I was very sad to hear John Clarke passed away. A great loss to the nation. An even bigger loss to farnarkling. A tribute at Blunty:

Farnarkling lost a champion yesterday, with the passing of Mr John Clarke. The veteran broadcaster was not just the voice of the national sport, but a much-loved ambassador to the powerhouses of the perfect game as far away as Bad Odursburg and Middlefart.

Play at the 'G in Launceston, where Australia and Uzbekistan contended fiercely for a quarter-final slot in the Far Eastern Cup, was interrupted for the traditional 49 seconds of mumbled Celtic mourning chants in the original Old Icelandic.

Just because I mocked the hardy frontier image of hardy frontier Queensland in Blunty:

There's nothing tough about refusing to evacuate in the face of a cyclone.

If you survive the winds and roaring storm surge you were just lucky, not resilient.

Cyclone's path: 'please leave'

North Queensland residents in the direct line of Cyclone Debbie should "take this seriously" as emergency crews prepare for "significant damage". Nine News

If the eye turns away and looks for somewhere else to destroy, same deal.

But if you live on the coast and you simply wait for the blast front and the tsunami because some pissweak little storm isn't going to scare you away, you're living in denial at best.

At worst, you're a selfish idiot who will endanger the lives of everyone who has to come to your aid.

I'm sure Lord Bob has all the feelz about this issue.

First Blunty.

So far 2017 is off to a cracking start. It hasn't killed any meme-worthy celebrities. Donald Trump isn't president. And I'm not even scrambling through a post apocalyptic wasteland fighting for rat meat and potable water. So, yeah. Good times. This is a great year so far.

I was going to do piece on this Centrelink datamatching fiasco, but the more I looked into it, the more I needed to look into it. So I might do that in a week or two.

Today's column was a simple and silly return to the keyboard while I sort out my shit for the year. There is a lot of shit to sort.

It was this, or West Papua. I went with the option all the playground was talking about. Even Murph, although he's mostly talking about what an abomination avocado toast really is.

Too late, Murph. The invasion of your food culture has begun.

There is no such thing as twenty-two dollar avocado toast. But maybe there should be. Ridonculous demographer Humbert Blowave may simply have been meeting his clickbait KPIs when he set the dumpster on fire over the weekend, claiming that kids these days should be driving trucks for their country and negatively gearing their second McMansion instead of galavanting about the boulevards combing truffled avo toast from their hipster beards – but his was the hot take we desperately needed.

At Blunty.

"Gerry Harvey's reported statement that this country needs a dictator is the sort of thing a world-class bozo would say. It's also the sort of thing your average mouth-breathing idiot down the pub would say before he was halfway into his first schooner, but the huge numbers of mouth-breathing idiots who'd agree with Harvey doesn't make his idea right. Just dangerous."

From Blunty

The Great Barrier Reef is almost certainly doomed. But that's OK, because our own doom is only probable, not certain. It will die before we do. It will die because of us. But we are such a resourceful, inventive, endlessly self-seeking species that we might yet survive the catastrophe we have visited upon the planet. Maybe in domes.

Yes, huge city-sized domes with a Soylent Green stall on every corner. That would be cool.

At Blunty.