The Western

I was lucky enough to be able to indulge recently in a little bit of fairly nerdy, high-def movie marathoning. We watched Serenity for entrees, Blade Runner (Director's cut) for mains, and finished (and I mention here that it is not a decision lightly made finding the right film to follow Blade Runner!) with an encore screening of Tombstone. A most excellent night, and as it was an exclusive viewing club, there was no guilt and much pleasure in talking over boring scenes, rewinding and freeze-framing, reciting dialogue along with the actors, in short all of the things that make re-watching great films fun.

Obviously at some point the subject of The Western as a genre came up. It is kinda easy to see how Firefly (and so Serenity) qualify (plenty of ponies, sidearms and law of the fastest draw), and Tombstone which apart from the Latin-off is nearly a textbook Western ... or is it? In discussion about what great Western films should be watched (we like a list, oh yes, we like a list) Unforgiven came up. And it is an utterly brilliant film in itself, "But" I said in the slightly preachy and pretty annoying way that I have "you simply can not start with it. You have to know about westerns, at least have a feel for them, to really get why Unforgiven is so good." Rather than calling me a wanker, or pish-poshing my elitist stance, my co-nerd simply enquired "What then, do you suggest I watch first?" thus further endearing her to me.
I took a moment to think about it.
I took a deep breath, marshaled my feeble mental resources and began.

I took another moment.

As I thought about it, I realised there was quite a complex history and lineage to a film like Unforgiven (or indeed Firefly on a different branch) and although I'm a fan of the genre as I critically appraised my knowledge in order to provide a reasonable, purposeful and appropriate guide to suitable viewing for a keen neophyte I realised (not for the first time) that I was in over my head.
"I'll have a think about it, and I'll make you a list." Best I could do at the time.

That was over two weeks ago, and I've been thinking it over. I started a list, and it seemed inadequate. Then I started a second of films I've seen but forgotten, then a third of films I'd been recommended, but never got to, and then a fourth of westerns set in space. The myriad shifts and mutations in the genre, the massive and now difficult to grasp homogeneity and popularity of it in its heyday all these things somehow need to be encapsulated and yet there are a huge huge number of westerns, and really I have only seen a very tiny part of their whole. Also, to add a little more piquancy some films set "in the west" are not a Western, likewise a story can be on a moonbase and still be quintessentially a Western (so I think) so why is that? What is at the heart of this genre? What really defines it? Is it independence? Masculinity? Justice?

So I have not made the list, and in another fresh move for me, I am not turning to my reference books (much as I am tempted) but shall instead embark upon a course of viewings. I shall ramble my way through 70 years of Western films in all their guises with no deadline, no schedule, no roster, no real purpose other than for the journey itself and to share the glory and the pleasures of the trip with you, my beloved travelling companions.

Suggestions and recommendations are warmly welcomed. Reviews and notes or mentions of films may or may not appear here in the future after this next week - nothing much is certain in life. In the great tradition of the high-country cowgirls "we will be together on the ride until we aint" (BTW I made that up, that tradition and that little aphorism, but I promise, I'll take the reviews a lot more seriously. Actually, I had my fingers crossed then too. You're on your own. You'll need to cross-reference anything you find here that you want to quote, or believe, or otherwise propogate).

I've decided to start in the 40s and have borrowed 2 volumes (!) of the "John Wayne Collection" from my brother-in-law. I shall view selectively from this vast array lest I sicken and fall early into the undertaking.

Until next we meet, Ye-Har!

Push Me, Pull Me

Tonight I had a fresh run-in with the hidden mechanism to social networking - gated communities.
Yes, I know they've been around the whole time. After all, before it was the interwebs it was ARPAnet and if that wasn't the biggest on-line gated community to begin with I'm a chartered accountant. I didn't even have to make that up about ARPAnet. I noes that from reading a book! Thank you Bruce Sterling!! You too can read The Hacker Crackdown if you're old school and don't mind reading things on that scratchy stuff called paper, or, if you prefer, here's the wiki link on it.) (Oh, how droll, i just went to find a link to the book, and actually, it's gone digital. MIT is hosting a copy here. Thank you Bruce Sterling and MIT, you rock.)

But I digress.

I've been getting recommendations for a particular site¹ from different persons of varying trust levels (ie knowledgeable strangers in shops and friends), and in the end, I remembered to write it down on something and put it into my weberciser. Well, jolly jumbucks if it isn't by invitation only! It isn't truly closed - I didn't have to get invited by someone I know (like gmail used to be) and I didn't have to provide in 25 words or less why I would like to be included, or justify my inclusion on the grounds of skills and expected contribution. No, I just asked to be invited, and got told that 1500 invitations go out a day, so I'm 3thousand 6hundred something something in the queue, so I'll have to wait about 3 days.

So my point here, and I do have one, is that pull marketing works.
And that humans still like to be a bit exclusive.
Finally, that the idea that the perfect anything/everything is out there somewhere secret and I don't know about it because I am not in the right circles is traumatising - thus identifying me as a vulnerable under-developed idiot ripe for clever marketing (read = "pretty normal").

Can you tell I've been compulsively watching Mad Men² lately?
Ah, Advertising, my dirty secret.

So I go and look up a bot more about the site and discover it's in Beta (since 2007 - no rush guys!) and has tools based around organising everything for one's hobby. That's what F'book lacks - a hobby connection (apart from tagging in photos). It would be good to cross-sort tools/books across various interests. But now I'm speculating, I still haven't tried to use it.

Something they don't talk up and I will be heartily surprised if it doesn't happen, is targeted advertising inside that room. Once you've asked to enter, you're self-identified as a consumer for linked products and people like me (wearing a work hat for a second) salivate at such a target-rich environment.

We have to make due at work with putting ads in the paper. LEFT.BE-HIND. people, we are being left behind. I cannot tell my eager potential customers about our wonderful range of products - because I have No pull! NO PULL! People are not queued up 3thousand 6hundred something deep to get the latest news about the next tribute show being hosted in Ipswich (it's John Denver in case you're interested, and then Sinatra next month. All happening at the Civic Hall!! peeps). But there has to be an answer to my work problem out there somewhere, somehow...

Which takes me into another tangent. One of the writers for the show (Mad Men) set up a twitter account for the lead character and had the character twittering to fans. Brilliant idea! Other characters got in on the act (hi-larious!) BUT WAIT - the studio that owns the show asked Twitter to shut it down! Oh Dear! You can read about this over here.

So I guess I'm not the only one trying to get more people involved in my product, and engaged in what we offer but then still completely and utterly trying to control how that happens and when. The sheltered workshop has a very strong stance - no interactive stuff! No blogs! No f'books! No relationships. We are push only! PUSH I say! So we push.

We do letter campaigns - no blip in sales. Email campaigns- no blip in sales. Radio - nothing. Yet some shows sell out with barely any work from us. Word of mouth. We have to get the right mouths going. Or book better acts. That the major variable that we don't really like to mention. Paul Kelly played our venue for half the price he played in Brisbane. Any wonder he sold out? Different proposition trying to fill "standing room only" (there's optimism for you) for the Noiseworks re-union tour that no-one was clamouring for.

Life isn't about buying things, it is about being in relationships. That's why we love movies and TV shows - we want to share in those extra relationships. We want to do things and go places with our friends and loved-ones and that's where the pull is, so be pull-able! But being pullable means letting go of the push a bit. We have to loosen up, flow with the breeze, be more like bamboo. Strong yet flexible.

There it is folks. We have to be more like bamboo.

Don Draper would be pleased with that.
There's the concept, work up some art for it.
Have a whiskey everyone.

1. It is www.ravelry.com if you're interested. It's a knitting thing. I really can't tell you anything else until I can have a peek inside.
2. Not just for the eye candy either, although that is a consideration, but for the thoughtful discussion of themes and issues yes, really, I'm watching it for the articles.

Correction

On Monday I wrote a little post in which I referred, somewhat vaguely, to a "NZ Author". I intended to go away and figure out the name of the person I was thinking of and put the name in there, but forgot to do so before I hit the big button.

It came to me last night that I was thinking of Janet Frame.
How could I have not been able to remember that? I don't know.

So Janet Frame, please accept my apologies for having a blank on your name although being able to recall your "Rainbirds" book (wish I'd kept that one), and readers, please accept my absentmindedness in this instance and be assured that this is pretty likely to happen again at some point.

A one-third achievement.

I'm delighted to advise that the project to finish reading Ulysses (by James Joyce) in 2009 continues to trundle forward and today I have basically reached the one-third mark. For those of you good at maths, you will immediately suggest that in order to finish on time I ought to have reached this milestone at the beginning of last month, yes, well done, you are correct.

This does not diminish my current (yet ultimately ephemeral) sense of achievement.

Herewith a relatively random sample (not too random, I chose a bit that at least seems like part of a story) to share with you the jaunty tones and fabulous rhythms. I would give you a little context and explain what is going on, but I barely know myself. I'm trusting in the journey.

Enjoy!

"Lenehan linked his arm warmly.
--But wait till I tell you, he said. We had a midnight lunch too after all the jollification and when we sallied forth it was blue o'clock the morning after the night before. Coming home it was a gorgeous winter's night on the Featherbed Mountain. Bloom and Chris Callinan were on one side of the car and I was with the wife on the other. We started singing glees and duets: LO, THE EARLY BEAM OF MORNING. She was well primed with a good load of Delahunt's port under her bellyband. Every jolt the bloody car gave I had her bumping up against me. Hell's delights! She has a fine pair, God bless her. Like that.
He held his caved hands a cubit from him, frowning:
--I was tucking the rug under her and settling her boa all the time. Know what I mean?
His hands moulded ample curves of air. He shut his eyes tight in delight, his body shrinking, and blew a sweet chirp from his lips.
--The lad stood to attention anyhow, he said with a sigh. She's a gamey mare and no mistake. Bloom was pointing out all the stars and the comets in the heavens to Chris Callinan and the jarvey: the great bear and Hercules and the dragon, and the whole jingbang lot. But, by God, I was lost, so to speak, in the milky way. He knows them all, faith. At last she spotted a weeny weeshy one miles away. AND WHAT STAR IS THAT, POLDY? says she. By God, she had Bloom cornered. THAT ONE, IS IT? says Chris Callinan, SURE THAT'S ONLY WHAT YOU MIGHT CALL A PINPRICK. By God, he wasn't far wide of the mark.
Lenehan stopped and leaned on the riverwall, panting with soft laughter."

"you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior"

Inspired by a tattoo, I discovered this quote:

“Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept record of their troubles. You’ll learn from them - if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.“

- Excerpt from Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

... and realise that either I've either never read this book (could this be possible?!) or I need to read it again, urgently.

Not What it Seems

Since the Enlightenment our western culture has revered the advances and solutions that science has delivered. It is one of those fields of human endeavour of which we are very proud.

After all, We fought our way up from thinking that all flesh contains the maggots that may crawl out of it from death and that the entire firmament spins about us, the magical centre of the universe to a much more detailed, specific, understood and known set of laws and reasons and consequences. We can make a machine and send it to another planet via a complex set of other machines and operate it from here for years of reseach and images. We can measure things so small that they become unpredictable in their behaviour and so discover another realm of knowledge enticing us forwards, we can split the centre of an atom and power a city with it. In short, we have become wizards. But just like Bod, we also call up things we cannot control.

We introduce Cane Toads to deal with a moth they don't eat, we have no way of dealing with the waste outcomes of splitting atoms, we can clone sheep, but we aren't really sure why we might do that. So we have Wizard Watchers, people versed in the lore of science, and ready to protect the interests of the greater good of humans. We call them ethicists. We trust that they are at the front lines, balancing our powers with our responsibilities, weighing the possible good with the largely unknown dangers, calling upon the broader communities for discussion, awareness, support and concensus.

Oh wait, I obviously strayed into science fiction there for a moment. When was the last time you heard an appeal from an ethicist for debate? Actually can you name an ethicist? Um .... Peter Singer? Is he? Does he count? I don't know.

What I do know, is that when I read a news article this morning about a court granting permission to a 17 year old to remove his breasts after having been on a gender-reassignment hormone treatment since the age of 13 everything seemed to be in order until I came across this quote from the ethicist (I excerpt here from the article, my emphasis added):

'But ethicist Nick Tonti-Filippini said mainstream medicine did not recognise hormone treatments and surgery as treatment for gender dysphoria. He said it was a psychiatric disorder qualifying under American guidelines as a psychosis because "it's a belief out of accordance with reality".
"What you are trying to do is make a biological reality correspond to that false belief." he said.'

Well that set off my "danger danger" antenna. My understanding is that psychosis is an extreme level of measure, a non-functional state of mental operation. A level, let us remember for a moment, that was applied in the not-too-distant-past to creative types ( NZ author) and women not deemed suitably compliant or docile by their husbands and used as an excuse for labotomies, elcetric shock torture and extreme confinement. But also, and perhaps more importantly, the way this has been formulated as being abberant in relation to an objective "reality".

So apparently, whenever any of us have an idea or a wish to use our will to make reality different, we're possibly just plan psychotic. A line like this is inviting criticism of everything from hair dye, tattoos, and dressing in BSG costume through to going to university and even the entire field of science itself. Where does Mr Tonti-Filippini intend to draw the line?

What a double whammy. I presumed that if ethicists exist, they would be humanists. It seems this has been naive. It seems also, that Mr Tonti-Filippini would find many of my behaviours and desires to defy existing reality as being aberrant enough to justify the label psychotic and so deprive me of my capacity to contribute to the human endeavour of growth and expansion (in ways that do not simply involve the multiplication of our number) and nested inside that issue is his presumption of an objective "reality". In the words of Dylan Moran, "Why does no one say, let's be realistic, oil me ?" Why is reality presumed to be locked in, ordered, un-changeable?

It is easy enough to discover that much as Alex in the court case identifies as "he", our ethicist actually identifies himself as "Dr Tonti-Filippini, Catholic bio-ethicist". Ahh. A little bit more detail gives a lot more context to that right-wing quote. Of all the versions of this news story promulgated across the various news sites of the interwebs, no one bothered to do any more than repeat the copy and the flaws of the first story filed.

Proving in the end that judges in courts can still make thoughtful, humanist decisions, but we only hear about them through the irritating whine of bigots masquerading as informed specialists and the haze of lazy journalism. We, in the form of science have created from our own efforts amazing tools, but we clog their workings ourselves.

I welcome our robot overlords.

Meeting Mary

Riley and I had some house chores to do today, and when we got to the Vet's place to pick up his special food he decided to wait in the car for this stop. I'm glad he did, because when I walked in after a moment I realised that I had inadvertently arrived at a very difficult time for the older couple in the waiting room.
I went to the display of leashes and tried to be invisible while the man took care of a very hefty bill. The woman on the bench was also trying to be invisible, but after a few seconds she started shaking, and I realised that she was sobbing, and trying not to make any noise. Her face was utterly collapsed in grief, and her hands, her arms, her back were all shuddering. I couldn't stand by and see that pain and do nothing. I could feel my own chest, my own guts cramping in empathy. I had a moment of hesitation about what would be polite, but this was beyond the realms of polite, I could not pretend that this was not happening. So I just sat next to her and put my hand on her back with my nearest arm, and let myself feel with her.
This could have been me last month if things had gone differently with Riley. She could barely breathe. Her husband was handed a dense, heavy black plastic bag, and he could barely see, although he was trying to hold himself together, he couldn't talk. It was the vet who called the woman, "Come on Mary, time to go." and she could not leave that bench. She was trapped in the moment of realisation that nothing they had done this morning could save their beloved, and she would be going home to a funeral, not to a recuperation. I sat with her through that horrible, horrible moment, and I wept too. I wept for her pain, and for their grief and for the loss of that precious life, and for the weary voice of the vet and for the gratitude I have that Riley is still alive.
They left in a slow, agonised stumble.

The assistant apologised to me "that you shouldn't have had to see that", but what had I seen? Nothing bad I thought. I had seen love, love caught in grief, but love nonetheless. I took a tissue from the box on the counter and caught the tears. A deep breath helped me to come back to my self, and the reason I was there - for love alive, waiting in the car and in need of biscuits.
"No problem" I replied, "its all part of the job, isn't it?"
"Yes." She said relieved, for the reality of being a vet's assistant is littered with moments like this but people like to think that it is all birthing kittens and the heroic saving of lives. "Sometimes there's just nothing we can do." She said, and it wasn't an excuse, it just was.

Riley was waiting eagerly for me when I returned to the car, and he had been happily oblivious of the black bag carried tenderly past him. I thought of that couple, laying the bag on the back seat of their car, and I hoped that they didn't have far to go before they could be safely off the road.
We backed out of the carpark and re-entered the world, and there they were, still parked on the side, and we caught each other's eyes, Mary and I, and she raised her hand to me, and I to her.

Under the One Roof

Indeed a new month has rolled into view and taken up residence on the couch - you know in the one spot that has the best view of the tv and the hallway and the kitchen - the spot the alpha person in the house takes. That's where May is sitting right now. It is just a guest, so I'm letting it go.

There's always been something very comforting about a positive communal living arrangement to me. Possibly due to being raised in rural environments where it is hard to see the roofs of ones neighbours, let alone easily interact with them, and so whoever is under the roof where you are is the sum total of what you've got to deal with. The idea that there might be people of my age or who share my interests under that roof rocked my world when I moved out of home and continues to do so. Sometimes I wonder why I live alone now. But nothing is absolute (except maybe for the rule that nothing is absolute).

Yes yes the internet means we can all be under the one roof, and of course at a very fundamental level we are all part of the great oneness .... but as these things remain somewhat intangible in my moment-to-moment reality. Actually physically seeing people and sharing meals and laughing at spontaneous convergences of personality, circumstance and wit remains a delicious pleasure that simply cannot be replicated in any other medium. And like a child, I still try and glut myself with it, and in doing so trigger the need for withdrawal and reflection to balance it out again and feel whole, both myself, and a social self and only in the gentle repeated mixing of aloneness and togetherness does this blend mature and rise and become some very tasty bready product that I love to be and share and be again.

Ah. I am feeling the concrete of the path and the dirt of possibility and the walls of protection and the sky of opening and the joy of being held and the lure of the quiet room. Perhaps I need another coffee before I deal with May. It got one day in under my guard, but I've got my eye on it now. A bleary, unfocused eye but it is all I have to offer.