According to the Worldometer website this morning, 100 million people have now been infected with the covid since the pandemic first broke out some 13 months ago. I expect that by Easter (or not too long after that), this will double to 200 million. I do not want to guesstimate when the current 2.1 million …
Author Archives: Ernest Zanatta
Is it lucky when a kangaroo crosses your path?
After the cool change this afternoon, I went for a walk upstream along the Maribyrnong River from Solomon’s Ford. About 2km up from the ford, a kangaroo hopped across the path and into the long grass just in front of me. Sadly, it was so quick that I did not have time to get the …
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The Land of the Long Weekend – Reflections on Australia Day
The phrase “Land of the Long Weekend” was coined by the late conservative Melbourne psychologist and sociology commentator Ronald Conway, as the title of a book he published in 1976. I have not read that book, but I consider, just like Donald Horne’s 1963 classic The Lucky Country, the phrase itself has passed into Australian …
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When the Gods of Sport Stop Smiling
Aside from my occasional fix of AFL, I am not really that interested in sport, although I wish I had bothered to watch the Indian test team win against the odds in the final batting session of the fourth test today. Reading on my news feed stories about how many of the tennis players and …
Waiting for Elvis to Return? When QAnon is not enough: Observations on the Far Side of Crazy….
In the mid 1980s, a little known cult known (in as original a way as possible) as the Jesus Christians decided on a major publicity stunt. They announced that several of their members were to prove their faith in the Lord by walking across the Nullarbor without supplies. For those of my readers in mainland …
Can’t Happen Here? Observations on the Situation in the USA
The first Sinclair Lewis novel I read, probably most aptly, was ‘Can’t Happen Here’. It is a dark and pessimistic story about a populist demagogue, probably based in part on Huey Long, who turns himself from US President to Fascist Dictator. It was one of his later novels, written in the 1930s, where issues in …
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Cleveland Browns in the playoffs
Early last year, I wrote in this blog that I had chosen to adopt the NFL’s perpetual underachiever, the Cleveland Browns, as my NFL team. After all, as a lifetime supporter of the Footscray Football Club (aka Western Bulldogs), I find underdog teams quite endearing. Well, perhaps my decision to adopt them has proven lucky, …
Stop Laughing – This is Serious! Why ‘Haha’ is not funny.
As a small child, my parents took me each year to have my photo taken with the Santa enthroned in the (now long gone) Forges of Footscray department store. I suspect it (like my baptism, first communion and confirmation) were things that were more for my parents’ benefit than for me – a photo of …
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2021: 2020 without the novelty?
A lot of memes have been sent to me over the past few days marking the end of the old year and the start of the new year. Most of them farewell 2020 with some profanities of some sort – I will not repeat them because, as Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, swearing gives people an …
Preparing for yet another wave….
You can probably surmise that I am a fan of Tolkien.
Lost For Words! 