From the 1st of July, pubs and clubs will be smoke-free. No more stinky hair after a night out. No more washing all your clothes the next day.

So! Who’s for a drink? Let’s hit the pubs!

(In preparation, the local RSL built a smoking area, which looks like an outdoor courtyard, but is almost completely surrounded by frosted glass and a shelter, so I bet it meets the definition of an enclosed space… Mind you I’d prefer they used frosted glass rather than something that lets the smoke out more easily, since I don’t want it coming my way across the footpath.)

Shrek the Third — was okay I suppose, a few amusing moments, but nothing outstanding. The first Shrek is still the best one… egads they have a Shrek 4 planned — I hope it’s better than the Third, though I bet they’re all successful. I suppose worth watching if someone else is paying, but fails the “would watch again” test.

I had been thinking that Jim Schembri’s article the other day about kids in cinemas was an exaggeration, but on second thoughts, it’s true: some kids (especially younger kids) don’t know how to behave in cinemas, and evidently their parents don’t know either.

Nerds FC — very amusing stuff. Yes I noted the guy who can recite pi — though he knows 486 digits, a long way over my paltry 75. I only caught a couple of episodes of the first series, but will try and see the rest of these ones.

Oh, and just when I thought my footy tipping couldn’t get any worse… 2 out of 8.

Next in the suburban moral dilemmas: I’m walking down the street, and I have some litter to get rid of, say a food packet or something else that’s small.

Is it okay to put it in someone’s rubbish bin?

I reckon it barely makes a difference to their bin load, and it’s better off in a bin than on the street. Plus I don’t have to handle it anymore, so everybody wins.

Others say it’s wrong to put your litter in somebody else’s bin.

PS. 8:25am Assume the bin is either on the nature-strip (bin day) or only a short distance inside the property, and not behind a gate or fence (eg in the driveway), so you’re not really “intruding” to use it.

Should I feel guilty for buying my kids secondhand school clothes? They’re in very good condition — no doubt donated by kids who have legitimately had no use for them anymore because they’ve grown or left the school. $2 per item, about 90% cheaper than buying new. Reduce, re-use, recycle, right? So I’m covering 2 Rs and saving money.

Yet because it’s not something I’ve tried before, I’ve got little pangs of guilt. But I’ve chucked them into the wash cycle and no doubt will have forgotten about it in a day or two, when everything’s mixed-up and nobody can tell what’s “new” and what isn’t.

The 17:09 from Swan Hill didn’t arrive tonight.

I was upset to read about the Kerang train crash. For all my bitching, I love travelling by train. When it works, it’s clean, cheap, quick, comfortable. And safe — rail travel has a deserved reputation for being one of the safest ways of getting around: about five times safer than by car. Accidents involving the deaths of rail passengers are very rare, especially in Victoria.

Which just makes a multi-fatality rail accident all the more shocking, particularly only just over a year since the Trawalla crash. Obviously there will be investigations as to what happened, but initially it looks like a terrible mistake on the part of the truck driver.

While driver education plays a role, to my mind it’s pretty clear that there need to be upgrades to level crossings. While the Murray Valley Highway isn’t a major highway, it’s busy enough, and protecting trains from B-doubles using just flashing lights and bells obviously isn’t enough.

PS. Wednesday 7pm. You know something bad’s happened when the BBC ring you up: Australia crash highlights safety concerns

I’m sure most of us have already worked this out, but let me decode the phrase “aspirational goal” for you. It means “goal that we’d like to reach, but we’re not going to actually make any effort to reach, and there certainly won’t be any penalties or anything if we never come close.” In other words, it’d be terrific if it happened by itself. Yeah right.

Examples from our illustrious leaders:

• [Prime Minister John Howard] said the Government would next year — the timing recommended by the group — set a long-term “aspirational goal” for emissions reduction.
• [Bush's proposal for international] meetings would not be to set caps on emissions, but to establish what the White House — uncorking a bold new euphemism — calls “aspirational goals.”
• [Public Transport Minister Lynne Kosky] played down the Government’s aim of doubling all trips taken by public transport by 2020, describing it as always aspirational.

What a load of bollocks. Either you support a goal, or you don’t. And if you do, you should be actively working towards making it happen, not just saying it’d be a good idea.

You don’t see football teams talking about aspirational goals, do you? — No, because they actually want to achieve something. Richmond are at the bottom of the ladder, and aspire to start winning games and climbing the ladder. But the difference between them and the politicians is they’re actually trying to make it happen.

(Well okay, forty years and 3 days ago actually.)

Sgt Pepper was the first cassette I owned, back in the late-70s. It lacked a lot of the non-musical extra bits and pieces of the original release: the cardboard cutouts and lyrics and so on.

At that age I don’t think I really “got” the concept album idea… I seem to recall wondering when and where the concert from the title track was recorded. (Some from a Goon Show audience, apparently!) And I didn’t like Within You Without You very much.

For the Christmas holidays in 1979, we went down to Dromana to stay with friends. They had a record player, and a copy of Abbey Road, and we played it solidly for a week, then bought the cassette when we got back to Melbourne. To this day I probably prefer Abbey Road to Sgt Pepper, even if the latter is better-known for being a mould-breaking revolutionary album. My friend Raoul got me into all the other Beatles albums.

In 1987 I bought the LP record of Sgt Pepper, on precisely the twentieth anniversary of its first release, tying in beautifully with the lyrics. I seem to remember it got up to at least number four in the charts that week. Having it on vinyl meant I was finally able to play that inner groove on the end of side two backwards.

Some of the Beatles albums were available as coloured vinyl at the time: I had a white White Album, and there was a yellow Yellow Submarine. I think there was a red version of Pepper, though mine was plain black. It had all the cardboard cutouts, though not the badges.

A year or two later I got a CD player (which only recently died), and Pepper was one of the first CDs I bought (second only to Abbey Road, I think) — the only letdown being the failure of the medium to deal with where the album segue between songs.

Sgt Pepper has long been one of my favourite albums, though as my musical tastes and collection have widened and widened, it and the other Beatles albums don’t get played very often. I played it last night for the first time in quite a while, and though it obviously reflects its times, it still sounds fresh. These days I like Within You Without You.

Favourite track? Probably A Day In The Life. Good Morning Good Morning has grown on me a lot, too.

• A great article from yesterday’s Age, analysing the album and its reaction: James Button: Sergeant Pepper’s wild trip
• Oh dear. Just realised I wrote about some of this before. Oh well.
• Visiting Abbey Road, 1998
• My photoshopped version of the cover, for the Federal election, 1996

Cameron Reilly’s done a podcast followup to his Age article encouraging people to “get off the bench”.

Listening to it reminded me of something I once wrote:

“Every person has the potential to create a great work of art; to work for the benefit of humanity; to become a spokesman or a great leader; to do good. Your role as a member of the human race is to reach your potential, and to help others to reach theirs.”

– Me, obviously feeling philosophical, January 1996

PS. Call me an imbecilic philistine, but I didn’t know Moleskine is pronounced “molly skeena”. But apparently they’re Italian, so fair enough.

PPS. Cam’s helping to run the MODM (Melbourne’s Online Digital Media) gatherings to talk about various aspects of this new digital thingamebob age we’re living in. I’d hoped to go to the meeting next Thursday night, but alas something else has clashed with it. Maybe next time, it sounds kinda interesting.