Almost there now. First day in maybe 18 years without a mobile phone.

You can stop calling me now mother.

How so? Dead iPhone — oo look, six weeks out of warranty and the home button doesn’t work. Anyway it’s off at the doctors and I am writing this in the hope that Steve Jobs has me on an RSS or some sort of super dooper iPhone reference world wide search thingy and a light has just gone off at Apple HQ saying give jgreen a new phone on Monday. That would be nice. I do miss it, and am prepared to say very nice things in public about Apple if they can deliver.

No phone (they didn’t have a loaner at the Optus shop, quelle surprise) also means no iPod, so today’s bike commute was conducted in the relative quiet of the breeze, air brakes and birds.

Had I had music, I might have craved this:

I have a thing about this song, and the distinctive country minor-lilt of the harmonies. That interval, that particular pairing of vocal parts, IS country music. How does something like that evolve? Is is just based on a regional singing accent? What’s the thing? I can’t get that question out of my head. Listen to the chorus and ponder for me would you?

More harmonious than the Humphries version.

Excellent Media Watch piece tonight on the Mullumbimby High story (catch it on their site I’m guessing).

How can ordinary folk continue to tolerate the behaviour of the press? How do these people, these alleged journalists, in TV of all networks and all sizes of print, have the nerve to claim the privileges of the fourth estate?

The more you see of this sort of story, the more you witness the behaviour of popular media in the field, on the hunt, slavering on the prowl … the more you realise they are agents of utter misanthropy. Why do people, ordinary people, often people in the most miserable states of despair and distress, give these parasitic worms the time of day?

And then why do they watch the ordure they then produce and commit to air and paper? Honestly, it shames us all. It parades itself as news and current affairs, but in truth it is the worst sort of malicious, cynical evil. It deserves total contempt. Sorry rant. But after 30 years in this caper … well sometimes I wonder where we’ve come.

Watch the Media Watch segment. Then turn off your TV. Memo people in Situations: the media are not your friends. Don’t talk to them. Just. Walk. Away.

It’s probably safe to assume that tomorrow’s talkback — especially the Neil Mitchell grumpfest — will swing to attack Victorian Water Minister Tim Holding, for you know, walking alone, in the cold, after dark.

The indignant callers will presumably turn on the Bullimore-like expense of the search and recovery. blah blah.

And there’s some point in all that. A single acronym for Tim: EPIRB.

Anyway, all that said and noted I’d just like to say how wonderful it is to have a senior politician in this state who takes some joy in a solitary embrace of wild nature. That to me speaks volumes for the man’s soul.

Tim Blair (he’s a Sydney blogger) takes a swing:

Parliament was subdued yesterday following news that nine Australians had been killed in a plane crash on their way to Kokoda. Crikey editor Jonathan Green didn’t share that mood, however:

were all govt MP’s coached on striking a suitably grief struck tone? a fine piece of ensemble work. wonderfully sustained.

As Parliamentary discussion moved on to other subjects, Green – displaying his usual sensitivity – saw another chance for mockery:

an interjection! have these people no heart! don’t they realise Aussie Pilgrims have died this day?

“Aussie Pilgrims”! Ha. Let’s laugh along with Jonathan. And then:

this remains a government in mourning. it’s as if prince albert had just dropped off the twig.

He’s all class, this bloke:

so if we get nine killed in a multi car pile up on the princes highway this evening will all government slump into collective despair?

Well, it’s only nine dead Australians. No big deal. Stand by for another apology.

No apology. I stand by the point. The over reaction to these sad deaths has been absurd and distasteful. It is not sincerely meant. It is opportunist, postured and cynical. The grief of parents and friends in these instances is a genuine visceral impulse. The contrived acts of professional faux empathy in our parliament and the wallowing mawkish meal made of it in the newspapers is offensive. A calculated gush of nothing sincere. They were decent folk who died doing something fun. And I’m sorry that they’re gone. I feel  for their poor folks. But I’m honest enough to admit — and recall my own moments of genuine misery too clearly — that I feel nothing even remotely like their pain. I know I don’t. Neither does Rudd. Or the editor of the Daily Telegraph. What a load of crap.