blame it on the talent

If you don't get up and dance when you hear
Blame It On The Boogie, then you must not be breathing.
We have to thank him for that pleasure.

The sad news of his death today, makes me contemplate the poor parenting he had, his incompetent medical providers, and those poor kids.

In 1983 Michael Jackson won

13 Billboard Awards,
5 Billboard Video Awards and
was Rolling Stone's Artist of the Year.
1984 he deservedly won 8 American Music Awards,
2 American Video Awards,
5 Billboard Magazine Year End Awards, and
4 Canadian Black Music Awards.
1984 Best Performance Video, Best Choreography and Viewers Choice at the first MTV Video Music Awards show and
EIGHT of his 12 Grammy nominations.
The success of the Thriller album commercially also rejuvenated a slumping music industry that at the time hadn't seen an album with sales numbers like it for nearly five years.

******** A week later:
His burial looks like it is going to be a media armageddon.

His father and his plastic surgeon butchers, and that incompetent 'physician' with him when he died, should be buried too.

Can The CAN !

The Canberra Press Gallery Annual Midwinter Ball.
What a night.
Our Deputy Prime Minister
was there with
Her Minister For Coiffure & Blokes Affairs.
(that WAS him in the photo above)

Our Fearless Leader arrived with 25 kgs-less-wife.
The Intern For Womens Affairs did
a bit of groping and has now resigned.
Peter Costello missed it though.

Pity, as he will have to follow one of those links to read

about the journos choir singing

'The Leader Up The Back'

Fairytale Audrey

A booky-blogger - Me and my big mouth, says this is his favourite photo of St.Audrey of Hepburn and he gets no argument from me


He also mentions Harry Lime as swine:

Harry Pigg, the only surviving brother from the Big Bad Wolf attacks, has set up business as a private detective in Grimmtown, only things aren't going too well.
Down on his luck, with bills to pay and no clients in sight the outlook is poor.
But then in walks local businessman Aladdin who needs someone to help him track down an old lamp.
What follows is a case of nursery-rhyme noir.
Funny, thrilling and always entertaining, Harry Pigg is an old breed of hero for a new generation.
It's as if Humphrey Bogart or James Cagney had walked into the middle of a bedtime story. A comedy caper for all ages. The first in a major new series.
The author, Bob Burke lives in Ireland. This is his first novel.

(That's the book-rap at Amazon.com and it appears to be suitable for children of all ages)

Mediabonic Plague

UPDATE: this post was made before 1000 people here were diagnosed.
Get yourselves over to my Melbourne pal Health Trip where there is a link to

Medical Journal of Australia’s online report this week
”Swine flu update: bringing home the bacon”,

several characteristics of this virus have been observed:
- on average there is an incubation period of 3-4 days between exposure to the virus and onset of symptoms

- in the US over a third of cases have diarrhoea and vomiting along with the usual symptoms such as a sore throat and malaise
* * * * * * *
The whole thing is a gift for the eedjit meeja.
We all say we have 'flu, when really we only have a Swine-of-a-cold.
All Influenza strains can kill infants and the elderly ALL the time fer chrissakes.
AND our eedjit govt could have kept this particular strain of H1N1 flu out of the country by giving masks to all new arrivals and instructing them to wear for a week. That simple, and god knows they had all the warning time in the world.

We can only hope that the whole thing will bring about something I have wanted for years -
1. an increased understanding that sneezing and coughing really, really spreads your germs onto other people who then get sick in turn; and

2. a pissy little scrunched up paper tissue is NO USE in public - you must carry proper handkerchiefs for coughing on buses.

I brought this image from a UK blogger who wrote a great post on Dirty Dancing which is worth a click-through.

Your homework on this topic is to find and view

  Panic In The Streets: a great old 

B-movie with Richard Widmark saving New Orleans from a pneumonic plague.

St.Gutenberg Of The Presses

These great images from The Power Of Books, 2003, by

  Mladen Penev, a Bulgarian, born 1980, 

he has a Masters Degree (Vienna), and again, 

I thank Have Your Way, Maria 

for bringing him to my attention.
Dear Readers, I swear it is true that my parents actually said to me before I was 16 "you shouldn't read so much, it heats up your brain".  By the time I turned 17, they had no idea where I was, thank god, any god.

Despite my preference for a book over a film any day, in this case I must concede that 

A Penev picture is worth a thousand words -