The Steam Pumpkin

 This Halloween the evil steampunk inventor emerged from his lair.

The Evil Steampunk Inventor [photo by Xesce]

Another Pestilent Halloween

 The plague is still with us this Halloween.

The Plague Doctor [photo by Xesce]

A Pestilent Halloween

Fear the Reaper

This Halloween the Grim Reaper paid a visit.

[click for larger image] Photo by Xesce

Hippie Halloween

From a political and environmental perspective (which was meant to be the main focus of this blog), this year has so far been such a horrific nightmare that any attempt at a scary Halloween theme would have seemed pitiful by comparison.

So instead, just to be different, this year's Halloween was Hippie themed - although I suppose that here in the heart of Peter Dutton's electorate the concepts of peace, love, tolerance and compassion might well be considered to be terrifying to some.

Trippy Yeti (She Asks Me Why, I'm Just a Hairy Guy) [Photo by Xesce]

Peace Pumpkin 2018

Now The Acid Is Really Starting To Kick In [Photo by Blinky]

The Abominable Snow Monster

This Halloween a seven foot tall Abominable Snow Monster visited.




His home in the Arctic had melted due to climate change and he was here searching for those responsible.


 I also carved a pumpkin.

Halloween Pumpkin 2017

Blinky the Three-eyed Pumpkin

Halloween 2016 [click for larger image]

This Halloween, the house became a nuclear waste dump, complete with a mutant three-eyed pumpkin. Kids were scanned with a Geiger counter and given the antidote (chocolate) when found to be contaminated.

Circuits by Dronny Darko (Neuroplasticity album) was played as background music.

As I've mentioned before, even if Halloween is being introduced into Australia for all of the wrong reasons, it's still a good opportunity to be creative and have fun. Maybe it says something about me, but it's a celebration than comes much more naturally to me than Christmas or Easter.

And if anyone is interested, I based the design for the fake Geiger counter on this instructables post, and I've posted details of what I built under the comments section.

A Scary Thing

For my belated Halloween post this year, let me talk about a scary and evil thing - the horror that is Malcolm Turnbull.

This year's Halloween pumpkin - angelic by comparison

In January this year I predicted that Tony Abbott would be knifed, despite the belief amongst many that the Coalition wouldn't dare to do any such thing. It turns out I was right and they were wrong - Nya Nya Nya! :pokes out tongue:

Actually, I was mostly wrong; I got the timing of the knifing and the identity of the assassin wrong, and the media reaction was different to what I had anticipated. Nevertheless, I think my final words on the subject still hold true:

If this happens, don't expect things to get any better; Abbott is merely the symptom, and not the disease.

Abbott was a blundering fool. It was a thing of wonder and despair that he managed to keep the (low but still significant) level of public support that he enjoyed. However, in his favour, the damage he managed to do was limited by his incompetence.

Now he's gone and good riddance, but the result is that we have Lord Baelish on the Iron Throne. Great! Little Finger as prime minister and Reek as leader of the opposition.

Since Turnbull is fluent enough to string whole sentences together and doesn't come across as obviously unstable, it seems that his rise to power has been greeted with immense relief, and the popularity of the Coalition has soared (to as high as 56% two-party-preferred if you believe the latest polls).

Turnbull scares me.

One thing that strikes me about him is that he represents Politics (in the bad sense) in its purest form. He spins everything to his own advantage with the skill of an unscrupulous lawyer who can turn black into white. He never hesitates to make personal attacks against anyone who dares to question him. He has mastered the art of the Big Lie - unlike Abbott who wasn't smart enough to get away with it. He can be extremely convincing if you don't know the facts.

He doesn't seem to stand for anything at all. I know he's made some statements that seem progressive, but these were just some bullshit he's made up to placate the proles. If we judge him by his actions rather than his words, virtually nothing can be said in his favour.

Consider this:

1) He's supposed to recognise that Climate Change is actually happening and it's important to do something about it - yet he maintains Abbott's Direct Action plan. Direct Action was intended partly as a mechanism to subsidise polluters, and partly as a work-for-the-dole scheme to keep wages down. Environmentally speaking, it's next to useless.

2) He's supposedly in favour of Marriage Equality - yet he maintains Abbott's disingenuous policy of holding a plebiscite. A plebiscite is simply a vote to determine what the population believes on a certain issue; it doesn't create legislation and doesn't bind the government to do anything. Since the opinion of the population is abundantly clear on the matter already, all a plebiscite is doing is telling you what you know already, at considerable expense (I think it's around $100M). Why do it? It's simply a delaying action; they don't want to legislate and need to find an excuse to put it off.

3) He's though of as being more humane than Abbott, yet he still keeps refugees in death camps, and he still keeps that mindless thug Dutton (a weak and evil version of Hordor) in charge of the process. In this case, it's probably a matter of politics again. This terrible situation is bound to boil over into a major international incident sooner or later, and who better than Abbott's mate Dutton to take the blame. Fair enough, but meanwhile innocent people are being tortured in death camps, in a manner that would spark outrage if some other country did it.

Then there's the wrecking of the NBN. The most important infrastructure project in many decades, with incredible social and economic benefits. Deliberately trashed. He can't claim ignorance; he knew what he was doing. Many technical people - a lot of them Coalition supporters - contacted him prior to the election to acquaint him with the facts. There was even a petition, signed by a quarter of a million people, on the subject - which he ignored. Fair enough he was ordered to do it by Abbott, and there was some hope that he'd (quietly) reverse his stand when he come to power, but this too came to nothing.

He's even abandoned his quest for a Republic (although I'm beginning to believe that he was actually working with John Howard to split the republic vote and cause the 1999 Republic Referendum to fail - at the time I thought he was naive, and fell for an obvious divide-and-conquer tactic, but now the evidence seems to be in favour of it being deliberate).

So, in all of the above cases, he is knowingly letting bad polices, with obvious detriment to the people, the environment, the economy, and the country in general, continue unhindered. It seems that pretty much the only thing he has achieved was turning back Abbott's policy on knighthoods. Big Fucking Deal!

Overall, he's capable of doing even more damage than Abbott, and getting away with it too. A scary thing indeed.

In Support of Halloween in Australia

Over the last perhaps five years there has been a concerted effort by retailers to import the celebration of Halloween into Australia. "Happy Halloween" go the advertising banners in the supermarkets, which always struck me as terribly inappropriate: Happy Halloween? Shouldn't it be Scary Halloween or Spooky Halloween or some such?

As a fully paid-up member of The Left, my first reaction to this trend was naturally to denigrate it; partially on the basis of "Bloody Seppos trying to take us over" and partially because it was obviously entirely motivated by the desire to sell yet more lame junk to the public.

However, I thought about it a little more.

Currently, the major celebrations of the year; Christmas and Easter are already a) Utterly inappropriate to the country and b) Completely commercialised beyond any hope of redemption.

Christmas derived from a pagan winter solstice celebration and Easter from spring-time fertility rites. Wicker Man stuff that was uneasily incorporated into the Christian tradition as it overwhelmed other cultures.

Easter has now morphed into a celebration of gluttony. I mean, a few Catholics go to church and stuff, but the majority of people just gorge themselves to the point of sickness on chocolate.

Christmas, in turn, has become a horrible orgy of consumption. The worst, most ill-tempered behavior you'll see all year is in Christmas shopping crowds. And, seriously, Santas with fur-lined boots and hats in an Australian summer! And reindeer and snowmen!

So my argument is that if you're going to celebrate stupid, inappropriate, occasions for no rational reason, you might as well at least choose a celebration that's cool and fun.

Halloween is fun. It's not restricted to a narrow range of conventional behavior, but gives the opportunity to be creative. You can dress up in an almost infinite variety of ways. You can stick a Tony Abbott head on a pike in your front yard, and people won't look at you like you're crazy, but say admiringly "Wow! That's a really gross zombie head!"

So, open your mind a bit. Just because it's American, doesn't mean that it's inherently bad.