on the grapevine

several things grow on my grapevine. one of which is an lj, by the same name. but its boring at the moment so ignore it.

Now this is quite amusing:

"The Office of the Attorney-General has contacted the Labor Party to inform the Opposition that the (anti-terrorism) bill would be introduced on Tuesday (Melbourne Cup day) and the Government would force debate on the same day.
Labor says Parliament will be given no opportunity to analyse the legislation before voting on the bills."

and its funny for several reasons. Theres the fact that the government are even trying to pull this kind of stunt in front of everyone; that the labour party are claiming Cup day is some kind of national celebration in the style of Christmas; and the overwhelming fact that it doesnt even matter. Whether or not Labor gets to look at the bill has absolutely no meaning whatsoever. They dont have a majority anywhere and the gov can basically do what it wants to to. In a real 'democracy' bills and prospective legislation have to be debated for ages before they get passed, so that any flaws or anything at all can be cleared up. We've only known about this for something like a few weeks, and the gov wants it in by next week. i dont want to be annoying or repetitive, but i feel like pulling out that pic of ian mcdiarmid as emperor palpatine as he takes conrtol of the galactic senate. ahh. metaphors.

and hughesy pointed out something disturbing last night. with all the new anti-sedition laws and media restrictions, will shows like 'glass house' and some of the more debatable sbs shows even be able to stick around? the amount of anti-government talk on those programs has always been more than the gov has wanted to put up with. it should be hi-larious, but with these new laws the gov is trying to get (and most probably will get, seeing as how the opposition seems to just be waving their arms around ineffectually), its actually a little scary.

in other, non-vicarious, news, i just finished my 3U maths exam. i think the acceptable parlance is: w00t! it was pretty hard at the end, but since ive always treated 3U as my baggage unit, i didnt really give a damn. apparently, zinger has now hereby finished her hsc. so while all of us poindexters are sitting, re-reading our notes till our eyes water in agony, she will be prancing around her house and playing the latest sims2 expansion pack. life 'sux'.
oh, and by the way, i managed to get myself quite sick yesterday, so i spent about 20 minutes in the 120 min exam blowing my *flipping* nose. apologies to anyone who was distracted by my extremely loud and painful-sounding sneezing. i hope i didnt lose you too many marks. although im sure i chucked about 10 of mine down the toilet automatically, by not attempting them at all.

and what, may i ask, is going on with the media and this new bird flu pandemic that we're all sposed to have died of a few days ago? i flip channels a coupla times and from what i can gather, that 'tamiflu' stuff doesnt work; wild birds have been banned (however-in-the-hell they did that); 'tamiflu' does work but roche is unwilling to give the research to anyone else without payment of a huge licensing fee; the usa has been producing a sum total of zero vaccines to today; and, oh yeah, we're ALL GOING TO DIE from the same kind of mutant virus (which, by the way, doesnt actually exist as of yet) that wiped out half of the world in 1918.
now, im not a pathogen/virus expert here (and neither are the media, incidentally), but isnt the media getting a little carried away? i mean really. if the definition of a terrorist is one who creates terror, then i would have to nominate the commercial media as key suspects. besides telling all the third world nations that they are not allowed to manufacture the vaccine because they can't afford the research, that may or may not work, all the media has achieved is getting people all over the world to run around like headless chickens.

wakes