The week in one liners:

Man wakes after ten years in a coma as Kevin Rudd is giving his electoral victory speech. The only words he utters before the speech sends him back into the coma are, “When did John Howard grow some hair?”…

On hearing of the Australian election results, George Bush says he will miss dealing with his close friend and ally, Ron Howard…

Judge in Glenn Wheatley’s appeal for tax fraud declares that the court may feel compelled to increase Wheatley’s prison sentence if the promoter organises another John Farnham farewell tour…

Kevin Rudd asks Santa for a book of fresh platitudes this Christmas…

CSIRO toxicology tests officially confirm John Howard’s electoral rabbits were riddled with myxomatosis…

Uproar at the funeral of J. Robert Cade, the inventor of Gatorade, this week when during the eulogy a bunch of gridiron players tipped a coffin full of the sports drink over the priest…

Those responsible for sticking two pig’s heads on stakes at the site of a proposed mosque in Sydney’s outskirts claim they weren’t being racist, merely offering a traditional Aussie greeting. Well, a traditional Moe greeting anyway…

A Jamaican inquest into the death of Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer ends with an open verdict, though they are pretty much almost certainly sure that he is actually dead. Maybe…

42 per cent of Israelis say that Annapolis is a failure. 82 per cent of those who live there say that Annapolis is a sh-thole…

New federal Liberal leader Brendan Nelson claims his ALP past won’t be a hindrance in his new role, pointing out that Kevin Rudd was once a Labor man and that hasn’t seemed to hurt him…

Failed Labor candidate George Newhouse says that while he is disappointed at losing the seat of Wentworth, it pales in comparison to his disappointment at only getting the slap and not the tickle that Caroline Overington had promised…

Kylie Minogue has announced that her 2008 tour will be completely different. FM breakfast show comedians around the country are itching to say that this time it will actually be entertaining, but it’s still three more years before the moratorium on Kylie jokes, instituted after her cancer diagnosis, is up.

Sri Lankan bowler Muttiah Muralitharan is all set to break Shane Warne’s world record this week – he has the seven prostitutes lined up and as soon as the two tonnes of baked beans arrive he’ll give it a crack…

Kevin Rudd gives deputy Julia Gillard responsibility for running two of his biggest policy priorities – education and industrial relations – proving again the political aphorism, “Keep your enemies close, and your future rivals running around like a blue-ar-ed fly so that they are too busy to plot against you”…

New leader Brendan Nelson reveals the party’s new slogan – “The Howard years: it was all just a dream.”

And the week in trash with Helen Razer:

It’s affecting, don’t you think, that sweetly ignorant Julie Bishop fancies herself as Julia’s Other. Ever since she opened her taupe-frosted lips to (a) get all her Latin wrong and (b) reveal the dangerous truth of Maoists in our education system, I lovingly commit her every utterance to memory.

Which is more than can be said for my own “Maoist” education. Mercifully, I’ve forgotten the “substance” of all those Barthes tutorials. And thank goodness. If it wasn’t for my pinot-addled mind, I’d be slaughtering the liberal bourgeoisie. In French, probably.

However, there is one phrase that I dimly recall. “Floating Signifier” refers to a referent (or word or symbol) that doesn’t point to any actual signified (thing). And this terribly Maoist concept presented itself to me as I trawled through this week’s trash.

Paris and Britney are themselves floating signifiers. They are untethered symbols of absolutely nothing. Plus, Brits has really chunked up. Have you noticed?

Anyhoo, I was tempted to revisit the “Maoist” paddling pool further when I learnt that (a) Britney may be expecting and (b) Paris is expecting to expect.

These blank, reeking symbols of nothing are reproducing? What the c-ck? Is there no one we can call? Perhaps Julie Bishop, even in opposition, will be so stung by this very post-modern event, viz. two floating signifiers replicating themselves, that she will first take pause to urinate on Jean Buadrillard’s grave before setting out to kill these blonde Maoists.

In other meaningless news, some insipid band that sounds like Human League off-cuts trashed a hotel room. They are called Sneaky Sound System and they reportedly Went Off, as is the habit of the young, in (wait for it … no, this is good) Albury.

Somehow, they managed to cause $1000 worth of damage. This befuddles me. As one with affection for both our Great Cities, I have often stopped in Albury. I have never seen a hotel room that contains $1000 worth of anything. Including building materials. Albury hotel rooms are only good for seedy s-x.

Which brings us, rather easily, to the Spice Girls. They reformed. What the c-ck? Is there no one we can call? Make it stop.

Look, you b-stards. You don’t email me anymore. I’d like some actual gossip that I didn’t have to read on News.com.au first. I don’t care if it’s not c-cking true: Helen.razer@bigpond.com