Before the Beatles, before Radiohead, before anything… one band stood above all others in the DayDreamer’s childhood. Dire Straits. As a seven year old, the very first album I ever owned was Alchemy Live. On cassette, mind you! That was Christmas 1983. My taste’s may have expanded over the last two decades, but my love of Dire Straits has never diminished!

Thus, it is with some joy that I was to find out that other members of the BEEZHOUSE crew shared a similar experience with Dire Straits. Agreed fact number one: Telegraph Road from said Alchemy Live (all fifteen minutes of it)… is there a better value for money jukebox song out there? No. A killer version as well! Now, it wasn’t all happy families reagrd our love of Dire Straits. A small arguement has festered amongst us. The problem: the lyrics of Money For Nothing. Chicks for free, or checks for free? A textbook mondegreen. Oz falls on the checks side, myself on the chicks. This debate has gone on for a few months now! Well, the debate ends today!

I began my search, where else, but on google. Anyway, I won’t bore you with the details of my search. (Yes, I’m a anorak… but I’m not going to provide a blow by blow validation of that fact). Knowing that the music lyric sites on the web aren’t always entirely accurate, I pondered a way to prove myself right. Then it hit me! Not three feet away from me… sat my copy of Brothers In Arms. Yes, the cassette, from 1985! Lyrics included! And the correct lyrics:

“Get your money for nothin’
Get your CHICKS for free”

As a little extra treat, the video for the song. One of the all-time classic music vidoes. Enjoy!

I think that it would be fair to say that there are very few organisations in the country, and maybe the world, which would allow a known predator into a leadership role.

If a person who had committed rape was nominated for a leadership position within a community group, say for example ATSIC, their criminal history would quickly come to light and affect not only their nomination, but their future career and public life as well.

Ron Maxwell Bibby is a life member of the RSL. He has been nominated as the new Secretary of the Darwin RSL. For those who are not aware the RSL or Returned Serviceman League, supports and represents Returned Servicemen and their families in the community and is run by (mostly) men from that section of the community.

Bibby was sentenced to one year’s jail with four months to serve in September 2005 after being convicted of 35 counts of possessing child pornography.

By contrast Geoff Clarke was never convicted of rape in a criminal court, but the case itself and the subsequent civil finding was enough to take him out of contention for any further involvement in the representation of his community long before the case even ended.

Ron Maxwell Bibby is in the running for a leadership role in an organisation run by our fathers, brothers, uncles and grandfathers. Men get a bad enough rap as it is without nominating (and hope it doesn’t happen) electing people like this into positions of influence and public standing. I find it offensive as a man that a group of older men, elders in our community would elect such a person to represent them.

Just remember, he had images on computer drives, compact discs and tapes, and had pornographic paperback books and magazines.

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When I last spent any real time in St Kilda and surrounding suburbs, it was all Greasy Joe’s and Big Mouth. I once sat in Greasy Joe’s eating breakfast and watching Tex Perkins consume a six pack of cheap looking beer at the tram stop in the time it took me to drink two flat whites and eat my bacon and eggs. Acland Street has changed, so further inland in Balaclava seemed a better option this last week.

Ugly Sister

263 Carlisle St, Balaclava

Firstly, at Ugly Sister you don’t have to book for breakfast. The breakfast menu is simple and runs all day (which means till 3 on Sundays as I found out at 3.15 on Sunday).

The clientele are mostly locals, so there is minimal posing. The coffee is excellent, as it should be considering their neighbour: Ugly Sister is across the road from Batch, which is owned and run by 2005 barista of the year Jason Chan.

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