What’s wrong with Slumdog Millionaire? Not a lot. But there is no way that this film should be known as a Best Picture winner, unless your idea of a Best Picture includes such tripe as Crash, Shakespeare In Love or the justifiably Elaine maligned The English Patient (“hurry up and die, will you!”).  Crash beat out Brokeback Mountain and Shakespeare In Love beat out Saving Private Ryan.  Head to head, Brokeback and Ryan run rings around the “winners” – and will be remembered in future years as “great” films. They explored old themes in grand new ways and were visually and emotionally stunning. They said something.  As for The English Patient well, if there was ever a more boring film, I’d be staggered…maybe The Phantom Menace just pips it?  But it beat out Fargo and Jerry Maguire. Enough said.

So why am I against a feel good “Indian” film (set in India, mind you, with Indian actors but financed and made by the Brits…) in a year of recession? I think that just sums it up. It is feel good, and we do need cheering up, but how about acknowledging great films rather than muddling stories of a feel good miraculous romance with an annoying bloody song that never makes it into the film until the credits roll and still wins best song? (Breathe, baby, breathe…). 8? 8? This is not an 8 Oscar pic.

So how did it win 8?

It won 8 the same way I would win 8 golf majors if the best players in the world were not included in the field. The Best Pic race this year was set up for an average film with a good back-story.  Where was The Dark Knight? Revolutionary Road? Shove them in there at the expense of say, Milk or The Reader or Frost/Nixon, and you would begin to see the makings of a real Best Picture.  Even Wall-E might have been another addition. Me? This would have been my top 5 for 2008:

The Dark Knight

Frost/Nixon

Revolutionary Road

Slumdog Millionaire (just to prove a point).

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Now, there’s a good line up. Popular, artistic and broad.  And – by and large – good. Now out of that list, please, tell me how Slumdog would have conceivably received the Oscar? No way. Head to head, Slumdog would struggle to be the 4th best film on that list.  Or - and this is the most outlandish thing I can say - perhaps I have missed something? If so, please enlighten me. 

Ok. This is not a rant.  It is a reflection, but “craig’s reflection” doesn’t sound as catchy and doesn’t fit as well on the t-shirt (please call Manuel on the toll free number 1800-765-987 for inquiries…).  Today, after a few trips interstate (on planes, people, planes! and the nervousness was at a minimum) I again took leave of my fam and made my way into Rod Laver Arena (where else to have a pseudo religious day of mourning?) and took up my seat as one of the 2 Church of Christ reps.

By nature, I am a talker.  Preaching was always my fave thing about local church ministry and I guess you would call it my “pastor’s love language”.  So I have nothing against talking.  I have mixed feelings about the mix of State and Church that has to come about for a Day of Mourning.  I am, however, a big fan in three things when it comes to important events: symbols and silence and shared songs.

The most powerful aspects today were the silences and the symbols and the shared songs.  Did you see the SES reps walking down the aisle Hand in hand? Brave, but fragile.  Fearless, but needing each other.  That was powerful. The school kids coming forward in uniform ushered by a parent(?) or teacher.  CFA, police, army, salvos…all coming forward and laying flowers at the wreath all spoke messages of pain, solidarity, endurance and selflessness.  It was sad and inspiring all at the same time.  These heroes needed to be acknowledged, as did the other heroes who just lived their lives and fought the best they knew how to the end.

The symbolic silences were few and far between.  There should have been more montages of survivors, of devastation, of ordinary heroes thrown into extraordinary circumstances, of hope.  I remember being in St Andrew’s in Sydney after Port Arthur, and 30 odd kids walked the aisle and laid roses at the steps of the altar.  Silence and symbol putting the unreality of the death toll sensitively into our hearts.

The shared experiences/songs were amazing - from the anthem to the heart strings that were pulled at the first strains of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and the awesomeness of “I am Australian” and “Touch” right at the end (one lady called out at the end of “I am Australian”: sing it again! I wanted to yell out Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! ).  In those moments the many words that were presented to us were forgiven by the words we could sing and express our sense of hope and our sense of loss. 

It might be insensitive of me, but we came to share.  Not to hear almost a dozen messages…and the most apt of those were the G-G’s, Rudd and Turnbulls.  And the Mayor of Murrundindi.  That’s who we needed to hear from.  And maybe one religious leader…

It is hard to have the courage to be quiet at times like these.  But, in my opinion, words (as almost everyone reminded us) were inadequate.  Words we all knew and evoked in us a communal response were needed.  We need symbols, images, silence, shared songs/experiences.  When those were prominent, it was a powerful “service”.

I’d be interested in what you all thought…

I hate summer colds.  They are repulsive and confusing: am I sweating because I have a temp? Or is it because it is 30 odd degrees? Or am I playing Tiger woods Wii too vigorously? (BTW, not a temp, I’m at a balmy 96.9 F…I just can’t be bothered converting it, sorry…).  And there is a tremendous lack of comfort food in summer.  No one eats soups in summer, or casseroles or shepherd’s pie.  Grasping a mug of hot green tea is almost as unpleasant.  And fruit? Who can fill up adequately on fruit?  Impossible. So, I am cranky at this cold, and partially because it is a sneaky summer cold.  One minute I was fine, the next not.  This cold has breached the Geneva convention on colds - “a cold should give it’s intended victim 24 hrs of mild symptoms, thereby alerting the victim to the impending attack and giving them a chance to dose up on whatever folk cures and old wives tails they believe will work.” (Article VIII)

So, I am taking this cold to the ICC (International Cold Court) and charging it with breaching Article VIII and producing far too much mucus. I may also charge it with escalating into a dry rasping cough.

Oh, that’s right, something more important is going on!

We’re in a worldwide recession, and the K-Rudd has come out with his second stimulus package. Now, before I go on, let me declare a conflict of interest here.  I am one of the many who will gain from this package.  Although, that won’t be true if I happen to lose my job or have my hours reduced!

I do like it though (the package, not the thought of un or underemployment).  The building of 20,000 units of public housing is desperately needed.  Looked at your local Primary School lately?  Most of them could do with new facilities.  The insulation initative is good (but could have been better - what about a solar panel or two for every house) and the increase of rebates for solar and for renters trying to make “their” homes environmentally sustainable is a good idea too.  They are steps in the right direction, regardless of whether they have gone far enough.

And I don’t think that you can fault a stimulus package that has an emphasis on nation building.  There are two major problems that I can see with it, however:

a) There is no “saftey net” for those individuals who will make up the jump from 4.5% to 7% unemployment.  That means, I suspect, that come the May budget more packaging and more stimulating will go on (am I sounding like a spam e-mail yet???).

b) For the nation building to occur, the basically incompetent State Governments around this nation will suddenly have to become efficient.  For goodness sakes, some of them can’t even guarantee power supplies, assume that national power grids will work when heatwaves hit more than one State at a time, and whose premier (when asked about the power usage) suggests that “workers stay at home”…I mean, if I had more energy myself at the moment I could work up to a perfectly good rant on why we don’t need State Governments - we’d save billions and have trains that ran when it got above 30 degrees…sheesh…I think my temp has spiked again (yep, 97.7 F)…enough for now.

Oh, and one last thing…if I hear one more time that this is “just another example of the ALP putting us into deficit”, I may scream.  If this were a Coalition government, a Facist one or run by Jehovah Witnesses in a power sharing arrangement with Mormons, we’d still have a deficit.  Go blame the Americans before you blame the K-Rudd.

The war has begun.

OK, to be fair, I can be a little anal.  A little like a dog with a bone when I get sufficiently riled up.  So I want to be balanced jsut for a second.  I want to acknowledge that up until this point I have had very little trouble with the people at Optus.  I guess that’s becuase up until now, there has been little reason to contact them over the most contentious matter between a telco and a customer: money.

Our combined ‘phone and internet bill is usually around $85 per month. Pretty good.  But a few days ago we got our Optus bill: a whopping $360+!

When I looked at our daily usage, I saw that 1775mb had been used on New Year’s Eve (a day that we were out for 1/2 the day), and that in previous months our usage had barely reached 200mb on our busiest day.  “Aha”, says I, “something is amiss.  The good people at Optus will have an answer for this!”  So, naively, I called the good people at Optus.  Well, they shuffled me on to some guy at “faults”.  He looked at the details and was able to tell me that not only did the 1775mb occur on New Year’s Eve, but it occurred between 10pm - midnight. 

“Hmm,” says I, “actually wasn’t home then.”

“Oh,” says Fault Man, “then you must not have a password and somebody has stolen your downloads.”

But I do have a password.  And encryption.  But this sort of thing does not interest the good people at Optus.  They take no responsibility for the security of what they supply.  After getting nowhere with Fault Man (I was applying logic…you know, let’s look at current usage, which has never got near the levels “recorded”, surely this could be a glitch…but Fault Man stuck to his guns…on NYE, someone was stealing my internet after 1st cracking the security installed.) I was passed on to Team Leader Girl.

Who was rude.  But who also said: “What has happened to you is a crime. We sympathise but there is nothing we can do.”

It’s a crime.  And what is Optus’ moral stand on internet theft (if indeed that’s what it was)? Optus’ stand is this: WE GLADLY PROFIT FROM CRIMES COMITTED AGAINST OUR CUSTOMERS!

Take, as a contrary example, your credit card company.  Say you live in Melbourne and buy some petrol on a Tuesday.  Then on the same Tuesday, someone in Kuala Lumpur buys a dancing Elvis figurine with your credit card.  Generally speaking, your credit card company will ring you up, inquire whether you can be in two places at once, and then take action.  THEY WILL NOT CHARGE YOU FOR THE CRIME COMITTED AGAINST YOU. Optus, on the other hand, wil do that. They probably even have paintings in their board rooms from that have been lifted from the Louvre. 

So, I rang back the next day.  Nicer service.  Not much luck though.  Wayne - who answered the ‘phone - is a self-confessed hacker, and sympathised with my plight.  He put me back to faults, who were told to help me more than they did yesterday.  Their solution? Maybe it was an automatic download from Windows…(not theft, that was the theme for Thursday, not Friday).

So no luck there.  What is scary is that not once did anyone from Optus offer to help make my system more secure, offer some sort of payment plan (we’ve been with them for the best part of 8-9 years), offer to put me through to a complaints section etc.  They just wanted to keep stonewalling so that I would give up.

Wrong guy.  Here’s my course of action:

• Find out if there is a complaints section and go to town there.
• Put together a written document and send it to high level management, detailing who I have spoken with, how little help they were and how their story changes each time (tempted to ring again to see what they new story will be…)
• Meet with someone in their Melbourne office
• Point out that I was about to up my plan, was recommending to other people that they join Optus, and then suggest I won’t be doing that.  Is $270 now worth losing $85-90 per month for the next 5 years?

If there is no luck there:

• Write to the Ombudsman, Small Claims Tribunal and send copies to Optus.
• E-mail Today Tonight, A Current Affair etc and copy Optus in.
• Write to my local MP, asking her advice on what I do next…especially since Optus think it is a crime and are still happy to profit from that.  The scary thing is - just say it happens again? A customer has no security with Optus becuase they will claim theft, and that it is not their responsibility.

Oh, and of course, continue to bag them out on my blog and Facebook page.

You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry…and my friends will tell you that the worst type of angry with me is when I am quiet, calm and logical…it’s out of character and it doesn’t blow over!

Stay tuned!

Well, it’s nice to be back and good to see that the fake comments have taken off.  I’ll out you later.  So, where do we start?

It would be nice to introduce (again) my co-conspirator, my faithful manservant, Manuel.  However, since Manuel and I both live in the once great state of Victoria, and as Manuel was dependent on catching a train on a day that peaked above 20 degrees, that won’t be happening!  Ah, the wonderful Victorian Government.  Someone once said that you get the governement that you deserve, but I’m not so sure about that.  Who deserves a government that hasn’t quite worked out that if the planet burns up, you have nowhere to live!?

John Brumby, I believe, thinks the new TV show, Life On Mars, is actually a documentary and therefore a valid “plan B” (”plan A” is to continue treating the state like, um, we always have). 

Perhaps you think I am being harsh (in that case, please grab a dictionary and look up the word “rant”…).  Here is my take on the Vic Government’s attitude to the environment via its policy on public transport:

1. Keep building roads.  Roads themselves do NOT contribute to global warming.  That is the fault of those people who feel that they must drive cars on the said roads.
2. Keep NOT building public transport infrastructure. 
3. Make sure public transport - particularly trains - don’t run on time, are overcrowded (where are those Japanese guards with batons when you need them?), don’t run if Connex declares it is too “hot” (which is what they said about that scorching 26 degrees we had yesterday!), and certainly don’t build train stations where the growth corridor is occurring.
4. Ignore calls for more trains and carriages…they just come from commuters who, after all, really aren’t experts at experiencing an efficient rail network. What would they know?
5. Let people build huge ferris wheels as distractions, and put said ferris wheel near the road system to keep enforcing the “sublimial” message.
6. Have the highest prices for  public transport travel in the country (Puffing Billy is more economical*), and
7. Ooooh, and spend millions on a new ticketing system that still isn’t in operation, has overblown its budget like Baz Luhrman, and still doesn’t work in trials.

It is a brilliantly subversive plan.  At this rate, we’ll be able to drive to oblivion…

Rant over.

* a complete fabrication.

Rant, Rant, Rant

Ok World it is time to nudge Craig back to ranting again… leave a comment and express you wish for Craig to rant.. tell him you love him, tell him you hate him…but  just tell him that you notice him!!!!