Gosh, what a weekend. I rode a liger!*



News

Does Australia have  a Government yet? No, but you know when www.doesausatraliahaveagovernmentyet.com changes its page from NO to ALMOST that something is definitely afoot. Of course, the weekend being the weekend not a huge amount of substance actually happened, it really just being a chance for everybody to rest, recuperate and reconsider, and for the political commentary set to hurl increasingly wild allegations and suppositions around the place. Somewhat counter-intuitively the smart money still sits with Labor, but if this election has shown us anything it's the increasing uselessness of ideas such as Left and Right. If Katter can be vehemently against the mining tax and climate change and vehemently for Aboriginal rights and the NBN - as well as being a big believer in the Government of one Kevin Rudd - then single sentence affiliations begin to show their limitations. The three independents suggest they'll have an answer either today or tomorrow. How exciting! While all have remained cagey, Katter talked about being strong-armed by his good friend Kevin Rudd, while Oakeshott provided a list of requested Parliamentary reforms he was looking for that Labor agreed to so fast it seems unlikely they actually had a chance to read it. The Coalition is being a little cagier on the matter, but it's all providing a bit more fuel for the "Oakeshott to Labor" brigade.

And the rest of us? Well, in a poll taken over the weekend 56% of us said we just wanted another election, which I feel uncovers an oddly masochistic strain in the Australian psyche.

Victoria is underwater!... Well, parts of it are. Personally, here in Melbourne, I was bitterly disappointed with the generally lacklustre rain explosion over the weekend. After numerous BOM warnings, I had braced myself for somewhat more Biblical/Pakistani fare. But that apparently was a pleasure held out for the state's northern areas, which are facing up to the worst floods in over a decade, having roads and houses - though fortunately not people - destroyed with equal fervour. With $10 million in damage already accrued, and coming on the back of the immensely expensive aftermath of the Black Saturday fires, it's really quite remarkable that insurers will still go anywhere near regional Victoria. Oh yeah, and South Australia and New South Wales had an enjoyable weekend too.

Moving from water to earth and next up in this Captain Planet-esque cavalcade of continental catastrophe (sometimes when I alliterate, I hate myself), New Zealand's second city, Christchurch, is today quite literally picking up the pieces after a 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck late Saturday evening. The damage is extensive, if not a little less than properly Apocalyptic, and despite the ground being moved a full 3.5 metres they managed to escape without a single fatality. When the Antipodes does natural disaster, it does it in such tolerable style.

UK politics continues to impress, with further allegations that the ever so classy News of the World tabloid has been tapping and hacking the phones of many, many high-end politicians and personalities. Whichis a pretty much par for the course in the high class world of British tabloids, but what makes this a little more interesting is that the then editor of the paper, Andy Coulson, now just happens to be the director of communications for David Cameron's Tory Government. It strikes me that his skills might be better utilised in MI5.

Paul Hogan arrives back in LA. I have an oddly long hair growing on my right upper arm. These two events are of commensurate interest.

Features

A New Yorker profile on the Koch brothers, who have ploughed somewhere in the vicinity of one hundred million dollars into destroying the Obama Presidency. America: what a system!

Christopher Hitchens on the Glenn Beck rally AKA the "Waterworld of white self-pity"

Oddities/Curiosities

Whale meat being served at one in six Japanese schools. Which does seem shocking, although given the miscellaneous nature of the meat pies that used to pass as lunchtime fare at my school, I'm sure I've probably eaten platypus somewhere along the line.

Although with the witch-hunt against the News of the World referred to above, I think it's important to keep in mind the often positive role they play in civil society, exemplified today by revelations that Wayne Rooney shacked up with a hooker while his wife, Colleen, was pregnant. The word romp is used a few times, often in capitals. Keep up the good work, News, we are better for your presence on this planet.

Video

A good use of your time - John Cleese talking about creativity



A better use of your time - watching a corgi bellyflop into a river



* May not have happened