I’m holed up in bed with a cold (which seems to have come from either Webjam or Jam for Sudan, both of which were immensely awesome!). Tis a mystery how I ever lived without WiFi.

• I would care if Kevin Rudd had ever spoken to the military leadership of Burma, or had an audience with Robert Mugabe. But a strip club in New York City? Bah, next there’ll be reports that he visited a casino in Las Vegas. Problem is, I fear this will dent his popularity — but then maybe the coming week’s polls will agree with Peter Beattie, since no one trusts MPs to be upstanding citizens anyway. Also, isn’t it just a little suspicious that it was a News Corporation editor who led Rudd and Snowden into the club, followed by the News Limited papers plastering it over their front pages today?
• Speaking of Robert Mugabe, am I the only one left with a bitter taste at the Foreign Minister’s decision to cancel the Australian student visas of his leadership’s children? Even aside from the “sins of their parents” question, exactly how will this help towards getting Zimbabwe out of its current situation?
• Earlier this week, we had the Treasurer issuing warnings and saying there was no need to panic-sell shares, and today he’s expressing “concern” at the state of the mortgage market. Now I’m just as miffed as every other investor that the market has dropped, but I have trouble seeing what the Federal Treasurer’s action or inaction has to do with the poor decisions of American home lenders. Oh wait, my mistake: this is the responsible economic management we keep being told about.
• Two things that caught my attention yesterday: a fluff-piece in the West Australian about the construction projects planned or underway around town, and a (rather expensive-looking) State Government brochure outlining the new infrastructure being paid for by taxpayers. But both of them miss what I think is the more important discussion — the subtler changes needed, if you will, to our city’s ‘software’. Things like giving priority to pedestrians in the city, engaging more closely with the arts (e.g. using white walls around town as canvases), and actually promoting the small bars that the liquor licensing changes were supposed to deliver …

Aside from recently completing their tunnelling, the merry band of construction contractors has just re-started track laying on the bits of the southern railway closest to my house. As part of this, there are crazy trackwork machines parked at random spots in the middle of the freeway — weirdo sliding gantry cranes, machines that thump the sleepers for (I’m guessing) joining purposes, and ordinary-looking goods carriages that have holes in them to drop gravel under the tracks.

And freight trains. When Murdoch Station is finished I doubt you’ll see one of these parked there on a regular basis …

So I arrived at work today, for the first time after our two-week Christmas break, only to discover that my normal entrance was blocked. And to think, these guys were supposed to have been finished last week, taking away their horrid mess with them.

Shortly thereafter, I discovered Toby’s handiwork outside of our storeroom. I call it Rat Central B, or the Stuff We Want Someone To Steal pile.