The Prime Minister said on Q&A last night that he wouldn’t mind the drinking age being lifted to 21.

This is probably the dumbest idea since cutting back on the solar panel rebate. Lifting the drinking age would be counter-productive and unfair.

It is stupid for a number of reasons:

1. It would instantly double the number of underage drinkers making the problem that much worse. A problem that is already impossible to police would be even more difficult to stop.
2. Instead of getting drunk under supervision legally at home or in a pub young people will go to the local park instead and get paralytic with a bunch of their friends. Raising the drinking age is supposed to cut down on drunken violence in the city, but all it would do simply shift the drunken violence to the suburbs. In a park there is no bartender to cut you off or bounces to break up fights.
3. It is incompatible with our culture. The drinking age has been 18 now for so long that nobody considers it a bad thing to drink at that age. It is a rite of passage to finally be allowed to drink. At high school I knew the odd person that waited to till 18, but I just can’t imagine anyone waiting for 21.
4. You can’t drink responsibly if you are drinking illegally.
5. May increase access to other illegal drugs. If I remember back to when I used to drink underage in a park or at someone’s house whose parents were not home, there was always a group of guys on the couch smoking pot and a bunch of girls in the corner popping pills. If you are already doing something illegal you may as well do something that is only slightly more illegal.
6. It is bad for the economy. There are many clubs out there that cater solely for those under the age of 21. What would happen to these clubs and the people who work at them?
7. It is moving the goalposts. Many kids have been waiting for 18 and suddenly changing the age to 21 is just unfair. An age has to be picked where a kid is finally accepted as an adult.

Binge drinking, alcohol fuelled violence and drunk driving are all serious problems that kill teenagers, but increasing the drinking age is not the solution and might even make those problems worse.

Driving while drunk is already a criminal offence. Is somebody who habitually drives drunk going to remedy their behaviour if drinking at their current age is now illegal? If you live in the real world the answer is of course no.

Last night I was watching, Natural Mysteries: killer whale attack. I was absolutely dumbfounded by the stupidity of the commentary on the show. It was about a pod of killer whales in a particular bay in California. The killer whales would separate a gray whale mother from its calf and then kill and eat it. This apparently was unheard of behaviour.

What a bunch of fucking bullshit. They are called killer whales because like all other animals they need to eat and their choice of food is: other whales. Unfortunately, before a whale can be eaten it needs to be killed. It isn’t exactly a mystery when a killer whale kills and eats a whale. Or you can’t be bothered using your brain today it can be boiled down to 2 words: killer and (wait for it) whale.

This sort of thing really explains the ignorance of some young people these days. Kids who don’t know who Gandhi is or that the Lord of the Rings movies were based on a book (true story).

I guess you can’t expect an 18-year-old to know everything, but when a person has been through university, risen up the ranks, created their own documentary and are still not aware of the simplest fact, that is something else.

I laughed when a friend of mine said our civilisation was crumbling, but now I wonder…

There are a few things that pissed me off over the weekend.

I was thinking about donating some money to Wikipedia. They have that line graph that shows how many more millions of dollars they need on a banner ad at the top of the page. But then they started using guilt to induce people to give money, by changing that banner ad from the graph to a pleading, “I couldn’t ignore that banner at the top of the site any more… I use Wikipedia far too often to ignore the need!”

As if we need another fucking thing to feel guilty about. Starving kids in Africa, Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers, global warming, not having life insurance, not having funeral insurance, not having income insurance, not having health insurance the list goes on and on. And now Wikipedia decides to jump on the guilt train.

I believe I know why vampires are very popular at the moment. Vampirism is a surprisingly large part of our culture. What do you think those insurance ads are about? They make you feel guilty about something you don’t even need to think about. You fall under their spell they sink their teeth into your neck and suck all your money out.

What I want to know is how do the actors who do the, “imagine if you suddenly died,” ads sleep at night? I bet they go for the Nazi death camp guard excuse – “I’m only doing my job.” What really disturbs me is people that have lost someone close recently, every time they watch commercial television they are reminded of the death at every single ad break. It’s soul destroying. Its emotional and economic vampirism.

Why would you bother watching commercial TV if it hurts? And then the networks complain about people watching content they’ve downloaded legally.

Has anyone got examples of vampirism that doesn’t involve sucking blood? If so I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

David Marr is good on media watch but he really gives me the shits. Everything he says sounds rehearsed and he can’t help being condescending.

I do find him irritating, but he said a few things about the refugee crisis on last night’s Q&A that set me thinking. He said that Kevin Rudd is being way too weak with the opposition and the Australian public.

It is no surprise to anyone that a large portion of Australians seem to fear refugees. Kevin Rudd needs to tell us that there is no real crisis and that our fear is unjustified or something along those lines. Maybe he could also compare our refugee intake with that of other countries. He should underline the problems with the Pacific solution on the grounds of expense, practicality and the unfair treatment of asylum seekers.

David Marr also criticised Indonesia’s appalling handling of the asylum seekers on board the Oceanic Viking. The Indonesian government won’t accept the asylum seekers if force is used to remove them from the Oceanic Viking.

The thing is on any commercial vessel after rescuing asylum seekers the captain would go to the nearest port and drop the rescued people off, if they were belligerent force would be used. If force cannot be used in this situation and a ship is found in distress the captain has a very difficult decision to make. Being stuck in port with one hundred asylum seekers on a ship not designed to carry passengers and your cargo rotting away. It would be a lot easier and no doubt better for the career to sail on past. After all there are plenty of other ships out there one of them is bound to stop.

Kevin Rudd has been sucked into this asylum seeker crisis and really it isn’t his fault. Instead of just being carried along by it he should stand up and fight back.

I believe our society is in danger of juicing every little bit of fun out of life. The example of the five police officers stood down, a month ago, over a harmless buck’s night prank is a symptom of this. Brendan Fevola was basically sacked because of his drunken antics on Brownlow night. Brendan did not glass his girlfriend or assault anybody – he had too much to drink. Haven’t we all been in this position?

Football players and police officers are ordinary people. People mess up. Most importantly people have fun. As long as this fun does not injure anyone else what is the harm? In fact, I feel we are harmed by not allowing people to be people. What is the point of living if you do not enjoy life?

We all have had those great nights with our friends. We drink share stories, jokes and of course perform pranks. We have all been in a car and someone has pressed their bare arse to the window to shock passers by. My most memorable occasion were when a friend of mine lit his own fart. I don’t think I have laughed so hard since. It is not sick or perverted – it is normal and everyone does it in their own way. We might be the last generation to enjoy such freedoms unless we fight to maintain them.

It started with politicians being exposed for sexual indiscretions. We hold people in power to a higher standard than the common person. When a politician is exposed it is deemed to be for the public good. Many people have an inbuilt distrust of those who seek power. This probably stems from the fact that there is a long history of people being abused by those in power. In these modern times in most democracies we are protected from the abuse of the powerful. Our rulers are ordinary people, but we still hold them to a higher standard.

Many people felt this was okay, but it was the thin end of the wedge. Now sportspeople and just about any other person in the public eye is also held to this unrealistic moral standard. They are role models you see, we want our kids to grow up like them. Most disturbing of all, ordinary people are now starting to be held to this standard as evidenced by the five police officers being stood down for a harmless prank.

One day soon you might get too drunk at a friend’s birthday party. You may take your clothes off and run around the house naked. Some people will record it on their phones and pictures of your indiscretions will be posted on Facebook. The following Monday morning you will be called into your boss’ office and immediately stood down without pay. You may even be forced into a humiliating public apology on You Tube. Your life would be thrown into turmoil for a single harmless prank.

The way the world is heading everybody in a position of power, such as your boss, becomes the moral arbiter of everybody under them. Mobile phones with cameras and websites like Facebook mean all your indiscretions will be known about – you will be judged and held accountable.

This is the world we could be living in if we do not stop the slide into moral totalitarianism. We all need to show politicians and our bosses that they cannot judge what we do in our private lives.

Being cool in my opinion is not about your fashion sense or whether you were popular at school it is how you handle situations. Like being cool under pressure or not being offended easily.

A cool person doesn’t appear to be offended when somebody calls them an arsehole, but instead comes up with a witty comeback that makes their detractor an item of ridicule. I always thought young people were supposed to be cool as they had not yet been filled up with opinions, prejudices and had not yet developed a hatred for the human race.

In high school I remember this kid, who suffered slightly from small man syndrome. He yelled across the schoolyard to one of the larger female members of our class, “Why stroll when you can roll?” The girl not looking the slightest bit bothered, yelled back, “You should have been drowned at birth you little turd.” This response caused the boy’s friends to fall into immediate fits of hysterical laughter. The boy turned into a beetroot – the colour of one in any case. From this moment I strived to be cool in just that way.

The other day I was talking to someone much younger than me I work with about the current ‘refugee crisis.’ They said some extremely intolerant things possibly in an effort to make me angry. I continued arguing using logic and reason. They got very annoyed when I disagreed with them. I was damn sure that I didn’t actually say anything that was offensive (I asked them later and they agreed). But the person refused to speak to me unless to answer simple yes or no questions for the next four hours.

A couple of days later the same person broke a fingernail, I made a small joke about it and again they did not talk to me for the next two hours.

It is not just me that is having trouble with supersensitive ridiculously easy to offend people. At a pub this girl got cut off from the bar for calling the bartender a “fuckstick”. She went to the toilet or something and her friends started discussing the incident and whether or not it was a case of mistaken identity from the bartender. Later the girl flew into hysterics crying and everything because her friends were talking behind her back. What exactly do parents do to raise somebody that unstable?

I would like to know if anybody else is having trouble with supersensitive young people? If so I would love to hear about it in the comments.

Yesterday, I was reading the science-fiction classic Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. One of the characters in the book does not like religion very much and was complaining about the terrible things written in some holy books. The character mentioned chapter 19 of Genesis verse eight and 2 Kings chapter 2.

In chapter 19 of Genesis Lot offers a crowd of men around his house his two virgin daughters if they would just go away and leave him alone. By the way these men were from the town of Sodom and you know what they do there. These girls would have been brutally raped by the entire male population of the town. The thing is any bible basher will tell you what a great bloke Lot was.

Genesis 19

8: Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof.

Okay so Lot was pretty evil, but now it is God’s turn. In this scene there was this guy Elisha who is travelling from town to town doing good things. Until that is he comes to the town of Bethel where the town’s children run out and start teasing Elisha about his bald head. He then curses the children and two bears come out of the nearby wood and tears the children into 42 pieces or tears 42 children into pieces – I’m not quite sure, but far out how bad is that?

2 Kings, chapter 2

23: And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.

24: And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.

Many Christians say they believe the Bible literally. If they are reading the same bible that I have how can they possibly believe their God is fair, just and good. If I met that God I would be forced to say, “see you next Tuesday”, if you know what I mean. Even if you don’t take the Bible literally what possible lesson could this passage teach you?

Some may say this is the Old Testament and that it doesn’t really matter any more. But it was the same God then as it was 2000 years ago and today. In my experience leopards do not change their spots.

But the world was a different place back then and who are you to question the will of God? I’m sorry, but there are some things that are wrong in any age if they are committed by any being divine or otherwise. In my opinion killing innocent children is always wrong.

There is a website devoted to evil Bible passages. There are atrocities in there attributed to God and many of his prophets, from mass killings to amateur abortions where mothers were ripped open to kill the growing fetus (Hosea, chapter 13:16).

In my opinion there is only one word to describe this and it is: evil!

I let out an annoyed groan when I heard Hey Hey it’s Saturday was coming back. It was a show that needed to die and die it did, much to many people’s relief. But like anything evil it did not stay dead.

As Victor Frankenstein and the owner operators of Jurassic Park found out bringing the dead back to life is not without its risks. This was proved again last night when they dredged up an old 80s skit the Jackson jive. This featured five guys painted black with Afro wigs.

This skit was in bad taste when it originally aired in 1989. There are many people who are still trying to defend the Jackson jive. This skit is racist and I can’t believe that anybody could possibly believe otherwise. If they do they are nothing but ignorant fools who are most likely closet racists.

This skit references the black minstrel theatre shows that were popular before the Second World War. This was used as a tool to ridicule black culture and made out that black people were, ignorant, lazy, superstitious and lacked personal hygiene. When you ridicule someone on the basis of their race – this is racism. To argue otherwise is like saying day is night.

For many years now Australia has been trying to convince the rest of the world that we are no longer a racist nation. The publicised attacks on Indian students have been seriously damaging Australia’s reputation and now it has been completely destroyed.

This is going to be all over American news and talk shows. It is already difficult to defend allegations that Australia is a racist country. And now… how do you say we are not racist when people have absolute proof that a good proportion of us are racist?

I am so pissed off about this is that I need to stop writing…

It seems totally bizarre to me that there are people protesting against the wind farm to be built near Colac, Victoria. There are protest movements around the world against the creation of wind farms. Some people find them ugly and claim they make noise that keeps them up at night. Some environmentalists claim they kill birds and bats.

Contrary to what a lot of these protesters believe windfarms do not create a lot of noise. There are many videos on YouTube that prove this, at least to my satisfaction.

Recently there is a new complaint against windfarms. Apparently windfarms create massive amounts of infra-sound that can cause a very rare and little-known illness called vibroacoustic disease. This sounds very plausible, but there are several things wrong about this theory.

1. Every scholarly article you find about vibroacoustic disease appears to be co-authored by the same man, Dr. Nuno Castelo Branco. This is a problem because until there is a number of papers supporting the theory that infra-sound can cause disease it can only be considered conjecture. There doesn’t seem to be agreement in the medical or scientific community that the disease exists at all.
2. If infra-sound from windmills created disease hospitals would be filling up around the world. Just as some people believed, and some continue to believe that mobile phones can cause brain cancer, but there is no epidemic even though virtually everybody in the Western world uses a mobile phone.
3. There are many other sources of infra-sound the wind itself for one. There are many machines that we live with every day that create huge amounts of infra-sound. How come this does not seem to cause any ill effect?
4. Some animals such as whales and elephants use infra-sound to communicate. If infra-sound is damaging to life surely these animals would have died out or stop using infra-sound to communicate.

Even though there is virtually no scientific evidence to say that infra-sound could be damaging there is also no scientific evidence to say that it isn’t damaging. Being a scientific person I’m forced to say there is a very remote chance it could be damaging. Any concerns about sound, infra or otherwise, can be solved by situating windfarms away from houses. The Colac windfarm will be situated on grazing land between Mount Gellibrand and the Princess Highway – not in residential areas.

There are people against any kind of new technology. People by their nature are also scared of change. When the printing press was brought to Europe it helped spark some of the worst wars the world has ever seen. These days people are far more open-minded, but there are still those that use the fear of job loss, disease and large corporations changing the landscape to resist development.

There are pundits who use the results of a Spanish study to say that windfarms cost jobs. The study authors claim that for every one green job created two are lost. In subsidising the cost of creating green power the cost of electricity goes up. Companies have to pay more for energy and therefore employ less people. But the fact is we don’t all live in Spain. Companies can always increase efficiency and reduce energy wastage saving money. They can also install solar panels reducing the need for electricity from the grid and getting paid for the energy they return to said grid. The green energy jobs knife cuts both ways. By supporting the green energy industry in a given country that country could become an exporter of green technology creating more jobs.

Another complaint about windfarms is the way big corporations seem to have overtaken the industry and claim to be making large profits from green energy. The green energy industry is subsidised and of course those subsidies to go to help windfarms achieve a profit. But there are also average people making a profit from windfarms, such as the farmers that allow turbines to be built on their properties. Subsidies are needed to encourage the development of green energy projects – even if you ignore global warming. We need to transfer over to renewable energy simply because fossil fuels are finite. All those electric cars need to get their electricity from somewhere.

Windfarms make a positive difference for the environment. They are needed to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and to help battle climate change. Even if you are a climate change sceptic you cannot deny that fossil fuels, particularly oil, are running out. Possible possible disease affects from infra-sound can be completely eliminated by situating windmills away from people. Offshore windfarms are ultimate solution out of view of everyone except fishermen. Yes some birds may get killed by wind turbines, but climate change kills animals too. Windfarm protesters really do have very little to complain about, but of course this won’t stop them.

The other night I was watching the Empire Strikes Back. You know the part where Boba Fett says one of his few lines to Darth Vader, “he is worth a lot to me?” That line now really pisses me off because George Lucas thought it would be a brilliant idea re-do all of Boba Fett’s dialogue with that of Temuera Morrison. In short Boba Fett now has a New Zealand accent. I really hate it when someone bends over your favourite movie and fucks it.

Anyway, I would now like to catalogue all the ways George Lucas has fucked Star Wars for life.

The new movies episodes one two and three are badly written, badly acted and badly directed. They have so much computer animation that they look very fake. Jar Jar Binks needs to die. They seem to be written for kids and not adults. Many of the scenes are utterly ridiculous and completely unbelievable even if they do occur in the Star Wars universe.

Battle droids: This one counts for two. First, the great thing about the original Star Wars movies is that they did not reference popular culture. They attempted to create a new popular culture one for the Star Wars universe. In the new movies the battle droids engage in slapstick comedy. I am sorry, but the Marx brothers belong to our own universe not the Star Wars universe. Battle droids are also meant to be incredibly powerful and scary combat machines, it says so in all those Star Wars books I read. I do not find comedians scary even if they are made of metal and are armed.

Anakin Skywalker made C-3PO: What the fuck? Need I say more?

In the 1997 special edition Star Wars: A New Hope they modified the scene where and Greedo confronts Han Solo to make it so Greedo fires first.

At the end of Return of the Jedi they have inserted Hayden Christiansen instead of Sebastian Shaw who played the dying Anakin skywalker earlier in the film. They have also changed the music of this end scene.

In the 1999 Star Wars novel Vector Prime they killed Chewbacca. This event prompted me to sell my large collection of Star Wars books on eBay in protest.

I really don’t understand why or how George Lucas completely fucked up Star Wars. If you have any more fuck ups to add, I would love to see them in the comments.