We’ve Got You Covid – Make Your Own Face Mask

‘In the Czech Republic, masks have been compulsory since March 18th. The country has only 2 deaths (as at March 24) and the growth of new cases has flattened, whereas in other parts of Europe the pandemic is largely out of control. How has this happened? One of the key reasons is a massive country-wide community initiative to create and wear home-made masks. In just 10 days the country went from no mask usage to nearly 100% usage, with nearly all the masks made at home with easily accessible materials, like old t-shirts. See https://tiny.cc/masks4all

Longer version:

You can also sew your own masks from cotton bedsheets.

Here’s another sewn version.

Related Links

World COVID-19 updates
Queensland Health current status for COVID-19

Voting Under the Virus

The VillageI leave home, a significant event these days, to vote in the Council elections at the local village hall. The road to the village is very quiet for a Saturday. No problem gaining a park right outside. There’s no usual cheery how to vote card hustlers, just signage and pamphlets to pick up if one hasn’t bothered to ascertain already who are the candidates who will keep our shire maintaining its world class sustainable biosphere status and stop any greedy neolib ‘development’ – I have, of course.

Clutching my own pen, I stride inside the ancient weatherboard dance hall. I’m the only voter inside – there’s four workers at desks to tick one off the electoral roll or scan the posted card, then to hand out the voting sheets, one for the mayoral candidate and the other for councillors. The ceiling fans are going full bore.

In the recyclable cardboard voting cubicle, I make my marks, then glance onto the white backing sheet, where someone has neatly written “Stay Home But Vote?”

Chuckling, I delicately insert my slips into the relevant boxes and march out, straight home to the hand cleanser and accompanying double chorus of “There’s No Toilet Paper Today”, though the husband brought home a 6 pack from the big stupormarket in town this morning.

I wonder how many infections occur pursuant to the exercise of our ‘democratic duty’ today, especially considering the now several contamination events down the coast in our shire around the Ides of March. Et tu, Anna P?

With any luck, our new Council will go easy on ratepayers until the plague has past, when we’ll be safe on the beaches again, visiting our friends and, sob, playing table tennis as usual in the local school hall.

Apoemalypse

Flame Tree

Lostralia

The Not Good Network has crashed again!
What will we do without Netflix and Nintendo?
Stare out the window, gaze at the clouds
Till the kids beg us to read books to them out loud.
We cook up the mince and tear out our hair
And Grandma hides out in her flat downstairs,
What’s the pollies doing except for themselves
While our lives are becoming a living hell,
You’re surplus workers and we don’t need you,
Go get infected in a Centrelink queue,
It’s a brave new world for us all to explore,
And frankly, my dear, that’s no metaphor.

Jinjirrie, March 2020

Panic Payback

And there’s nooooo toilet paper again!
Just expensive tissues and paper towels,
The dunnyrollheads are driving us round the bend
And there’s a mighty bellowing in our bowels
That won’t be purged with a wash in the shower,
We’ll have to get up at an ungodly hour
And interview the dunnyroll queue
To ask politely ‘from where are you?’
And if they’re not from round here,
Lock ’em in the loo, till they learn not to fear!

Jinjirrie, March 2020

Under The Coronavolcano

Already I miss the parties, all our friends,
We’re a party for two without foreseeable end,
I ache for ping pong nights with our local group,
Now it’s stay at home or be carried off by hazmat suits.

We’ve been lucky, us two, we always rub by,
Yet with Scummo’s ineptitude we gaze at the sky,
Wondering when humans will be safe outside our place
And we can hug and kiss them again on their face.

Jinjirrie, March 2020

#Scummo Years

For these are now the Scummo years
You can’t eat dirt, you can’t drink fears
Stand up against the ruling class boots
It’s us or them, pull out their roots
Tears only overflow their cup
Never give in, never give up.

Jinjirrie, May 2019

From the bush on the Sunshine Coast, where even the local stupormarket is out of toilet paper again today.

Useful Resources:

WHO COVID19 info
Info on how long the virus survives on different surfaces, the virus half life, how to clean and more.

Invasion Day 2019

Crinum

Whitey Lament

I am not a bloody racist
Never comment to their faces
I have some very good black friends
You’re up a shit creek deadend
Can’t you see my smile
is politely nice and bright
I’m the genuine true blue article
from well-meaning #NotAllWhites
Intersectionally proud
of all my whitey cultures
What’s this crap you’re spinning
about capitalist social structures?
Who needs a republic
the mother ship gives us so much
All the lovely white things
sugar, flour, cotton and such
and why shift our Straya day
why do you want to #ChangetheNation?
We’re the lucky country, aren’t we?
be happy in your station.

January 2019

Updates

How could these barbarians do this to the memory of such a brave and noble British explorer!! Australia would be an empty wasteland without British colonialism, that great spreader of civilisation across the globe!! Mining and farming profits should not be taxed and used to extend even more civilised white British influence everywhere!!!

Racism toward courageous white exploiters of an empty land is intolerable!!!!

New Years in Australia

Umbrellas at the Lake

It’s come down to this
Tim Minchin sings Neil Finn
till the cows come home
You better be home soon
then video killed the radio star
We wave sparklers in the dark
in the singing forest and consider
No new Holdens off the line in 2019
in my mind and in my car
Gotta wonder about the Bathurst
this year without the local team
We’ll be ridin’ on the horses, yeah
And the NSW Lib gov charges
Sydneyites and hangers on
Fifty five bucks a seat
for the coathanger show
It’s come down to this –
a fireworks levy.
Relax, you can see it all on TV
till the scoundrel silvertails
kill off the ABC
Doing the eagle rock
yet we still call Lostralia home.

January 2019