The week in one liners:

After releasing his major tax policy on the very first day of the campaign, John Howard seeks medical help for premature electional dysfunction…

John Howard threatens to talk for an hour and a half if Kevin Rudd fails to show for Sunday night’s debate. And if Kevin Rudd does turn up, it will still seem as if Howard has been talking for an hour and a half…

Thousands of fans who gathered at Phillip Island last weekend disappointed to discover that the 21 year old Stoner they had come to see was not Lindsay Lohan but some guy on a motorbike… 

New Zealand police arrest 17 Maori paramilitary activists and pressgang them into the All-Blacks, in order to give them a bit of grunt following recent World Cup disaster…

Alexander Downer follows John Howard’s lead and makes his own YouTube video. Filmed in his closet, it features a tearful foreign minister imploring the world to “leave the PM alone, after all he’s been through! He’s a human!”…

With his football career in tatters after being arrested without his shirt on in a Perth street, Ben Cousins nominates for the male stripper draft. Man Power are rumoured to take him with their number three priority pick…

Latest figures show that there are now more campaigning politicians in Eden-Monaro than there are voters…

Equine flu claims another victim as NSW bestiality film shoot forced to close down…

Paul McCartney admits that his $57 million divorce settlement was costing him an arm and a leg… but he wasn’t complaining, as unlike ex-wife heather Mills, he has an arm and a leg to give.

The Australian Cricket Board has expressed outraged at the racial abuse hurled by Indian crowds at Andrew Symonds saying that if this type of abuse continues, “future matches against the curry munchers may be in jeopardy”…

Victorian Hospital Administrators claim that since the nurses’ strike, patients have had to wait on trolleys in corridors for up to 24 hours. So pretty much business as usual there…

Plans by The Chaser team to sing a song about the dead child found in a suitcase in next week’s show could push ratings over 2 million mark…

Grieving members of the Brock and Irwin households give grateful thanks to radio shock jocks, Today Tonight and A Current Affair for playing that Chaser song over and over again, just in case they missed it the first time…

Kevin Rudd agrees with Joe Hockey’s claim that unions are irrelevant as union members make up only 20% of the workforce, but points out that if all his front bench went back to their old jobs, that figure would be back up to about 50%…

John Howard meanwhile disagreed with Joe Hockey’s views, claiming unions still had a legitimate roll in society – to be used to scare the electorate when there are no asylum seekers on the horizon…

And finally the week in trash with Helen Razer:

Pitching one’s self into the whiffy mud of the populaire is, as you know, giddy fun.

And, let it be said, this week there are plot points of satisfactory quality INCLUDING a Britney Bad Mommy reprise.

However, it is with a leaden heart I offer this week’s debris digest. For I learned that we have all missed International Talk Like a Pirate Day. By an entire month.

There are few occasions not improved by means of a poor West Country accent.

Next year, when my handicap is hovering at something below a parlous 89, I hope to be able to say,

“I made paaarrrrrr.”

Or, perhaps I could say to the peculiarly talented Amy Winehouse,

“You look terrible, east some Caaarrrrrbs.”

If you’ve not heard of this tabloid treasure, she’s a little like Courtney Love.

Albeit with a far greater (a) faculty for substance abuse and (b) talent.

Recently dropped by 007 producers as the author of the next Bond theme song, the out-and-proud bulimic lost no time in getting herself arrested. In tolerant Norway, of all places.

The Chaser, as if you require reminding, sped into public view again this week.

With the charm and agility of a punk Tom Lehrer, Andrew Hansen demeaned the dead. I thought it was funny. Howard didn’t. And nor did J-Ho’s better pressed doppelganger Kevin.

Despite what you may have heard, the comic did not assail the memory of the genuinely charming Belinda Emmett.

Brava, La Spears. In a visual economy crowded with badly behaved young women, you again wail like a wanton diva.

This Callas of crack must have done something awful. Perhaps she has become a public virtuoso on her flesh mandolin. Perhaps, under the influence of scrutiny or smack, she humped a fire hydrant. I dunno, do you expect me to read all this stuff?

I’ve been reading Ulysses for the last EIGHTEEN YEARS, so why should I endure anything more than the gist of this nonsense?

Anyhoo, the Los Angeles Superior Court has suspended the mother’s rights to visitation. Which is sad. Of course.

However, we must remember that Britney is a carbon metaphor for the profligate United States and not an actual person.

She’s not real.

If you don’t believe me, skype her and ask her to repeat Descartes’ dictum.

Which, of course, you’ll recall is

Cogito AAAARRGO Sum

Only another eleven months until International Talk Like a Pirate Day.