Days 936-940: A Terrible Shamey

25.07.11-29.07.11: Amy Winehouse passed away this week. I was never really a big fan (of the 500+ ‘songs of the day’ on this site, hers isn’t one of them), but I was given to wonder if the idiotic “pictures or they’re not dead” brigade that floated around the internets in the wake of Bin Laden’s demise would resurface. I doubt they will, it was hardly something of a surprise that somebody who had lived so close to the edge for so many years finally shuffled off this moral coil. But, look at the facts: she was past her prime, she hadn’t done anything halfway decent in years, her recent performance in Serbia did little to suggest she was on the road to recovery… AND her so-called ‘death’ has made her record company a fat load of wodge. We have MOTIVE, people! This looks like a case…

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Days 933-935: The Tragedy Of Big Numbers

22.07.11-24.07.11: In the wake of the Norway massacre I want to share with you some of the things I’m feeling right now. Revulsion at the crime, pity for the victims, sadness that such a thing could happen in any country, let alone one as peaceful as Norway. There are other things too; the media's response, our response: stuff I would like to address in this blog entry.   Firstly, I find it morally abhorrent that the man's name, manifesto and pictures of him posing with a gun were posted by the media. In any crime in which the motive is fame (and infamy) to grant the perpetrator the very platform he craves is not just wrong, it's sick. In my mind, it's the equivalent of a man murdering for money and the media paying him that money. The names that should matter are those of his…

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Days 887-932: A Heavy Wait

06.06.11-21.07.11:   “What’s going on with this boat, Graham?”  I must have heard that question over a hundred times in the last few months.  Before today I was unable to give a clear and concise answer – the situation was completely out of my hands.  Delays enforced by paperwork and red-tape meant that every time I thought I had a real, tangible “I’ll be leaving by date x” to tell people, I’d end up looking no end of a fool by still being here in Melbourne watching that very date whoosh by.   Of course, my first preference – to spend the bulk of 2011 by hopping from one Pacific Island to another, living off fish and coconut milk and entertaining you all with my tales of leaky canoes and rusty banana boats facing down tempests that would make The Perfect Storm look like a drizzly…

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