1) Allan Border. Arguably Australia’s greatest cricketer of the modern era, AB was my teenage sporting idol. He maintained a world-class batting average against bowling attacks that were much stronger than today.

I saw his epic last stand with Jeff Thomson at the MCG on December 30, 1982 and was there again a few years later when he scored a century against the West Indies.

I could talk all night to AB alone.

2) Bernie Quinlan. Known as Superboot because he could roost the pigskin 90 metres, Quinlan was Fitzroy’s first century goalkicker and played in the club’s last successful teams.

He came from my home town of Traralgon and played originally with Footscray. Quinlan returned to Fitzroy after retirement to coach the club in 1994. He signed an autograph for Kathleen a few weeks after she was born.

He came back as the messiah but finished up being crucified.

3) Gisele Bündchen. The world’s highest-paid supermodel will add some glamor to the table.

Her German/Brazilian background has some exotic appeal. Not sure if she speaks English, but it doesn’t really matter.

4) Princess Anne. This will surprise you. I thought about asking Nambaryn Enkhbayar, the president of Mongolia, but figured we would probably need an interpreter.

Yes, I’m a monarchist for sentimental, symbolic historical reasons, but I wouldn’t invite the Queen to dinner. AB and I might be a bit rowdy by the end of the night.

I don’t think Princess Anne is an air head who only cares about fox hunting. In the 10 minutes she has the floor between cricket and footy chat I’ll ask her about the Olympics and for some inside goss on Diana.

5) Kramer. For light relief and an American perspective. I thought about asking Tony Blair. Retired politicians are more likely to spill the beans, but I figured he would talk too much and was unlikely to contribute much to the cricket and footy chat.

Rupert Murdoch or one of his kids came under consideration, but Kramer gets the nod.

The Israeli journalists who questioned the Dutch Foreign Minister using a web translator must be extremely embarrassed.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry isn’t too happy either. “How could this email possibly have been sent? These journalists have sparked a major, major incident,” said an Israeli official. “Sure he can’t understand many of the questions, because the English is so bad. But he is being asked about the sleeping arrangements of his mother!”

Apparently the failed translation attempt was from Hebrew to English. I wonder what they would have got from a Hebrew-Dutch service if they’d found one.

I find the web translators useful for gaining a basic understanding of web sites, especially those in German and Dutch, which I partly understand anyway. That’s all I use them for.

That’s a little surprising when you consider that journalists are writers. But when you think about it, we are craftsmen while novelists are artists. We ply a trade while they follow their creative spirits. We have responsibilities, they don’t.

Three good books about newspapers come readily to mind. PG Wodehouse wrote Psmith, Journalist in 1915; Evelyn Waugh wrote Scoop in 1938 and Terry Pratchett published The Truth in 2000.

In Wodehouse’s classic, Psmith arrives in New York on a cricket tour and becomes involved with the home entertainment weekly “Cosy Moments” which he transforms into a hard-hitting investigative journal. He rides the bumps of organised crime and American politics along the way.

In Waugh’s story, scribe William Boot is mistaken by the publisher of the Daily Beast for a war correspondent. He is uprooted from writing country garden features to covering the civil war in Ishmaelia. Both novels are cleverly satirical.

Pratchett’s The Truth is a typically fantastic work from the author of the Discworld series. The hero in this case is William de Worde, who teams up with dwarfs to print the first newspaper in Ankh-Morpork.

As usual, Pratchett offers some tremendous insights into human nature. His observations of the newspaper profession are also very sharp, suggesting excellent research or personal knowledge. For instance, he offers a rare literary tribute to the unsung work of sub-editors.

I’ve just finished reading The Truth for the second time. I found the focus on hired assassins to be distracting and kept wanting the story to get back to the trials and tribulations of The Times.

There are some great one liners, like when the dwarfs make a typesetting error with the newspaper’s logo, which becomes: “The truth will make you fret”.

I related personally to the serial pest who kept coming into the office with remarkable vegetables. Anyone who has worked on a country newspaper will know there are people in most towns who like to show off their giant tomatoes or funny-shaped parsnips.

I admit it’s one of my long-term ambitions to write a satirical novel about newspapers. I started taking notes of strange but true incidents last year, like when one of my reporters disappeared while on the trail of visiting Mongolian detectives.

I have heaps of material; just need the time to write it.

I'm grateful that people think to invite me, but in a town the size of Kalgoorlie it's a similar guest list at most of the events.

It would be better, I think, to have one giant, shared Christmas party where all the corporates could get together and mingle. The Middle Island Fishing Club banquet was something like that, I suppose.

Then there could be another one for New Year.

Throw in your own company's Christmas party and that would mean three must-go events instead of a dozen or more individual parties.

Note: I'm writing this from WriteToMyBlog as an experiment.

Funnily enough, I’m writing this on the day that Google formally integrated its online spreadsheet application with Writely to create Google Docs.

I like the look and feel of Google Docs, which is minimalist in the Google tradition, but Zoho is also impressive. I’ll continue to experiment with it and give some more impressions here later.

My initial observations are that it’s easy to install, attractive and minimalist. The download was just 380kb. It’s not bloated or overloaded with unnecessary features. There’s an active support community and a wide range of add-ons. Word Press integration is feasible.

On the downside it’s fairly difficult to modify templates.

I don’t have a great practical need for it (like the wiki I set up) but it’s interesting to try these scripts for potential other uses.

I was honoured to be invited and used the opportunity to give some personal views on the media’s role in society and more particularly the role of newspapers in country communities.

I finished with this joke, which like nearly all jokes was adapted from elsewhere:

There were three men: an editor, a photographer, and a journalist, walking down a street when they discover a lamp. As they rub the lamp a genie appears and offers to grant them each a wish:

The photographer went first. “I would like to spend the rest of my life living in a huge house in Margaret River with no money worries.” The genie granted his wish and sent him off to Margaret River.

The journalist went next. “I would like to spend the rest of my life living on a huge yacht cruising the Great Barrier Reef with no money worries.” The genie granted his wish and sent him off to the Whitsundays.

Last, but not least, it was the editor’s turn. “And what would your wish be?” asked the genie.

The editor replied: “I want them both back after lunch. The deadline for tomorrow’s paper is in three hours.”

1. Woman marries dolphin.
2. Porn star arrested for raping boy.
8. Australia feels the heat of Proteas’ slow burn.
9. Woman weds dolphin (again … breaking news?).
10. For sale: Two-headed snake.

It’s unthinkable that South Africa is poised to defeat Australia, as indicated by number eight on that list. The dolphin story is a beatup, no more newsworthy than saying New Zealanders are fond of sheep.

What does this list say though about readers of the esteemed Age? You’d expect this of the London tabloids, rather than a broadsheet that takes itself too seriously.

It uses the XFCE window manager and includes my favorite programs like Firefox, Thunderbird, the Gimp and OpenOffice.

I’m unfamiliar with the Slackware package management, but it seems simple enough, although there aren’t many in the net repository. Contributed packages through the Zenwalk web site are easy to download and install.

The total distro is only a 478MB download, which must be one of the smallest around to include the full version of OpenOffice.

I like the look and feel. Zenwalk boots faster than any other Linux system that I’ve used. I’ll stick with it for a while.