The Opinionated Diner

the sky is clear and blue / lets go swimming

Ok, back to business.

I had an email today from some person suggesting, strongly that I delete my Australia Zoo post of some months back in respect for the recently departed Mr Irwin. With the greatest respect for both the correspondent, and Mr Irwin…no, and why?

I’m not sure where respect ends and my right to express myself as a blogger starts, but I don’t think either Mrs Irwin or the kids will read this anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. Hole….dig….

I can’t help feeling that Australia has found its own Princess Diana, if one is to believe the television. The performance by the ever odious John Howard, a man I wouldn’t trust with my loose change, let alone a country, made me nauseous. The bugger was close to tears, politically motivated of course. Some of my Australian friends (actually the same people whom we visited the Zoo with, and they, Blake & Sandra, also provided the image and are actually New Zealanders, so deportation must follow methinks, or a spell in Queensland’s friendly cells) mentioned that the Australians were going to discover that the Stingray was Indonesian sooner or later (Australians regard Indonesia as the root of all evil), and that led me to the thought that it was perhaps a member of Al Qaeda and then Howard could, if Bush tells him to, link the whole thing to Islamofascism and TWOT (the war on terror).

I sat in the gym today and saw a MySpace, whoops I mean FoxNews, half hour on the guy, or at least that’s all I saw, it may have been going on for hours, who knows. It was an endless litany of tributes to our Steve, tear stained and full of unquestioning idolatry…..clearly the first step in the process to rename the Great Barrier Reef or maybe Queensland after the bloke. One git, from the Queensland RSPCA suggested that he was perhaps the planet’s finest husband and father. Of course he was mate, no question…was that before or after he dangled his sprog near a salty’s mouth?

It's led the CNN website for two days...meanwhile the bodies of 33 Iraqi innocents have been found and largely ignored. And they are talking state funerals in Australia..

Get a grip please, this gruesome sanctification is making me a little unwell, and it’s just, I fear, begun…

Thing is, if you spend that much time poking around with deadly creatures then sooner or later one is going to get you. The irony of course being that it was the humble Stingray, not one of the world’s great killers that topped him. Which brings me to the second part of the Diana parallel…the conspiracy theory which must now raise its head, taking into account the humble nature of said stingray. Clearly someone put the fish up to it; the question is who……

I wonder if the rubber stingrays have disappeared from the endless souvenir super-marts at Australia Zoo yet…