Was down at the local video store, having a squizz at the flicks on the shelves. Saw a title that looked like a bit of a hoot called The Steam Experiment. It's about some nutty boffin who decides to show what we're all in for as the planet cooks by locking a bunch of airheads inside a steam room. So, it's not really an experiment at all, since said scientist has some pretty fixed ideas about what kind of results will occur!

Don't know if it endorses the crazy green theory of human caused climate change, or just exploits it for its entertainment value. (I suspect the latter from this plot outline.) Whatever the case it certainly didn't make much of an impact. It was made this year and more or less went straight to DVD. 

Interestingly, Kilmer has made another global warming themed thriller recently. It's called The Thaw, and the plot revolves around a killer parasite being released as a result of the unfreezing of a wooly mammoth.

This choice of roles suggests that maybe Val is a full-on ferndie, obsessively trying to send a message about our impending immolation through his art.

Hmm. Maybe, maybe not. But if he replaces the "m" in his surname with an "n", then we'll know for sure.

Just got some very disturbing news: My nemesis Derek Sapphire has returned to the internet and resumed blogging.

Derek and I are enemies from way back, and we've clashed many times before both online and off. When I started blogging, he quickly followed suit. He was stalking me in cyberspace for quite some time, constantly writing vindictive posts and sending abusive e-mails. 

I used to bite back. But that never seemed to work. These leftie wankers just live to get a reaction, after all. So I decided to ignore him. That seemed to work after a while, because he eventually just gave up. 

But now he's back into it. And he seems to be doing so with renewed vigour. This time he doesn't just have a blog. He's gone and got himself a whole website, and bought a top level domain (which I'm sure the long suffering Aussie taxpayer will be hit up for!).

He reckons he's intending to use the site to "subvert" capitalism by selling culturally sensitive and eco-friendly products and services. What a bloody joke! Can't wait to see what sanctimonious crap he'll try to flog to his gullible acolytes.

No doubt he'll whinge and whine about what I've written here. But he's already snarked at me - and in his first blog post. So this one is just karma as far as I'm concerned.

While the couple who faked this balloon boy incident are obviously total pillocks who deserve to be punished for what they did, you've really gotta feel sorry for them. I mean, imagine being that needy and insecure that you would even consider doing such a thing, let alone go through with it? 

And to do it to your child! They'd already committed a kind of abuse by calling him Falcon. But to demand that he be complicit in such a craven, desperate act to get attention was destructive beyond words. He's obviously been deeply affected by it already - poor sprog barfed twice during live interviews, apparently. But imagine how much anger he'll have about this when he's an adult. Abuse is kind of like wine - but in a bad way. The hurt it causes gets worse and worse over the years.

One of the saddest things about this is that while this incident is pretty extreme, there are countless others not unlike the Heenes; people who are determined to become famous at absolutely any cost. Reality television is such a big industry now that there's actually a place where you can learn to be an expert performer in the medium! Of course the genre was never "real" to start with, but the existence of such an institution makes the label completely invalid. (Don't know what they teach you there - how to be even more annoying than you are already, or something.)

Bizarre, eh?

The Hey Hey It's Saturday! blackface furore made paranoid shop owners move their golliwogs to the back shelves. Understandably, some think the reaction is unjustified.

Store owner Diarne Revelle is quoted in the story above:

"Kids aren't racist and they don't relate to their dolls as being black or white, to them they are their little friends and that's it.

"We are imposing adult sensibilities on childish desire and fancy. Kids aren't racists - golliwogs to them are bright, friendly toys, dolls, scallywags."

That's a good observation. But she also makes the mistake of kowtowing to PC dogma in defending the sale of the dolls:

"In multi-cultural Melbourne, our little customers should be allowed to walk in and select a doll of any colour or any race of their choice."

Not surprisingly lefties snort with derision at this defence. But is invoking PC in defence of something any more ridiculous than doing so to condemn it? Hardly.

In related news, golliwogs have been removed from the latest Noddy book. Tony Summerfield of the Enid Blyton Society says that in the celebrated writer's time they carried no racist connotations:

"Gollies were just nursery toys and it wasn’t until much later that they became seen as racist symbols.”

So, if children don't see them as racist (and they weren't originally envisaged as such) why should we tell them they are?

What's really fascinating about this controversy is the zeal with which lefties cling to and actively promote the stereotypes they say they're trying to stamp out. 

But then they would be zealous. Not only are they almost invariably more racist than those they condemn - and therefore, er, protesteth-ing too much - without these "racist" stereotypes they would have nothing to be outraged about. Without being outraged, they can't intimidate people. Without intimidating people, they can't control them. And control is what it's all about for lefties. It's like oxygen to them, poor little petals.

I mean, imagine actually being one of these shrieking ninnies, spending half your waking hours squittering about bloody rag dolls! What a sad, wretched little life you must have. 

Am in the process of relocating from Newtown to Leichhardt. It's a helluva thing, moving. And it gets harder and harder the older you get. I'm almost a quasi-codger now, so it's not easy at all. 

And it's not just the physical effort of it all. It's the emotional upheaval. Living in the same place for a while, it's as if you become physically melded to the joint. You also become very accustomed to the routine, the shops, the pubs, the trains and buses. 

Still, it's good to do it occasionally. And even though it's only just up the road, Leichhardt is way different to Newtown. Newtown is charming in a grotty, grungy way. But it's also kind of bleak and depressing. Forgive the bluntness, but it just has too many stumpy chicks in boiler suits with purple hair!

Leichhardt, on the other hand, is more upmarket, with doe-eyed, raven haired babes aplenty. And it's gotta have a higher concentration of cafes than just about anywhere else in Sydney. I have been known to sip the odd latte (in a politically subversive way, of course). And I do like a nice strong black coffee to get me going. So I can pretty much go to a new cafe every day for a fortnight!

Amazing how different new surroundings make you feel. And that effect is far more pronounced in a joint like Sydney. It's the most diverse, tribal city in Oz, that's for sure. You can go a couple of kilometres and feel like you're in another country.

In Sri Lanka, street theatre will be used to warn people of the dangers of trying to enter Australia illegally by boat. Now that's gotta be a first! After all, the medium was invented by dirty, smelly hippies with absolutely no talent to inflict their moronic leftist dogmas upon unsuspecting pedestrians.

(Although I suppose you could look at it another way and see people smugglers as extreme capitalists who profit hugely from people's desire for a better life. Then performing street theatre against it could still be deemed a progressive pursuit ... Still, lefties have never looked at it that way. So it's safe to say that this new use of the medium is a major subversion of the dominant paradigm.) 

So, could this eeevil right-wing hijacking of a beloved bolshie performance mode be the beginning of a conservative cultural revolution? Will the forces of darkness wrest other modes of, er, "creative" expression from the left? Are we about to see a climate sceptics' indy rock band, giant puppets for Christ, or a nude protest against porn?

Hmm. Somehow I doubt it. Oz lefties would fight tooth and nail to preserve the status quo. Sure, they can't stop right-wing street theatre being performed over in Sri Lanka, but there's no way they'll let it catch on over here. That'd be illegal immigration!

It's pretty obvious that reality TV shows don't exactly attract the creme de la creme of society. Actually, it's starting to look like they attract its creme de la crim!

See, the prime suspect in the gruesome murder of a porn star called Felicia Tang Lee is a former reality TV star (and preacher - can you believe it?) named Brian Randone. While he has the right to a presumption of innocence, things aren't lookin' too good for him. 

This case has eerie similarities to the murder of swimsuit model Jasmine Fiore. The culprit was thought to be former reality TV star Ryan Jenkins. He ended up topping himself - probably about as close to an admission of guilt as he was gonna give.

If this trend continues, it's only a matter of time before some attention craving psycho carves up a babe during the taping of a reality show, sending ratings sky high. The producers'll really be "making a killing" then ...

The murder of Michael McGurk is absolutely fascinating. It's like a bloody straight-to-DVD thriller, with a touch of Agatha Christie thrown in. Barely audible tapes, political powerbrokers, dodgy development deals, notes naming potential killers, and "colourful local identities" aplenty. You'd be hard pressed to make this stuff up, I tell ya!

One thing that keeps popping up in the reporting is a phrase something like this: "there is no suggestion that (insert name of colourful identity here) is in any way involved with the murder". The mere inclusion of such a phrase might lead the more conspiracy minded among us to think that actually there just might be! (Although by pointing out that possibility I am in no way suggesting that to be the case, of course.) 

Hmm. On second thoughts maybe I shouldn't have said that ... Hey, anyone know of a cheap, reliable plastic surgeon in Sydney?

Singing sisters Kylie and Dannii Minogue are both currently in serious relationships, so they're intending to get married simultaneously. 

I think doubling up is a fine idea. They'll certainly save a heap of moolah by doing so, and that makes sense in these financially precarious times. And I know that potential media exposure has absolutely nothing to do with their plans, but they'll also be getting twice the coverage doing it this way.

I wish them well. Still, I don't hold out much hope for these marriages. Let's face it, when celebs tie the knot, it usually comes undone in a year or so. If that happens - and it almost certainly will - they should really try to time the breakups. Then they can cut costs by having a double divorce. 

Here's some info about Chloe Traicos, a dynamic young woman working in the Australian arts field. I first met Chloe via the comedy scene in Perth about nine years ago. She was only nineteen or twenty then, yet she immediately impressed me with her creativity, intelligence and determination to get things done. Since then she's achieved more in several fields than many people have in just one.

Chloe was born in Zimbabwe. She had a love of drama from an early age and performed in many plays throughout her teenage years. The family moved to Perth, Western Australia in 1998. While studying at university there she remained active in theatre. Among other projects she wrote and performed in a play about her experiences in Zimbabwe.

She then moved to Sydney and has been very busy with various projects. Soon after arriving she scored a small part in the movie Garage Days and wrote and starred in a short film called The Sixth Commandment.

As the situation back in Zimbabwe deteriorated, Chloe made a documentary that included several interviews with Zimbabwean refugees. The doco, called A Stranger in My Homeland, was screened in several film festivals across the globe including Amnesty International Film Festival and the Los Angeles International Film Festival. At the New York International Film Festival it won Chloe the award for Best Director of a Foreign Film.

She then wrote and starred in her first feature film, I Wish I Were Stephanie V. Directed by John Cohen, it co-starred Clayton Watson (The Matrix). It's a romantic comedy which could be described as a cross between Bend it Like Beckham and My Big Fat Greek Wedding. It will be released later this year.

Chloe then wrote and starred in another feature film. Next Door to the Velinskys is a thriller and stars Matt Doran from The Thin Red Line and The Matrix. This is currently in post-production. In it, Chloe plays Ruby, a troubled young woman who has created a false identity to deal with the pain of her past.

While that project is being completed, she has yet another project in the works. It's called Obsession, and it's based on her experience of dating a man suspected of being the Claremont serial killer.