Shaggy Dog Comments...

We'd like to wag our tail in fraternal salute to a legend who retired last week. George Richards is one of Australia's best-known columnists - although few know he was responsible. For the past 15 years, George was the wit behind The Sydney Morning Herald's much-loved Column 8, a quirky institution that highlights life's more amusing moments and was, in part, the inspiration for this column. George spent 45 years at the Herald, and every now and then Shaggy would get the chance to have a chat with George, who had fond memories of the North Coast after a young ABC reporter once told him that cattle leave enough dung behind to make the ground a foot (just under half a metre for you metric types) higher. He always wanted to visit to check out whether Lismore and surrounds were indeed at a higher altitude than the rest of the state thanks to the bovine population. Cheers George, we hope now you get the chance.

Shaggy stayed up the other night to watch the American version of a footy grand final, the SuperBowl. If you're used to the pace of AFL or rugby union, then watching gridiron is like chess with helmets - lots of waiting around for five seconds of flurried activity. But the big story to come out of the event wasn't the game, but the halftime entertainment. One of the less bizarre Jacksons, aging sex popette Janet, was performing with former boy band idol, Justin Timberlake, when he tore away her top, revealing her right breast in a scandal that's been dubbed "Nipplegate". In a nice break from suicide bombers and weapons of mass destruction, America has gone apoplectic over the incident, with Jackson, 40, broadcaster CBS and assorted others apologising. While the American deficit has now topped a whopping trillion dollars, the US Federal Communications Commission plans to blow its budget on an inquiry to ponder whether it constituted indecency. And amidst howls of outrage and much tut-tutting, television stations keep broadcasting the incident over and over and blown up pics of the incident have already become one of the most popular downloads on the Internet. And running in competition to the SuperBowl broadcast was a Pay TV event called the Lingerie Bowl, involving two teams of scantily clad women. We await the inquiry into the person spotted at the game fully dressed.

Labor's flavour-of-the-month, Mark Latham, in an echo of the last bloke to try and take the nation's top job, Bomber Beazley, has hopped in a bus and is driving up the coast for a spot of political barnstorming. He's lobbing in Lismore on Friday morning. Shaggy was doing a spot of research on the lad, who we remember fondly for his last visit, when he released his education policy, later gutted by Beazley, which led Latham to resign from Labor's front bench amidst dark mutterings. Looking for details on Latham on the Internet, we stumbled across a blog (web log - a personal online diary) titled "They're all a#@•lickers!" - the spoof diary of the Labor leader. It's explained thus: "This is the place for the real Mark Latham; the Mark Latham who toiled his clacker off in grinding poverty to become dux of his school; the Mark Latham who built his own ladder of opportunity, then scaled it himself with bugger all help from anybody else (er, except full-on legend and mentor Gough Whitlam - Dad, I love ya!); the Mark Latham who is mad as hell, and isn't gonna take it anymore - particularly from the Yanks and their pop-cultural, celluloid imperialism!" And who said Conservatives don't have a sense of humour.

If love has given you butterflies in the stomach, or you simply want to recreate that feeling, you might like to consider taking part in the Byron Bay Sky Divers' fourth annual "Share the Love Skydiving Boogie". You'll join your Valentine and tandem skydiver for an exhilarating dive over Byron Bay. The five-day event, which attracts skydivers from around the country, runs from Wednesday to Sunday, February 11-15, at the Tyagarah Airfield, just north of Byron. And if you think the shock may be too great for your Valentine then maybe a picnic lunch might be more suitable while you both watch skydivers float to earth beneath colourful canopies from two large planes specially flown in for the event. For more information contact Clare Heaton on 6662 3426.

Crossword Answers for this Issue