EPISODE 716: Oh, We Frolicking?

Bullet Train Puppy Palace

May 23, 2022

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

After ten very long and terrible years of Liberal Party leadership, Australia elected a Labor leader over the weekend. They also elected something like 15 independents who campaigned largely on a climate change agenda, which the current government pretty much didn’t believe in.

I realize this probably doesn’t mean much to many of you reading, but it’s a very big deal for Australia and as that’s a place that’s dear to me, I’m very excited to see what all of this might mean for that beautiful country.

The video above is to my mind a classic Australian take on their own politics. Basically, don’t take yourselves too seriously.

My niece graduated from college this weekend, which was very cool and did not at all make me feel old. (Before graduation they had this ongoing slideshow of graduates from their time at Marquette. And after about a half hour I realized I had spent the whole time puzzled as to where were the pictures of them like, normal age (aka my age)).

I’ve decided to spend the next year trying to invent a different way of doing commencements, because sitting in your seat for two hours while you wait for your kid’s name to be read off is just insane. Either we have to find a way of making each name announced meaningful (which, when you’ve got 1900 graduates, fat chance), or we need to find a way of doing graduation that does not involve the reading of all the names, because it is horrible and I’m pretty sure they do that for all eterntity in Hell.

First Thought: Have a DJ and make it a dance party.

For example, imagine the first group to get their diplomas standing up, and as they do, this begins:

How could that not be better than what we have, you know?

Doing lots of traveling right now, so in place of too much of me chattering on, I’ve got my Top 10 Tweets of the week for you. A bunch of them include video—if you have Firefox, you may see an error, but if you click on the tweet’s date it’ll send you right to it. If you don’t have Firefox, you shouldn’t have any trouble.

TOP TEN TWEETS OF THE WEEK

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