In the spirit of this week being all about the Power of Good on The 7pm Project, I thought I’d take a closer look at some stories you may have put in the Power of Bad basket on first glance. Please adorn your eyeballs with rose-coloured glasses and join me as I take a look at the brighter side of darker news.
I know you hear this every time some old Hollywood broad croaks, but Elizabeth Taylor seriously was the ‘Queen of Old School Hollywood’. She won two Oscars, married 8 times, and was instrumental in raising the profile of AIDS in the 80s, which lead to a bucketload of money being raised for research and treatment. Possibly her greatest achievement though is that she once gave Michael Jackson an elephant as a surprise gift. Anyone who gives a freaking elephant as a surprise gift is up there with Little Zangief in my book. So yeah, the world has lost someone special.
On the bright side, the Queen of Old School Hollywood and the King of Pop are probably sitting around in heaven talking about the time she gave him a freaking elephant and laughing like bastards! An elephant!
That’s right. Record levels of fraud plague the $4.5 billion in taxpayers’ money that is given to foreign aid each year. Right now, 175 suspected cases of dodgy bastards siphoning off food and money meant for needy foreigners are being investigated. To make matters worse, while this criminal extortion has no relation to the money Aussie citizens give privately to organizations like Red Cross and World Vision each year, it could lead to a drop in charity confidence and a subsequent drop in donations.
On the bright side, despite our small population, Australia is one of the biggest aid donors in the world, which is something worth celebrating. Go us! Also, I’m sure those who stole money meant for the poor probably did something worthwhile with it.
NASA IS RAMPING UP PLANETARY DEFENCE
News this week revealed that NASA plans to land astronauts on asteroids by 2025 as part of a new planetary defence system. According to Dr Paul Abell, who only happens to be NASA’s lead scientist for planetary small bodies, part of NASA’s motivation is to ensure “our grand-children or great grand-children don’t have to worry about an asteroid coming in and hitting the planet”. Holy rings of Saturn, what a terrifying concept! Add to all this the difficulty involved due to potential asteroids travelling up to 90,000km/h and the fact that they are too small to have a decent gravitational pull to assist with landing, and basically it appears like NASA has basically just announced their next kamikaze mission.
On the bright side, this news could inspire a sequel to Armageddon and if the planets align, Hollywood might do the right thing and kill off Ben Affleck’s character this time… or at least have aliens probe him.
In a display of either great insolence or great insight, bad-ass preschoolers have smacked down NSW Opposition Leader, Barry O’Farrell, with some classic schoolyard one-liners. Mr O’Farrell had rocked up to a school to read The Very Hungry Caterpillar (a classic) because apparently the teachers aren’t being paid enough to put up with the subsequent abuse from kids that comes along with such an exercise. The most hurtful comment came from one young upstart who told Bazza he was a “silly bum bum”. Woah! Pardon my French but that little kid très perspicace pour reconnaître que M. O'Farrell a une tête comme deux clochards! Another kid just yelled out the word ‘penis’ the whole time, perhaps taking part in an inappropriate, though obviously amusing, game of Penis.
On the bright side, I’m fairly sure Sophie Mirabella, truly a beacon of rational thought, would defend the children’s right to abuse politicians with vulgar language as ‘an expression of people power’. So the kids aren’t rude at all. They’re just the next generation of world-changing protestors in the making!
While we are on the topic of penises, probably the most important news of the week has revealed Aussie men have relatively small members. In fact we rank 94th in the world and Kiwis have more to boast about. At least that is accordingly to ‘a mix of stated and undefined sources’ and a colourful map run by News.com.au. But I think they’ve buried the lead here. If the map is to be believed, men in Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan have no penises at all!
On the bright side, apparently we have larger man-parts than our Indonesian friends. Probably not something I ever envisioned bragging about before today, but it’s still handy to be armed with that information next time I travel to Bali.
The opinions expressed in The 7PM Side Project blog do not necessarily reflect those of The 7PM Project or the Ten Network.
