By Gregor Stronach

I can’t stop laughing this week. It’s been an enormous amount of fun, notwithstanding the massive and slightly mysterious bruise on my upper arm. Honest to God, it’s the size of a tennis ball and a black as the inside of a cow in a coalmine. It’s OK though – liberal application of scotch to (but mostly near) the site of the injury has meant that it doesn’t hurt nearly as much as it did before. Mind you, with a good three litres of Christmas scotch still to get through before my birthday in a few weeks time, I figure I’ll have to injure myself again once or twice to have an excuse.

Anyway… my injuries and drinking habits aren’t really the sort of thing you’re interested in, I’m sure… so let’s see what I learnt this week.

1. Young Labor = ship of fools  

These young go-getters want YOU in the army... seriously.

Compulsory national service? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me… oh… you’re not? Oh.

I fell over in hysterics when I heard of the proposal from the youth wing of the Labor Party to condemn themselves and countless thousands of other young people to long, boring hours of compulsory national service.

I am intrigued that they seem to think that it’s OK to force young people into doing something they quite probably don’t want to do, be it an actual jaunt in the military (presumably complete with terrifyingly short hair cuts, live ammunition and the ever-present fear that a violent and bloody death is right around the corner… my guess is that it’s only the residents of Bankstown that would survive…) or some other form of mind-numbing ‘community service’, such as helping out at a local nursing home or quietly stealing beer at the local bowls club.

Young Labor has, historically, been populated by wide-eyed maniacs hell-bent on a career in politics – the kind of zealots that in years gone by would have been packed onto a leaky boat and sent to the New World to start another colony. I should know - used to be one of them…

I spent plenty of time doing battle with the lefties and the ultra-cliquish right faction in New South Wales Young Labor. Alas, it was all to no avail. I was not one of the chosen few who managed to rise above the petty squabbling and allegations of sexual misconduct to become a shining star of the New South Wales Right.

It frightens me a lot to consider that the people with whom I went through Young Labor are actually becoming the driving political forces in this country. Some of them are MPs. Others are hardline union thugs. Some of them even have real, honest jobs. But for the most part, it’s that horrible clique that looks set to run the country.

Which means that in about 12 or so years, the dopes who came up with ‘let’s make every Australian kid do something in the community or the military that they really don’t want to do, and which will only make it harder to study, get good grades and do something other than sell each other real estate’ policy, will be in charge. And that can’t be good.

2. When it comes to the law, Bush knows his shit. 

You! Up the back! Can I have a beer and a hotdog?

If you’ve ever wondered why it is that George Bush is as inexplicably popular as he is, look no further than the new law that was passed this week in the US. It is now a federal offence (ie, jail in a federal penitentiary, where the true hard bastards of America live) for… wait for it… annoying people on the internet – if you don’t tell the people you’re annoying who you are.

No shit. That’s what the law says.

Here it is, in all it’s glory: “Whoever...utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person...who receives the communications...shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”

So – RSVP.com, you’re on notice. So is www.livejournal.com and just about everyone on www.myspace.com as well. They’re all really fucking annoying, and hardly any of them use their real names. I predict a flurry of arrests, mostly of angsty, whiny teenage kids who use the internet to complain about their parents and talk about cutting themselves ‘just to feel alive’.

Mr Bush, your administration has outdone itself. We’re living in the age of cybercrime and terrorism, and someone stopped doing important things long enough to think up this ridiculous law.

3. Dangerous Vegans 

I'm pretty beefy for a Vegan, no?

Oh yeah… if there’s a pet topic of mine, it’s Vegans… they’re funnier than a pregnant nun and thoroughly deserving of satirical attention.

This week, though, I found out about a group that gave me pause in my quest to ridicule Vegans. They call themselves the Sea Shepherds, and the Japanese government has publicly described them as ‘dangerous Vegans’.

Despite my ongoing assertion that there’s nothing even remotely dangerous about Vegans – they lack the energy to throw a decent punch and their bones are brittle, like chalk – if the Japanese government thinks they’re dangerous, then perhaps I’d better be more careful. The Sea Shepherds have taken it upon themselves to protect the whales by endangering human life. Noble? Perhaps. Fucking Stupid? Definitely.

Don’t get me wrong – I like whales. They’re big, they sing and they like to swim – kind of like Luciano Pavarotti (except I don’t know if he likes to swim). But, given the Japanese propensity to undertake scientific studies using whale meat - Research Paper WM2445/33R: “How tasty is whale meat?” being a classic example – I can kind of understand these militant Vegans belting around the ocean in their big, diesel-burning boats that can’t be good for the environment.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again here for good measure. Veganism should be encouraged – and here’s why.

The world economy is due to collapse, and we – as human beings – will soon realise that our fellow humans are just another source of food. Without the constraints of government, we’ll all end up on each other’s dinner plates soon enough. And I, for one, will be targeting Vegans – Vegans will be the new veal.

4. Ruddock’s been getting bad advice. 

"So anyway, these two Muslims walk into a bar..."

Oh, I know – he’s denied it thousands of times, and even done a few outwardly nice things from time to time. But Attorney General Phillip Ruddock unwittingly outed himself this week with a display of bigoted ignorance so monumental it beggars belief.

The Muslim world recently celebrated the end of The Hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam, with the beginning of the Eid al-Adha, the celebration of sacrifice.

Of course, the Howard Government has a bit of an image problem within Australia’s Muslim population (and rightly so – our government treats these people like shit on a regular basis), so Ruddock pops along to Lakemba Mosque to address the faithful.

One would expect his message to be one of peace, and togetherness, on one of Islam’s holiest days. But no. Ruddock’s message couldn’t be clearer: This government thinks you’re criminals, so start behaving yourselves.

I’d like to point out to Mr Ruddock that if he’s going to choose holy days to give various religious groups pep talks about not breaking the law, then perhaps a Christmas speech in a Catholic church to get the priests to stop fucking the children in their care would also have been appropriate. Or perhaps an Easter-time speech at St Mary’s Cathedral on how good, honest god-fearing white folks should stop robbing service stations and abducting English tourists might be a good idea.

Shame on you, Ruddock – you’ve exposed yourself and your terrifyingly biased outlook to the very people who you should be embracing. Wedge politics, on a holy day, in a Mosque of all places… You brainless fucking idiot. Sack your advisers – they clearly don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.

5. Cricket. Again. 

KFC delivers the world's tastiest bird flu ever

Now I know from last week that I touched a raw nerve when I bagged-out the cricket, but this week just gone brought us the latest instalment in the ongoing ‘how do we make cricket relevant again’ saga. Twenty20.

It was, I will admit, entertaining. But it’s an insult – a well-thought out game reduced to an idiotic slog-fest, designed to appeal to the unwashed masses whose attention span Cricket Australia has assumed is no longer good enough to deal with even a limited overs match, let alone a test match.

Several things were wrong with it. First of all, the sponsorship. Fucking KFC. The signage for Dirty Bird was everywhere, and so violently intrusive on the ground that the logo has been permanently burnt onto my retinas.

Secondly, the nicknames on the Aussie’s uniforms… Some of them were woefully unimaginative, others so obscure they made no sense at all. Catfish? Marto? Where were Boofhead and Fuckwit? The answer: they were in the commentary box…

Cricket was getting dull, I’ll admit. But livening it up by putting on a three-hour well-orchestrated drubbing of the international visitors is a bit much.

Cricket purists are weeping into their sun-warmed lagers. New fans are wondering what the fuck is going on. And the rest of us, ordinary work-a-day Aussies who will watch the cricket, and maybe even enjoy it, when there’s nothing else on are bemused. Twenty20? It’s just not cricket.

Oh, and fuck you KFC. Your food makes people sick and you market it directly to children – two unforgivable sins. Good luck staying afloat when bird flu arrives.

That’s all for this week… Feel free to leave a comment and I might even answer it, unless you’re clearly just being a troll, in which case we’ll track you down through your IP address and make online life a whole lot more difficult for you than it already clearly is.