Eric Abetz, Steve Fielding, Teen Spirit, Alcopops,and spinning the bottle with the Vodka girls

Wow ... the loons have left the pond for the school holidays. Miranda the Devine is on leave, and Michael Duffy, esteemed columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald, is nowhere to be seen for the second week in a row. 

And after the exhausting duties of launching Ian Plimer's book on climate change, Christopher Pearson has retreated to writing about Emily Post. Never mind about the end of the world, mind your manners sweetie (and don't call me sweetie).

Over in The Australian, Greg Sheridan gets terribly anxious about the one North Korean nuclear test to date, and warns that French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said Obama lacks backbone, and therefore there'll be more nuclear tests in the future. Let's hope Obama develops some Gallic cheek along with the charm, and finds it in his heart to celebrate the 210 nuclear tests the French conducted between 1960 and 1996 while claiming the title of the most advanced and sensitive and charming civilization the world had ever seen. North Korea's still got a way to go to match the French for pig headed, irrational arrogance.

Yep, it's a bit like stopping hitting yourself in the head with a hammer, to go searching for a friendly loon face, and instead to be confronted by the flabby likes of a William McInnes rabbiting on about going to a barber, or a clearly leftie ratbag scientist like Bob Beale giving sweet geologist Ian Plimer a hard time in A scarier, colder vision of the climate change future .

Beale uses Plimer's own words to predict that the end of the world is nigh, cold comfort for the lemmings arguing whether it's caused by human activity or is simply the way of the world.

(Plimer) uses the history of recent climate change to suggest Earth will "soon lurch into another glaciation, possibly only in 300 or 400 years time but certainly before 2800". The same history shows such a change can occur very rapidly, in less than a human lifetime. "Past ice ages have led to famine, disease, population reduction and warfare, but have not led to the extinction of humans. Depopulation will occur by disease pandemics. As in the past, urban communities will drift into subsistence agriculture and cities will be vacated."

Well, with that settled, done and dusted, and all of us helpless in nature's path, and seeing as how it's Anzac Day, and we've already dealt with the joys of smoking, how about we move on to the question of alcohol.

The eternally tabloid Daily Terror has discovered to its hysterical shock and alarm that teenage girls have taken to skolling vodka in the risky form of a spin the bottle game. You spin the bottle, it points to your glass, and you knock the shot down. So much more fun than kiss the boy with the pimples and the braces.

Dearie me, I wonder if that's the same game they played in the sixties, when vodka was the favorite beverage of choice amongst girls (nee young women), mixed with orange juice, and downed with a heartiness encouraged by the fresh rural air. Vodka being odourless, clear, and so it was whispered, without calories, it was a good way to get pissed as a parrot quickly and easily, without enduring beer or experimenting with wankerish wine.

The Terror seems to have spiked the story for the moment, in deference to Anzac day, but no doubt they'll bring it on again, and meantime you can access it in barebones form here.

It did remind me of the time when Senator Eric Abetz, a classic Liberal loon, sought to justify the Opposition's attitude to not taxing alcopops on the grounds that the ready-mixed sweetened beverages helped drinkers keep track of their alcohol.

"As a result young people will be able to very sure as to the amount of alcohol they drink," he was reported as saying back in March.

Sure, they'll be totally sure and certain they're as pissed as parrots, and thanks to the Opposition, in a very economical way.

Abetz also said that alcopops would help prevent young women from having their drinks spiked - they'd be able to put the top back on and hold the bottle rather than a glass, which is a great protection.

Until they get so pissed as a parrot and legless, that they sprawl on the ground and you can fuck them till the cows come home.

He rejected suggestions that cheaper alcopops meant teenaged girls could get drunk more easily.

"That's quite a silly question,'' he said.

Well yes, but not as silly as a Tasmanian Liberal politician. There must be something in the water down there to breed such an extraordinary loon, and enough voters who've cherished his loonish ways to keep him warming a senate seat since 1994.

Why it's almost as good as that arch Christian Senator Steve Fielding announcing on his web site that some things a worth fighting for, like giving our kids a safe and secure environment, and denouncing the effects of binge drinking.

Like making sure alcopops remain dirt cheap and the preferred drink for young women. After the government refused to bow to Fielding's blackmail regarding banning booze ads during sporting events on television, he took his bat and ball and stumps and went home in an almighty sulk, after voting with the Opposition to end the 360 days of the 'alcopops' tax grab.

Do Christian politicians do hypocrisy and blackmail and absurd incoherence? You betcha.

Some silly moralists claim that young women are moving from alcopops to harder spirits, and binge drinking is increasing, and that alcohol abuse is the number one cause for girls being hospitalized, ahead of suicide, assaults and falls. Meh, what would they know. Keep them extra cheap and sugary I say, and for a good time, make sure you older boys give the girlies a six pack or three. 

After all if it's good for big tobacco to market to under age kids by implicit means, why not allow big alcohol to go explicitly to the teen set for a much needed revenue boost. Sure it means a bit of an impost on the public health sector, but where's the ultimate harm. Surely it's our right to determine who can become legless in this great country, and the circumstances in which they become legless.

I guess things are getting very clear now. Thanks to Ian Plimer, we know we're in end times. If you don't believe in the rapture, then get prepared to face the fate of the raptors. Extinction, or maybe life as a subsistence cowherder.

So the conservatives are maybe right. It's time for complete moral dissolution. 

Smoke along like a chimney with Tim Blair - what have you got to lose, except your lungs and a bout of cancer, at least you keep your thin, svelte good looks - and get pissed on alcopops, cheap as chips, helped along by kindly old uncle Eric Abetz and brave Steve Fielding. 

Then have sex without a condom, courtesy of the Pope and Sarah Palin, and end up a single mother, preferably with a child brain damaged by constant drinking and smoking during pregnancy. Cooking with gas. While you're at it, have another one for Peter Costello. Gotta keep this nation growing.

Then look forward to a lifetime of abuse for being a bludger on society as you try to be a single mother and a minimum wage worker.

Oh oh oh that conservative rag, it's so elegant, so intelligent. Thank the lord we keep government out of our private lives. 

Now spin that bottle again, let's see how quickly we can get wasted this time ... I'm sure if you kill enough brain cells you can get to walk like an Egyptian, and think like a neo con ...

Blonde waitresses take their trays
They spin around and they cross the floor
They've got the moves (oh whey oh)
You drop your drink, then they bring you more

All the school kids so sick of books
They like the punk and the metal band
When the buzzer rings (oh whey oh)
They're walking like an Egyptian

All the kids in the marketplace say
Ay oh whey oh, ay oh whey oh
Walk like an Egyptian