Obligatory holiday post

Hi all.

I'm off on Wednesday for a few days up the coast soaking up the balmy sea air and avoiding sunburn.

For those of you who read my blog from colder climes, there is something truly wrong about singing Christmas carols about snow, roasting chestnuts and one-horse open sleighs when the weather outside is verging on 35 to 40 degrees. Celsius.

(Or, if you like, spare a thought for Sean the Blogonaut. He lives in the middle of Australia where the temperature gets into the mid forties during the day, and then plummets to seriously cold levels overnight. Thank goodness we at least have the moderating influence of the sea where I live)

On Christmas Day, normally, I will be up around midday - because I like to sleep in. Then I will get up and stuff myself silly on turkey, ham, salad, maybe some chicken, prawns, Balmain bugs or lobster (depending on availability - looks like lobster is out this year), mussels and a variety of deserts including pudding.

Then we might get in a trip to the beach before opening presents, having a nap and then finally passing out in front of the TV in a bloated state.

It's all good.

So anyway, on to my annual holiday post.

Bloke of the year goes to Joe Biden, who, after spotting that Dick Cheney was planning on scuttling away without anyone noticing, put the boot in and shitcanned him, calling him, 'the most dangerous vice president we had probably in the American history'.

Dick Cheney, you might recall is still currently the Darth Sidious character to George W Bush's Dark Helmet. An odious guy who will be remembered for pulling the strings in the worst administration in US history. Oh yes. Harding, Nixon, Hoover - they had nothing on the Cheney Bush Administration in terms of general awfulness.

But enough of this. Here's some holiday reading for you:

Dikkii's Greatest Hits for 2008

=10. Go Placidly Amid The Noise and Wait

=10. Something I noticed recently

=10. Are Fiscal Deficits Really That Bad?

=10. Yes, I have a new favourite TV show

9. Keysar Trad on polygamy

8. The art empire strikes back

7. Brutal carnage!

6. Denial. Or why people actually drink.

5. One more and then I'll shut up. For a while...

4. Holy Frottage, Batman!

3. Blackmail And The Catholic Church

2. An open letter to artists everywhere

And, you all know how I love to big-note myself. I bet you can guess what is going number one here:

1. This blog is culturally significant. Official.

So party on and enjoy the summer. And, if you're reading this from the Northern Hemisphere, OUCH!


Edit 05/01/2008: Yes, I know that this didn't go up until January. I totally thought I'd posted it, when I in fact hadn't done so. I was in a hurry to pack and go off to the coast at the time. For the record, Christmas lunch was turkey and cranberry sauce sandwiches in a picnic area in the remotest corner of East Gippsland, Victoria.

Dikkii for president, 2008?

This is interesting. I'm not even American.



(With thanks to Orac.)

Happy blogiversary to me again!

Dear friendly blog readers,

At the start of the year, I celebrated one year since I rejoined the blogosphere.

I'm now going to celebrate an even bigger milestone, chronologically speaking, that is. This month marks ten years since Dikkii's Diatribe originally launched itself on to the net. Without repeating myself too much from my post in January, I began Dikkii's Diatribe out of my ground floor front bedroom in September 1997, not long after getting my first computer and internet access.

After a few days of feeling smug, I printed out a copy of this complaint and pasted it up in the bathroom of my house next to the toilet.

Thanks to the Wayback Machine, this is my first post, which I have reproduced here at the new, Blogger facilitated Dikkii's Diatribe.

Lots of stuff has changed since I first started blogging, but in the meantime, a lot of stuff has stayed the same.

And it's somewhat topical that some of my favourite bloggers have started questioning why they started blogging in the first place. One of my favourite bloggers is Bob the Austin Atheist Anonymous who writes an excellent blog called Hot Dogs, Pretzels and Perplexing Questions. He's just retired from the blogosphere.

This immediately prompted his brother Bronze Dog who writes The Bronze Blog (another excellent blog, by the way) to review why it is that he blogs again.

So I thought I'd do a little review myself, and guess what? I'm going to put the broom through here a little bit.

For a long period - in fact, going right back to this blog's inception, this was the spiel that explained my blog:

"This page is an outlet for my own hate-filled vitriol and spiteful opinions. Uneducated as I am in the ways of the world, it's still necessary to vent my spleen at the media, the music industry, the AFL and anyone else who could have offended my sensibilities. I plan for this to be updated occasionally, depending on my state of mind. So you can either look forward to, or avoid my one-sided, uninformed and dangerously unbalanced opinions on the state of the world and everyone in it."

I'm dumping this. Not because it's inaccurate, but because I do other stuff on this blog, now.

So what is Dikkii's Diatribe about?

1. Woo.

I have a particular fascination with anything that falls under the umbrella title of "woo", be it the paranormal, pseudoscience, quackery, religion, or anything else that can be so labelled. I tend to also place things like postmodernist/deconstructionist/post structuralist mumbo-jumbo, management doublespeak, legal flummery and quack economics/finance under this umbrella title too.

Why?

The ultimate aim of these is to obfuscate and deceive, and it's no different to the mischief of woo merchants such as your John Edwards, Sylvia Brownes and Allison DuBoises.

Fighting these is the least that the world's one and only militant agnostic can do.

2. Politics.

I regard myself as politically, the most average bloke out there. I strive for political mediocrity and normality. I consider myself the yardstick by which everyone else is measured, the social median, if you like.

My economics may be slightly on the right, but my social justice meter counter-balances this by being slightly on the left.

Consequently, I think that there is no better person than myself for pointing out the foibles of the politically conservative or politically progressive.

3. Economics.

I love economics and I have worked in finance for pretty much all my working life.

One of my key complaints about people these days is that they don't see the need to be fiscally literate. This leads people to be exploited financially, so it is my aim to see the balance redressed by providing the odd piece of commentary on economics and finance.

Hopefully in a simple and straightforward fashion.

4. Science.

Science is an area that I wish I knew more about. People appear to only know slightly more about science than what they do about economics, so I'm schooling myself to know more as well.

And along the way, a bit of scientific knowledge helps stave off all sorts of charlatans peddling woo.

5. Law.

The law is an ass.

6. Music.

I love music but hate the music industry. I might just quote TISM here from "Jesus pots the white ball" off their Beasts of Suburban compilation:

"Why play rock and roll? It's a question fundamental
Take Jimbo from The Doors, you'll find which ones incidental
Take the music from the industry, you're left with grasping bankers
Take the industry out of music, you're left with childish wankers"

It says it all.

7. Sport.

I am a spectator. I was routinely bad at sport, but I love to watch it. I also love to watch the sheer amateurism of sporting administrators in professional sport.

I also like to get in any chance I possibly can to poke fun at the Collingwood Football Club and their president, Eddie McGuire. If they win a flag this year, we should all reflect on what we all could have done to prevent this from happening.

---

So there you go. Over the next few weeks, I'll progressively change the look of my blog to reflect where I'm going with this.

But I'll leave you in the meantime with my blog's new motto, from Public Image Ltd's "Rise":

"Anger is an energy."

Hugs and kisses to all, Dikkii.