I Have A New Song

It's a song called 'Miss Belinda' out at iCompositions.
This song technically is the last song in my 12 song series called 'Escape From Satellite City'.
Yes, I'm being a sexist scumbag in using the pickie of the chickie in a bikini, but not being a sexist never profited me a cent so I am going to go out in a blaze of political incorrectness in getting people to check out my song. So... lustily check out my song. Click on my artist badge in the right hand column, click on 'Miss Belinda' download button, and the song is yours for a listen!

Weekend That Was - Phase 1 In Which Doris Gets Her Oats


I know 'Two of Us' was a Lennon song, but hey, if the shoe fits, it fits. Sir Paul McCartney turned 64, and with that he received a rash of media attention, getting compared to his own song.

AS A young Beatle, Paul McCartney wondered what it would be like to be 64. Yesterday he found out.

But far from the enduring love he described when, as a teenager he wrote the Beatles' classic When I'm Sixty-Four, McCartney finds his life in turmoil. He and second wife, Heather Mills, split after a four-year marriage.

The separation is being played out in the full glare of publicity as intense as anything McCartney experienced in his days as a Beatle.

Mills, 38, has been the subject of a torrent of tabloid allegations about her past life, and has pledged to sue one British newspaper. "One of the worst aspects of going through what Heather and I are currently going through is the malicious spreading of rumours and made-up facts that is happening in some areas of the media," McCartney said in a recent message on his website.

McCartney's spirits may be at a low ebb but he remains a national institution in Britain and adored by millions of fans around the world. The Daily Mirror said McCartney's daughters Stella and Mary celebrated his 64th birthday by throwing a barbecue for close friends and family at his estate at Peasmarsh, East Sussex, in southern England.

In contrast to the frugal old age he foresaw in When I'm Sixty-Four, taking holidays "if it's not too dear", McCartney is one of Britain's wealthiest people.

Legal sources say he could lose up to a quarter of his £825 million ($A2 billion) fortune in a divorce settlement.

I guess the more sobering thought is that only 2 out of 4 of the Beatles made it to 60-something. Money, Fame and Fortune can't buy you longevity if you smoke or get hounded by crazies with a gun.

World Cup All-Nighters
Yeah, yeah, I watched the Japanese draw 0-0 with the Croats and the Aussies lose 2-0 to Brazil.

Australia produced a wonderful performance against the world champions but still fell short 2-0 in a truly competitive match which showed the immense progress the Socceroos have made since the appointment of Guus Hiddink.

Second half goals from Adriano and Fred sealed qualification from Group F for Brazil, but following the goalless draw between Croatia and Japan a point for Australia in their final match will almost certainly see them historically through to the second round.

The pre match talk surrounded the yellow card situation of Australia who had four players one booking away from suspension, Moore, Bresciano, Cahill and Grella desperately needing to stay out of trouble in order to face Croatia in the final encounter of the group stage.

Carlos Alberto Parreira named an unchanged side despite the widespread criticism of their narrow victory against Croatia while Hiddink made three changes, dropping Kewell, Bresciano and Wilkshire to the bench in favour of Sterjovski, Popovic and the hero of the last match Cahill.

It was to be expected, but the Socceroos did put on a brave performance and the scoreline hardly reflects the vigor with which they attacked and laid on the pressure. That late goal for Brazil was flukey.

'Adele Bloch-Bauer I' Is Sold


One of Gustav Klimt's masterpieces 'Adele Bloch-Bauer I' sold for an estimated US$135million in a private sale.

The portrait, of Adele Bloch-Bauer, the wife of a Jewish sugar industrialist and the hostess of a prominent Vienna salon, is considered one of the artist's masterpieces. For years, it was the focus of a restitution battle between the Austrian government and a niece of the Bloch-Bauers who said it was seized, along with four other Klimt paintings, by the Nazis during World War II.

In January all five paintings were awarded to the niece, Maria Altmann, now 90, who lives in Los Angeles, and other family members. Although confidentiality agreements surrounding the sale forbid Mr Lauder to disclose the price, experts said he paid $US135 million.

"This is our Mona Lisa," said Mr Lauder, a founder of the five-year-old Neue Galerie, a tiny museum devoted to German and Austrian fine and decorative arts. "It is a once-in-a-lifetime acquisition."

Mrs Bloch-Bauer died in 1925 at 43. In her will she requested that the painting and four others by Klimt be left to Austria on her husband's death. But when Germany annexed Austria in March 1938, he fled, leaving his possessions behind. The Nazi government confiscated his property.

Mr Bloch-Bauer died in November 1945, leaving his entire estate to three children of his brother Gustav: Robert, Luise and Maria. Only Maria Altmann is still living.

The price eclipsed the $US104 million paid for Picasso's Boy With a Pipe (The Young Apprentice).

I have no smart-alec comment to make.

Having A Whale Of A Time
I haven't followed the fracas closely this year as the World Cup is inherently more interesting than nations arguing semantics and confuting ethics and environmentalism with name-calling.

I look upon the whaling issue not as the fighting standard for environmentalism, but the issue that puts the 'mental' case into the environmentalism. There are simply bigger, more pressing issues than whales. All the energy expended here is actually of no use to the overall picture of Global Warming and Global Dimming.

Today I find this article.

The International Whaling Commission narrowly voted that a 20-year ban on commercial whale hunting no longer was necessary because marine mammals have recovered from near extinction.
The 33-32 vote at Frigate Bay, St Kitts and Nevis, gave Japan a symbolic victory in its campaign to resume whaling and signaled a power shift within the commission but did not jeopardize the ban, which can be overturned only by a 75 percent vote from among the 70 member nations. Environmentalists and other observers called such a scenario unlikely.

The so-called St Kitts and Nevis Declaration also expressed the deeply divided group's "commitment to normalizing the functions of the IWC" - a reference to Japan's desire to return to the IWC's original role as a whalers' club with only modest responsibility to manage whale populations.

The vote demonstrated that Japan and its pro-whaling allies Norway and Iceland have finally acquired control of the IWC by enticing small Caribbean, Pacific and African countries - some of them landlocked and most of them with no interest in whaling - with lavish aid and assistance in developing fisheries.

Denmark unexpectedly voted in support of the declaration after previously siding with the conservation advocates. The European nation appeared to be swayed by the pro-whaling sentiments of its constituents in Greenland and the Faeroe Islands.

The resolution cast the 1986 whaling ban as a temporary measure aimed at allowing stocks to recover and deemed it "no longer necessary." It also contended that commercial whaling should resume because the commission's research has shown that "whales consume huge quantities of fish, making the issue a matter of food security for coastal nations."

Japan, Iceland and Norway have continued to kill more than 2,000 whales annually. The Japanese and Icelanders have exploited a loophole that allows "scientific" whaling, while the Norwegians ignore the moratorium altogether.

The host country's initiative passed after impassioned statements by Caribbean delegates that the whaling ban was a form of "new colonialism" by wealthy states that seek to impose "emotional" arguments that are detrimental to the small islands' economic development and natural resource exploitation.

"Years ago, we were told what to eat," said Claris Charles, Grenada's Cabinet member responsible for environmental and fisheries matters, recalling how slaves imported to the islands to work sugar cane fields were fed salted fish by colonial masters.

Cedric Liburd, head of the St Kitts delegation, proclaimed the decision "a historical one as we move toward normalization of the IWC. We're hoping this small country, St Kitts and Nevis, will help to bring the IWC back on its right course."

Japan's success in luring a simple majority of the IWC's members to its side provoked anger and predictions of doom for the global whale population among conservation and protection advocates. For example, only about 1,000 blue whales are believed to survive out of a population believed to have been about 250,000 before large-scale commercial whaling.

Well, when you think about it, the ban had to end this way.
The anglophone countries lack credibility in a post-Colonial world when they say "save the whales" to these tiny, poor nations where people are genuinely starving. For that, they only have their own histories to look back upon. I do take a lot of amusement out of this outcome after years of following this annual shitfight.


And one more thing... Media pictures like this one are terrible. If you took photos inside an abattoir, it would be even more bloody. Cruelty per se shouldn't be an argument against whaling. Such a position will inevitably draw fire as being hypocritical unless that party is completely vegetarian.

Fantasy Team Report
My baseball Combat Wombats have reclaimed the top spot and are extending the lead. I feel like a genius. My AFL Combat Womabts are regressing down to the bottom half as my stars have begun to regress significantly. Luke Hodge, Peter Everitt, Ben Cousins, Dean Cox and Chris Fletcher turned in a very mortal/un-Godlike performances this weekend, totally killing my totals.
My Yahoo Soccer team is also slipping into oblivion, while my Sportal soccer team is re-defining oblivion itself.
Predictably, I am busy chasing numbers.