Hot dog, we have a wiener

cvm: All this Howard vs. Costello stuff makes me think we should be reading the papers very closely for the next few days to see what’s being kept off the front pages.

rheiner: Oooh, think I found it: “The cabinet decided yesterday to remove the restrictions on foreigners owning Australian media and scrap rules limiting ownership of newspapers and television licences in any one city.” Is there a prize?

cvm: World peace was recalled by the manufacturer so i’m afraid the only prize left is a niggling sense of terror at the state of the world. Ta da!

rheiner: Oh. <pouts> I won that last time.

cvm: We do still have some Presidency of East Timor available.

rheiner: Oh. Perhaps I’ll just risk that for what’s in the box.

cvm: Is that your final answer?

rheiner: I think so.

cvm: Congratulation rheiner! You are now the proud owner of The Australian Democrats! Oh well, they can’t all be winners…

rheiner: Shit. The only thing more tedious than “Who Wants to Lead the Liberals?” is “Who Wants to be President of the Democrats? Anyone? Anyone at all? Any takers? Hello? Is this thing on?”

cvm: You even get the optional Cheryl Kernot “when i still had a modicum of credibility” figurine.

Why I read

From an interview with Shirley Hazzard in the Guardian Review:

The idea that somebody has expressed something, in a supreme way, that it can be expressed; this is, I think, an enormous feature of literature. I feel that people are more unhappy, in an unrealised way, for not having these things in their lives: not being able to express something, or to profit from somebody else having expressed it. It can be anything but it’s always, if it’s supreme, an exaltation.