The federal election and three other topics
So, what's been happening lately?

1. John Howard finally announced the date of the bloody Australian federal election. It'll be on 24 November. Here's hoping we've got just approximately 40 days of Howard left. He's been Prime Minister the entire time I've lived in Australia and every term seems to be worse than the last. The desperate fearmongering attempts by the Liberals at the moment are hysterical, and Kevin Andrews should be ashamed of himself. Now that nobody gives a shit about terrorism and there are no waves of illegal immigrants, something has to be manufactured to appeal to the far right morons who unfortunately exist in this country, so of course, people who look different like the Sudanese appear in the crosshairs. Ironic how a group so apparently prone to crime has a crime rate lower than the Australian average. It's time to turf this braindead government out onto the streets. I was fairly lukewarm about Liberal-lite Labour until Kevin Rudd came to the helm, but now I sure know where my vote's going. I especially hope that those of you in marginal seats vote against the Liberals/Nationals. I'm (un?)fortunately in a safe Labour seat.

2. I've just about stopped giving a shit about the Rugby World Cup. It's not just that New Zealand's gone; Argentina's the only team really keeping things interesting. The problem is the scheduling. We just went six days without a game and it felt like a damn year. Didn't the RWC organisers learn a thing from the mindnumbingly drawn out Cricket World Cup? Play games more frequently!

3. You know what I hate? How Radiohead are suddenly being hailed as changing the face of music for releasing their new album independently via their website and listeners can choose to pay however much they like (or precisely nothing). It's hardly anything new; I've gigabytes of albums I acquired for free directly from bands' websites, but apparently that doesn't matter if you're a Radiohead hipster who needs to hype up a rather mediocre band. Also, the new album is laughably bad. Literally laughably bad. I'm not kidding when I say I burst out in laughter during the first track. What a trainwreck of an album.

4. You know what I love? Justifiable bragging. Yeah, I can't help myself. I got an essay back earlier this week with the following note: "this is a very impressive piece of work, one of those rare essays which I both marked and took notes from." Somehow I think I will pursue this topic further.

And that's about it for now. Have a good one, folks.