Our Smoking Ruin

March 5, 2017 | Posted by Peter Jakobsen | ART, AUSTRALIANIA, LIFE, Ulalume | 2 Comments |

"Wasteland with Elephant" (image by Topangahomeboy)

South Australia – a Looper’s Paradise

If you’re unlucky enough to live in (or almost as bad, be passing through) Australia’s benighted State, the coalmine canary of the Commonwealth, cheer yourself up by logging-on that superb website, SA Great [http://www.sagreat.com.au/].  You’ll be treated to a hard-to-navigate map and several invitations to submit an event, a business, a restaurant, a job, or a coupon (but not a complaint, not an idea).

(photo by Alfresco24) (How many in the crowd are watching the Race? We counted 8)

(photo by Alfresco24) (How many in the crowd are watching the Race? We counted 8)

Adelaide closes down for a couple of months every year to host a stock car race (that ‘climaxes’ today), a pallid homage to the Formula-1 Grand Prix that we used to hold (annoyingly) till Victoria snatched it from us (annoyingly).  It’s a paltry substitute for car manufacturing that lingered, moribund, for years in SA till they finally removed the prop of taxpayer-bilked subsidies and had it put down for good. The Race itself is mind-numbingly dull – the only interest coming from the odd Ford or Holden driving into a wall at a stately and manageable pace. (Where do these guys get their licences?)

The Varnished Culture has an idea for the Event: force the drivers to compete with a mandatory minimum alcohol level of 0.2 grammes or more in 210 litres of breath or 100 millilitres of blood.  Now that’s a race we’d pay to see!!

Meanwhile, here’s another superb example of South Australia’s commitment to high-quality, provocative, imaginative, Public Art – it’s at the gateway to Littlehampton in the Adelaide Hills.  We were passing recently and simply had to capture it for our readers’ edification:

DodgyStautue

The artist (Sakari Peltola) from Finland is said to have specialized in different sculptural techniques at the Art School of Kankaanpää, and works mainly in stone, especially granite.  Words fail…the mind boggles. The boggle boggles! It almost appears that this stone amoeba is giving us the finger. Good to see the Czar for the Yartz is not asleep on the job.  Or is he….?

MIRON

2 Comments

  1. Reply

    Smug of Glebe

    March 29, 2017

    What's the scariest sailing song ever? "Bound for South Australia." LOL

  2. Reply

    PudgeFoot

    March 29, 2017

    I heard Jay Weather-all-to-blame barracks for Port Power...'cos Power's what he ain't got!


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