You know, there is only one movie I found so bad that I weighed up the lost cost of my ticket against the lost cost of sitting there for another two hours to watch it that I actually got up and walked out.

That film was Ellen Degeneres’ 1990s screen vehicle Mr Wrong, which seemed to rely on a dated psycho slapstick vibe where crazed stalkers are funny. I think I lasted about 10 minutes into the film before I decided to walk out, just when the overacted phone call from said slapstick stalker occurred.

That, closeted as she then was, Ellen might be the perfect choice to play the lead in a heterosexual stalker-rom-com is something that I leave to the verdict of history. It did not occur to me at the time, and I have never given the more ironic merits of that film any further thought.

[I would say that there are some other films I wish I had walked out on. Jim Carey’s star making hit Ace Ventura is high on the list. And some which took so long to go nowhere that I wish I had known that in advance – such as Johnny Depp’s sci-fi horror flick The Astronaut’s Wife and the low budget alien invasion film Skyline.]

Mr Wrong would be the outer limits of my direct exposure to Ellen’s screen presence – either big or small. I never saw her sitcom, nor the talk show which is currently doing an impersonation of the Titanic after it struck the iceberg (now that is a film I only went to see because 4 hours in an air-conditioned cinema looking at icebergs was better than putting up with the 40 degree celsius heat outside that day).

It seems that at the moment, Ellen is the latest target of the me-too movement. Her public image has been one of a loveable goof, who always tells everyone ‘Be kind to each other’.

Apparently this public image is as genuine as a three dollar bill, from the avalanche of stories which have come out about her behaviour to crew on her show, and to lower status guests (yet no one is awarding Ellen an Emmy for her acting performance). Being friends with George W. Bush is also a bit like putting a ‘kick me’ sign on one’s back in terms of preserving popularity amongst the woke and other undead (or is it ‘cultural’) marxists.

So Ellen’s show is in trouble and no one really believes her authenticity when she gets up there and gives a scripted apology to viewers about mistakes which might have been made.

How is her show to be saved? Not that I really care, as I do not watch talk shows and such rubbish, but like everyone, I have an opinion, which I can and will share with the few readers of this blog (especially my avid readers in the PRC, who make up 10% of my readership).

That is, Ellen needs to embrace her nastiness. Stop pretending to be nice and start showing everyone the true Ellen, the mean spiteful vindictive creature which her crew know and fear. Don’t bother apologising and revel in being hated and feared instead.

After all, the best Shakespearean plays are the ones with a virile villain whom you can really barrack for, such as Macbeth, Richard III, and Iago. They are so evil and ruthless and clever and full to the brim with Nietzschean Will To Power that when they finally get their comeuppance, you somehow feel that something is wrong in the world, that weaker beings with all the insipid goodness of Dudley DoRight have somehow triumphed through dumb luck.

Be a villain Ellen. All the world loves to hate a villain.

On the day after the 2016 Grand Final miracle, after leaving the celebration at the Whitten Oval I had a few drinks (very limited choice as the pub had almost entirely run out) at the Victoria Hotel in Footscray with a friend who had crossed the Nullabor to see the game.

He had spoken to his six year old son in Perth on the phone and his son had said: “I’ve waited my whole life for this.”

So too had his dad, to put it into context. A whole life that had been forty years longer.

We supporters of the Footscray Football Club, as we prefer to call the team trading as the Western Bulldogs, are a resilient bunch. 2016 was the first grand final our team had played in since 1961, and the first premiership since the solitary first one of 1954. I watched us get smashed by Geelong in the 1992 preliminary final, and get robbed by a point by Adelaide in the 1997 preliminary final (which hurt even more). To say nothing of those other prelims in 1985, 1998, 2007, 2008, 2009….

There has been a long while there when winning one final in a series would make the season seem like a success, albeit still the disappointment of falsely raised hopes. But it is our home town team, and we love it, just as we love our home town Footscray, with all its quaint charms and shortcomings.

And then we had 2016, when the theoretical possibility of winning four sudden death finals matches in a row to seize the premiership became a miracle reality.

It is September, and a Victorian football fan’s mind turns to the AFL finals, especially when his team has squeaked in.

We do not quite know whom the Bulldogs will play against in the first week of the finals, whether it will be St Kilda or West Coast. That depends on whether Collingwood wins the final game of the home and away season and leapfrogs past us into 7th spot.

But that we made the finals fills my heart, and that of every Bulldogs supporter, with optimism. 2016 was a miracle premiership, but when something can happen once, it can happen again, particularly in this topsy turvy strange year of 2020. And the team knows it – believing that you can win is the first real step towards winning, something which never really was the case before 2016.

As our Grand Final t-shirts put it in 2016:

BELIEVE

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BULLDOG

As I have indicated in my blog on various occasions, whilst I am far too conservative to participate in demonstrations, I do very strongly believe in the right to protest as part of what makes for a healthy democracy.

That people (bogans are people too) have been arrested in their own homes for simply advocating holding protests in the current state of disaster in Victoria, under emergency powers which suppress freedom of speech, makes me very concerned about the conduct of the technocrats currently ruling Victoria.

So, I am not going to do anything to break the law, or to encourage bogans to do something stupid.

What I am going to do is express my dismay with the technocratic and authoritarian conduct of Premier Andrews by placing my boots at the front of my home. “Give Dan The Boot” is a civilised and lawful way of protesting, as it is to discuss such passive protests online.

Whilst we still have some freedoms, let’s use those that we still have to advocate for the return of those which have been taken (hopefully temporarily) from us as soon as possible. Especially the freedom of speech and the right to protest.

About 15 years ago, an acquaintance of a friend ran for the Maribyrnong Council on a mostly sensible platform around cutting waste and rate payments. I say mostly, because he had a fixation about permanently reopening the public toilet on what was then platform 4 of Footscray Station.

The one time I met this prospective civic leader and he launched into his tirade about this, I did mention that this was not a council issue, it was possibly a state issue, or more likely a metro trains issue, as they manage the station (and you can’t have an open toilet on an unmanned platform, particularly at night, without spending on the salary for at least one station attendant). He ignored this, and continued a rant about how people need that platform 4 toilet reopened immediately.

Sadly, he did not win, and Maribyrnong City council rates remain proportionately much higher than most other council areas in greater Melbourne.

And that toilet remains shut. (I did wonder about his obsession with public toilets.)

It is approaching council election time across greater Melbourne, and the campaigning has started already. Compared to fifteen years ago when contests were rather tame, property developer related interests means that in some areas (like mine), council seats are more fiercely contested than seats in state or federal parliament.

But that distant acquaintance is not the only prospective councillor with an overreach as to where his area of municipal responsibility may lie. My mother has started receiving campaign leaflets in Maribyrnong, including from the endearing Marxists at Socialist Action, whose platform appears to consist solely of two planks – retain and increase JobKeeper, and increase childcare.

How demanding those will translate into civic leadership in the city of Maribyrnong will probably transform Footscray into the sort of annoying woke hub that Brunswick is (I got delayed by a big climate protest in Sydney Road 13 months ago one Saturday).

But I cannot help but like the policies of one candidate for my ward here in the City of Moonee Valley, whose leaflet was placed in my letterbox today.

His public transport policies include:

. extending the Route 57 tram over the bridge and up Military Road til Buckley Street (excellent idea, which has been talked about since I was in high school and ignored by local state politicians almost as long)

. digging a tunnel under Avondale Heights and having several underground rail stations en route to the airport (another excellent idea, which the Federal Government supported, but which was kiboshed by Chairman Dan a couple of years ago in favour of the Sunshine route).

These are excellent policies, although not exactly within the ambit (or budget) of local councils to implement. I have given up hope of course of having a rail tunnel under Avondale Heights, although it still seems like a fantastic idea to me, even though I would be long retired before it could come to fruition, but I do still think that the extension of the Route 57 tram would not be anywhere near as expensive and really should happen (I do love trams).

His nature and biodiversity policies are also welcome. He wants a 50% canopy cover over Avondale Heights by 2050. I love the idea – why else did I plant two gum trees (as well as my many citrus trees) when I moved in? His website talks about encouraging native fauna back into the suburb and limiting development so as to preserve green space and wildlife. The website also has a photo of that monstrous development on the west ridge of the Maribyrnong, overlooking Solomon’s Ford, which is currently being built (I see that eyesore every time I walk to the corner of Canning Street).

I wish that candidate luck. It is almost 15 years since I last saw a live kangaroo near the river, and although I have seen a kookaburra and and owl this year, I cannot take those for granted in the future.

Let me start by saying that despite self-identifying as a Catholic every 5 years on the census, I am not a superstitious person.

However, since Sunday morning, something strange has happened five times in my home. My shaving handle (Gillette Fusion Power) is battery operated, and it has somehow turned itself on five times in the past 60 hours. Quite strange. Once it happened just as I was walking past the bathroom.

As I am now five months into growing an isolation beard, I am not shaving at the moment, and do not plan to until some sanity returns to daily life. Perhaps the spirit world is telling me I should shave.

In any event, if this is the only nuisance that this poltergeist is going to cause in my home, they are welcome to share it with me.

I, Robot is the sort of movie you watch once in the cinemas and then mostly forget about. I cannot remember too much about it except it had Will Smith in it and that actress who was one of the barmaids in Coyote Ugly (yes, I have high brow taste in film).

With the restrictions that have been imposed on Victorians by Disaster Dan, and which continue to be imposed on us for the next few months, I cannot help but harken back to when I saw I, Robot so many years ago.

From memory, I believe the sinister agenda of the Artificial Intelligence controlling all the robots was to ensure that no harm came to any human – resulting, in this case, in Asimov’s Laws of Robotics taken to a logical extreme (suffice to say that my working knowledge of science fiction writing is at nerd level). So, at a pre-determined moment, all the robots trigger their secret agenda and place all humans individually under some sort of house arrest.

After all, if you keep people confined to their houses, they can’t go out and get into traffic accidents or murdered by street thugs, or any of the other things which create greater risk than staying home.

These atypically non-killer robots do not appreciate that in keeping people safe in that way, they are depriving their wards of any joy that they may have in their lives – such as the ability to lead a life. No frolicking in the park, or eating high cholesterol food in steak restaurants, or drinking fine wine in a bar, or going on a date to the movies, or the simple meaningfulness that comes from having a job.

And I wonder about how long, without being able to go to the supermarket or engage in any economic activity outside the home, before all of the humanity guarded by those robots would starve to death. The freedom granted by the robot-protectors is only Hobbesian in its nature – the absence of actual physical restraints (and that itself is arguable).

The premier of Victoria, with the unprecedented technocratic emergency powers which he is now exercising through his minions, seems to share the same agenda as the robots in I, Robot.

And the same amount of empathy as those robots.

Essentially he wants to protect people from themselves and from living their lives. Freedom of movement, of religion, to earn a living through normal economic activities, and now even of speech have been suppressed to a very large degree.

The only freedom is to stay in one’s home, a very Hobbesian form of freedom.

And that itself is limited. Those bogans who have been ‘inciting’ public protests on Facebook etc have been arrested. After all, freedom of speech and the right to protest has been severely curtailed under emergency powers. A pregnant woman has been arrested and handcuffed in her own home for simply putting something mildly stupid on Facebook. Two elderly ladies sitting on a park bench have been arrested for sitting on a bench.

After the Hotel Quarantine failure which caused Victoria alone of all states to have the Covid pandemic resurge and take on new hideous momentum, the technocratic architect of this debacle has been accelerating the use of the agency of state power to restrict the freedoms of his victims, the citizens of Victoria.

This is all to keep us safe from the Covid. For how long? Do the measures now imposed by this unfettered technocrat in the past few days amount to a road map to the economic and social ruin of Victoria?

Let’s face it, we will be locked in our homes for the next three months at this rate, possibly longer. The metrics which have been proposed to end this lockdown (the harshest in Australia and possibly the world) are very hard targets to achieve. In the meantime, people are losing their livelihoods and many of the more economically and psychologically vulnerable are losing the will to live.

And people have lost the right to protest. Taking away the right of dissent, and to protest and express legitimate concerns, is the action of an autocrat, not of a democratic elected government. That last week cross bencher Fiona Patten was foolish enough to entrust the Premier with six more months of unfettered emergency powers was immediately revealed to be a huge mistake.

I must admit that I was looking forward to seeing the live action remake of Mulan in the cinemas earlier this year, until the pandemic resulted in the closure of cinemas. Mulan, the latest Bond film, Black Widow, and Bill & Ted 3 are all films I have been keenly awaiting.

Mulan has a great trailer, promising an action packed and inspiring story, with great visuals – perfect for seeing in a cinema. And it is, whilst set in China, in English, which makes it easier for me than having to concentrate on subtitles, like I did for Crouching Tiger and Hero (incidentally, Hero is an amazing story told extremely well – do yourself a favour and watch it).

However, Liu Yifei, the star of Mulan, has made various comments in support of the Hong Kong police during the civil unrest last year. Now, with the communists on the mainland causing more withdrawal of legal protections from the people of Hong Kong, the subject is becoming a hot one, particularly as concerned people all over the world are starting to see the secretive communist regime as a threat to world peace and freedom. not just to the people of Hong Kong.

The release of Mulan on Disney+ for a premium fee of $34.99 in Australia does now mean that it is available to watch in the comfort of your own home. However, does a couple of hours of enjoyment of such a film warrant overlooking the stated views of the star, which are very un-Mulan-like in their apologetics for a repressive regime?

Sadly, I will not be watching it. I am too worried about the state of the world and the potential extension by stealth or aggression of tyranny. If not watching it is one small step towards causing business and political leaders in the western world to wake up about the menace the government of the Peoples’ Republic of China presents to the world, then it is well worth it.

I fear the introduction of Yar Yar Binks into the Star Wars Franchise is the moment that Star Wars jumped the shark (and they did have a lot of shark like creatures on Coruscant in Episode One).

Through the good fortune of meeting two fugitive Jedi, Yar Yar Binks is turned from an outcast exile into an upstanding citizen and accidental civic leader. As Lucas did not feel he could write Mr Binks out of the second prequel entirely, he turned him into a member of his home planet’s senatorial delegation, deputy to Padme Amidala.

In that episode, the moment when the Sith start to get the upper hand is when Yar Yar Binks, way out of his depth in Senator Amidala’s absence, is persuaded by Chancellor Palaptine that supporting the creation of a ‘Grand Army of the Republic’ comprising clones created by aliens from outside the borders of the Republic is what Amidala would support.

[The questions of governance are totally set aside in that moment. One obvious question is that it is totally impropriate for a democracy to buy an army of clone-slaves from some foreign source. Another is that if the Republic is worth fighting for against various secessionists, perhaps it needs to get its member states to levy troops to wage that war. The Senate and the Jedi are more culpable in not discussing these issues than poor confused Yar Yar.]

Yar Yar Binks at least had the decency to ask himself ‘What would Padme Amidala do?’ even if he came up with the totally wrong answer.

Another, real, accidental civic leader, the Hon Fiona Patton MLC, has chosen instead to ask herself ‘What would Yar Yar Binks do?’ and come up with the totally accurate (if not right) answer.

I am talking about her support, along with two other cross benchers in the Victorian Legislative Council, for granting to the government an extension of emergency powers for a further six month period.

If emergency powers are to be granted, they need to be subject to constant parliamentary review. A six month term is excessive and allows for an unfettered period of potential abuse of those powers, as has been seen since they were granted with the Police arresting various people, including a pregnant woman, for the crime of ‘instigation’, ie placing comments on social media calling for people to publicly protest against the various very tough restrictions that are currently imposed on Victorians.

With the wave of a hand, not even the stroke of a pen, Fiona Patton has caused freedom of speech to be the latest freedom which we have lost in Victoria due to unfettered use of emergency powers.

Fiona Patton has also abdicated her duty as an upper house parliamentarian to review and scrutinise legislation and the actions of the executive government of this state. What more use is she for the next six months, until the next time Chairman Dan asks for another extension of emergency powers?

The hypocrisy of Ms Patton, in supporting these powers, is more sad than disturbing as she is leader and representative of the softy libertarian Reason Party. This party started out as the Sex Party, as a voice for the sex industry in lobbying against censorship and prudishness, and has since sought to broaden its appeal to a wider audience by promoting secular values and freedom.

Ms Patton, you cannot have freedom in a technocracy where you have the duty to review the powers and actions of the executive, but instead choose to enable a government who does not wish to be accountable even to its own rank and file party membership or parliamentary party room.

As a civic leader and legislative councillor, the Hon Fiona Patton MLC now has as much credibility as Yar Yar Binks.

The next Act in this sad story is for her to walk, like Yar Yar Binks beside the coffin of Padme Amidala, beside the coffin of freedom of speech in this state – something for which she obviously (despite the rhetoric of the party she has created) has no genuine regard.

One of my more juvenile pleasures is to watch the current season of The Masked Singer, a show which best demonstrates the rapid decline of Channel Ten in recent years. D-list celebrities perform in masks to provoke the supposedly funny reactions of mostly appalling B-list judges (except for Dannii Minogue – she has always been my favourite of the Minogue sisters).

It is car crash TV which is so bad that it is good, and hence I have been watching it.

I was disappointed during the week to be proven wrong when the Wizard was unmasked and the identity was that of some D-list singer of whom I had never heard. The cryptic clues given during the performances had me convinced that it was ex-Senator Sam Dastiyari who was behind the mask.

After all, he is probably rather strapped for cash after leaving the Senate rather ignominiously, and he did appear on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Year last year (along with then fellow ex-senator Jacqui Lambie in a recent period of transitional unemployment).

A new career of appearances on ersatz reality shows as a celebrity appeared to beckon for him, in my mind at least (it is probably just as well that I am not a TV producer).

Senator Sam had a promising career in front of him in the Federal Parliament not too long ago. He was one of the few people who could constructively deal with Jacqui Lambie in the Senate, and he played a key role in getting the pressure on the government to institute the Banking Royal Commission.

However, whether he really believed it or not, he was recorded at some function or meeting expounding a view of the sovereignty of the South China Sea which was more in line with that of the architects of recent discussion on that topic (ie the Communist regime that currently tyrannises main land China), rather than the stated views of his own party or the interests of the Australian people.

With billionaires (and their emissaries) donating money to both parties, many politicians, both past and present, appreciate their generosity, and seem to feel some sort of moral obligation to return the favour in some way. That a lot of those billionaires are from main land China and are billionaires through the gift of the Chinese Communist Party is often overlooked.

Sam Dastiyari is the only politician who has paid the ultimate price of political death for his dalliance with communist China. There are many others, particularly ones who are retired on generous superannuation pensions, who now sit on boards of or as consultants to companies based in communist China. Their interests, and their utterances, are not always going to be aligned to the best interests of the Australian nation.

The Victorian Government’s agreement with communist China to unilaterally join the Belt and Road Initiative is one where the interests of the Australian nation have been utterly disregarded by the Premier, Chairman Dan. This is an agreement which was entered into with no transparency but with various Chinese communist apparatchiks who have clear access to the corridors of power in Spring Street being able to lobby the government. This is privileged access available to the rich and powerful, but not to the average citizen.

We do not know who is doing what, or with what motives. Sam Dastiyari has been unmasked, but who are the others who are wearing masks, and who are having a more sinister impact on our democracy?