Celebrating a jihad on The Chaser

The infiltration of September's APEC summit by the boys at The Chaser's War On Everything was one of 2007's greatest moments of popular culture, on TV or anywhere else. Originally a prank that got a bit out of hand, it sent jaws dropping across Australia and achieved worldwide acclaim on YouTube.

If it weren't funny enough already, all charges relating to the incident have been dropped. The New South Wales Director of Public Prosecutions called the series of security breaches a "reasonable and honest mistake" and has conceded that there is little to no chance of conviction against any of the ABC staff involved. The link above shows, unsurprisingly, ABC's coverage of the news of their own show, along with, perhaps more surprisingly, a reaction from Osama bin Laden himself.

There's plenty of footage on YouTube of the original broadcast, but this video purports to have the whole thing. Being a big fan of The Chaser myself, I had fun today reminiscing about it. In any case, it's good to see that satire at the expense of overbearing government incompetence isn't actually a crime in this country. At least, not yet.

Random bits and pieces

While I've got a few half-finished things to write about, I thought I'd write an update so that people wouldn't think this was another abandoned blog.

I've been pretty busy for the past few weeks. Mario Kart Wii is out and I've hardly had a chance to touch it - although I'm liking what I've seen so far. I've got some new music to listen to - Absolution and Black Holes And Revelations by Muse, and Friend Opportunity by Deerhoof. Regarding the latter, while looking for the cheapest music video ever made, I stumbled upon a Deerhoof song called The Perfect Me, whose filmclip is a pretty good candidate. However, this song is perhaps the most interesting music I've heard in years. That said, my taste in music is pretty weird.

Another piece of news is that I've got my first sale listing on eBay. My first experiment is going to be the sale (hopefully) of my copy of Brain Age for the Nintendo DS. I'm not sure of all of the available options and what will work best for my very-small-time operation, but I'll see if it's right for me. I've got a steadily increasing pile of things to sell, so I hope this works out.

Finally, I hope to embark on another working week without my car. It has rained a bit here in Adelaide over the weekend, which is always welcome, but it makes me wonder a bit about all the walking I'm going to do. It may be a remarkable return to pedestrian power, or it might just have to wait - stay tuned.

More working weeks without a car coming up

The Adelaide Metro - the blanket brand for Adelaide's trains, buses and trams - has released a number of new bus timetables that will come into effect at the end of April.

The big change for me is that if I choose to get the one bus to work in the morning, and the one corresponding bus back again in the afternoon, I'll be able to stay a bit longer at work, and probably even get in a full eight-hour day. This may make things easier for me if I'm not riding my bike, which I may not want to do in the winter because it will be too cold, too dark, and probably too wet.

Of course, by the merest coincidence, the day before I found out about the new bus timetables, one of my colleagues showed me where there is a shower at work, in one of the adjacent buildings. And I was all geared up to give the bike another go, now that I've got the tyres fixed again. Still, even with daylight savings finally over, there's still time to try again before what South Australia calls the winter really sets in.

Visit the Adelaide Metro web site here.

Quote Of The Year

Barack Obama may only be slightly ahead in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, but for mine, he's way ahead in the Quote Of The Year honours:

Chris Matthews ('Hardball', MSNBC): At any time in this campaign, did you have a chuckle that you just couldn't get rid of - something weird that happened that was so crazy that you just went to bed laughing about it?
Barack Obama: I think that happens once a day - but then I stopped watching cable news.

Imagine this, if you will. I'm sitting on a crowded bus on a Saturday afternoon, watching The Daily Show on my spiffy new iPod Touch. Suddenly, Obama completely and utterly destroys Matthews in all of two seconds. Here I am, cracking up laughing, surrounded by a bus full of shoppers who have no idea what I'm doing, biting on my knuckles to try and stop laughing. I've only had the damn iPod for two weeks, and it's already embarrassed me once in public.

You can watch The Daily Show's coverage of this priceless moment in political news coverage here.