Nigel Satterley: Now we on teh internets, we needs a ad.

Satterley executive: But we gots no money.

Nigel Satterley: Me know.

Satterley executive: Internets scare me.

Nigel Satterley: Me too.

Think there’s nothing to do in Perth?

FOR all those that call Perth ‘Dullsville’, maybe you’re just not aware of all the events happening around the city.

Maybe you’re just not aware of all of the events, but PerthNow is aware of all the events! What follows is an extensive list of all them. There’s so much happening, folks! I couldn’t assemble the whole list here, because it goes on 4 EVA, but here’s a taste:

Tuesday, In One Act

Until Sat 5 Sep, The Blue Room Studio, 8.30pm

This intimate, absurdist play takes you to a world where astronauts carry briefcases and cowboys feed pigeons. A delicate flux between poetry, satire and unpretentious honesty.

A world where cowboys feed pigeons? Get right outta town!

Spring Friday Night Shopping at Harbour Town

Fri 4, 11, 18 & 25 Sep, Harbour Town, 6pm to 9pm

Shop for your spring essentials at over 100 brand direct outlets while soaking up the sounds of jazz trios, contemporary crooners and the cool sounds of the calypso cats.

Factory direct Elwood t-shirts and jazz. A match made in Huhvean.

Catholic Arts Carnevale

Wed 9 Sep, Forrest Place, 9am

See a showcase of talent from Catholic primary and secondary schools. Activities include interactive displays, music and dance performances.

BYO condoms.

When I Grow Up

Sun 6 Sep, Fashion Central, Forrest Place, 10am

Celebrate Father’s Day with your dad at Perth Fashion Central as gorgeous kids and their fashionable dads model the latest collections from Forrest Chase retailers.

Replace the word “gorgeous” with “spoilt” and the word “fashionable” with “emasculated”. Oh, and the word “model” with “whore”.

After this “event”, shit somehow gets even duller:

City of Perth Library

Hay Street, Weekdays 9am to 6pm and Sat 9am to 12pm

A variety of activities including board games for seniors, free internet course for beginners, preschool story time and more.

More like “bored games”, am I right?

Kangaroos

Heirisson Island

Home to a colony of Western Grey kangaroos, found in the southern enclosure of the island.

“Kangaroos” is an event now.

Scitech and Horizon the Planetarium

City West Complex, West Perth

Experience the fun of science with interactive exhibitions and live theatre demonstrations.

Remember nothing, except that the plane-arium is the best thing that you’ve ever known.

State Library of Western Australia

Perth Cultural Centre

Join in at a variety of events, research online, search for your favourite book or hold your meeting or function at the library.

Dullsville? Our TWO libraries suggest otherwise!

Wheel of Perth

Perth Foreshore, Riverside Drive

Experience stunning and panoramic views of the city, Swan River and Kings Park during the 12 minute ride.

Well, that’s 12 minutes of my weekend scheduled.

The Bell Tower, Home of the Swan Bells

Barrack Square, 10am to 3.45pm

Listen to the Bells of St Martin’s chime, enjoy the view from the viewing platform and wander through the exhibitions.

There are three things to do at the Bell Tower, Home of the Swan Bells!

Found myself lost in Perth’s infamous Chamber of Beasts a few weeks back looking for the Nick Cave exhibit. Frozen in time is right – about 1982, by my estimation.

Teen on track to be a doctor at 20

What do people think when they hear child prodigy doctor? Author Bethany Hiatt and her editors hit you over the head with it in the very first paragraph:

Teenage medical student Welwyn Aw-Yong is WA’s own Doogie Howser MD.

Except without the resurgence as a creepily believable pussy-hound in How I Met Your Mother.

Is it ok to make fun of this child? I dunno. Good on him for following his “dream”, I guess?

I’d like to be a rural GP or something like that – maybe

But he’s on page 3 of the newspaper. Why on Earth would you subject yourself to that embarrassing shit! Did The West hold a gun to his head and force him to make that awkward pose? Did his pushy parents demand that he put his smarts on the public record?

Actually, both of those seem like possibilities. The kid is 15, you can’t blame him. I’m not even sure how consent works when it comes to minors and publicity-whoring.

But sorry, Welwyn, this I can’t abide:

Asked why he thought he was so advanced for his age, Welwyn attributed it to “God’s grace” and his ability to set aside other distractions.

Riiiight. Remind me not to see this guy when he’s a doctor at age 20. Wouldn’t want my health complaints attributed to “Demons”.

In other news, DAD PUNS ARE OFF THE CHART TODAY, MAKE IT STOP, GOD WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE MAKE IT STOP:

Nine news went pretty hard (you’ll have to watch the vid at PerthNow, soz):

The wedgetail took off – LITERALLY…

Problem was, Auzzie had flown the coop…

Sightseeing flight…

Attracting a crowd of angry crows and magpies…

This eagle finally landed…

Despite an injury scare Auzzie will line up for the eagles tomorrow night…

AdelaideNow got a gloat in:

A MURDER of crows cornered fugitive West Coast mascot Auzzie the eagle when she winged it from a club training session in Perth yesterday.

But WA Today soared above the rest:

Eagle Mascot Back After Flight of fancy

Auzzie the Eagle… Flying high around the streets of Perth today.

…flying the coop…

Perhaps he was getting tips from the bigger birds about what it takes to play finals footy after a few years in the AFL wilderness?

Maybe there was some crowing going on about West Coast’s loss last week to Adelaide?

Whatever the conversation, it was creating much crowing among the Perth media, who dropped everything to race to City West to witness the ‘event’…

“Crowing” in this context is a standard Dad pun. But “the conversation was creating crowing” throws Dad alliteration into the mix. Dadtastic.

Later in the piece, WA Today devolves into stream of consciousness verse poetry from a coked-up Monika Kos mode:

The idea to bring Auzzie’s familiar gameday perch – and oversized red Sherrin – bore fruit, and woman and bird were reunited on Zempilas Street – perhaps a good omen for namesake and Perth sports guru Basil, who takes a flight of his own on Saturday for his wedding in Greece.

O…

K…

Three warnings in five minutes see boner sacked

Chris Thomson

August 26, 2009 – 6:39AM

A gun Lenard’s Chicken boner fired after receiving three warnings in five minutes has been awarded more than $11,000 in unfair dismissal compensation.

Huh?

Chris Thomson isn’t always this obtuse, but he does have his own blog at WA Today called “You’ve Got Male” which mostly seems to be anecdotes about car parking.

Enhance:

First Patti Chong quits her blog at WA Today, and now her favourite furniture store and questionable source of F-grade publicity, Merrys Furniture, are packing up shop for a new location! This sequence of heartbreaking news has shocked the psyche of right-thinking people.

Patti’s paid endorsement of Merrys is so funny. Strange funny, not ha-ha funny. I mean, why her? Unlike John Hughes, she doesn’t own the store.  Unlike Luigi Savadamoni, she isn’t an actual celebrity. I presume she doesn’t have any special knowledge about the benefits of couches made from real dead cows. But that ain’t stopping her!

Yet… something about this ad is so =(.

This, from Nova’s breakfast segment fuckstains “Nathan and Nat”, doesn’t help:

They are cackling at her accent, right? When Nat pronounces “Patti Chong” like a sneering teenager, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that these are a couple of schoolyard bullies with their sights on the Malay kid:

It’s scary to think about the number of Dullsvillains who straightline this sewage on the way to work every morning.

After all of that, maybe it’s time to lay off Patti for a while. Right after I get this out of the way:

Enhance:

Enhance:

He starts with an interesting claim that 96% of stores already can open but don’t.

Is this true? If so, I have never heard Dullsville so perfectly summed up in one statistic! Anyway, on this base, he believes that extend the trading hours will only mean Coles and Woolworths to open longer hours.

And how about the “why not?”

The argument that extended shopping will be forcing small, local-owned business to close is an argument I thought to have a strong effect on the public. I think many people could sympathize this – despite the public’s clearly demonstrate preference for chain stores (maybe something about the importance of signs?)

Anyway, I was fully expected that at least a real-world reason will be the base of the IGA argument.

But no, Mr Cummings does not make this claim – turns out he’s just “philosophically” against late shopping! And yet, as you can see in the interview below, he has no idea about the philosophy behind the regulation that he philosophically agree with. From now on, there is a word, for the philosophy Mr Cummings could not think of:

Behold! Philosophy of Dullsvillianism…

—

Zhu Hongbing: Could you give your viewpoint on the extend trading hours proposal?

John Cummings: Not needed by consumers because in a referendum 60% of people said no to it, and we don’t think it’s wanted by any retailers but Coles or Woolworths because all other retailers have said they won’t open even if they [the rules] change.

If like you say, the “consumers don’t need, and retailer don’t want”, so why do the IGA stores stay open? Why not close early?

Not many IGAs are actually open till 9 o’clock. There are some IGAs that close at 6, some close at 7, some close at 7.30, some close at 8.

Another question is, in Perth CBD, and in Fremantle, where all stores can stay open till 7, why do all the retailers have their doors closed by 6?

What is the advantage for WA people of having the stores close earlier?

Well, what’s the advantage of the stores in the city closing at 5 or 6 o’clock? What’s the disadvantage? Those same stores shut their doors in Sydney and Melbourne at 6 o’clock as well. Why would Perth be different?

So what is the advantage of having shorter shopping hours?

As i just explained, 96% of all retail shops in WA under current legislation could trade 24 hours a day, 7 days a week if they wanted to. But they choose not to.

Then what is the need for the regulation?

Well why is there need for change?

If they don’t want to stay open, then why do we have the regulation to stop them?

Why do we need to change it if they don’t want to anyway?

I guess the other side would argue that to allow the consumers to shop later in the evening..

Now hang on, there are 2 retailers who want to be open, only Coles and Woolworths.

So you believe if the proposal was passed through the parliament….

There would be only 2 retailers that would be open – Coles and Woolworths.

So you are putting up a proposal to change regulation for the benefit of two retailers. Forget about what the rest of the retailers want. We’re just doing this for the benefit of Coles and Woolworths.

Why do we have the regulation in the first place? To prevent shops from opening too late, right?

Why do we have any regulation? The union movement wished to see regulation in certain areas so that their workforce have some form of a lifestyle. We regulate for licensed premises because of problems of antisocial behaviour and alcoholism. Shopping hours isn’t the only area of Australia that has regulations applied to it.

I just want to get to the bottom of why retail trading hours are regulate in the first place…

Retail trading hours are regulated in every state of Australia.

You can’t say the reason?

The original regulation of trading hours in Australia started before I was born, I don’t know.

I’m not a parliamentarian or a legislator so I honestly can’t answer that.

The regulation is not getting in the way of anybody. The vast majority of retailers in WA don’t see any need for a change to that, except for two, which is Coles and Woolworths. I would contend that the only reason they want to be open longer hours, and there’s been studies done in Australia and overseas that would show that any change to those hours would just see a transfer of business from small locally-owned businesses to those two large retailers.

You mention small locally-owned businesses. What’s the average number of IGAs per owner?

It’s not just IGA stores, we have country Co-ops through to IGA stores in metropolitan Perth who do not open any different hours or longer hours than Coles or Woolworths and who are not agitating for longer hours. They are happy to not open on a Sunday and close at 6 o’clock at night.

Can you say how many close at 6 o’clock on a weeknight or not open on a Sunday?

I haven’t got those statistics. There are many, there are many, several, many IGAs, several, whatever you want to put, that trade the same hours as Coles and Woolworths.

You don’t know if it’s a majority, or just…

It wouldn’t be the majority because the majority of our members tend to be single-operator, small store with small turnover.

What is the average number of IGAs per owner? One store?

One store.

So you [with 3 stores] would be the exception?

There are 3 families that are part owners in 3 stores. Now you can view that one of two ways. Does that mean that I own a chain? There’s 3 of us that are part owners of 3 stores.

Two of my partners are actually related by marriage. Brother-in-law and sister-in-law.

Will your IGA store go out of business if the proposal were enact?

No.

But there is a fear that there may be some IGA that will?

Personally, no, I don’t think so. I don’t see it as an issue that would immediately impact financially on my business in any way shape or form.

I just think it is philosophically wrong. That is my personal view.

The extended shopping hours “debate” is in one way closely analogous to the stateside argument about public health care. In America, there’s a fierce debate about whether the government should provide basic health care to its citizens.  In Perth, there’s a fierce debate about whether shops should be allowed to open past 5pm.  In the rest of the civilised world, they’re laughing at both of us.

There’s a few prominent villains who’ve emerged from this debacle.  First and foremost, of course, the spineless WA Labor party, who went to the last election touting extended shopping hours. No more. Nuts to all of the people who voted for them on that basis, they’ve conducted straw polls at supermarkets and discovered that there’s a real groundswell of self-interested, reactionary fucks in the Perth suburbs (per Eric Ripper):

We went out there, we spoke to people and we found small businesses almost universally opposed to it (extended trading hours), and we found only lukewarm support, at best 50 per cent among customers.

Of course, if they’d turned up to a few offices or factories, the results might have been different. But I don’t want to say too much about public support or opposition for the concept. As much as Labor and the interest groups are pushing the 2005 referendum defeat as a good basis for their opposition, anyone who knows anything about referendums knows they’re worth shit.  The Federal government has held 44 referendums and 36 have ended in “No” votes. That’s because people vote no – people who don’t give a shit, people who don’t trust politicians, undecided people, people pissed off they’ve been forced to vote, old people. Naysayers.

John Howard knew instinctively that referendums are a highly effective way to kill progress, and happily watched the chances for an Australian Republic burn.

The other big villain is Independent Grocers Association president John Cummings:

I don’t think Coles, Woolworths or the Chamber of Commerce and Industry will ever pack up and go home and interestingly with all of the surveys that they have done that supposedly shows that people want change, it’s strange that they’ve never actually called for a referendum.

The reason they’ve never called for another referendum is because they know it would be lost.

Yes, because the game is rigged, and you know it, Cummings.  Worse:

It’s good that a party has gone out and found out what its constituents wants…

The change to 9pm was a proposal the consumers didn’t need and that retailers didn’t want.

The consumers don’t need it and the retailers don’t want it, right?  On that logic, why does the government even bother to regulate and police shopping hours? If we deregulate we’ll save precious taxpayer dollars and, on Cummings’ logic, the shops still won’t open. Everyone wins.

Especially Cummings, who owns three IGAs. That’s right. The same bloke who is having public conniptions about the possibility of extended shopping hours and Coles and Woolworths’ duopoly status earns a mint by exploiting one of the best monopolist scams in WA by opening his IGAs into the night, long after his competitors are forced to close. Credibility FAIL. But really, he’s the perfect public face of the doggedly self-interested Independent Grocers Association, who actually profit from the pain of consumers. Say what you will about Monarchists, but at least they don’t have a profit motive behind their backward ideology.

John Cummings, you, sir, are a DullsVillain:

Settling down in front of the TV for the Eagles last night, I tuned in to the best footy show on the box: Before the Game. Good job on that show! Unlike other footy shows, it isn’t self serious and doesn’t rely on fabricated controversy or inflated egos. It’s funny, and full of exuberance for AFL footy. Last night’s 30 minute episode was no exception. Kevin Rudd receiving “Tool of the Week” for handballing like a girl and calling himself “The Ruddster” was a highlight.

Just one thing. At the end of the show, as the credits rolled, host Andrew Maher yelled out the result of the Eagles v North Melbourne match, which had just finished at Subiaco. Great! Everyone loves live results. Everyone, that is, except for a few hundred thousand Perth viewers, who were waiting for the delayed telecast of the match and had scrupulously avoided finding out the score in order to keep it interesting.

I was one of those Perth viewers. Like so many other Eagles’ supporters, I naively enjoyed last night’s Before the Game with my glass of Chardonnay and looked forward to another promising performance from the Eagles’ youngsters. That is, before Maher exploded my bubble by shouting “West Coast by 38 points over North Melbourne” seconds before the telecast started. I can only liken the psychological impact of Maher’s betrayal to the traumatic realisation, at the tender age of 5, that there was no Father Christmas. I felt robbed, deceived, and powerless.

So thanks for killing the potential for any excitement in what turned out to be a thoroughly boring match.

Look, I don’t have a PhD in live television. But I do remember an old trick Channel 7 used to great effect.  It went something like: “If you don’t want to know the scores, look away now”. It was crude – but undeniably effective. Maybe you guys have a more sophisticated way to prevent such monumental cock ups. I don’t know. All I know is that Father Christmas isn’t visiting on December 25, or ever again.

Accordingly, I write to implore that Maher and the autocue operator responsible for this outrage be dubbed the round 21 Tools of the Week.

I look forward to your reply.

Yrs.

Dick