Wednesday, January 25, 2012 at 10:13PM 
Like girls?
Like bikes?
Like listening to talking?
Well you'll love Pushy Women.
Noni Hazelhurst, Ethel Chop, Clementine Ford, Emilie Zoe Baker, Nelly Thomas, Stella Young, Anna Krien, Jess Maguire and me all talking bikes at for Melbourne Bike Fest. Will sell out. Please come. BUY TICKETS HERE!
Thursday, October 27, 2011 at 9:55AM 27 October 2011
Good Morning!
I’m astonished but not at all surprised by the profound selfishness and complete lack of thought displayed when you parked your car this morning.
I say not surprised because anyone purchasing a dangerous antisocial monster truck like you have (that, like 80% of 4WDs, never leave the metropolitan area and are involved in three times as many collisions, speeding fines, drink driving convictions and failure to wear seatbelt infringements. And as far as backing over toddlers is concerned 4WDs have the game stitched up) would not be known for their thoughtfulness or intelligence.
Nothing that says provincial loser more than a 4WD Mazda. 
I’m sure you think your car makes you look wealthy. It doesn’t. It makes you look poor. It makes you look like an insecure, aspirational, loser. It makes you look like a poor person trying to look rich. Like a little girl walking round in mummy’s high heels with lipstick smeared on her face thinking she looks like a grown up. Successful and/or wealthy people would not be seen dead in a car like that. Tacky. Gauche. Vile. How do I know? I am one.
This spot regularly fits two medium sized cars. Medium sized cars owned by residents of this street and people who visit them. Take a look around. Most people in our street do NOT have driveways. And most have only one car. Many have small children, are elderly and some have a disability.
You've managed to park your car so as to take up TWO car parking spots when you could easily fit into one. And yet only three doors up there are over 20 parallel parking spaces. Empty spaces. There should be public recognition for that level of narcissism.
And this is not the first time. You are a serial offender. Over the years every time I see your suburbanite shrine on wheels I'm reminded of the TISM lyrics, 'You're only ever five yards away from a fuckwit.'
I will root Tony Abbott backwards if you own a tent, have ever towed a horse float or own a boat. You work in the area and apparently park near houses for 'safety and shade.'
I am certain you have a driveway and perhaps a double garage where you live for the cars you need to drive to Chadstone, Fountain Gate, Knox, Highpoint or whatever cathedral of greed you visit to buy stuff you don’t need with money you don’t have to impress people you don’t like. And you need that double garage to store all your stuff in. Mouth breathing, chinless food tubes existing only to consume. You are nothing but wetware.
Feel free to continue to display your profound lack of thought and complete disregard for others when you park here in our street. It reminds us why we ride bikes, drive the cars we do, and have chosen to live here. A place you would never want to live. And not because the houses don't have en suites for Diesal, Taylah and Beyonce but because 'it's full of Muslims, gays and boatpeople.' Give me boat people over car people like you any day.
Let me guess? Caroline Springs?
I couldn't help noticing the crucifix hanging from your rear vision mirror. Sucked in. God is not real. You are not his special friend. There is no heaven.
Enjoy the next seasons of MasterChef, The Biggest Loser and Packed To The Rafters. And don't forget to pick up the Herald Sun on the way home. You better hurry! You don't want to miss A Current Affair.
And by the way your kids aren’t gifted.
Sincerely
The Residents
Clare Bowdicth, Marieke Hardy and Catherine Deveny. LIVE! Book now
4WD, Suburbanites, cunts, notes on windscreen Monday, October 17, 2011 at 2:39PM Victorian MPs should spend some time in a pokies joint and see the machines' corrosive influence, writes Catherine Deveny.
HERE'S a question for you. How would it harm our society if we eradicated gambling, and, in particular, poker machines? It wouldn't. What would we lose? Nothing. If we banned pokies, people would find other things to do and the Government would find other things to tax.
And if the pokie addicts missed the feeling of losing money, they could just flush half their pension money or their pay cheque down the toilet every week. How can we live with ourselves and support a Government that is raking in $1 billion in toxic revenue from pokies? I can't understand how we've let this happen. It's dirty money. And it stinks.
An article in The Sunday Age, "Pokies scourge creates new criminal class" outlined yet again how poker machines are causing law-abiding citizens to turn to crime to feed gambling addiction. I was sickened for the thousandth time to be reminded of how people's lives and families are being ripped apart by these evil, mindless, addictive one-finger bandits.
I woke today to a beautiful, glittery Melbourne day. The air was sweet and the sky was blue, I popped on a nice frock, fixed my hair, dropped the kids off at school and drove in to Crown Casino.
A mate said: "I work near Crown and see all the pensioners pile out of the tram on my way to work."
"On your way to work? What time does Crown open?"
He looked at me as if I were an idiot. "It's open 24 hours a day."
As I drove into the car park, I was asked to pay for my parking up front. The cold, stark reality of this great monstrosity of greed and broken dreams is that some people, maybe many people, don't have the cash to pay for their parking when they leave. Let alone their mortgage, groceries, petrol, bills, car payments or child care.
As I write this I am sitting in front of a poker machine called Cash Express. There are others, indeed 2500 others. I look around at the faces of the people on the other machines. No one looks happy. Pokies do not bring joy. How bad are these people's lives and how fractured are their souls if sitting in front of a poker machine on a beautiful day at 10am is an escape?
What would these people be doing if they didn't have access to the pokies? Watching telly? Lying in bed? Flicking through a mag? Would any of those pastimes be more valuable? Maybe not, but at least they're cheaper. None of these people around me punching the pokies has walked in here today expecting to be a loser. Despite knowing that these machines are programmed to make losers of them, they each feel as if they're the lucky one. They are mesmerised by the pretty lights, the dark ,windowless room and the electronic music. Their basic instincts have been manipulated by thousands of dollars of interior design, flashing lights and electronic music researched and proven to separate people at their weakest from their money. Their faces don't look happy, beautiful or wealthy. Just sad.
Gambling is theft and deception. It's manipulative, corrosive and it diminishes us all. How are the social misery and catastrophic outcomes that poker machines create worth the bucks they pull in? I challenge the Victorian Government to take an excursion to a pokies joint and spend a couple of hours watching the faces, finding out about the lives behind the faces and then explain to me how any amount of money is worth that kind of cynical revenue raising. Politicians are elected for their brains, education, imagination and experience, so how is raising revenue through pokies the best we can do?
Why don't they just cut out the middleman and tax stupid people, gullible people, sad people, tragic people, addictive people and broken people? Because that is exactly what they're doing. The other day I drove past a pub and a sign next to the entrance to the gaming room read, "Everyone's a winner!" No, they're not. A friend told me about one of her students who works at a suburban pokies venue. A man won $5000 and gave her and another girl $100 each. When he left later that evening the girls had more money than he did.
Judge Roland Williams said he didn't see "any real civilised justification for (poker machines) other than a means of indirectly taxing the people who are too stupid to work out what they are doing". I'm with him. I have trouble reconciling my strong sense of civil liberty with the overwhelming feeling that all poker machines should be piled up and detonated. We humans are weak and some people need to be protected from themselves. We're pleasure-seeking machines programmed to a certain level and type of risk that gambling exploits. We think "It won't happen to me", despite the fact that sometimes it does.
Book Catherine for your next conference, panel or think tank
Monday, October 10, 2011 at 7:09PM Friday, September 30, 2011 at 3:18PM I can't stop thinking about him. I've even had his face tattooed on the insides of my eyelids so I can see him the moment I wake up. I'm so obsessed with him I chant his name aloud without realising. "Lame, gay, churchy loser. Lame, gay, churchy loser. Lame, gay, churchy loser.'' ''Sorry," I said to the man in front of me in the supermarket queue who'd snapped me an odd look. "Not you. Tony Abbott."
Tony Abbott's daughter called him a ''lame, gay, churchy loser'' - I'm quoting her. Tony Abbott's daughter for PM! And AM. 24/7! On every station. What do we want? Tony Abbott's daughter. When do we want her? Whenever she's mouthy.
I need to make it clear that despite persistent rumours, sadly, there's nothing between Tony and me. Sure, we sat side by side on Q and A. Me in the Tony Sandwich. Abbott to the left of me, Jones to the right. There was a magic moment just before we went to air when Jones said to Abbott: "Just warning you, Tony - last time Catherine was on, John Elliot was sitting in your seat and when we walked off set, he pinched her bum and she smacked him across the head. Hello. Welcome to Q and A, I'm Tony Jones. Joining us on the panel this evening … "
The frisson between Tony and me began when I called him a ''flappy-eared pope muncher''. And increased when I told him his white T-shirt under a white shirt made him look like a horny Mormon. The chemistry built when we were discussing abortion and I said: "Get your rosaries off my ovaries" and when he said: "Calm down, Catherine", I replied: "Don't tell me to calm down, you fire up."
Is it hot in here or is it just me? It certainly isn't global warming. Just ask Tony. The climate-change sceptic poster boy. In budgie smugglers. Not because it's hot - because he's hot. Don't mind me while I lie back and think of the Vatican.
I love Tony Abbott. There. I've said it. And who wouldn't? He's a man who tells it like it is. In 1970. Not only does Big Tony believe in God, the monarchy, fault-based divorce and controlling women's bodies (NOTE TO SELF: must ask him about guns, David Irving and Nostradamus), Big Tony also believes in The Tooth Fairy, Santa and Donald Trump's hair.
But surprisingly denies the existence of Malcolm Turnbull.
Politics hasn't been so invigorating since Mark Latham. Who knew the demise of the planet could be so entertaining? Or more specifically a white guy in a suit. The journalists' faces when Big Tony came out after he'd been elected leader? The crowd went mild! Why would you want to lead the Liberal party? It's like claiming ownership of a fart. Tony Abbott has done the impossible: made me feel sorry for a merchant banker.
Has he smoked dope? He gave it a red-hot go. But the inhale wasn't successful. But he did, he revealed, have a lassi in India that was the ''house specialty'' and it turned out to be hemp yoghurt. He was apparently ''away with the fairies'' for a good 12 hours. I have a vision of him cleaning out a deep freeze with his tongue. Wearing a mitre. In the nude. While listening to the soundtrack of Jesus Christ Superstar.
Abbott is an early Christmas present for comedians and people everywhere who don't believe in science.
And he's the gift that keeps on giving: amateur firefighter, ex-seminarian, lifeguard, mad monk, Lycra lout, Queen fancier, flirt and potty mouth. He's part-man, part-ventriloquist dummy.
He may be a gay, lame, churchy loser. But he's our lame, gay, churchy loser.
You know what? I'm voting Liberal in the next election if he's still leader. And when I say leader, I mean patsy. Pump up the global warming and pass me a martini. I'm enjoying the show.