One Of Terry's Corners Of the Online World

Not a good day to start a livejournal. The car crapped itself ten metres from the driveway last night. The RACV guys says it's the fuel pump. This would be a disaster of lesser dimensions if we hadn't had the radiator and headgasket fixed just this week. All up, this is costing us the price of a good laptop. Maybe it's time to get a new car or win Lotto and buy a large flat in Docklands and never have to drive again.
It's a cold Saturday morning in Melbourne. I'm listening to RU Sirius' podcast, I have the heater up high and my stainless steel Starbucks mug is filled to the brim with sulawesi kalossi coffee which is my all-time favourite bean. Today, we're gonna put the car into the repair place and take it easy. I'm gonna watch my new DVD of Jacques Brel Is Alive And Well And Living In Paris, which I've wanted to own a copy of for a couple of decades. Then maybe veg out with The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp (Anton Walbrook's speech in that movie always brings a tear to my eye) and maybe... hmmm (pauses to gaze up at the wall of DVDs) Psycho Beach Party just for a change of pace. Give me the simple life.

Over at The Pagan Prattle Online, http://www.prattle.net/archives/001878.html Feòrag NicBhride has a piece on the Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson's encouragement of Intelligent Design (a.k.a. Pernicious Creationism By Proxy) - which I'm pleased to say I alerted her to. The Culture Wars are heating up in Australia, alas. But not since the Vietnam War have the battle lines been quite so clear. There's little ambiguity here. You're either for progress philosophically, scientifically, rationally, humanitarianly and compassionately, or you're for a future which retreats to tribal superstitions in a high tech version of the Dark Ages.

But on to other things, not entirey unrelated to the mini-rant above: Rather than watching The Life And Death of Colonel Blimp, we're watching the director's cut of The Wicker Man, where a wicked Christian policeman (Edward Woodward) tries to ruin the  harvest for Summerisle, in spite of all of the hard work by Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee).