Well a while back I decided to retire this profile (and I more or less did). I've got another one lurking around (you can find it here if you really want to) and I planned to not write any more blogs in this one.

But then I found something that I really felt I needed to share, and it makes a brilliant finale to the adventure that was RSVPBlogger.

As many of you who may have read my stuff regularly will know, I am a tireless campaigner against the banal and the mediocre, and a champion for anything that is good.

And I found something good. Really good. Quite extraordinary, in fact. So amazing that I will go on record as saying this girl is the best new musical act that this country has produced for around five years.

Her name is Kate Miller-Heidke (pronounced hide-key). She is 25 and she is from Brisbane. She's recently released her first album on Sony (called "Little Eve"). She's tiny, she's blonde, she's cute, and at first glance she appears to be yet another pop princess being churned out of the "pop princess factory".

But a generic pop princess she is not. I went and saw her perform live last week and her show was simply astonishing. And I've been going to see bands and musicians for over 25 years. She was utterly stunning. Seriously. An astounding vocal talent, a superb songwriter, and her music is both highly enjoyable yet delightfully quirky.

Comparisons are difficult to make. The most logical one is to Bjork, although they sing quite differently. But Kate Miller-Heidke has that same sort of dazzling originality.

Her vocal work couldn't be broader in range. At times she will sing in a cute, almost waifish voice. Then out of nowhere she will rock back on her heels and let out one of the most powerful voices I have ever heard. She has had years of operatic training (so much so she was offered a professional role in an opera company).

This first song is her current single - Words. You can find the actual video clip here, but I've found a live version that I think is far more impressive (it's from the morning TV show Sunrise... there's an annoying interview afterwards).

Towards the end of the song you get a glimpse of her vocal power. I love the fact she has a violin in her live band as well.

Here's a clip from Rockwiz (another Oz TV show) that shows both her amazing vocal talent and her brilliant sense of humour. It's called "Career Advice" and contains the immortal lyric "shove it up your Ass-tralian idol". (As a sidenote - I'd be amused to see how many Americans can actually understand half of these lyrics as they are fairly heavy in "Australianisms".

And finally, here is some footage of her singing "Toxic" by Britney Spears at a live gig (it's amateur footage - shot on a handycam). Despite the poor quality of the clip it gives you an idea of just how entertaining she is live.

Now some of you might not find her style appealing at all. That's fine. But I suspect a lot of people will become as enthused about her as I have become. She's nominated for a few ARIA awards (Australian equivalent of a Grammy) and I hope she wins one.

And on that note, let me retire off RSVPBlogger. I'm still blogging as Manning, (over at my new profile) but to a far smaller audience and on even more esoteric topics(!) Chiefly though I'm working on my music.

So thanks for all the fun. If I see you over at my new home then great, and if not - take care and I've enjoyed the ride together.

Manning :)

PS - Here are some Kate Miller Heidke links

Official Site: www.katemillerheidke.com
MySpace page: Kate Miller Heidke on MySpace
Forum: The KMH Web forum

Today or tomorrow is Sept 11 (depending on where you are) - a day of sombre remembrance across the entire world. It remains the most heinous act of terrorism in human history, as everyone knows.

I am sure everyone will pause to reflect on this day in their own way - I know I will. Like everyone, I remember the day only too well - I was having lunch in a pub in Edinburgh, Scotland and I watched the second tower get hit live on TV.

So it's six years later and I'm asking myself  - what was the fallout from September 11? There were a lot of victims. Obviously the people who suffered the most were the families of those who perished, and the many thousands whow were injured. New York City suffered terribly as well. The American people have had their freedoms and civil liberties drastically curtailed.

But I'd like to point out some other victims - the members of the Muslim faith. Since that dreadful day, Muslims have had to carry the collective guilt for this act, and have lived in the shadow of the calamity. Even today they are mistrusted throughout much of the western world.

Which brings me to my central point of the blog - Muslims did NOT perpetrate 9/11.

9/11 was perpetrated by "evil fuckwits".

What is a fuckwit? Well Americans might use the term "fucktard" but it means the same thing. Fuckwits are people who simply have absolutely no clue as to what is important in life. They seek satisfaction through causing disruption to others. This disruption can be annoying, or it can be fatal.

Now what is important to understand is that being a fuckwit takes precedence over affiliation with any other social or ethnic group. David Koresh did not represent the "Christian" community - he represented the "fuckwit" community. Michael Vick does not represent African-Americans, he represents "fuckwits".

There are at least two kinds of "fuckwit" in the world - "annoying fuckwits" and "evil fuckwits".

"Annoying fuckwits" are the most common. These are people who derive enjoyment out of irritating people. Annoying fuckwits positively abound on MySpace as well, sadly. Damn Girl is dealing with one right now in her blogs. Coqueto went through a different but equally annoying hassle a few weeks back. I've not been spared - a fuckwit recently emailed a bunch of people I met in the USA to tell them I was lying about being single and that I actually had a wife (!).

Annoying fuckwits send out spam. They leave shopping carts in the middle of parking lots, and lie about themselves on dating sites. Fuckwits cheat on their wives/girlfriends and try to interfere with the happiness of others. Fuckwits spread conspiracy theories about events like the moon landing and 9/11. They are the bane of society. But they are basically just trouble-makers and not truly evil.

"Evil fuckwits" are those that seek to really harm others. When they are white and middle-class (like Timothy McVeigh) we regard them as simply a evil person.

But when they come from a minority group, it is all too easy to forget that they are (first and foremost) fuckwits and push the blame on their minority. In Australia we had a bad case where a small group of Lebanese men gang-raped several girls. A lot of anger was targeted at the Lebanese community as a result. Many people across the world felt anger at the Muslim community for 9/11.

I can tell you something from direct experience - Muslims are fine people. I've worked in several predominantly Muslim countries like Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia and had a fantastic time. Muslims are no different to any other kind of people - they mainly want to get through life happily and raise their families. Blaming Muslims for 9/11 is like blaming Christians for the Holocaust.

Now sure, some fuckwits straddle the definition and it's hard to tell if they are merely annoying or truly evil. And to make things worse, fuckwits can form associations of their own. When they get guns and march around in right-wing militias, or join the Neo-Nazis or the KKK, then they are a "fuckwit collective". And groups like these ones I have mentioned don't represent "White America" any more than the Crips represent "black America" or cuban drug gangs represent Hispanics.

So if you need any more proof that 9/11 was perpetrated by genuine fuckwits, then just consider the fact that the people they supposedly represented (the Muslim world) have suffered as a result more than just about any other community (except for those who suffered directly and personally, obviously).

So I urge you - learn to identify the hallmark signs of a fuckwit. Once you recognise one, practice the fine art of "fucking them off out of your life". If you are dating a fuckwit - don't try and fix them. They're broken. Just get rid of them. Better to spend your time ironing out the wrinkles that they may have caused in your life or in the lives of those who matter to you (which is - sadly - what I am having to do right now after my own brush with fuckwit-ism).

And if YOU are a fuckwit, then always remember that being a fuckwit is now your defining trait. Once you have entered that world, you can no longer represent your people, your culture, your gender or your race anymore. You are now, fundamentally, a fuckwit.

I heartily embrace the laws which give rights to women, to the disabled, to ethnic and religious minorities, and to the genuinely disadavantaged in our western societies.

But I don't think we should be prevented from discriminating against fuckwits. So if they ever free up the laws to permit open season on these idiots, then let the party begin.

So tell me - what sort of fuckwit annoys you?
I'm also curious to hear what other people were doing on Sept 11.
And if you can't think of anything to say, just send a shout out to the boys/gals in the Fire, Police and Ambulance departments, and also the Military. This is a day where we should remember and pay homage to them as well.

RIGHT.
Listen up.
All of you.

Now my last blog (which got to 10 in the overall rankings, so thank you for that) was a light-hearted rant about the traffic chaos that was caused by having George W. Bush (aka the PUSA) here in my hometown of Sydney. I had fun writing it and most of you had fun reading it, by the looks of things. So no problem there.

BUT... Jaysus! In the comments things got nasty and some huge fights broke out - chiefly between Americans (although the non-Americans chipped in as well). You complained, you whined, you criticised. I ended up spending all my time arguing against you and trying to remind you what is so cool about the USA.

So frankly, you all need to be slapped, and I am in the mood to do it. So pay attenshum.

Now I am NOT an American. I am Australian, and very proud of that fact. But regardless of that, I have a deep and abiding love of the USA. It is an amazing country with an amazing history and an amazing people. It has dramatically shaped world events, and (despite what any nay-sayers may offer) it has for the most part shaped those world events for the better.

You want to know what I think is the only thing really wrong with Americans? You are all way too quick to bash your own country and way too slow to be nice about it. And for all of my readers who are not American - you are all much too quick to criticise her as well.

So today you are ALL going to be nice about the USA. Ya got that?

I don't care if you are American, Australian, whoever. You are going to tell me something that is great about the amazing USA. Something you are proud of, something you appreciate, something about her that inspires you.

I'll get you started in a few different categories:

• Politics: The Bill of Rights.
• Military. June 6, 1944 - D-Day. Without the US presence, Hitler might have won. Even if he hadn't, Europe would have been in tatters for 20-30 years.
• Culture: Jazz. Rock and Roll. Blues. Soul. Twain. Vonnegut. Capote. Whitman. Kubrick. Etc.
• Technology: The lightbulb. The gramaphone. The integrated circuit.

So now I want YOU to tell me what you love about the USA.
Tell me things I don't know about.
Inspire me and inspire everyone else.
I'm not kidding.
Get to work.

Faithful readers - I'm expecting a 100% turnout.
Australian (and other non-American) readers - you WILL demonstrate that we can do something other than bash the USA.
New readers - subscribe and join in :)

I'm serious. You all really pissed me off yesterday - so it's time to make up for it.
Impress me.

OK - Hands up all of my American readers who know where their president currently is. (For those of you who actually put your hands up, congrats on both your knowledge of current events and your ability to blindly follow absurd instructions).

Well for those of you who don't know - we've got Dubya here in Sydney. And we are NOT amused. Not one bit.

Dubya with our dweeby Prime Minister who no-one cares about, not even us Australians

I'm not upset because of his politics, or  about Iraq, global warming, Palestine, Israel, Darfur, human rights violations at Gitmo, etc, etc. (Feel free to share your own thoughts though).

No, what I am annoyed about is the sheer chaos that his arrival has created. Dubya is interfering with Sydney traffic (which is dire at the best of times), and we are NOT happy.

Now we Sydney-siders love our town. We know for a fact that Sydney is THE most gorgeous city in the world. The fancy American magazine "Conde Nast" just agreed by declaring it the "World's Best City", ahead of New York, Rome, Paris and all the other lame-arsed wanna-be try-hards.

Now we like our city to look nice, so that we can break the hearts of all the poor schmucks who don't live here. Hence we are accustomed to seeing Sydney look like this:

But since Dubya arrived, out city has looked like this.

See why we're pissed off? We can't drive anywhere, we can't hang out in our favourite watering holes and if we so much as glance anywhere except at our feet we get arrested as a terror suspect. The entire city has been fenced off and is crawling with Secret service people (who are SO good at blending in).

So last night they filled the sky with helicopters and shut down an entire freeway just so GWB could drive from the airport to his "top secret" accommodation (which everyone knows is the Intercontinetal Hotel on Macquarie St). And Dubya is so fussy he even brought his own damn Cadillac with him. What's wrong with our Sydney trains I ask you? Just ask Rick Reilly from CNN, he thought they were good enough.

And Dubya won't even eat our food! Fact is - we have the BEST food and chefs in the world (Conde Nast's said so - neener, neener Paris, New York, etc...). He brought his own (ahem) "chefs" with him and look at the slop they served him today.

Although he could have had quality Australian food, Dubya chose to eat this slop.

Now this is Australia, for God's sake. We're used to relaxing, going to the beach and having a good time. We're primarily worried about the availability of cold beer and fresh seafood. We don't even worry about defending outselves - we make the Americans do that. (Which, you must agree, is one hell of a sweet deal for us. And if you were wondering, we spend the money we saved on education and health-care).

So if Dubya is going to hang out here, he needs to get into the Australian mindset. None of this wearing suits and acting like anything he does actually matters. Here are some recommended activities for him (the other people are Vlad Putin of Russia and the Chinese President guy:)

So bottom line - either get your president to mellow out or take the damn fool back. He's interfering with our drinking.

Every had someone say this to you? "I want to share something amazing with you - it's an incredible ground-level business opportunity!"

If you EVER hear these words - walk away. Trust me on this. You have just encountered the parasitic scourge of "Multi-Level Marketing". If they use the term "Network Marketing" instead, then run.

Let me tell you a shameful secret from my dim and distant past.

It was a bit over ten years ago, and having just freshly dropped out of medical school I was somewhat desperate for a decent paying job that might overlook my rather dismal academic record. Now while at med school I had held down a job as the "computer guy" for a genetics research lab, and I planned to "parlay" this into a decent IT related position somewhere. ("Parlay" is a term used by the unemployed which means "bullshit one's way through an interview").

Skipping some irrelevant details that involved some rather spectacular "parlaying", I subsequently landed a job as the "IT Manager" at a "marketing" company in Sydney. Now at first I didn't pay too much attention to the exact nature of my employer's activities. They said "marketing", and I heard "a way of paying rent".

But soon enough I began to realise that my employer (who shall go unnamed) was primarily engaged in what is known as "multi-level marketing" or MLM. At first this didn't bother me - they kept telling me how it was this "new and exciting dynamic business model". I mean hey - I was just a guitar player/med-school dropout, so what did I know about business?

And thus it was that I began to work in MLM, and I subsequently became fairly expert at this curious phenomenon - both with the glamorous face of MLM and (as a result of running the data systems) the very ugly backroom operations.

What is MLM? Well I'd be tempted to dismiss it all as a scam, but some of the MLM companies have a habit of suing when you do that, so I won't. They aren't against the law - in 1979 the FTC officially described them as "not illegal". (The FTC is currently reviewing this however).

MLM usually describes itself as a form of "franchising" or "distribution". Now franchising is where you buy the right to sell some form of "product" using some shared brand name. It might be fast-food, cleaning products, rental cars, make-up, lawn care, you name it. You get to buy this product at a wholesale price and are then encouraged to sell this product either door-to-door (as with Avon) or via traditional retail premises (as with McDonalds, etc). Nothing wrong with any of that, obviously.

MLM usually has some form of "product" to sell as well. However you tend to find that instead of encouraging you to sell their "product", the MLM company tends to focus on telling you to "recruit" other distributors into your selling network. If you recruit someone else you get a share of their "distributor fee". You then encourage them to "recruit" more "distributors" and you get a share of the fees from their recruits, etc, etc. (Ostensibly you can also make money from selling the product, though in practice this almost never happens).

Put it simply, the MLM model doesn't work - it is nothing more than a pyramid scam with clothes on. And the people running the MLMs not only know this - they are depending on it. Mathematically, if everyone was successful, the network of distributors would exceed the world's population before it got ten levels deep. Generally the operators are banking on the fact that 95-99% of people who invest into the "distributorship" will fail.

Hallmarks of an MLM are incredibly hyped claims "everyone will want this product", "the business model of the future", and so on. Promises of astronomical incomes are routine, and there will be some guy in an Italian suit telling you about his private plane and island villa. MLM's exploit basic human greed and naivete, which is why they are so successful.

 If all MLM did was cause some greedy and starry-eyed fools to lose a bit of cash then I'd have no problem. But the real evil of MLM is how it convinces people to exploit their personal relationships for financial gain. "Invite your friends and family to be a part of this amazing opportunity! They are the people you love - you wouldn't want to leave them behind! You owe it to them!"

While I was at this company (a mere four months) I saw this kind of psychological pressure expertly applied continually. I saw marriages destroyed, bitter family rifts created and I know of at least one suicide. I also saw how the money always got funneled away from the handful who were genuinely trying to be successful at it. And I saw the top dogs make a LOT of cash.

There were other things I saw go on... and I SO wish I could say more about it all, but I'm teetering at the edge of legal jeopardy as it is. What I saw was heartbreaking and depressing, but fortunately I got to learn about it from the safety of being "behind the scenes". I didn't lose my house or destroy my relationships. Others were not so fortunate.

There is plenty of excellent info about these crackpot scams on the web - http://www.vandruff.com/mlm.html is an excellent read. If anyone you know is on the brink of getting involved in one, then alert them to it

You'll save them a bit of money and - more importantly - you'll save them an awful lot of grief.

So it's the first day of Spring, or at least it is down this part of the planet. And as a result I'm spring-cleaning some corners of my mind. The phrase "putting things into perspective" has been hovering in my head the last few days.

It's a common - almost cliché - phrase: "putting things in perspective". It gets used so often that it's easy to lose sight of its true meaning.

Perspective is simply the matter of knowing "what really matters". But I will concede it's easy to lose sight of this at times in your life. I've certainly done that myself at times. You get so caught up in whatever trivial concerns are going on around you, or in managing how people are perceiving you, or in managaing how you are perceiving yourself.

So what does matter? When you strip away all of the noise and the chaos, the only thing that matters in life is the quality of your relationships. You have nothing of value in this life but the love you give and the love you receive. If there is an afterlife, then this is all that you will take with you.

The other day a colleague of mine was struck down with a vicious cancer that had gone undiagnosed until all too late. His outlook is dire, and he has a wife and young child. Meanwhile a former girlfriend contacted me to say her own cancer has relapsed and she is now having to confront the prospect of a hysterectomy - a fundamental desecration of her womanhood.

So naturally events such as these cannot help but give me pause, and make me reflect on the deeper purpose of things. And from there it makes me reflect on things like "what really matters".

Forgiveness matters. That's obvious and I don't think I'm saying anything new here. The bookstores and the internet are full of guidance on "how to forgive". "Forgiveness is the process of letting go of the chains that bind you, of the pain that cripples you."

Etc, etc.

But interestingly, there is almost nothing out there which shows us "how to seek forgiveness". On how to deal with remorse. On how to bridge the gap with those we've injured. I googled "remorse" and most of the links I found were about "buyer's remorse", having "no remorse", or for a variety of bands with that name.

Maybe it's a reflection of our "me" society that we are solely focused on dealing with those who have transgressed against us. We are constantly told that we are the centre of our universes in a myriad of subtle ways, and we are seldom encouraged to be accountable and acknowledge our failures. "Live without regret" is constantly pushed as a mantra of modern living.

But there is both a time for regret, and a time for remorse. If more people could bring themselves to honestly say "I'm truly sorry - please forgive me" there might be a little less grief, a little less hurt, a little less pain, and a little more love in the world.

It hasn't been an outstanding year for me in many ways. You get to an age where you think you understand yourself, and you have a sense of security in who you have become and what your values are.

But then you do something which completely transgresses all of those values and principles, and you are confronted with the appalling truth that you are capable of doing things that are completely selfish and harmful.

And whenever this happens, one or more people that you profess to love is likely to get badly wounded in the process.

Those can be tough times, sure. The easiest way out is to maintain the pretence, and to dress up the transgression with "explanations" and "mitigating circumstances". Sometimes a dose of "it was out of my control" self-righteousness can kick in - we all like to play the victim. No-one ever likes to believe that they are ever truly in the wrong.

But if you persist in this self-serving attitude, then you had better be satisfied with what you gain in the process, for you shall kill a love along the way. To me, that's a terribly high price to pay. 

So if you can, try to be accountable. A transgression committed is a love injured, and the healing of such things are far more important that preserving your pride or "being right". You may die being "right", but there will be no-one at your funeral to mention it.

I'm not going to make any exact pronouncements on "how to go about mending the bridges" - I'm hardly qualified to offer such advice. But I can say a few things.

Apologise sincerely and offer to make amends. And apologise without any expectation. Unfortunately it must be accepted that the injured party may never truly forgive you. You may never regain what has been lost. This - sadly - is the price you sometimes must pay. We do not live in a perfect world, and sometimes there are wounds which cannot be healed.

Despite this risk, whenever you are in the wrong, take steps to demonstrate remorse, and to seek forgiveness. It is the only hope for salvaging the love that is damaged. Preserving the love we have in our lives is the only worthwhile act we will ever perform. And if you truly do not feel remorse... well then I don't know what to say to you. Get help or accept your lonely and bitter life.

And no, this blog isn't an apology for my transgressions, I've offered those privately so as to give the injured some quiet dignity. And the healing on both sides is far from over. I also must accept the fact that the reconciliation I so hope for may simply never occur. That's the cost I bear and there is a deep, deep sadness that comes from that. All I can do now is learn from my errors, continue to make amends and strive to improve myself.

But writing this blog was a good opportunity to reflect on these things. If there is anyone in your life that you need to say sorry to, then I highly recommend doing so. A family member, a current or former lover, a lost friend - whoever. Just get on with it. Your pride isn't that important. The love you have in your life is.

If you don't try to mend that bridge, then you truly will regret it. And that's one circumstance where I do heartily recommend attempting to live with "no regrets".

(Dedicated to ANR, of course.)

Rewind two weeks or so. I just got back from the USA. I'm tired, jetlagged and bored, and I don't have to go to work straight away. So I check my emails and there's this "So-and-so invites you to join Facebook" message. So I figure - "why the hell not?".

The word is that it's popular. The word is that it's growing faster than MySpace. The word is that it's "IN" and if I fail to jump onboard this paradigm of grooviness I will be so unhip my ass will fall off. Apparently it was invented at Harvard University - an institution supposedly turning out some of the best and brightest of Americans.

Well friends, I have been to the edge. I have walked that valley. I have seen what is on the other side, and YEA VERILY - it is complete crap. I am not kidding. Facebook puts the "DUH" into "dumb", the "LAME" into "lamentable" and the "IN" into "inane". It is childish, mindlessly banal and remarkably irritating. 

As both MySpace and Facebook are competing "social networking" sites, making comparisons is inevitable. So, using children as an analogy: MySpace is a slightly ADD but otherwise bright young child who is attending piano lessons and draws impressive pictures well worthy of display on the fridge. Facebook on the other hand is the young child smashing the family photo frames with a hammer and eating his own snot.

Let's examine Facebook a bit more closely. For starters, you can't even examine Facebook unless you sign up. MySpace allows you to snoop around a bit and get a feel for the place before you decide to jump in. I have a lot of readers who don't have MySpace profiles - they email me at my Yahoo account fairly often.

So you get registered. And once you are in it is BLAND. You can't customise your profile page beyond the text. You can add photos, and leave comments (much like MySpace). But there are no blogs, no videos, no music and no real opportunity to get to know strangers (unless you accept them as your friend first). MySpace lets you sniff over people a bit - via their comments on blogs, via looking over their interactions with others. Facebook makes you commit to being someone's friend just in order to get to know them.

But the supposedly "holy grail" element of Facebook are the "apps". These are custom-written mini-programs that you install on your profile to make your life more meaningful. There are at least 2000 of these applications. You can "poke" people. You can buy them virtual drinks in a virtual bar. You can pet their virtual pets. You can buy them virtual bakery items. This (apparently) constitutes meaningful social interaction.

I think this whole "poking" idea bothers me the most. You can "poke" anyone. For starters, K above has been my friend for ten years and I just don't feel very comfortable with the idea of "poking" her. It kind of breaches the boundaries of the friendship. But people can poke you randomly any time they want. MySpace is bad enough with the "hey baby, message me" emails that people get bombarded with. On Facebook, people can irritate you merely by clicking their mouse and "poking" you. This is taking you to whole new levels of annoyance.

And Facebook is aggressively chasing your money. You are regularly encouraged to register a credit card number with them. This way you can send gifts to your friends, for varying amounts of money. Today's $1 gift (and I am NOT kidding) is a lemon.

Now I'll give Facebook one thing over MySpace. It's stable. As far as I can tell, the site behaves normally pretty much all the time. We've all endured the wrath of SaTom, and the technical team at MySpace has no fans whatsoever.

But if bland is the future of this kind of social networking website, then count me out. For every crap MySpace page full of 40000 images there is a well-designed and interesting profile of someone who just might be worth knowing. And the quality of writing in the blogs here on MySpace continues to amaze me.

So I know where my loyalties are. Tom may be unreliable and irritating at times, but he's a damn sight more fun to be around.

So am I missing something?
Is there something actually worthwhile about Facebook?
Do let me know, because I just can't see it.

PS - if you want to hear an amazing Australian band, go check out my profile page as I've got the song "Special Ones" by George playing. The singer Katie Noonan is utterly amazing - listen to the high notes she hits about 2/3 of way through the song.

OK, I haven't thrown a good tantrum for a while, so this is long overdue.

But first - some business news from Australia. We have four "major" banks here, and one of them just appointed a new CEO. Generally this sort of news only appears in the business pages of the newspapers, but this particular case was a big deal. This is because the new CEO of the Westpac Banking Corporation is a woman, Gail Kelly.

Gail Kelly, newly appointed CEO of Westpac.

I'm disappointed about this.

My disappointment is not that Ms Kelly is the new CEO - I've worked in banking and insurance long enough to know that she is highly respected and that she turned St George Bank (where she was previously the CEO) into a streamlined and profitable entity. It was no secret that a number of Australia's largest companies were very keen to sign her up, and Westpac now consider themselves fortunate.

NO, I am disappointed because I checked my watch this morning and it's apparently 2007. Yet in 2007 the fact that a woman takes the helm of a major corporation is still unusual enough to make headlines. She is, sadly, very much alone in the Australian business world.

Frankly, I'd like to live in a world where the fact that a CEO is female isn't regarded as particularly interesting or newsworthy. But it definitely still is.

In the 80's Maggie Thatcher was elected prime minister of the U.K., the first female leader of a major western democracy. At the time it was mooted as the "end of the era where women were secondary". But her leadership was an aberration for the most part. Women are still very minor players in business, politics and academia. And I'm sitting here asking myself why there has been so little change in the past twenty-five years.

Here's some movie trivia for you. The gender balance of all of the directors being graduated from the major film schools is pretty much even. Yet the percentage of Hollywood films made by female directors last year was only 4%.  And only three women have ever received a 'Best Director' Oscar nomination (none have won it).

I have no idea what the causes are or what the answer is. I could rattle off the traditional platitudes - "glass ceiling", "business is a boy's club", "women take the primary caregiver roles", "lack of opportunity", etc. They're probably all true. I just wish it wasn't and I'm frustrated by why it is still this way.

One thing I will say though, is that we just don't celebrate women who achieve in these areas. Some token acknowledgement of Oprah happens, but did you know that Fortune Magazine only ranks Oprah as the 8th most powerful businesswoman in America? This means there are seven women regarded as more powerful than her, and I will bet that you can't name any of them. (Here's a link if you want to look them all up.) The CEO's of major companies like Pepsi, Xerox and Kraft are in there.

But we sure as hell celebrate Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. Vapid minds and nubile eroticism are the hallmarks of female achievement in our media-obsessed age. Young girls are constantly being told that their sexuality is their only significant asset.

Here's a comedy skit which lampoons attitudes from an era which is supposedly "bygone".

But with everything I see in the media today, I'm not convinced that this message is so out-dated.

Addendum: Glen (AKA Mr Belligerent) raises the interesting observation that, for the most part, women are the better bloggers on MySpace. Anyone agree?

Second addendum: I can't think of a way to justify including this video given the blog topic, but it's just too damn funny not to. Yes I'm being cruel, yes I'm being insensitive. So sue me. At least she is cute.

*UPDATE* An addendum to the addendum... Apparently Miss South Carolina isn't as dumb as she looks. She says she just had a brain lock at that particular moment. She defends herself quite eloquently in this NBC interview.

Just about three weeks ago was Hiroshima Day - August 6. I was in St Louis at the time, and this let to a fun dispute with Casteroni as to how to actually pronounce it. I say "he-ROSH-she-mah" and she says "HEE-row-SHEE-mah". Poor Americans, can't even pronounce things properly. Never mind.

Anyway, that led me to think about the "mother of all public safety films" - the immortal "DUCK AND COVER". And I am delighted to say that with a minimal amount of fuss, I found it on YouTube.

Now if you've never seen this before, you might feel like you're watching a comedy skit from Saturday Night Live. That's because "Duck and Cover" has been parodied so many times that much of it will seem familiar.

But this is NOT a joke. This is a genuine film made in the 1950's and circulated to schools throughout America. I've met people who were in high school back then who remember seeing it. Along with the equally famous "Reefer Madness" (an inadvertently hilarious anti-marijuana film), "Duck and Cover" is an immortal work of public disservice and misinformation.

DUCK AND COVER - produced in 1950

The precise purpose of this film, and the ridiculous advice it dispenses have been the subject of much debate in the years since its release. Needless to say, the practical value of "ducking and covering" in the event of a nuclear strike is nil.

In the blast at Hiroshima every building within two miles of ground zero was powderised and human remains could not even be identified. The heat blast extended for a radius of several kilometres, and the victims caught in the maelstrom were charred beyond identification. And Hiroshima was not a particularly powerful bomb.

When this film was released, the extent of the damage at Hiroshima was fully understood by the US Military. Even if Hiroshima hadn't been studied, the tests at Bikini Atoll in 1946 must have left little doubt. Entire warships had their hulls ripped off and livestock in the blast area were liquidised. The footage is gruesome.

So the exact purpose of "Duck and Cover" remains unclear. Cynics would argue that by addressing the risk of nuclear warfare in such a trivial way, the public would be less concerned by the genuine risks it presented. It would take until the 1960's for the anti-nuclear movement to organise itself.

Politically, a calm public is a voter-friendly public. And everywhere we look we see efforts being made to assure us that war "isn't really that bad". We glorified in the apparent clinical precision of the first Gulf War - it was even termed the "video game war".

But it wasn't. Over 40000 people died in the first Gulf War - that's an entire small city wiped out. That only 146 of them were American is hardly the issue.

The truly horrifying images of the Gulf War were largely suppresed for some reason. The media seemed almost complicit in this act, as if collectively they felt it would be wrong of them to point out that war - whatever the reason or the justification - is truly horrifying.

From "The Unseen Gulf War" by Peter Turnley, (C) 2002.

This is a photo from the "Highway of Hell" in the First Gulf War. As Iraqi vehicles fled Kuwait City they were bombed from the air. In the traffic jam of trucks attempting to escape they were (as one US Military commander termed it) "sitting ducks".

Whenever I look at this image, naturally I am at first horrified by the carnage. But then I am horrified by the fact that some poor GI is having to walk past and look at it.

War is merciful to the slain - their torment is finally over. That poor soldier in the photo is confronting that memory every day of his life. And I don't think any human being could see that and not be changed forever.

Now this blog isn't an anti-war rant. It may be true that in some cases there truly are no other options. But we should always understand the true cost.

So when soldiers complain of "Gulf War Syndrome" or similar conditions, listen to them. These people have gone through stuff that I don't even want to imagine. I have nightmares about the minor car accident I was once in. To contemplate witnessing the sheer horror of war is beyond me.

Some things are simply not meant to be seen. We cannot duck and cover from the reality of military conflict.

And time does not heal all wounds.

Addendum - some of the comments below have related some stories of veterans and the struggles they go through. So I've added a YouTube video. It's one that all Australians will know, but that may be unfamiliar to others. It's a haunting, heart-rending ballad by a band called Redgum, and it's entitled "I was only 19".

And can you tell me, doctor, why I still can't get to sleep?
And night time's just a jungle dark and a barking M.16?
And what's this rash that comes and goes, can you tell me what it means?
God help me - I was only nineteen...

Scandal, scandal, scandal...

Now the last blog I wrote while in the US was a light-hearted take on "validation". On my US trip I'd met a lot of well-known MySpacer bloggers such as  Casteroni, Stephanie, and Damn Girl (plus hundreds of other MySpacers), and (as I had photos) I decided to write a blog to prove they were all "real".

But along the way, I made mention of a couple of scandals that had hit the MySpace community over the past two months. I mentioned them merely in passing. But since then I have received a deluge of emails and comments asking me to elaborate on what these scandals were. Basically you are all a bunch of shameless gossips.

So I write this blog with some trepidation, given that there is an element of "trash tabloid journalism" to all of this. But there are some good observations to be made, so I decided to proceed. But only this once - I'm off this sort of topic forever after this blog.

There are three scandals to comment on, and I'll deal with them in order of least to most significant (in my opinion anyway). Well-known blogger Superjabs is to be fully credited for exposing the final two.

FREY
The Frey scandal was one that really only bothered the community of dedicated bloggers, and not so much the general MySpace community. Despite all trying to act like we don't really care, the dedicated bloggers DO pay attention to the MySpace blog rankings. (Which are all screwy today as the various categories have disappeared for some reason.)

Blog rankings are determined by the number of views and comments. So Frey had a novel approach. He created at least 40 seperate MySpace profiles and used them all to artificially boost his numbers.

Now apart from the mind-numbing amount of effort this must have taken (seriously, who has the time?) when he was exposed he earned the hostility of all the other bloggers who play fair. He quickly disappeared and hasn't been seen since.

**UPDATE** I only ever heard about the Frey scandal from others. I have since learned that it was Chad 360 who busted him. Thanks for the heads up!

KENDALICIOUS
Well the Kendal story is probably one that made a lot of the girls laugh, as it made a lot of boys look fairly stupid. Back in April a very cute blonde from Dallas, Texas starts posting some fairly sexually explicit blogs and the boys go crazy. They all start messaging her privately, and she gives them her phone number.

I was one of the first to ever talk to Kendal (I was introduced to her by Hostile 17) and she was keen to hear my advice on how to become a better known blogger. We spoke on the phone quite a few times. She certainly had a sexy voice, but quite a childlike demeanour.

As she became better known our contact dropped off, and she began co-hosting a blog-radio show with Superjabs. Now if you aren't familiar with Jabs, he is one of my favourite bloggers. He's confrontational, uncensored... kind of the Howard Stern of MySpace. Many people hate him, which is their right. But personally, I think he's brilliant.

Anyway Jabs and Kendal began to speak a lot on the phone, but Jabs became suspicious. Little things about her story didn't add up and it became apparent that there was no-one on MySpace who had ever met her. Anyone who ever tried kept receiving excuses (there were people who also lived in Dallas who had tried). Finally Jabs asked for some photo evidence... you can see the result of that here.

So it turned out that Kendal was fake... in a sense. There was a real girl in there somewhere obviously - I'd spoken to her. But the consensus is that those were not her pictures. In the week that Jabs exposed her I spoke to both of them on the phone several times. My advice to Kendal was to shoot a quick video clip - it would be incontrovertible and she said she owned a video camera. Failing that, go and meet Daniel (Rosjian) who also lived in Dallas. Her response to me was that she "didn't need to prove anything to anyone". She deleted her profile and hasn't been seen since.

Since then it has been revealed that there were at least 25 guys who thought they were getting into some form of "net romance" with her, and at least one flew to Dallas exclusively to meet her (she never turned up to meet him). The girl must have spent a LOT of time on the phone.

A final note - I'm also aware of at least three other girls who were doing the same thing, though not to the high-profile extent of Kendal. Since the Kendal scandal broke they've all disappeared too.

TODD AND CHAD
Of all the scandals, this is the one that really bothered me. And as with the Kendal story, it was Superjabs who exposed the whole thing.

The basic outline was a lot of MySpacers (chiefly girls) had rallied to support this poor guy named Todd who had all forms of cancer. Chad was his lifelong friend who kept everyone updated. The supporters raised money, sent out endless updates and numerous bloggers posted "Pray for Todd" type blogs.

The more cynical among us might note that both Todd and Chad had photos that indicated they were male models, (go check out the pics on Jabs blog) and that may have made the girls a bit more enthusiastic. (But after the Kendal scandal, I don't think there's a lot of room to point fingers on that score.)

Anyway, as it turns out, the entire thing was a hoax. Neither Todd nor Chad existed, and the best consensus is that it was being run by some girl (possibly in Tennessee). One poor girl honestly believed she was in an online relationship with Chad, despite never having even spoken to "him".

Now I was in Roseville California with Damn Girl and her Blog Baby crew on the Friday night the scandal broke. At that gathering were a lot of people who had invested real effort to supporting Todd and Chad, and they were horrfied to learn they had been so completely conned.

In Roseville, CA with Damn Girl and her crew.
(BTW if anyone could help me with all the names of people in this shot, I'd appreciate it)

Now why this pissed me off is that there are REAL efforts being made to fight for valid causes on MySpace, but hoax crap like this will only burn people. The people who supported Todd did nothing wrong other than genuinely care and demonstrate remarkable kindness. They were betrayed and that really irritates me. The next time around they may not be so generous with their hearts, and that is a real loss.

So my observations are this. MySpace is for fun. Try to keep it that way.

BUT... if you feel like getting more involved, be it with a "cause" or a "romance" then get some background validation. There ARE good and genuine people here, but there are also some sick f**ks who get off on manipulation of others. If a cause interests you, do your background checks first.

SIDENOTE: If you want a cause to look at, I highly recommend Damn Girl's Cancer Project. She's real, the cause is real and her approach makes a lot of sense.

Well my vacation is over, and I'm back to blogging properly. For anyone who is new to my blog, I just returned from a seven week soiree across the USA, and met hundreds of MySpace people and, frankly, had myself "a very good time indeed". But I'm back to my regular schedule now.

Food. And love. In combination.

One thing I really like doing is cooking. And frankly (after quite a bit of practice) I've become fairly handy at it. I'm by no means a 'chef' and I'm not as diverse as I'd like - I can't do a soufflé and my range of desserts in minimal. But what I know I can do quite well.

Now how I came to cooking was quite simple - I was an "insecure teenager". One day it occurred to me that in order to achieve some degree of success in the bedroom stakes, I needed to increase my (ahem) "unique selling proposition". I'd already become a musician (which can be highly effective in the right circumstance), but I felt I needed to broaden the palette. So at the age of 18 or so, I began to learn how to cook.

The effectiveness of this "home-cooked meal" technique is here demonstrated using Damn Girl as a subject.
And keep your filthy gossip-mongering minds under control, it was all innocent.

Basically - cooking for a girl is a great way of winning her over and (ahem) getting her under. If your post-meal objective is to get laid, then the odds are good frankly. (Granted, as the girl is already in your home, she may have been at least entertaining the notion. But the invitation to a home-cooked meal is a highly successful method of getting her there in the first place.)

A lot of guys have hit on this notion as well, but have failed to ascertain exactly how much effort is actually involved to pull it off. The promise of hand-prepared epicurean delights may lure her into your dining room, but a meal of Kraft Mac & Cheese served on plastic Flintstones plates with a beer may send her straight back out. (And if it doesn't drive her away, you probably shouldn't have bothered cooking and just taken her to Taco Bell in the first place.)

Cooking a decent meal takes a fair amount of practice, and a fair amount of preparation. Dishes that require a great deal of effort are usually a bad idea, as you end up spending all of your time over the stove while she sits getting bored. My repetoire includes dishes that often take considerable preparation, but quite brief actual cooking time. Asian food is excellent in this regard as many of the dishes come together quite quickly (although the prep can be significant).

Chicken-breast in a wholegrain mustard sauce, with garlic mash and blanched vegetables.
Carrots would have improved the presentation, but it was a fair effort.(I forgot to buy them at the grocery store).

Once you get started cooking, some decidedly "male" aspects kick in. For starters, the implements of a well-equipped kitchen appeal to the same area of the male brain that worships motorcycles and power tools. What is good cookwear other than precision-machined bits of shiny steel? After saving up my pennies I finally got myself a set of Wüsthof-Trident knives, and I am fiercely smug about that fact.

These knives are serious kitchen-porn.

Seduction.
But if you want to cook your way into a girl's underwear you really need to consider the bigger picture. Cooking for a woman isn't about food, any more than a Rolex is about telling the time. It's about seduction.

Now I have long on a personal crusade to bring seduction back. We live in an age where the art of "wooing" a girl seems to have vanished. "Get her a lager then get a leg over" seems to be the mode of operation, and I like something a bit more compelling.

Seduction has many forms and guises, naturally. But one method is simply doing something extravagant for a girl, on the grounds that "she is worth it". This last bit is the most important. It's hard to fake this form of seduction, because if she isn't worth it, then why exactly are you going to all the effort?

Seduction when preparing a meal for a woman means attending to the finer details. The presentation, music, candles, wine... what those in the restaurant business call 'ambience' (except they pronounce it "om-bee-yonce").

At the very minimum you need to get yourself some decent plates and cutlery (ie. whatever Americans call knives and forks - I can't remember their term offhand). Get some glasses that don't have cartoon characters on them. If you know nothing about wine then buy a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, as you cannot EVER go wrong with this wine. Don't put Hank Williams or Pantera on the CD player.

In later blogs I'll explore this whole food/seduction notion more, and if there's interest I'll even start writing some of my basic "how to get started" ideas down.

Until then - what do the girls think?
Any other guys out there got something to share?
Anyone got a story of their own to share? (Notice how discrete I was... :)

Well that was my first blog back after a ridiculously long vacation. Hope you enjoyed it!

Now I don't often ask for pimpage, but as I've been away for so long, a lot of people have forgotten about me. So if anyone wants to spread the word that I'm back on deck, I'd be very grateful. Would be nice to see all the old faces back.

And don't forget that the video talk show project with myself and Paul (Devils Advocate) will be getting underway next week. That WILL be fun. And it will feature the return of the infamous pink jacket. On the weekend I might even resurrect the infamous nude guitar playing as well. We shall see...

Hi folks

Not a real blog, but just a promise of things to come. Am still exhausted after all of my travels, particularly after the wonders the exceptionally festive city that is St Louis, Missouri. Combined with Sacramento, California I met some truly amazing people and my life has been deeply enriched by getting to know so many fine people. But I was seriously worn out!

Went through the worst jetlag of my life, and am still not back to a normal sleeping pattern, but at least I'm starting to think about establishing a blogging routine again. Am not going to go back to the relentless '6-days-a-week' blogging schedule I used to maintain, but am aiming for twice a week. Wind-up Wednesday may return.

I'm still planning on a lot of output, just via different mediums. Someof you may have seen the series of impromptu short films that Paul, Tristan and I made, and we're going to do some more, and recruit a few more actors (eg Kat).

If you haven't seen our existing trilogy of silliness, follow the links below.

Paul, Tristan and Manning Short Film - Audition 351
Paul, Tristan and Manning Short Film - Audition 352
The infamous Planetary Pictures - "World Hunger Appeal"

MYSPACE TALK SHOW
Paul and I also have a crazy notion to start making a weekly "Talk Show" which we'll run via MySpace. It will be some sort of weird cross between "The McNeil Lehrer News Hour" and "Wayne's World", but with our own Oz twist. We're not too sure what is a good length, but we're thinking a 15 minute show split up into three five minute segments might work.

If you have any talk show topics you want to see, let us know. We'll probably shoot the first one next week and I look forward to your feedback.

And in case any of you are wondering - the pink jacket will make a return. It is too popular to retire.

------------

So hang tight and expect a proper blog from me on Tuesday (or Monday evening in the US). I've got LOADS of material from my time away. Thanks a lot for all of your comments over the past six weeks- they are much appreciated, and humbling.

And if you are look for a fun blog to visit in the interim, always remember you can go to my favourite MySpace hangout - Casteroni's Relationship Blog

Peace, y'all

Manning

Damn! It's been quite a month of controversy on MySpace.

In case you haven't logged onto MySpace in about six weeks, there've been a few major scandals going on. There was the Kendal scandal, the Frey scandal and the worst of them all (in my opinion) the "Pray for Todd" scandal. (Please don't make me elaborate on the details... ask in the comments if you need more info.)

Meanwhile, I was aware of a number of "lower-to-zero" profile mini-scandals, mostly involving MySpace romances where one party was spinning a line of total (ahem) "fantasy" to the other.

Which has led me to wonder about the reality of MySpace and the purpose/nature of MySpace friendships (and *shudder* MySpace "romances").

Now you can certainly have "net-friends" - I've got a large number of them. These are people I exchange the odd email with, and I have a rough awareness of their life and circumstance. They often read my blogs or I read theirs. If the opportunity ever arose I'd love to meet these people.

I don't allow myself to regard these people as "real" friends, however. The dividing line for me between a "net-friend" and a "real friend" is VERIFIABILITY. All of the scandals (major and minor) that I've seen unfold recently involved a failure to verify before getting emotionally attached.

So let me establish some basic ground rules for living in the virtual MySpace world.

Manning's First Law of MySpace: Do not get emotionally involved with someone you've never met. Curiosity is OK (but subject to the second law).
Manning's Second Law of MySpace: Do not even become curious about someone who's existence you can't verify.

How do you verify someone on MySpace? Photos are a good place to start. If there is a photo of a person with someone you actually know, then you are on very solid ground. If you can see an image of someone you're curious about with someone else that you can contact independently, there's a fair chance that is still a real person.

For example, I've never met the MySpace blogger Wayno.

I've read his stuff, I've exchanged emails with him on a number of occasions, and I am aware that he is a mid-30's guy living in Boston. But regardless of having never met him, I'm 100% certain that Wayno is a real person and that what he is telling me is the truth. This is because I've met Wayno's real-life girlfriend (and MySpace Blogger Queen) Stephanie.

Following on, I know that Stephanie and Damn Girl correspond regularly but have never met. However I can link the two of them together via photos, and hence I can vouch that they are both very "real".

More examples - the well-known bloggers Laura (Casteroni) and Paul (Devil's Advocate) also exchange emails regularly, and I can connect them too:

I could go on... I've regularly corresponded with, but have never met Jenna. However I have met Daniel (Rosjian) and he has met Jenna, so I now regard Jenna as a real (and 'verified') person. I can name plenty more, but you get the idea.

The bottom line is, if you can find a way to verify people, all the better. If you are starting to become emotionally attached to someone (especially if that attachment is romantic in nature), then it is mandatory.

Verification is also great when you hear things that should raise suspicion. In the Todd/Chad  case, Chad allegedly had a private jet that he was flying around the country on. If that sort of stuff doesn't raise alarm bells, well it should.

Likewise, if some random guy tells you he's just landed a three-month role in a major television series, I'd be really skeptical... unless of course the guy happens to be the Devil's Advocate, because I can then vouch that it is true.

As you can see, verification is a useful thing.

It's not always going to be possible - I've got a MySpace friend in Finland (Miss Mirelle) who I enjoy corresponding with but don't see any way of getting to know in person any time soon. I've spoken on the phone with SuperJabs but missed out on meeting him this time around. It doesn't mean that I don't trust these people as such, but I maintain a certain sense of detachment from them that I don't have with the I know or can verify. (And if I put any effort into it, I could probably find a mutual contact and verify Jabs fairly quickly).

But the Kendal and Todd situations arose because a lot of people got attached to someone where this verification never happened, and they got burned. In the Todd situation, a lot of genuine, caring people had their natural empathy and kindness exploited by a manipulative hoaxer, and those people did NOT deserve that.

So to cut it all short - Keep it Real, people. As best you can.

The Kevin Bacon Element. While in Sacramento, it was pointed out to me that with all of these meetings and photos I am becoming the "Kevin Bacon" of MySpace - in other words I can connect large groups of people on MySpace to each other. If you aren't familiar with this subject, there is a theory that every actor in the world can be connected eventually to actor Kevin Bacon.

Adapting this idea, we find that anyone who has met me in person has a "Manning Number" of 1 (M1), and anyone who has met someone who has met me has a "Manning Number" of 2 (M2), and so on. Anyone in a photo with me gets this changed to "MP1", and anyone in a photo with someone who has "MP1" gets "MP2", etc.

After scanning my friends list, I concluded that I have 140+ MySpace friends that I have met in person, so they all have M1 status. I'm not sure how many people I've been photographed with, but I'm guessing more than that (allowing group shots) and they all get an MP1.

So if you are prepared to accept the fact that I am real, then anyone who has met me can also be trusted to be real (to at least a degree), and any photo you see of a person with an MP number can be trusted as well.

Questions
How best to go about validating someone's existence?
When do you need to?
Who's got an M or MP number?
What's the highest MP number out there?
Has anyone got a photo from my trip that I don't know about?

PS - I recently modified my Top Friends to only include people I knew in real life. A number of folks got miffed at that, but it was nothing personal and I'm sorry if anyone got offended :)

Hello Folks!

I am typing this in LAX, so no time to upload fancy pictures. But as what I have to say is from Biblical Scripture (sort of), I feel that your undivided attention is warranted. Today's lesson is the account of how the Lord God Almighty created the mysterious state of California.

From the Gospel according to St Manning.

1. And it came to pass that the Lord God woke up one Tuesday morning after having a good night's sleep, and decided that creating California was his task for the day. For verily, the Lord had cranked out Washington State and Oregon the night before, and while his work was very good, he knew he could do better. Plus he really didn't feel like going out and talking to Adam and Eve, because Eve was already complaining about the lack of decent fashion options and Adam just wanted to watch football.

2. Thus did the Lord boot up his trusty copy of Adobe PlanetShop, and in his infinite wisdom he did scroll over to the unfinished bits of North America's western coastline. He grabbed a Grande Latte, lit up a fat Cuban cigar and set to work.

3. And after drawing in the coastline (using a fair bit of cut and paste from Australia's eastern seaboard) the Lord our God thus began to work his way downwards.

4. In the north of California the Lord did create majestic mountains, fertile green valleys and crystalline rivers. Then the Lord did place spectacular Sequoia forests and mighty redwoods, and create harbours of Godly splendour.

5. And the Lord did create the Napa and Sonoma Valleys, so that his people may enjoy the nectar of the vine... regularly.

6. And the Lord did then populate his magnificent creation or Northern California with sweet and lovely and wise people, who could think and reason and appreciate the beauty that their Lord God had provided for them.

7. Then it came to pass that the Lord God did turn his attention to Southern California. It was the goal of the Lord to create even more wondrous marvels, but alas, the divine cel phone rang, and did interrupt the Lord in his planetary creation.

8. And thus it was that the Lord then spent the next twenty minutes listening to Mrs Cohen (the Virgin Mary's Jewish mother) rattle on about why God had never made an honest woman of Mary, and how Jesus was still fooling around with that dreadful Magdalene girl and that if God didn't intervene then how could she ever show her face at the Heavenly Country Club ever again, and that Mrs Leibowitz's son had met a nice girl and got married, and he was a doctor, not a carpenter. And yea verily, the Lord did become severely pissed off.

9. So it came to pass that the Lord did finally get off the phone, and he was mightily annoyed. And thus in his divine anger he did turn to the Los Angeles area and decree in his heaviest Latin:
 "Stecorum maximum pro Los Angeles habes"

10. And the corps of heavenly sub-titlers looked up quickly and rapidly superimposed the translation:
"Yea verily, Los Angeles shall be the biggest shithole in the world".

11. And the Lord God in his fury and anger did smite down upon the Los Angeles area, using the divine ugly stick. He laid out swamps and barren ground, and he did create hills of relentless poo brown, and surround it all with boring mountains that did nothing but trap the smog. And the Lord God did populate the drabness with the most irritating people he could create, and appoint Paris Hilton as their Queen.

12. And the Lord God did look down upon Los Angeles and he saw that it was basically crap. But he was still annoyed at Mrs Cohen and couldn't be arsed fixing it. (And besides, he thought Mary Magdalene wasn't actually a bad sort).

13. However deep down the Lord did know that Los Angeles was an embarassing crock-of-shit, so the Lord God did create the San Andreas Fault as an "auto-delete" option for later use.

14. At this stage, the Lord our God hadn't actually done anything about the 200 miles between Stockton and LA. But it was getting late and Angelic Idol was coming on, so he wanted to wrap it all up and plonk himself in front of the tube. So using the "bucket-paint" tool on his Adobe PlanetShop, he filled in the entire 200 miles with a flat brown dustbowl.

15. But the Lord did realise that he was still being a slack bastard, so he right-clicked on the 200 miles of dirt he'd stuck in north of LA and selected "Allow Orange Groves and Electricity Transmission Towers". And thus the Lord our God did complete his creation of California.

16. And the Lord did look down upon California and saw that it was good.

17. Well the Northern bit anyway. The Lord did quietly admit to himself that the southern bit was rubbish, frankly.

Here endeth the lesson. Amen.

Dedicated (with tongue-firmly-in-cheek) to my dear friends Cara (Damn Girl), Barbara and the fine folks of Sacramento, California. Thank you so much for your generosity and hospitality during my stay :)

So, as many of you know, I've been driving around this amazing country, and there have been some things I have been noticing. The majority of them have been incredible.

But there's been one thing that's bothering me, like a tiny cut in the roof of my mouth, and I can't ignore it any longer. Maybe I'm wrong (and if I am, PLEASE let me know) but it seems to me like very little has changed in this country as far as the "colour divide" goes.

Now I lived here in the USA in the late 1980's. MLK had been dead for less than 20 years, and his spirit lived on powerfully. Spike Lee made "Do the Right Thing" (still one of the most intelligent and balanced films ever made on racial issues). Intelligent Rap/Hip Hop music was on the radio, from the thoughtful and uplifting social commentary of Arrested Development to the urban anger of Public Enemy and the vitriolic rage of NWA.

The Cosby Show was the number one TV show in America and presented a benign, (possibly over-sanitised) view of the black middle class. "In Living Color" presented an alternative black comedy TV show, and "Living Colour" (the band) brought black heavy metal to an predominately white audience via MTV. Branford Marsalis took over from Doc Severinson on the Tonight Show.

It wasn't a peaceful time, as was demonstrated by the carnage of the Rodney King riots in 1992. But it was a time when the call for social justice rang loud. Black rights and racial issues seemed to be at the forefront of social thinking.

Now granted I was working in the music community at the time, and (along with sports) this is a world where race had long lost any meaning. I lived and breathed in a highly integrated community where blacks were over-represented (relative to the 12-13% of the general population). So maybe I was seeing a skewed perspective about the level of commitment to social change.

Regardless, skip forward to 2007. I'm looking around at what I see, and as far as I can tell, progress has stopped in its tracks and the black community has gone awfully quiet. The only black music I hear is 'gangsta rap' which is largely a celebration of hedonism and misanthropy/misogyny. There are no "black" TV shows on a major network. The social and economic integration which was so well underway in the 80's seems to have ground to a halt.

And as I drive around, I have seen little towns that belong in the Sudan and not in the richest country in the world. Children without shoes run on dirt roads to their houses propped up with pilfered lumber. I heard a realtor discuss a house she was selling and complain about it's condition by saying, "Well, you know how THEY live…".

Then I get on to MySpace and I find myself in a predominantly white virtual world. I have only one black American reader that I know of. I have two black American friends back in Sydney but none in the USA. Can we not even integrate on MySpace?

I had a long discussion about this with a black guy in a record store in Nashville. He was an articulate and thoughtful young man, and he didn't flinch when I asked some hard questions. "Where has the anger gone?" "What is the black community doing?" "What the hell happened to the idea of "advancement"? He answered that there is tremendous apathy in the black community which appalls him, and that getting the right clothes is more important than getting the right education. He complained that anyone who tries to get an education and achieve upward social mobility is vilified for "not staying black".

Now there are signs of hope – Barack Obama is running for President. Colin Powell remains highly respected by all sides of politics and society. Black actors are starting to be treated equitably in Hollywood.

But my feeling is that - for the most part - things have gone backwards in the last 20 years, not forward. 25% of the African-American population still lives in poverty (2004 figures) and the life expectancy is drastically shorter than for the white community. Blacks represent 13% of the general population but 49% of the prison population. And the NAACP is playing the "race" card in the Michael Vick case, which I don't think is the best use of their resources.

Now I'm far from certain I'm right in my observations. Hey - I'm just a tourist cruising around. But I'm sensing that the shame still lingers, and Americans are uncomfortable discussing this topic. Now nothing unusual there – try asking the English about Northern Ireland or Australians about the Aborigines. We all carry the guilt of our history.

My pic of the MLK museum in Memphis.

As a footnote, Author Michael Moorcock observed that as long as the word "nigger" remained charged, then the racial divide would not be closed. The word "gay" has lost most of its heat in recent years, and I'd love a day when "nigger" is no more meaningful than "blonde" or "ozzie". But that day is a long way away it seems.

So tell me – what the hell happened?
Am I missing something?
Has the racial divide narrowed?
Does the racial divide exist on MySpace as well?
What hope is there for the future?

Back to my travelogs soon, but I needed to get this out of my system.

By the way... while I was in California I got the opportunity to go on a bit of a side adventure, so I'm staying in the USA an extra week. This screwed up Kat's planned return home party... Sorry KAT! The new date is Sat Aug 18.

Click here to go to Kat's blog and the updated details