Lindsay McDougall (thanks Nurse Myra)

Well, we're back from Chicago. We had a nice time. I saw my first cousins. Our kids played together. It was cute to see.

I have no idea who Lindsay McDougall is.

I guess I shall go and find out.

It's a radio person. Male? Female? I'm not sure. I think of Lindsay as a girl's name. But in Australia, there's Norman Lindsay. That's a LAST name, though.....

Lord Wiki doesn't have a full entry on Mr. (or Mrs.) McDougall. He just has an entry on the duo itself. They call themselves Jay and the Doctor. The other part of the duo is named Jason Whalley. So I guess he'd be the Jay. McDougall must be the doctor.

The two of them were (or still are?) part of a punk band called Frenzel Rhomb. They started doing their thing in 1993 in Sydney.

McDougal plays the guitar. I still don't know if this person is a boy or girl. I am feeling it's a boy, but I could be wrong.

Lord Wiki says McDougall also organized the creation of a compilation album called Rock Against Howard. That's regarding John Howard. It was inspired by America's Rock Against Bush albums.

I found songs on YouTube from the American album, but not the Australian one.

I'm not a fan of Bush or Howard. But I'm not sure I applaud making anti-albums like that. It seems so...negative and hateful. I'm not saying Bush and Howard don't deserve hatred. It just seems to me that it would be better to make a positive album.

For example, instead of making an album against Bush, how about making an album that's FOR someone who is not like Bush.

I think sometimes we put so much energy into being AGAINST something. We don't direct enough energy towards being FOR things.

You know, it's kind of also like one of the rules from Charmed. The witches are supposed to protect the innocent; NOT punish the guilty. So, I think we should spend our time and energy helping the victims of Bush and Howard rather than spending our energy on hating Bush and Howard.

Well, there IS some good news here though. The proceeds to McDougall's project went to refugee charities. So he did use some of that energy to help victims of Howard.

Still, if it was up to me, I'd probably label the album Rock for Asylum Seekers. I'm sure there could still be some anti-Howard lyrics in there.

I guess in a way, it's a matter of semantics.

I'm probably just rambling here so I can avoid reading about McDougal's music career. This stuff really does bore me. I hate reading and writing about which album came out when.

I'll do a little bit of it anyway.

Their first album album (not just EP thing) was called Coughing up a Storm. I like that name. In America, the same album was called Once a Jolly Swagman Always a Jolly Swagman. That's very cute. I like the whole "Waltzing Matilda" reference. I wonder why they used that for Americans rather than the coughing thing.

They did an album in 2003 called Sans Souci. That's what my mom named their lake house. It hasn't quite caught on, though. I think she was hoping we'd all say things like Let's go to San Souci this weekend! We don't do that. We all call it simply the lake house.

Ah! There's another album with an Aussie cultural reference. For the Terms of Their Unnatural Lives. That's a cute play on the novel title For the Term of His Natural Life.

The album title makes me think of True Blood. I'm totally loving that show. I watched part of it last night. My other new favorite (Drop Dead Diva) was also on, so I was flipping back and forth between the two. Then Drop Dead Diva ended, so I could put my full concentration on the last half of True Blood. There was some very suspenseful scenes involving Anna Paquin and a horrible church. Just when I got to the good part, Jack came downstairs and I had to turn it off. I'll need to try to catch it again this week.

I probably should just TAPE the shows and watch them religiously. But I'm getting bad at all that. I got so behind on Medium. Our DVR ended up erasing them before I watched them. Now I have the last Eli Stone episodes taped. I need to watch those.

See? I'm rambling again. It's avoidance.....

Anyway, I'll be a good girl and get back on track.

Maybe I'll listen to some of their music on YouTube.

Here's a song called "Mum Changed the Locks".

Well, THAT video is one of the most disturbing things I have ever watched on YouTube. Lovely. Uh...well, the dog is cute, I suppose.

Here's a song called "Russel Crowe's Band".

Well, the animation is cute. I like the Monopoly Money bit.

I probably don't like the song much...neither the lyrics nor the music.

I'm reading now about how these punk band people started hosting a radio show.

In 2004, they temporarily replaced some of the Chasers who did a morning show. The Chasers were busy doing election type stuff.

The funny thing is...prior to this, the band's music was actually banned from the station. Why? Frenzal Rhomb had criticized the station for always playing the same forty songs.

I think all radio stations do that. You turn on the station for the first time and think I LOVE this. They play awesome songs. I haven't heard this song in SO long. Then a few weeks later, you get sick of that awesome song and realize they play it way too much.

We listen to Sirius music at the lake house. My parents put on this instrumental station when we eat lunch. It seems almost every lunch we've had there, the past few weeks, features the theme song from The Mission.

The Jay of Jay and the Doctor left the radio show in 2007. McDougal still works for the station. He now co-hosts with people named Robbie Buck and Marieke Hardy.

Lord Wiki lists features of the Jay and the Doctor program. Some of it seems somewhat funny. I guess I'd have to listen and see.

I'm done with Lord Wiki now, and he pointed me towards the ABC website for the show.

The show provided wake-up calls. You leave your name and number in their guestbook. And then I guess you hope for a phone call from Jay and the Doctor.

I like this: They ask people to send them tourist photos from around Australia. The catch is they want you to look totally depressed in the photos. That's pretty funny.

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The site has some excerpts from the show. I guess I'll listen to some. This one features Borat. According to him, the Jews are not just responsible for every war. We're responsible for the end of the dinosaurs. If that's the case....I apologize for that. I mean I really don't feel that guilty about the Jesus thing. I'd definitely feel guilt for the dinosaurs.

Borat makes reference to Home and Away which once featured his alter-ego's fiance. He mentions a character named Colleen. Was that Fisher's character?

Okay. No. Fisher played Shannon, not Colleen.

Well, that was pretty long. I don't think I'm going to listen to a second one...at least not right now.

This article has a photo of McDougall.

Oh. This makes me like McDougall. The article says he's angry because he was used in a video that preaches anti-downloading. When he lent himself to the video, he thought it was simply about surviving as an Australian musician. It turns out it was a video directed at high school students--teaching them how evil it is to download music illegally.

McDougall says, I have never come out against internet piracy and illegal downloading and I wouldn't do that - I would never put my name to something that is against downloading and is against piracy and stuff, it's something that I believe is a personal thing from artist to artist.

He also says, I'm from a punk rock band, it's all about getting your music out any way you can - you don't make money from the record, the record companies make the money from the record. If they can't make money these days because they haven't come onside with the way the world is going, it's their own problem.

My feeling is the Internet has changed everything. There's so much you can get for free. People are DOING so much without any payment. People are writing. People are making videos. People are making websites.....

I think the illegal downloading thing is pretty silly. I can go to the library and get books for free. Why can't I go to a website and get music for free? I can also get music free from the library. We can check out CDs there.

This website has the video that angered McDougall. I'll watch it.

So far, it seems to be a woe-is-me kind of video. It's not easy being a rock star. It's not all parties, big houses, and hotel-room-crashing.

Yeah. I thought being an asylum seeker in a detention camp might be tough. But being a rock star?  That's where the REAL hardship occurs.

The video talks about the Internet....the good and the bad. One of the Veronicas twins talks about how it allows your music to get an international audience. But then if people listen to your music for free, how do you make money? Are rock stars becoming poor?

Just for the record, I DON'T download illegal music anymore. I used to...via Napster and some other site. Now I take the legal route. I download from I-Tunes. But I usually just listen to stuff for free on YouTube. Is that illegal? I don't know. Maybe it's illegal for some of these videos to be posted on YouTube. I can't see how I can go to jail for watching....

These rock stars make it sound like they're on the verge of poverty.

One guy says if we don't support the artists, they won't exist anymore. Hey! That's kind of like Tinker Bell.

Maybe when we listen to music for free, we should clap our hands. Maybe that will help the artist continue to exist.

Seriously, though. I can imagine it might be quite damaging if rock star people stop making any money. They'll have to find day jobs, and will have less time to do music stuff. But I don't think that will happen. They can make money via concerts. They can sell t-shirts. And there will always be people out there who are willing to buy the CD. There are people out there who like to have a tangible object in their hand. They like to OWN things.

I like I-Tunes. I think paying a dollar for a song is pretty reasonable. I much prefer that to buying a CD. I used to hate liking ONE song and having to buy a whole CD just so I can listen to it.

McDougall is on Twitter. He seems fairly active. He's done about thirteen post in the last twenty-four hours. For the most part, he seems to respond to other people. He's interactive about the whole thing.

Here's an article about McDougall on an animal liberation website. Is he vegetarian?

Ah! He's a vegan. And he makes me feel a bit guilty. He says, I always knew the problems with dairy, but used the 'at least I'm doing something' defence to justify my cheese and egg lovin' diet. Then, about a year and a half ago, I realised that it wasn't any defence at all, in fact acknowledging the problems but not doing anything about it was almost as bad, if not worse, so I cut out all dairy products, too.

I agree with him. I hate that I agree. But I do.

I'm such a horrible hypocrite for eating dairy and eggs. I'm NOT going to become vegan. But I do want to be better; eat less dairy and eggs. I did make a good choice the other day for breakfast. We ordered room service for breakfast. I wanted the French toast, but I figured that probably had a lot of eggs. Instead I got rye toast. I'm not sure if that has eggs, but I'm pretty sure it has less eggs then French toast. Maybe? The recipes I'm seeing for rye bread do include eggs. I guess it would depend then on what kind of bread you used for your French toast. If you used bread without eggs, you'd just have the egg batter. But if you used a bread like Challah (which has eggs) and then added an egg batter, that's a hefty contribution to chicken cruelty.

I'm thinking I DON'T want to become anal enough to check the ingredients of everything I eat; avoiding all dairy and egg. But I'd like to avoid things that are heavy in dairy and eggs...especially if it's made by companies that don't try to use organic free range type stuff. So it's probably bad that I ate cheese pizza the other night. And it's probably bad that I recently bought a can of processed cheese.

I REALLY need to put more thoughts and ethics into my eating.

McDougall says some honest upfront type things here. No, seriously, it does feel good to be in a group of people doing the right thing, when the majority of people aren't, it 's probably how people brainwashed by a cult think. But I realise that's just a superficial feeling of superiority, and I would feel a lot better if everyone in the world was vegan, and I was no different to them at all.

I sometimes feel all superior to those around me eating their huge sausages and steaks. But then I remember dairy cows are often treated like shit too. And here I am eating nachos with tons of cheese....

My feeling is we don't need to strive to be on the top of the ethical chain. Instead, I'd rather us ALL be a little more ethical. I think meat-lovers should eat a little less meat, and try to get it from ethical sources. Vegetarians should eat a little less eggs and dairy. Vegans...well, I guess they're ethical enough, at least food-wise. Although it would be hypocritical of them to eat any chocolate or coffee that is not fair trade. I think it would be wrong to care about the mistreatment of animals but support the mistreatment of humans. Hey, humans are animals too. Right?

McDougall is a very strict vegan. He avoids ALL the animal stuff. He's an ingredient reader.

McDougall says, But there were times in my life when I realised things were a little off kilter. Like when friends would say how they could never hurt their pet, or how much they loved their horse, and I'd think, 'but you still eat meat, isn't that the same.

I think about things like that. People get sad when they see a lonely-looking puppy in the pet store. Then those same people will go to the food court and get a hamburger.

How do they do that?

They might be like me...forgetting ethics when they order lunch.

They might believe that farms animals live a Charlotte's Web life.

I don't know.

McDougall is asked about which countries are most vegetarian tolerant. He comes down hard on America. I was about to debate him on that. America has a lot of vegetarian restaurants...just like Australia does. But I think there is a difference. In America, you can get good eating in the big cities. The thing we noticed about Australia is that even the smaller cities have vegetarian stuff. Well, we've been to only a few small cities. I'm really making a leap here. I'll just say that in my limited experience, I've noticed Australia's small cities are more vegetarian friendly than America's.

McDougall is VERY strict in the vegan thing. He's like a PETA person. No animal products in the house. No circus. No zoo.

I'm not sure how I feel about that.

I feel when you're so militant, and advertise the fact, you kind of scare people away. Although some people think I'm scary and militant. I guess scary/militant is in the eyes of the beholder.

No, but when I first became vegetarian I bought a PETA type book. It pushed me to being vegan. I felt it was something I HAD to do. I drove my family nuts. I think Tim wanted to strangle me. I probably kind of wanted to strangle myself. It was hard to find food. I'd find something and think it was okay. I'd buy it, eat it and then learn it had some wrong ingredient.

I gave the whole thing up after about a month. I did stick to being a vegetarian. That's never been too hard for me. I've never loved meat all that much. But the whole vegan thing backfired. I mean maybe that's why I'm so unethical when it comes to dairy and eggs. Maybe things would have been better if these books didn't make me feel like a nasty human being if I ate one lousy little Lucky Charms marshmallow. Maybe I would have stuck to a more ethical diet if I read a book that pushed the idea of REDUCING rather than fully eliminating.

I have trouble with these extreme organizations. They make it very hard to get to the truth. They make it very hard to be ethical. In their eyes, the only RIGHT thing to do is eat NO animal product whatsoever. I don't think that's helpful. Because let's face it. The whole world is not going to become vegan anytime soon. What would be more helpful is if they distinguished between practices that are horribly cruel and practices that treat the animals fairly okay.

Let's take zoos. Is it helpful to say, all zoos are horrible. Stop going to them! Or is it better to say Some zoos are good. Some zoos are bad. Avoid zoos where you see these things going on.....
There's that saying. Choose your battles....

So no. I'm not impressed with organizations like Animal Liberation and PETA. I'm sure they do SOME good. But I think sometimes they do more harm than good. It's the same way that the preacher yelling on the street, that we're all sinners, totally turns me off from Christianity; and how Richard Dawkins and Robert T. Caroll make me want to hate science sometimes.

It's hard to find that balance. I don't think we should shut up. I think we should be able to share our beliefs. There is a chance that someone will listen and make a change because of us, and what we've said. I think we just have to guard against going too far and alienating people. Well, we're always going to alienate SOMEONE. I think I might offend some people by simply BEING a vegetarian. But if you can promote your message without offending too many people than you're probably doing an okay job.

And if you can live a highly righteous vegan life without acting snarky and oh-so-superior to others....then you're doing a REALLY awesome job. I'd surely fail at it. I already failed at becoming vegan. If I ever succeeded, I MIGHT become a little snarky about it. I most definitely would have a superiority complex. That might be okay, though, because I have such low self-esteem in other areas. It would all probably balance itself out.

Well, enough of that. I'm going to watch Jack play his video game. Then I'm going to watch more McDougall videos on YouTube.

Here's something called "Ben Lee vs. The Doctor". I think it's a Triple J thing. They're doing some kind of busking contest. I watched about half and then I got bored.

Here's McDougall doing a vegan video. It's about the food pyramid. It features McDougall chewing on a bike tire. Yum. The video is actually more comical than didactic. It's cute.

Here's another Triple J thing. It's called "Priceless Pleasures, Looking" I like that. It promotes people watching and looking at nature. The whole idea is that we can entertain ourselves without spending money. That's a valuable message. And it's cute and funny. I laughed out loud at least once.

Here's McDougall trying to set the world record for hot dog eating.  That's vegan hot dogs. He doesn't get too far.

Here's a Jay and The Doctor thing. I guess that was a promo for their show. It's interesting. It involves bees. Bees make almost anything interesting. At least I think so.

Now I'm going to listen to some more Frenzal Rhomb stuff.

Here's "Forever Malcom Young".

It's cute. Tim might appreciate the red balloon scene.

Who is Malcolm Young? Is he a random fictional type character, or someone famous I should know about?

Well, Lord Wiki says he's a guitarist with AC/DC. So he is real. I'm guessing that's probably who Frenzal Rhomb was talking about in the song.

I'm looking at the lyrics. Angus is mentioned and he's part of AC/DC too. So I guess that confirms that the song is about AC/DC Malcolm Young.

Here's a video called My City of Sydney. I'm going to watch it, and then I'm going to end this post and go to something else.

Okay...interesting. It kind of moved too fast for my brain to follow.

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