Articles from THE BLOT REPORT
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Anzac Day 2024
As readers of this blog may know, we are downsizing from a house to a unit, as in the former, we only use about half the space. Going through a filing cabinet with the aim of culling stuff, turned up a few letters from my parents and letters from mates, cards from relatives and friends on birthdays and other events, but we also stumbled across some postcards in a small plastic bag which had been stuffed in the hanging file.
Herewith the doings
The job of downsizing is an onerous one, and in our case has consisted of seven carloads of books to Lifeline, a charity which provides crisis support, suicide prevention services and mental health support. We also have taken eight carloads of stuff, we cannot bear to part with, to a storage facility, hopefully as an interim measure until we can find a place for it in our new unit. However, downsizing does have some bright spots.
Rapture rupture
Some weeks ago, some religious nutter argued online that the rapture* was going to happen on the 9th of April. I am typing this on the 10th of April so it seems that this nutter’s arithmetic was awry, or like the rest of these rapture prophets, he was delusional.
Old friends
The blog has been a bit quiet over the last few weeks. The reason is in part because we are downsizing. We are moving from a fairly large house we bought in the early 1990s when such houses were affordable, into an apartment about half the size. As a consequence of this downsizing we have to get rid of a lot of stuff and some of this stuff which has to go, consists of books.
A very strange occurrence
We went and checked the mail today after a few days of not doing so. Our post office box was pretty full, which is fairly unusual. The contents were stuffed in a bag as we had other things to do before we went home. On arrival at home, my partner opened the letters, one of which was addressed to me from the New South Wales government. It was a fine notice for a parking offence in Queanbeyan in early March.
On the dangle
Back when I was studying geology in Tasmania, I was involved in doing field work in the south coast of Tasmania at a place called Point Cecil. The only way to get down to that part of the state, was to go by boat, floatplane, helicopter or by a couple of days tramping along the South Coast Track.
Nuclear non-option
I have just seen another Coalition vegetable (Ted O’Brien) on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s 7:30 show1. The reason O’Brien was on the show was in relation to nuclear energy, and he failed to answer any questions put to him by Sarah Ferguson; instead he simply talked over the top of her. This is a technique often used by creationists and is called the Gish Gallop.