all the boxes as the perfect superhero: super-rich, cool, good-looking, HE CAN FLY, and Gwyneth Paltrow’s the bird he doesn’t bag. Lovelywife will probably just inhale a bag of popcorn while I bounce up and down in my seat like a little kid.

Let’s move on from the fascinating details of Tribune Life, to the wider world. Rudd just gave up on the CPRS, which is hardly surprising, given his ability to swing with the breeze, having flitted from one Change The World announcement to the next. At least he got something resembling reform in the Health (cough) system, but from where we sit it just looks like one layer of bureaucracy patching over another.

Tony Abbott was on Radio National (and no doubt elsewhere) this morning, going for some kind of “how many times can I say Great Big New Tax On Everything” record, and we looked at each other and said, at the same time, “Rudd’s got to go, but listen to that”. The way the government’s flapping in the wind, doing pathetic side-deals with recalcitrant state premiers, dropping just about any issue as soon as it gets anything like difficult, you have to wonder what would’ve happened if that one-vote difference in the spill a few months ago had swung the other way.

Turnbull, for all his faults (it’s like they invented the word hubris for him), can actually debate, and is prepared to say something in English when asked a direct question. Despite all his dog-whistling to the redneck constituency, Tony Abbott is starting to wear everyone’s patience a bit thin with his utter refusal to offer a policy, or indeed, an answer to just about any question, other than “Kevin Rudd, you’re doing it wrong, Great Big New Tax on everything”.

Even though Abbott has shown himself to stridently and loudly hold every possible position on every possible issue, Rudd’s government is looking worse – nobody really knows what these new reforms to Health are, let alone what they mean; Dear Kevin “got it” about the insulation screw-up, but has now just killed the program, dropping the news on the same day the Melbourne Storm hit the wire. The list of bullshit goes on and on – having sat on it for months, they’re finally going to man up and release the Henry Review, but how much of it will be deemed fit for our consumption? Said it before, happy to say it again: Rudd’s got to go, but can we puh-leeeeeeze have an alternative?

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As you know, we’ve been on Twitter for some time now, and we kind of love it, a bit. You may have seen us at our local, streaming QandA on the laptop, and tweeting from our iphones at the same time. This is thoroughly justified and part of our jobs as social commentators and journalists, and there is nothing at all geeky or obsessive or sad about it. Okay?

Twitter has its fun side, such as when I played with the bogans a couple of Wednesday nights ago: “OMG #HeyHey it’s Wednesday WTF LOL! I’m the 9millionth person to make that joke, STOP IT FUCKTARDS”, and “Watching Daryl and Livinia’s banter on #heyhey is like watching an old dog choke to death on a towel”. (for this, I received “@juzzy31797 your a dickhead”, which I just loved and loved and loved).

Twitter also has its serious uses; it’s how I found the Wikileaks “collateral murder” Apache gunship video at 7am on the day it was released, and how I became the only robot being followed by a major news organisation. After watching the gunship video I resolved to spend that morning at work finding out more, particularly with regard to what, if anything, mainstream media were going to do with it.

Long story short, at about eleven o’clock, I tweeted something nasty about The Age not having anything about Wikileaks or Malcolm Turnbull resigning on their website.

Turns out, thanks to my Pleistocene Era work computer not knowing how to refresh a website, I was wrong. I found out I was wrong because I got a series of sniffy emails from an editor at The Age, culminating in a couple of screen-grabs showing time stamps and Twitter feeds and big red circles, and “YOUR TWEET” and shit like that. Yeah, I was wrong, you told me the first time, I admitted it the first time, thanks for applying your sledge-hammer to my walnut.

Oh, the cool thing? @theage is now following @juzzy31797 – they only follow fifteen others, and I’m the only cylon. HAH!

Love to all who love us and a night in a concrete bunker with Tony Abbott for those who don’t.

J&J Shaw

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