Jackson and I are in a musical currently, for those that don’t know. Hopefully Shannon has noticed as she’s the director. It plays for four days at the end of the month — I’ll put the actual details and booking information and such up here very soon.

Anyhow, while Jackson is the main character, with a boodle of scenes (actually, not that many, the cast is pretty big), I’m a 1940s crooner who gets eight lines. The point of the story is that we got to rehearse the scenes where I have lines last night, finally, and it was great fun. I’m absolutely spewing that I wasn’t more involved in these things at school. Of course, I doubt I really could have been. Curse my teenage awkwardness!

Meanwhile, Battlestar Galactica still rocks. I’ve just finished watching an awesome trilogy of stories — episodes 210, 211 and 212 — and the show has not disappointed yet. Yes, I’m aware I’ve only reviewed up to 203. I’ll get busy very soon. Aren’t you paying attention? I’m a busy actor!

Finally, I’m trying to think of some more random website names. I’ve decided relevance is not nearly as important as pithalit… pithical… pithiness? Anyhow, random is the order of the day. Just not fruit or vegetables.

This year’s Oscars seem to be getting a bit of flak online. And by “getting a bit of flak”, I mean, every article about them I read is reasonably positive but starts by saying “This year’s Oscars seem to be getting a bit of flak.” People have been complaining that they’re boring. As someone pointed out, they say that every year. If you want more excitement, give Roberto Benigni some more Oscars. I haven’t seen Crash but no one seems happy about that either, not even Google. I can’t guarantee that that link will continue to be amusing.

The Oscars are an awards ceremony. Compared to school speech nights, they’re amazingly entertaining. And everyone’s waaaaay hotter. You’ve just got to keep your finger on the fast-forward button. Don’t watch it live. The only reason to watch it live is if you’re actually there, in which case, why are you even paying attention? Go get Keira Knightley to stop sitting next to Jack Nicholson and pay you some attention. Jon Stewart did a good job too. His humour was a bit nervous, but exactly in his style — which didn’t seem to always go down well with the audience. But then, I didn’t see Charlize Theron smile once, so there’s clearly no pleasing some people.

Anyhow, the purpose of this missive is to point out that the time is golden for a resurgence of that “Witherspoon” joke. It works best in the morning, ideally not when someone has just seen the news. Say “Oooh, did you hear about that girl who won the oscar, she was stabbed to death! I forget her name. Reece…” At some point, the person will say “Witherspoon,” to which you reply “No! With a knife!”

Comedy Gold. Go forth and make people groan and hit you.

Say, is there a cool website name that ends in -scape? No, never mind, let’s talk about something else.

While watching season four of The X-Files — which is quite good so far; the show continually confounds my usual ‘2-3 are the best seasons’ theory. Not that it’s really been awesome yet. It just keeps on keeping on. There’s perhaps been a slow improvement overall after a nadir in the early second season.

Ahem. Sorry, that was just supposed to be an aside. Er, while watching season four, and seeing Mulder flitting about between the various states, it occurred to me why Australians just aren’t as big on science fiction as everyone else on the planet. Americans, Europeans… they’re all used to driving, flying, translocating in any direction and coming across people really quickly. And so, they don’t really get the whole ‘space is really big and empty’ idea. And so, they’re quite happy to accept Star Trek finding a new planet all the time.

Australians understand space. They’re used to driving for over eight hours and finding nothing more interesting than Adelaide. They hear people say we’re light years upon light years from anything else and think, “Oh, right, no point exploring then. We might accidentally arrive in the universe’s Adelaide and we don’t want that.” And then they see Star Trek and wonder: didn’t they get the memo?

Or not. I’m not convinced, but sometimes things just bounce around in your head and you can’t get rid of them. Like the music in this what if Microsoft designed the iPod packaging? video hosted on YouTube.com (well, it was, and might be still at a different URL, but we’ll take this GoogleVideo link instead). Watch, and be similarly cursed. Andy asked me when YouTube.com turned up today and I had to admit I didn’t know. I hate to dash the poor kid’s hopes like that. He looks up to me so. Anyone else know?

Not that we won’t accept others, but a meeting was held and a short list drawn up. If everyone could nominate their favourites (and add new ones if you insist, oe provide variations on these themes) that’d be awesome. Yes, I’m aware that there’s probably only five people likely to respond. We’re having a poll anyhow. In no particular order (and with a brand new entry which I just thought of):

1. Opinion Pirates
   opinionpirates.com
2. Mild Themes
   mildthemes.com
3. Rightly Wrong
   rightlywrong.com
4. Certain Doom
   certaindoom.net
5. Since You’ll All Die Anyway
   sinceyoullalldieanyway.com
6. Idle Discourse
   idle-discourse.com
7. Born Mad
   bornmad.com
8. Entirely Possible
   entirelypossible.com

Last August, the ABC’s Media Watch highlighted a Today Tonight report on young muslims for editing together a series of interviews dishonestly. Though it was obvious that the vibe of the story had been twisted in that way that Today Tonight does so well, one interview’s cut in particular really irritated me. A bloke named Ahmed was quoted by Today Tonight as saying:

I mean you have all this talk about integration. Why hasn’t the Muslim community assimilated or why doesn’t it integrate into the Australian community as quick as other communities. Well, at the end of the day OK, we will never integrate.

When in fact, he went on to say:

… we will never integrate in the way other communities integrate purely because of the fact that you have to draw the line with what your idea of integration is and what our idea of integration and accepting, you know, accepting the practices of other people.

That’s my emphasis up there by the way. I don’t completely understand the integration issue. I don’t see why anyone cares whether muslims around the country are having a barbecue and watching the cricket. Does an Australian immigrant have further responsibilities past making sure he or she can communicate sensibly with other Australians? Anyhow, the reason I’m highlighting this is because according to Media Watch this week our TV watchdog — the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) — doesn’t think Today Tonight was naughty. This from page four of their report:

The latter part of the quote which was not broadcast did not alter the statement “we will not integrate”.

Really. Hmmm. Interesting. Try chopping a statement like “A bumblebee does not fly in the way that birds do” in half and see how much sense it makes. If the part I highlighted in bold wasn’t there, I could see the ACMA’s position. But it’s there, and it qualifies “We will not integrate” very strongly.

On a basic level, I’m a bit concerned that we can have an organisation like the ACMA and that they can look at Today Tonight on any night and think “Hmm, yes, fair enough.” There needs to be a clause preventing a program from being full of shit put into the Code of Practice. Just think, it could have protected us from Skithouse too.