Month: May 2015

Domestic violence at Melbourne Zoo

Lili Gans totally absurd, Uncategorized

Australia is in the grip of a domestic violence epidemic. I won’t go into the causes of it since there are many, but let’s say that most of it is due to drugs, alcohol and failed relationships.

A tragic state of affairs which I hope will be improved in years to come.

To make matters worse, last Friday a male gorilla at Melbourne Zoo attacked a female gorilla who subsequently died the next day.

Otana, who is a Silverback gorilla (whatever that is) behaved like an absolute animal!

Silverbacks are known for asserting themselves in a normal manner, the zookeepers inform us, but this time Otana went too far. He overdid the aggressive asserting and poor Julia copped a bashing.

Now that is sad indeed, but I have to confess that I chuckled when it was announced that the primate keepers have been offered counselling to help them through this difficult time.

My new website is teaching me new stuff

Lili Gans Uncategorized

I’m still in the process of adjusting to my new and improved website. For my exclusive (and very small) circle of readers  who know lots more about the internet than I do,  I have to apologise for my natural ignorance.

I did not realise that you get an email immediately that I  publish a post.   This means that when I read the damn thing,  shake my head and am obliged to do inevitable corrections,  the loyal readers are not informed of this new and much more impressive blog.

For those of you who care,  may I invite you to read the revised post on my website—using google.

In future I will click on the preview thingy before publishing the post.

 

The real reason why Gay Marriage won in Ireland

Lili Gans Society

Poor Ashers Bakery didn’t have a hope in slowing down the acceptance of gay marriage in Ireland, did it?

From what I observe,  it was not that gay marriage won, but that the Catholic Church lost.  In my opinion,  the Church with its harsh treatment of single mothers and its sexual abuse reputation, has buried itself.

The Church has lost respect among its former supporters and once someone loses faith in something it cannot be regained.

I have no objection to gays wanting the right to be legally married.  It’s natural to need to be accepted by the rest of society.

I did hear British living treasure,  artist David Hockney,  ironically  lament the loss of the Bohemian lifestyle which the gay community used to enjoy.  He preferred it when they were “radical.” He complained that homosexuals are boring now and will become more boring as they dwell in suburbia, mow their lawns,  and have children etc. just like the rest of us.

It was an observation which made me smile.

How long will it be before a married gay couple announces to the press that it is going through,  in the famous words of Ms Paltrow,   ” conscious uncoupling”?   And,  in the fullness of time, the gay community,  with its new rights,  will share the joy of “unconscious coupling”,    just like the rest of us lucky married folk. lol

 

Let them eat cake at Ashers bakery. Not that there’s anything wrong with it.

Lili Gans totally absurd, Uncategorized

In 1997 Tasmania became the last Australia state to decriminalise homosexual activity between  consenting males.

A propos of this I can recall one of my favourite cartoons of the day. There’s a very Aussie male wearing a dinkum hat and singlet as he waits in line at the airport in Hobart.

His comment is:-

“First it was illegal, then it was tolerated and then it became legal. I’m getting out of here before it becomes compulsory.”

So why am I recalling this cartoon today?  Well, it’s got to  do with the ruling in Northern Ireland which fined a devoutly Christian bakery for refusing  to bake a cake promoting gay marriage.

This was a case of discrimination, the female judge declared.

According to the judge the bakery was conducting a business for profit.  Hmm… very unusual motive.  “They are in the business of providing services for all. The law requires them to do so,” she declared.

My question is  ” If Ashers were a halal  or kosher food store would the owners have to supply a pork hamburger to anyone who demanded it?

The reason for not doing so surely would be the same as the Ashers bakery case. It is against their religious beliefs.

As I hinted above, there will be a day when we will have to come to terms with our sexuality…heterosexuality, that is.

 

Who needs these Isis collaborators back in Australia?

Lili Gans Politics, Society, What Pisses me off

So the young men who left Australia and joined Isis have asked to be allowed back into the country they abandoned.  Well whoopee!

Do we welcome them back? Do we believe that they will now turn their backs on the most violent and unscrupulous murderers in the Middle East?

Perhaps these traitors have discovered that joining a group of terrorists who want to destroy everything that is good in our world is not a picnic, after all.  It’s not an adventure for the bored sons and daughters of the Muslim community in Australia.

Pardon my scepticism, but if I were a member of Isis and I wanted to return to Australia to cause more trouble here, then I would pretend that I am disenchanted with the Isis credo. I would pretend that I regret having left my comfortable home here in Australia for a cause that is the work of the devil.

I would offer to betray Isis by blabbing all the secrets that I had  learned during my adventure with them.

But could I be trusted?

After all, a person who has been a traitor once, which these men have been, could easily become a traitor twice or three times over.

So do we want these men back here to cause havoc in Australia?

No way. Let them stay in the Middle East where they belong.

Latest Ford advertising on Australian TV is annoying

Lili Gans T.V

There are some TV commercials that are so annoying  they become a cult thing.  We can’t stand them because the actors in them are irritating, dumb or just plain unappealing. But they work on a subconscious level because the people in them strike a chord with the viewers as does the iSelect commercial,  for example.

Take the Trivago advertisement for hotel bookings, as another example.  An attractive man meets a rather long-nosed plain woman in a hotel and they get together. Every girl’s fantasy, you might say. The message is that even a rather ordinary woman can find love in one of the hotels that Trivago lists on its site.

It’s not an original concept but it works because  it promises romance.

In the same vein the Crown Casino ad promoting a fun weekend for an ordinary couple will work as well because it’s the average Aussies who will  find something beguiling about romping around in such an environment.

In my opinion, however,  the TV commercial for Ford vehicles does not resonate with anyone.  Yes, it’s annoying because the woman in the ad looks unfriendly as she hops around the set like some sort of manic rabbit.  So it’s memorable, but for all the wrong reasons.

Does she have any plausible connection with the product,  Ford trucks?

No way.

Doesn’t a tradie just want a truck that works well, is reliable and has some oomph, some vroom  and gets the job done?  He doesn’t really want some prissy female telling him what he should do.

Why does she bounce around so much?  Why does she look so harsh and bitchy?  Would you visit a Ford showroom or lot or whatever after watching her prance around looking so off-putting?

Granted that these Ford commercials are not directed at me and are not meant to suck me in,  I wonder if they have attracted any tradesmen at all.

 

p.s  added on the 24th May

Ford Australia has just announced it will shed about  440 jobs because their cars are not selling. Now I’m not saying it is the fault of the latest Ford ad but it certainly didn’t help, did it?

 

 

Organic restaurants, expensive and uncomfortable

liligans So you think you're cultured?, totally absurd

If you want to sit on a crate, balance on a swing or hurt your back on some Scandinavian style sterile furniture, then an organic restaurant serving that yummy organic food is the place for you.

The whole thing about organic is that if it hurts or tastes bad then it must be good for you. Take kale, for example. A green triffid-like growth that tastes so awful it has been promoted as being the best vegetable ever.

Well, I bought some just to see what the fuss was about and all I can say is it must be very, very good for you.

When I was a TV critic at the Courier Mail newspaper I reviewed a British series called “Heartbeat.” One of the characters in it was a lovable rascal called Greengrass who was always looking to make a fortune in a less than honest manner.

In one episode he was seen dipping some farm eggs into manure and rubbing that smelly stuff all over them. When asked why he was doing this, he replied “There’s lots of money in being organic.”

Good on you, Garland, Texas!

liligans Politics, Society

There was a time when I was against guns. But that was before the Sandy Hook School massacre in Connecticut, U.S.A in which 20 very young children were brutally killed by a gunman. There was no armed guard at the school which prided itself on being very liberal and tolerant.

That school had a marvellous philosophy which preached that we should all live in peace, and sing Kumbaya my Lord as we hug one another and pretend that everyone else agrees with us and wishes us well.

Sadly, the evil people in this world did not agree with the peace-loving ones at Sandy Hook and so 20 children were murdered by a monster.

That atrocity took place in 2012 and I grieve for the dead children and their families. There should have been an armed guard in the school to protect them.

So here we are in 2015 in Garland, Texas. A couple of crazy jihadists have decided to attack an exhibition which offends them. They arrive armed and ready to kill. The two pieces of excreta shoot a guard but then a policeman shoots the two murderers dead.

ISIS claims responsibility for the attack. That’s okay as long as the assassins were shot dead before they could massacre people. So be it.

The sooner that people learn that we live in a different world now and that good people are under threat from an horrifically evil force the better and they had better change their idealistic views.

If you don’t learn from experience you pay the price and surely Sandy Hook should have been a lesson to us all. We need to face reality and protect our citizens, even as we lament the loss of innocence in this world.

Back online

liligans Society

Following an erratic interruption of almost two weeks I am back online. I won’t go into the details but, fingers crossed, I hope to be online for a while. I still don’t really understand why my website had problems, but it has made me very sceptical about the reliability of it all.

Whilst the internet is an asset in many respects, it has changed the way we live, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.

I know that communication is less frequent now because people expect me to be on Facebook with pretty pictures of my cat or dog. I also know that I can’t expect phone calls from people. Now it’s texting. And what pleasure is there in that? It’s like semaphores and smoke signals. Hard to have a real conversation nowadays without somebody fingering a phone.

No wonder I become nostalgic as I caress my Montblanc fountain pen and remember the letters we wrote together. But then who has the oportunity to express oneself in depth nowadays when everything has to be encapsulated into 140 characters?