Fantasy Teams Report

AFL Turning It Around Late
It's too late now, but my team has just strung together 3 wins on the trot. Judging by the for and against record, my team would have been 8th out of 16th at this juncture if not but for 2 unlucky match-ups. So seeing that there is underlying strength I'm looking forward to the Losers Cup play-off rounds. Heck, last year's Loser Cup winner is killing it in the no1 spot this year, so who knows?

Jack Kerouac Memorial League
The Combat Wombats are still limping around in 6th. Most interestingly, the bad News Bears have pulled all their players hoping to come last in order to pick first at the draft next year. I think I'm the opposite kind of player in the sense that I want to go right down to the wire of 30th September and not care about next year's draft at all. After all, my team looks nothing like the team I drafted by the time each year May rolls around. It's normal for me to chop and change. I understand the truly valuable players can only be had in certain rounds, but at the same time, those guys are gone by the end of the season.

Anyway... Just wanted to gloat about my starting pitching staff, which is looking like this:
John Maine
Ted Lilly
Cole Hamels
Felix Hernandez
Tim Lincecum
Matt Garza
...with Phil Hughes coming off the DL sometime soon.

All of these guys had a week where they each won 1 game, struck out roughly 1.0/IP, except for Matt Garza who today struck out 11 in 6.0IP. Even King Felix had an outing befitting his nickname If you were a GM somewhere, I'd say you'd be salivating at having that rotation going forward, but what the hey - it's only Fantasy League. So having traded away Santana for Dice-K and then swapped him out for Derrek Lee, I'm not exactly feeling that pain right now.

The hitting on the other hand is still atrocious.

This Dog Won't Run

Lame Excuses

After all the brouhaha last week, the charges against Dr Haneef were not only dropped, the case against him seems to have crumbled completely. If the Federal Government was looking for some kind of electoral boost out of hounding out another 'terrorist', it has backfired badly - and rightfully so.

As yesterday's extraordinary events unravelled:

■The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, Damien Bugg, could not explain how a prosecutor falsely told a court that Dr Haneef's SIM card was found in a burnt Jeep Cherokee at Glasgow Airport.

■Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said police had done their job professionally and vowed that the investigation into any Australian connection with the British terror attacks would continue. He would not rule out further charges against Dr Haneef.

■Mr Andrews said Dr Haneef could leave prison and live in "residential detention" at his apartment on the Gold Coast or another place of his choosing.

■Mr Andrews said he would seek advice from the Commonwealth Solicitor-General on whether the decision to drop the charge against Dr Haneef had any bearing on his earlier decision to revoke his 457 work visa and deport him.

Dr Haneef's wife, Firdous Arshiya, said last night she had thanked God when she learned the charge against her husband had been dropped. "Now I want him to come home as quickly as possible," she said.

As immigration lawyers expressed fury about the way Dr Haneef's case had been handled and minor-party politicians demanded that Mr Andrews resign, the Labor Opposition, which until yesterday had supported the Commonwealth's stance, called for an independent inquiry into the affair.

Prime Minister John Howard last night sought to distance his Government from the debacle. "The detention of the man was undertaken by the police and not at the request or direction or encouragement of the Government," he said.

The latest twists in the saga came after Mr Bugg ordered that a charge of recklessly supplying a mobile SIM card to a terrorist organisation be withdrawn, and that no evidence be offered.

Mr Bugg admitted that his office had made a mistake in advising police to charge Dr Haneef and that one of his prosecutors had given a Brisbane court incorrect evidence, possibly because he had been pressed for time. "On my view of the matter, a mistake has been made," Mr Bugg said. "I will now take further steps to inquire as to how that mistake occurred."

As I keep saying, we have idiots running the government.
Kevin Andrews is culpable in trying to circumvent a man's rights in the name of the powers invested in him as minister. If he needs to ask the Solicitor-General, he's clearly a sub-literate moron when it comes to ethics. Mr Andrews, you hoisted him to hang, you'd better be willing to take the wrap for hoisting an innocent man, without trial.

Clearly Kevin Andrews is an incredibly stupid man if he thinks his own ill-advised decision to revoke the 457 visa just to keep Dr. Haneef locked up without charge, wouldn't come back to remove him from his office. It's just the kind of scalp the Federal Government deserves to surrender, but the amazing thing is he didn't see it coming. So the question that begs to be answered is, what exactly did he see? A free kick for the Government? Is that the kind of minister we want?

For a bunch of conservatives with privileged backgrounds, half of them with law degrees, it's astounding they can't see how fundamentally un-conservative their leap to justifying the 'Anti-Terror' laws have been. Don't any of them remember from their Law School days, Habeus Corpus?
This fiasco has been due for a while since the Federal Government introduced their idiotic, anti-civil, so called 'Anti-Terror' Laws. At some point somebody was going to try and hoist an innocent man up the post and only to get found out that the system (comprised of equally stupid men and women) threw up a glitch and the government would end up with egg on their face. Which is why Habeus Corpus has existed in law for a long time.

What's worse is that the Labor Opposition played along with this fiasco until it became clear that there was no reasonable case against Dr. Haneef, but that too is another rant that I'll leave for another day.
I keep telling you, idiots are running our government and clearly, we're worse off for it.

More Astronaughty

NASA In Yet More PR Trouble

I know it's been a little while since I posted but hey, life is busy. Anyway, here's today's headline:

America's space agency was shaken Thursday by two startling and unrelated reports: One involved claims that astronauts were drunk before flying. The other was news from NASA itself that a worker had sabotaged a computer set for delivery to the international space station.

It was just another jolt for an operation that has had a rocky year from the start, beginning with the arrest of an astronaut accused of attacking a rival in a love triangle.

"It's going to shake up the world, I'll tell you that," retired NASA executive Seymour Himmel said of the latest news. "There will be congressional hearings that you will not be able to avoid."

News of the two latest bombshells broke within just a few hours of each other Thursday afternoon.

Aviation Week & Space Technology reported on its Web site that a special panel studying astronaut health found that on two occasions, astronauts were allowed to fly after flight surgeons and other astronauts warned they were so drunk they posed a safety risk.

The independent panel also found "heavy use of alcohol" before launch — within the standard 12-hour "bottle-to-throttle" rule, the magazine reported.

A NASA official confirmed the report contains such details, but said they were from anonymous interviews and not substantiated. The official asked that his name not be used because NASA will discuss the health report on Friday.

The Aviation Week story did not say how long ago the alleged incidents took place, nor did it say whether it involved pilots or other crew members.

At a news conference to discuss the upcoming space shuttle launch set for Aug. 7, NASA's space operations chief was asked repeatedly about the drunken astronaut report.

The manager, Bill Gerstenmaier, would only say that he had never seen an intoxicated astronaut before flight or been involved in any disciplinary action related to that.

But Gerstenmaier had more news. He revealed that an employee for a NASA subcontractor had cut the wires in a computer that was about to be loaded into the shuttle Endeavour for launch.

The subcontractor, which he wouldn't name, contacted NASA 1 1/2 weeks ago, as soon as it learned that another computer had been damaged deliberately, Gerstenmaier said. Had the contractor not discovered the problem, NASA would have uncovered it by testing the computer before launch, Gerstenmaier said. Safety was not an issue, he added.

He refused to speculate on the worker's motive. He also wouldn't say where the sabotage occurred. He said it did not happen in Florida and had nothing to do with an ongoing strike at the Kennedy Space Center by a machinists' union.

NASA hopes to fix the computer in time for launch next month. It's intended to be installed inside the space station to collect data from strain gauges on a major outside beam.

Former shuttle commander Eileen Collins was as stunned as anyone to learn of the astronaut alcohol claims in the upcoming health report.

"I'm anxious to hear more details because this is very out of character from anything I have ever experienced," she said.

Collins worries this will hurt the image of the astronauts, at least in the short term. "I hope people can really look at the good things astronauts do," she said.

Astronaut Jeffrey Williams, who spent six months on the space station last year, said he's never seen or heard of anything like this. As for the effect this may have on astronaut morale, especially so close to a shuttle flight, he said, "We're trained to deal with things so we deal with them without much emotion."

Himmel, who retired in 1981 as associate director for what is now Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, wasn't surprised to learn the information was anonymous.

Oh how these stories keep coming out. So much for 'The Right Stuff' myth.

King Felix

Waiting For Maturity

I'm not talking about my nephew Felix, I'm talking about Felix Hernandez, he of the Seattle Mariners and nominally the guy picked as my 'Ace' for the Combat Wombats. I even confidently traded away Johann Santana for Dice-K, thinking, "Heck, I'll have 2 of them Ace Dudes!"... Well, Felix is 21, and so he comes with a bunch of 21y.o. kind of issues. Here's a taste of it from USS Mariner:

But, reading through some people’s reactions, with comparisons to Freddy Garcia and predictions of a guy who will never live up to his hype, I realized that there’s still a need for some understanding of what Felix’s immaturity actually means for his development. So, the following is a list of performances by the 10 best pitchers in baseball today, as determined by me, during their age 21 seasons:

Johan Santana, Minnesota - 86 IP, 6.49 ERA 102 H, 54 BB, 64 K, 11 HR
Brandon Webb, U. Of Kentucky - 112 IP, 4.58 ERA, 123 H, 41 BB, 123 K, 14 HR
Roy Halladay, Syracuse (AAA) - 116 IP, 3.79 ERA, 107 H, 53 BB, 71 K, 11 HR
Jake Peavy, San Diego - 98 IP, 4.52 ERA, 106 H, 33 BB, 90 K, 11 HR
Ben Sheets, Stockton (A+) - 28 IP, 3.58 ERA, 23 HH, 14 BB, 28 K, 1 HR
Erik Bedard, Delmarva (A-) - 111 IP, 3.57 ERA, 98 H, 35 BB, 131 K, 2 HR
CC Sabathia, Cleveland - 180 IP, 4.39 ERA, 149 H, 95 BB, 171 K, 19 HR
Josh Beckett, Portland (AA) - 74 IP, 1.82 ERA, 50 H, 19 BB, 102 K, 8 HR
John Lackey, Lake Elsinore (A+) - 101 IP, 3.40 ERA, 94 H, 42 BB, 74 K, 9 HR
John Smoltz, Atlanta - 64 IP, 5.48 ERA, 74 H, 33 BB, 37 K, 10 HR

Now, I ask you, 24 hours after getting frustrated with Felix again, which of those players showed major league poise and composure at age 21? Only Santana, Peavy, Sabathia, and Smoltz were in the majors, and none of them were matching Felix’s success - Santana and Smoltz were downright terrible. Brandon Webb was struggling to get college hitters out, Roy Halladay was posting pedestrian numbers in Triple-A, and Ben Sheets, Erik Bedard, and John Lackey were all still in various stages of A-ball. Only Josh Beckett was having anything close to a great year, and he was doing it across three levels of the minor leagues. He did make four impressive end of the season starts… and then watched his ERA balloon up to 4.02 in the majors during his age 22 season.

Felix is ahead of every single one of these guys. All of them. At age 23, where Felix will be in two years, Roy Halladay posted the worst ERA in major league history for any pitcher who was allowed to throw more than 50 innings in a season - 10.67. He was so horrible that the Blue Jays sent him back to A-ball, had him start all over, and forced him to earn his way back to the major leagues. You think Felix is never going to get it because of his start yesterday - what on earth would you have thought of Roy Halladay in 2000?

Is Felix pitching as well as we all want him to? No, obviously not. Is he pitching as well as he’s capable of? No. Is it frustrating to watch? Of course.

But keep in mind that you’d have been frustrated watching any of the ten best pitchers in baseball at age 21, too. After a mass exodus from the Felix bandwagon yesterday, there’s plenty of leg room now. I suggest getting back on board and enjoying the ride, because Felix is still going to be a great, great pitcher - we may have assumed that he’d get there faster than he has, but that’s our fault, not his.

Pretty interesting. I think I bought into the 'Felix Bandwagon' way, way, way too early.
Yes, he's going to be great, but not this year, seems to be the verdict. And thus the native hue of my my Combat Wombats stays adrift at 6th.

The Oldest Profession In The World

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Stumbling Around In The Darkness Of A Creative Life

Works In Progress
I haven't really talked about my own film projects lately because I've found people's response to 'Key Psycho' so disappointing. Actually, people don't watch it when I give it to them, which is possibly worse than if they rang me up to tell me how fucken awful it is. Instead they say, "I haven't watched it yet."
Christ almighty, that's 4 years of my life but you can't bring yourself to watch a 60minute piece? Great!

The deafening silence has me kind of crawling off to do my next project with less confidence in my own aesthetic and judgment. It's crippling to face a project thinking "okay, maybe I don't have all the answers"

Yet I feel I ought to. This must be the nagging doubt Jane Campion was talking about all those years ago. Well, I can't imagine her having failed as much as I have, so I'll take that with a pinch of salt. And that took me a big dent in the pride to admit that.
I guess I haven't exactly noticed her making classic films lately so maybe things have finally caught up with Ms Campion too.

Anyway I am working with KJ on a story outline about a family on the Sydney North Shore where the matriarch widow with 3 grown kids is having an affair with a wealthy man who turns out to be Drug Lord. It's based on a true story I've heard. Anyway, The working title has been 'North Shore Depseradoes" which is about as sexy as a Playboy centrefold spread of Amanda Vanstone ("Eeeuw!"). Today we've christened it 'Crashing By Design' which is a more sensible title. We'll see how we go with that one.

Coelacanth
The musical project known as Coelacanth continues to chug away. I think we're at the 3/4 mark in terms of putting the album together. It takes a long time to do anything good. I ought to resign myself to that, but even so I feel like I have to relearn that chestnut every few weeks. If you're going to do anything creative, never do them by halves. The only problem with that formula is that you just don't know what full-throttle gets you on any given day.
Such is life. We'll get there by hook or crook. it's going to be a nice record.

Other Musical Stuff
I'm also working on a Mod-Revival revival kind of song. It's called 'Nobody's Looking Now' and it's a song about loneliness, boredom, alienation and the end of happiness and the beginning of existential ennui. I don't set out to do these things with such a concept... they just turn out that way when I start combining ideas and sounds. Once again, this is a slow process but it does have the benefit that I only have to please myself. Some days I think this sort of thing stops me from committing suicide or running to politics.

My Song Of The Week

The Natural

This week's song is a Coelacanth track.
Just when I'm getting my ass handed to me in the Jack Kerouac Memorial League and the Yankees are stumbling around .500, I am posting up this song here.

What is this? It's a baseball spiritual, for wont of a better genre.
The song started out long ago as a 2 chord jam between me and Chris. We had a few attempts at turning it into a song which never went anywhere, and it even had lyrics inspired by "The Book of Five Rings" by Musashi Miyamoto. Chella Elaine said she always liked that one, but alas, we never really had an arrangement that worked for it while we played as a 3-piece.

Many years went by and here we are, it's seeing the light of day as an homage to Roy Hobbs, as opposed to Musashi Miyamoto. Why? Because I was trying to dovetail it into the concept of 'The American Century' which has guided all the other Coelacanth tracks.
Anyway, do check it out. It's not half-bad at all in my estimation. :)

From The Letter Box

Came this link:

Do you love Harry Potter, but think you're too old and too awesome to be seen reading the books?

We have the solution, my friend. Print these out and you can safely read your Potter in front of all those ex Navy SEALS at the local strip club.

Indeed, it's very wrong... but the title with the little penguin caught my fancy!

Doc Terror

So...
Dr. Haneef is released on bail, but Kevin Andrews immediately rips up his 457 visa, which sends the doctor to Villawood Detention Centre. You should've seen the idiotic Kevin Andrews on the 7:30 report.
All he did was basically say that he evoked the visa in his capacity as Minister for Immigration; that it had nothing to do with the court case where the Judge saw fit to grant Dr Haneef bail; and it was not going to affect the public at all. Over and over and over and over again. As if it were a mantra, more than a thought-out piece of action. I can't believe they let such a dimwit into seats of power, let alone in charge of a whole ministry... but we've seen that before with the likes of Ian Campbell and Amanda Vanstone. So much for the benefits of Democracy.

Worse still, Kerry O'Brien kept trying to squeeze him for a quote to recognise the difference between an "innocent association" and a "guilty association". Well, that's O'Brien insisting on a trial by media while slamming the possibility that the Government might have created a bias in the public perception regarding Dr Haneef. *Ugh*
What counts for democratic discourse is woefully inadequate in this country.
God help us all from these Anti-Terror legislation, for we are indeed more terrified of them!

Linking Oil To War

It's Not, But It Is
And here I was thinking it's because our government hates towel-heads and camel-jockeys.
The Australian Minister for Defence, Brendan Nelson has done what Sir Humphrey might call "a very courageous thing" and linked Australia's involvement in the Iraq War to oil.

The defence minister, Brendan Nelson, says humanitarian grounds, clamping down on terrorism and standing by allies are all reasons for staying in Iraq, but he says there should not be any surprise that securing oil supplies is also on the list.

"It is in the interests of Iraqis to protect and support energy security as much as it is for those that actually buy that oil from Iraq," Mr Nelson said.

The minister argues instability in the Middle East could affect many nations that rely on the region's oil supplies.

The opposition Labor party's Joel Fitzgibbon says the government has been dishonest with the public from the start of the Iraq war.

"People have suspected oil has been a consideration for some long time now," he said.

The Prime Minister is of course out to stamp out this bush fire, but all the same, the press of the world has seized upon it like vultures swooping down to grab the lame rodent.

Mr Howard said it was "stretching it a bit" to interpret comments by either himself or Defence Minister Brendan Nelson as meaning that the war on Iraq was about petrol prices.

But federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd and minor parties said the government had finally admitted that oil was behind Australia's decision to join the US-led invasion of Iraq - one of the world's largest producers of crude oil.

Dr Nelson told ABC Radio on Thursday morning that the Middle East was an important supplier of oil and Australians had to consider what would happen if troops withdrew prematurely.

Mr Howard told a strategic conference in Canberra that energy demand was one of the reasons for establishing a stable, democratic Iraq.

He later denied that he or Dr Nelson had said troops were staying in Iraq to protect the western world's oil supply.

"I had a look at what Brendan said and I think in fairness to him he didn't quite say that," Mr Howard told Macquarie Radio.

"I haven't said in my speech that the reason we went to Iraq is oil or the reason we're staying there is oil.

"We are not there because of oil and we didn't go there because of oil. We don't remain there because of oil. Oil is not the reason."

Well of course it's oil. Oil was always going to factor in to something like a war on Iraq. Our entire civilization is addicted to oil. What are we going to do when the stuff might be on the running-out side of the ledger? Get desperate!

If a bunch of heroin addicts raided a pharmacy and took boxes of methadone with them, of course they were in it for the drugs; not just the change kept in the register overnight. Don't let them fool you that the pharmacist was a threat to the rest of the street because he might have chemicals that could be turned into weapons.
Then again, there is this thing here too. If Doctors are terror suspects, why not pharmacists? or policemen? Or Governments?

This Mohamed Haneef business may well be a real terror case, but it strikes me as being overly fortuitous for both John Howard and Gordon Brown to come out looking like tough defenders of the Christian realm here, at this point in their respective careers. One is facing electoral oblivion and the other is a newcomer trying to set his own agenda.
Suspect? Or not?

Back to the oil thing.
World War II was fought over oil because oil was a strategic commodity that powered battleships and planes. Thus, we have already fought a world war over who gets to get the most oil and use it as a strategic commodity. Now at this point in history where we can see the day where it might all run out, is it really surprising to find that the Australian government is totally willing to abandon principles and just do what's right for their own populace? - A populace that is totally hooked on the conspicuous consumption of crude oil?
It's daft to even question the motive of the Government any more than to call this part of the agenda a 'conspiracy'. Look, at a certain point, states behave in the most thuggish ways to secure what they need.

The lesson here?
Saddam Hussein really shouldn't have tried to trade his oil in euros instead of US dollars.
Oh, and Cordell Hull and FDR should have been tried as war criminals. :)

My Song Of The Week

Dejah Thoris


What is Dejah Thoris?
Well, more to the point, who is Dejah Thoris?
She is the Queen of Mars a.k.a. 'Barsoom' in Edgar Rice Burroughs' book on Captain John Carter's adventures on the Red Planet.
She is also a character in Robert A.Heinlein's book 'Number of the Beast', or more accurately, 'Number of the Breast'.
She is also the chick in this song that Pharmakeus and I wrote many terrestrial moons ago.