Showing posts with label Stupid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stupid. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
I'd like to learn from my Mistakes
Here's a hot tip for beginners - don't keep using earbuds that have deteriorated to the point that there's exposed wires. I shouldn't have to say it - but there it is.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Sedition in the Dark
It is deeply unAustralian to dislike hot weather, be largely disinterested in sport and be underwhelmed by the idea of mowing in middle of the day, but nonetheless, here I am. Your personal representative of that irritating single digit demographic of population that insists on watching SBS, reading books without pictures and not eating meat. Frankly, under Howard the sedition laws were getting very close to netting us pale non-sporties and veggos. I don't think any of those "patriot act" style laws have been revoked, but I'm pretty confident they haven't continued to expand. (Of course, they may have. My deliberate ignorance of news means that I remain unaware of what new evils the blandly congenial face of our Current PM hides).
I used to find the idea of sedition very interesting. As I understand it (ie, vague guessing rather than any looking up of definitions, or actual research. I like to start off with a kind-of gestalt feel and spiral my way towards accuracy. Lends slightly more to poetry if there's any in the offing than just diving in to the dictionary. But I digress.) sedition is kinda like mutiny, but on land. Or the idea of mutiny. Of course learning about Pirates has shown me a few more things about mutiny too. Sometimes 'mutiny' was a fairly straightforward commercial decision where a strongly held difference in acquisitional strategies and philosophies of plunder led to simple (ie bloodless) partings where the pirates' fleet (yes, they often had small convoys and even fleets) would experience a re-distribution of crew and a ship or two would peel away and head to fresh horizons. Seems reasonable. In other times, most notably in the above-board commercial world and the navy, mutiny was the last line of defence against a Captain gone buttfuck crazy - wigging out all over the place and homicidal on an unsustainable trajectory. Of course, Captains get to write the Ship's Log, so later on it could be hard to get the dead to speak in one's defence if the Captain had a lucid moment with quill before the parting of ways.
So anyway, why might this be interesting? It seemed to me that crumbly empires get more concerned with what you might be thinking than what you're actually doing. Critical thought can become a crime. Frank conversation about how things could practically be different can become a crime. Not a misdemeanour, not a concern, not a 'no scones for you naughty thing!' but a crime.
A much greater thinker than I, George Orwell, has of course covered this ground superbly, in his seminal work of paranoia "1984". I recommend it to myself for a re-read and to you dear reader for your own edification (read it here for free).
I'm not up to Orwell. I'm just saying that for some reason a few years back, we started making it explicit that thinking was problematic to the Australian way of life. That was interesting because it seemed so quaintly old-school and utterly, utterly pointless. Then it wasn't interesting at all for a long time, just another example of how shitty life can be, and keeping that list is a really dull hobby. I let it go.
Then last weekend I watched "Death Race" and it set me to thinking (as incredibly brutal, masochistic, post-collapse action films often do) about what we like to think of as "fiction" and therefore entertaining, and who we think are suitable people to fill the roles of villains. Not many people saw Death Race, despite Jason Statham in the lead and Ian "Swearengen" McShane in support so let me break it down for you... and bear with me as the plot does not hang together in the film so this will not sound very cogent*.
An ex-con who happens to also be an ex-car racing guy's wife is brutally murdered and he is framed for it so that he can go to the commercially run jail where they RACE (a la Running Man) in a competition to THE DEATH to win their freedom. BTW the race of fortified and armed cars is telecast live and viewing is by subscription, thereby earning the prison mega-bucks.
Ok. Nothing new there. Literally (it is a remake of a '76 film). I won't distract our conversation by going into the gender stuff (other than to say it is tediously predictable - the wife is a corpse before she gets 2 full lines out, the uber-evil Warden is a post-menopausal corporate witch drone, and then there's 3 or 4 bootylicious and interchangable sets of tits and arses to dress the cars up. Sorry "navigators" from the women's prison.) That was a long set-up for a short pay-off. The fiction here (can you spot it?) that makes all of this allowable - is that "in the future, prisons will be run for (dramatic pause) profit!" (GASP OF SHOCK) Only in that kind of hideously peverted world would something so craven come about.
But of course this fiction is a fiction.
Prisons the world over, and here in Australia, are run by contractors to lesser or greater degrees already. Some in the States are already "purpose built facilities" completely funded by commercial interests. Running a prison is like removing garbage - one of those services that the community expects gets handled, but actually as long as the name and the signage is ok, really don't care who exactly is taking care of that business, and it's a growth industry. It's the Indian call-centre approach to staffing and funding. A hollow-core world, and, most importantly to this discussion, it is old hat. Maybe in 76 it seemed a wild idea, great for some future world (Mad Max-esque - if you will. Actually Mad Max came out in 79 - but you get my drift.) and certainly when Ghosts ... of the Civil Dead came out in 88 it was a chilling commentary on a system running loose and note - even the title tied it in to the concepts that prisoners were people, with rights (BTW Nick Cave co-wrote this, and had an acting role in it. Keyword: BLEAK. It is not a popcorn and beer type film - unlike Death Race which is clearly made to be consumed as Entertainment "Ghosts..." feels like a nightmare documentary ). But I digress.
To bring this back to sedition, it seems we have eaten our own tail. If sedition is a crime of thought in which criticism of the ruling system is entertained, what is it called when telling the truth about the ruling system is seen as distasteful or undesirable enough that we maintain a consensus reality that these unpalatable truths remain fictions?
How close are we to a situation where, on the books at least, speaking aloud a truth becomes a crime?
Close enough, I'd say, that someone will be able to furnish an example in Australia of where this is already the case. Or proposed to be the case. Probably in that that bundle of ridiculous on-line measures. Anyway. There it is. I don't really know what to do with that line of thought. It begs for action of some kind. But what?
In a hollow-core world where do you toss the molotov?
* WARNING - PLOT SPOILER. You and I know that it is unlikly that you're going to:
a. Watch this film, eva.
b. Not see this twist coming, and
c. Have the pleasure of watching massively overclocked cars race around almost endlessly brutally killing 'people' ruined by this brief synopsis. Basically this is a film that delivers on the core promise of the title. "Death Race" That's what they were selling and that's what they made. No nancy-pantsing around.
I used to find the idea of sedition very interesting. As I understand it (ie, vague guessing rather than any looking up of definitions, or actual research. I like to start off with a kind-of gestalt feel and spiral my way towards accuracy. Lends slightly more to poetry if there's any in the offing than just diving in to the dictionary. But I digress.) sedition is kinda like mutiny, but on land. Or the idea of mutiny. Of course learning about Pirates has shown me a few more things about mutiny too. Sometimes 'mutiny' was a fairly straightforward commercial decision where a strongly held difference in acquisitional strategies and philosophies of plunder led to simple (ie bloodless) partings where the pirates' fleet (yes, they often had small convoys and even fleets) would experience a re-distribution of crew and a ship or two would peel away and head to fresh horizons. Seems reasonable. In other times, most notably in the above-board commercial world and the navy, mutiny was the last line of defence against a Captain gone buttfuck crazy - wigging out all over the place and homicidal on an unsustainable trajectory. Of course, Captains get to write the Ship's Log, so later on it could be hard to get the dead to speak in one's defence if the Captain had a lucid moment with quill before the parting of ways.
So anyway, why might this be interesting? It seemed to me that crumbly empires get more concerned with what you might be thinking than what you're actually doing. Critical thought can become a crime. Frank conversation about how things could practically be different can become a crime. Not a misdemeanour, not a concern, not a 'no scones for you naughty thing!' but a crime.
A much greater thinker than I, George Orwell, has of course covered this ground superbly, in his seminal work of paranoia "1984". I recommend it to myself for a re-read and to you dear reader for your own edification (read it here for free).
I'm not up to Orwell. I'm just saying that for some reason a few years back, we started making it explicit that thinking was problematic to the Australian way of life. That was interesting because it seemed so quaintly old-school and utterly, utterly pointless. Then it wasn't interesting at all for a long time, just another example of how shitty life can be, and keeping that list is a really dull hobby. I let it go.
Then last weekend I watched "Death Race" and it set me to thinking (as incredibly brutal, masochistic, post-collapse action films often do) about what we like to think of as "fiction" and therefore entertaining, and who we think are suitable people to fill the roles of villains. Not many people saw Death Race, despite Jason Statham in the lead and Ian "Swearengen" McShane in support so let me break it down for you... and bear with me as the plot does not hang together in the film so this will not sound very cogent*.
An ex-con who happens to also be an ex-car racing guy's wife is brutally murdered and he is framed for it so that he can go to the commercially run jail where they RACE (a la Running Man) in a competition to THE DEATH to win their freedom. BTW the race of fortified and armed cars is telecast live and viewing is by subscription, thereby earning the prison mega-bucks.
Ok. Nothing new there. Literally (it is a remake of a '76 film). I won't distract our conversation by going into the gender stuff (other than to say it is tediously predictable - the wife is a corpse before she gets 2 full lines out, the uber-evil Warden is a post-menopausal corporate witch drone, and then there's 3 or 4 bootylicious and interchangable sets of tits and arses to dress the cars up. Sorry "navigators" from the women's prison.) That was a long set-up for a short pay-off. The fiction here (can you spot it?) that makes all of this allowable - is that "in the future, prisons will be run for (dramatic pause) profit!" (GASP OF SHOCK) Only in that kind of hideously peverted world would something so craven come about.
But of course this fiction is a fiction.
Prisons the world over, and here in Australia, are run by contractors to lesser or greater degrees already. Some in the States are already "purpose built facilities" completely funded by commercial interests. Running a prison is like removing garbage - one of those services that the community expects gets handled, but actually as long as the name and the signage is ok, really don't care who exactly is taking care of that business, and it's a growth industry. It's the Indian call-centre approach to staffing and funding. A hollow-core world, and, most importantly to this discussion, it is old hat. Maybe in 76 it seemed a wild idea, great for some future world (Mad Max-esque - if you will. Actually Mad Max came out in 79 - but you get my drift.) and certainly when Ghosts ... of the Civil Dead came out in 88 it was a chilling commentary on a system running loose and note - even the title tied it in to the concepts that prisoners were people, with rights (BTW Nick Cave co-wrote this, and had an acting role in it. Keyword: BLEAK. It is not a popcorn and beer type film - unlike Death Race which is clearly made to be consumed as Entertainment "Ghosts..." feels like a nightmare documentary ). But I digress.
To bring this back to sedition, it seems we have eaten our own tail. If sedition is a crime of thought in which criticism of the ruling system is entertained, what is it called when telling the truth about the ruling system is seen as distasteful or undesirable enough that we maintain a consensus reality that these unpalatable truths remain fictions?
How close are we to a situation where, on the books at least, speaking aloud a truth becomes a crime?
Close enough, I'd say, that someone will be able to furnish an example in Australia of where this is already the case. Or proposed to be the case. Probably in that that bundle of ridiculous on-line measures. Anyway. There it is. I don't really know what to do with that line of thought. It begs for action of some kind. But what?
In a hollow-core world where do you toss the molotov?
* WARNING - PLOT SPOILER. You and I know that it is unlikly that you're going to:
a. Watch this film, eva.
b. Not see this twist coming, and
c. Have the pleasure of watching massively overclocked cars race around almost endlessly brutally killing 'people' ruined by this brief synopsis. Basically this is a film that delivers on the core promise of the title. "Death Race" That's what they were selling and that's what they made. No nancy-pantsing around.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Nano Halfway Status: Not Sucking! Woot!
What is it that is different about this year?
I busted a gut last year and basically washed out.
It is half way through the month and I'm on 25 673 words - essentially right where I should be to have a chance of getting across the line. That is to say - tracking just fine, and so far I've missed only about 4 days writing due to work/travel/homicidal tendencies. And without wanting to jinx anything or sound like a wanger, it has been not too bad, writing-effort-wise. Not too many anxious blockages, that kind of thing. Actually, it has been pretty darn good. Fun.
This is why people get superstitious - because when things suck it is easy to figure out how I choked or sabotaged myself, but when things go well, I look for external reasons. "Oh, I found a white feather - there must be an angel watching over me" (thanks Angel, pls leave cash next time!) or "I was wearing my lucky striped undies when I had the idea / wrote the first page/ decided to make that character into a guy so people wouldn't think it was me," or "I turned my computer on and then I made the coffee - it must work better in that order." Whatever. Something outside of me is responsible for the good stuff.
How freakin insidious is that?!
Who designed these brains anyway? What kind of genetic or evolutionary advantage can there possibly be to building in a tendency to neuroses?!?
I don't think I'm alone in having that kind of experience. I just wish I could swap the polarities for a while. Have a little rest from being infinitesimally small and insignificant and soak up some center-of-the-universe juice for a bit. Ah well. I'm not hung up on it, not while the writing is coming ok. Of course at some point I'll have to take off the lucky striped undies, and then if things start going badly, well there will be tears until they're out of the wash, I can tell you that for nothing.
Also, please send chocolate, I'm out.
I busted a gut last year and basically washed out.
It is half way through the month and I'm on 25 673 words - essentially right where I should be to have a chance of getting across the line. That is to say - tracking just fine, and so far I've missed only about 4 days writing due to work/travel/homicidal tendencies. And without wanting to jinx anything or sound like a wanger, it has been not too bad, writing-effort-wise. Not too many anxious blockages, that kind of thing. Actually, it has been pretty darn good. Fun.
This is why people get superstitious - because when things suck it is easy to figure out how I choked or sabotaged myself, but when things go well, I look for external reasons. "Oh, I found a white feather - there must be an angel watching over me" (thanks Angel, pls leave cash next time!) or "I was wearing my lucky striped undies when I had the idea / wrote the first page/ decided to make that character into a guy so people wouldn't think it was me," or "I turned my computer on and then I made the coffee - it must work better in that order." Whatever. Something outside of me is responsible for the good stuff.
How freakin insidious is that?!
Who designed these brains anyway? What kind of genetic or evolutionary advantage can there possibly be to building in a tendency to neuroses?!?
I don't think I'm alone in having that kind of experience. I just wish I could swap the polarities for a while. Have a little rest from being infinitesimally small and insignificant and soak up some center-of-the-universe juice for a bit. Ah well. I'm not hung up on it, not while the writing is coming ok. Of course at some point I'll have to take off the lucky striped undies, and then if things start going badly, well there will be tears until they're out of the wash, I can tell you that for nothing.
Also, please send chocolate, I'm out.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Battle Lines
My sister mentioned in passing yesterday that the family is considering holding an intervention on me. Well there's some news.
Which of my many antisocial and problematic behaviours could they be planning to target I wonder? Could it be my relentless cynicism and brooding depressive belief that life is pretty shit and it is best to pretend otherwise so one doesn't spiral helplessly into an abyss of self destruction? Could it be my venomous and acidic disregard for my fellow humans and seething hatred for politicians, derivatives fund managers and smokers? Could it be my addiction to Spider Solitaire - that sensuous and seductive siren who lures me endlessly onto the rocks of lost time?
No. Apparently, these things don't rate a mention. The family takes it all on board with barely a flicker. There are bigger issues. Issues that threaten the fabric of my life if only I could wake up to their horrible implications.
I look again. Is it the dead lemon tree that I haven't removed yet from the barren (possibly poisonous) part of the yard? No. The trees need trimming? I Mean they're kind of touching those wire things at the front of the house again - that can't be good. No, not that, but yes, they do need a trim. The obsession with re-watching Chronicles of Riddick? Nope. Dodgy and worth keeping an eye on, but no.
What then!?
The evil that hides in plain sight gentle reader is this:
Too many books.
To come here I jettisoned about two thirds of my library, and I have culled and thinned and negotiated ever since. Sure there's a few "rainy day" reads put aside, there's a few in the "maybe read" pile that need to be evaluated, there's the "read once - possibly keep for re-reading" pile, there's the room full of books that fall into the "LOVED IT" category, there's the small collection of first editions, there's non-fiction and reference collection, there's the Batman collection. Very humble collections they are too! There's a few piles here and there I admit. But there are no books in the bathroom! There are no books in the hall! And there are only cookbooks in the kitchen! The shed has only 3 tubs of books, that's not bad considering how much room is in there, but I just don't trust the tubs to stand up to the bugs and pests that rule the kingdom of Shed. All the doors in the house open and close without hindrance. Oh, well, except for that one! But other than that I think the house is, frankly, thin on the ground for intellectual stimulation!
Too many books indeed!
There's barbarians at the gate. Raise the drawbridge! Fly the flags of resistance, rattle your swords in their scabbards, release the monsters into the moat! Prepare for battle!
(Oh, and if you're going to pop by, you're welcome to stay, just let me know a day or two ahead if you can so I can unearth the bed in the spare room, it just has a little "filing" on it for the minute.)
Which of my many antisocial and problematic behaviours could they be planning to target I wonder? Could it be my relentless cynicism and brooding depressive belief that life is pretty shit and it is best to pretend otherwise so one doesn't spiral helplessly into an abyss of self destruction? Could it be my venomous and acidic disregard for my fellow humans and seething hatred for politicians, derivatives fund managers and smokers? Could it be my addiction to Spider Solitaire - that sensuous and seductive siren who lures me endlessly onto the rocks of lost time?
No. Apparently, these things don't rate a mention. The family takes it all on board with barely a flicker. There are bigger issues. Issues that threaten the fabric of my life if only I could wake up to their horrible implications.
I look again. Is it the dead lemon tree that I haven't removed yet from the barren (possibly poisonous) part of the yard? No. The trees need trimming? I Mean they're kind of touching those wire things at the front of the house again - that can't be good. No, not that, but yes, they do need a trim. The obsession with re-watching Chronicles of Riddick? Nope. Dodgy and worth keeping an eye on, but no.
What then!?
The evil that hides in plain sight gentle reader is this:
Too many books.
To come here I jettisoned about two thirds of my library, and I have culled and thinned and negotiated ever since. Sure there's a few "rainy day" reads put aside, there's a few in the "maybe read" pile that need to be evaluated, there's the "read once - possibly keep for re-reading" pile, there's the room full of books that fall into the "LOVED IT" category, there's the small collection of first editions, there's non-fiction and reference collection, there's the Batman collection. Very humble collections they are too! There's a few piles here and there I admit. But there are no books in the bathroom! There are no books in the hall! And there are only cookbooks in the kitchen! The shed has only 3 tubs of books, that's not bad considering how much room is in there, but I just don't trust the tubs to stand up to the bugs and pests that rule the kingdom of Shed. All the doors in the house open and close without hindrance. Oh, well, except for that one! But other than that I think the house is, frankly, thin on the ground for intellectual stimulation!
Too many books indeed!
There's barbarians at the gate. Raise the drawbridge! Fly the flags of resistance, rattle your swords in their scabbards, release the monsters into the moat! Prepare for battle!
(Oh, and if you're going to pop by, you're welcome to stay, just let me know a day or two ahead if you can so I can unearth the bed in the spare room, it just has a little "filing" on it for the minute.)
Saturday, October 17, 2009
The First Japanese Teahouse in Qld
Ipswich is building the first Japanese Teahouse in Queensland in the Nerima Gardens -a small(ish - by Qld standards) enclosure in the very freakin large Queens Park.
That's kinda cool. A bit of kimono-zen-calmness is always good to soak up. Maybe this will be somewhere that one might be able to go on an utterly brain-numbingly dull and hot Saturday morning in order to escape the litany of suburban mediocrity and lawnmowers. Some green tea, perhaps some music. The gardens in which is is currently being constructed are lovely and beautifully landscaped with a mix of Australian natives and Japanese classics.
So I enquire.
Once it is built, there will be an official opening ceremony in early November with Japanese ambassadors and a Tea Master. Well that's a bit fancy-pants! Sounds good, so I ask if I can come. No Way. The opening ceremony is by invitation only - no plebeians allowed, no public at all. Oh, I see.
I further enquire, "After the formal proceedings there's bound to be some kind of public element or opportunity. That's what I meant. Can I please come to that?"
"No. There is no public event."
"Oh. So it will just be open to the public after the formal ceremony."
"No," Gives me a look like I am an irritating idiot, "after the ceremony it will be locked up. It's a very special place, you can't just let people into it willy-nilly."
"Right. I get it. So there's just going to be certain days or special events that it is open for the public. Like a museum."
"No. It. Will. Not. Be. Open. To. The. Public."
"Message received and understood. Thank you for your time."
WTF?
This construction is a function of the Sister-City relationship with Nerima in Japan (what are they getting I wonder? - a backyard barbie setup? Maybe a pool with a faux-Balinese shade house?) but there's neither inclination nor resources for integrating it into the "existing cultural fabric" of the area. So why the fuck is it really getting built?!
The cynic in me says so that:
a) It is a "first" and therefore secures the formal ceremony (and therefore press)
b) It is a "first" and therefore secures bragging rights
The chirpy, positive one inside me says - "Don't be so quick to judge! You don't know the whole story! There may be a whole team of people working away on a culturally rich and socially rewarding series of exchanges and events that will happen around this eagerly awaited facility and it is just that they can't officially be announced yet! It could still really work out to be great!"
Maybe she's right. I shall have to wait and see. In the meantime, I can go and visit the garden and see if I can peer into the construction site. I'll take a thermos of green tea and maybe that collection of Japanese Sci-fi I've been planning to re-read. Riley and I will have our own freakin tea ceremony. No kimono required*.
* Unless you use kimono in the direct or literal meaning of "things to wear" in which case, yes, I will be clothed. Riley will be sporting his fur - summer length.
That's kinda cool. A bit of kimono-zen-calmness is always good to soak up. Maybe this will be somewhere that one might be able to go on an utterly brain-numbingly dull and hot Saturday morning in order to escape the litany of suburban mediocrity and lawnmowers. Some green tea, perhaps some music. The gardens in which is is currently being constructed are lovely and beautifully landscaped with a mix of Australian natives and Japanese classics.
So I enquire.
Once it is built, there will be an official opening ceremony in early November with Japanese ambassadors and a Tea Master. Well that's a bit fancy-pants! Sounds good, so I ask if I can come. No Way. The opening ceremony is by invitation only - no plebeians allowed, no public at all. Oh, I see.
I further enquire, "After the formal proceedings there's bound to be some kind of public element or opportunity. That's what I meant. Can I please come to that?"
"No. There is no public event."
"Oh. So it will just be open to the public after the formal ceremony."
"No," Gives me a look like I am an irritating idiot, "after the ceremony it will be locked up. It's a very special place, you can't just let people into it willy-nilly."
"Right. I get it. So there's just going to be certain days or special events that it is open for the public. Like a museum."
"No. It. Will. Not. Be. Open. To. The. Public."
"Message received and understood. Thank you for your time."
WTF?
This construction is a function of the Sister-City relationship with Nerima in Japan (what are they getting I wonder? - a backyard barbie setup? Maybe a pool with a faux-Balinese shade house?) but there's neither inclination nor resources for integrating it into the "existing cultural fabric" of the area. So why the fuck is it really getting built?!
The cynic in me says so that:
a) It is a "first" and therefore secures the formal ceremony (and therefore press)
b) It is a "first" and therefore secures bragging rights
The chirpy, positive one inside me says - "Don't be so quick to judge! You don't know the whole story! There may be a whole team of people working away on a culturally rich and socially rewarding series of exchanges and events that will happen around this eagerly awaited facility and it is just that they can't officially be announced yet! It could still really work out to be great!"
Maybe she's right. I shall have to wait and see. In the meantime, I can go and visit the garden and see if I can peer into the construction site. I'll take a thermos of green tea and maybe that collection of Japanese Sci-fi I've been planning to re-read. Riley and I will have our own freakin tea ceremony. No kimono required*.
* Unless you use kimono in the direct or literal meaning of "things to wear" in which case, yes, I will be clothed. Riley will be sporting his fur - summer length.
Monday, October 12, 2009
I don't like Mondays
For about eight or nine years I worked in the real world, where what you did and how you did it relly mattered in quite a direct way. That experience was far from cubicles and the monday-to-friday-9-to-5. As you probably know, in the real world, service industries (and like it or not Australia's domestic economy is largely service based) are 7 day operations. Well they are on the central planets. Out here on the rim there's not much that's open on a Sunday, or even a saturday arvo.
But I digress.
I had to make many changes when I took the colonisation shuttle here. The pamphlet said things would be a bit different, but I couldn't have guessed how hard it would be to crowbar myself back into the little box of punching the clock, trying to work on an interface centrally controlled and monitored in work processes based around political expediency and box-ticking rather than service, and with people who've grown up here and think (at best) of everywhere else as only a possible holiday destination (but why pass up a trip to the pleasure boats?). The one thing of all of these that is hardest to swallow is not the petty bitching over imaginary power bases, nor the endless chatter about the best fake tan lotions or speed bleaching of hair. It is the cold, terminal nature of Monday Mornings.
Back in the bustle and business of the central planets, Monday mornings and Friday nights are largely just like any other other moments in the purchasing/pleasuring continuum of modern life. Actual days off may vary. From the inside, Mondays and Fridays are the bi-polar manic days of emotional extremism highlighting the endless cycle of the rat-race and the pathetic occlusion of all that is organic and natural about living. Rigid, imposed and arbitary rules still are the guiding principles of bureaucratic structures, no matter their inefficiency, their pointless focus on attendence and process above output and quality, their heartbreaking monotony.
No sir, I do not like these type of Mondays at all.
But I digress.
I had to make many changes when I took the colonisation shuttle here. The pamphlet said things would be a bit different, but I couldn't have guessed how hard it would be to crowbar myself back into the little box of punching the clock, trying to work on an interface centrally controlled and monitored in work processes based around political expediency and box-ticking rather than service, and with people who've grown up here and think (at best) of everywhere else as only a possible holiday destination (but why pass up a trip to the pleasure boats?). The one thing of all of these that is hardest to swallow is not the petty bitching over imaginary power bases, nor the endless chatter about the best fake tan lotions or speed bleaching of hair. It is the cold, terminal nature of Monday Mornings.
Back in the bustle and business of the central planets, Monday mornings and Friday nights are largely just like any other other moments in the purchasing/pleasuring continuum of modern life. Actual days off may vary. From the inside, Mondays and Fridays are the bi-polar manic days of emotional extremism highlighting the endless cycle of the rat-race and the pathetic occlusion of all that is organic and natural about living. Rigid, imposed and arbitary rules still are the guiding principles of bureaucratic structures, no matter their inefficiency, their pointless focus on attendence and process above output and quality, their heartbreaking monotony.
No sir, I do not like these type of Mondays at all.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Malfunction
Sometimes I really hate computers.
My whole post was just replaced by a letter I was capitalising before publishing, and the software autosaved that stupid version over the existing versions.
What I am really steamed about, what that I decided against composing in another program because I have a habit of always saving multiple copies of things unnecessarily and feeling like a worrisome nana with redundant files hanging around.
Until suddenly that just looks like prudent backing-up.
ARRRGH!!!!
My whole post was just replaced by a letter I was capitalising before publishing, and the software autosaved that stupid version over the existing versions.
What I am really steamed about, what that I decided against composing in another program because I have a habit of always saving multiple copies of things unnecessarily and feeling like a worrisome nana with redundant files hanging around.
Until suddenly that just looks like prudent backing-up.
ARRRGH!!!!
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Solstice and Spaceship Earth
It is winter solstice again; the long night.
I went to my little sister's place for dinner and to play cards and it was good to see them and catch up on their news. Time is moving faster for them now that she's going to have a baby. There's a very finite and concrete sense of 'time left before the baby comes' and 'everything after'. I can see what shape it is giving to weekends and plans and of course their relationship. All the natural winter urges are heightened for them.
I was thinking earlier today - what is the most beautiful thing that you can think of? Or perhaps it is a place or a person or a sound... feel the joy and the beauty it brings you. How precious and wonderful that is.
Now unless you naturally think of the Eagle Nebula, the Sun's corona or the rings of Saturn, chances are very very good that what you thought of - even your top ten - are all here on earth. Everything is here. So why is it that being a 'greenie' or someone concerned about the well being and survival of the planet is still considered such a social crime? I just don't understand how anyone can be so obstinately ignorant of the peril we're in. It isn't even that "if we break this one we don't have a spare" because we know this one is already broken and the question on every body's heart and mind should really be more like "how much can we mend it if we all pitch in?"
All those extinct species won't come back, but maybe we won't all have to genetically merge with salamanders to survive.
I went to my little sister's place for dinner and to play cards and it was good to see them and catch up on their news. Time is moving faster for them now that she's going to have a baby. There's a very finite and concrete sense of 'time left before the baby comes' and 'everything after'. I can see what shape it is giving to weekends and plans and of course their relationship. All the natural winter urges are heightened for them.
I was thinking earlier today - what is the most beautiful thing that you can think of? Or perhaps it is a place or a person or a sound... feel the joy and the beauty it brings you. How precious and wonderful that is.
Now unless you naturally think of the Eagle Nebula, the Sun's corona or the rings of Saturn, chances are very very good that what you thought of - even your top ten - are all here on earth. Everything is here. So why is it that being a 'greenie' or someone concerned about the well being and survival of the planet is still considered such a social crime? I just don't understand how anyone can be so obstinately ignorant of the peril we're in. It isn't even that "if we break this one we don't have a spare" because we know this one is already broken and the question on every body's heart and mind should really be more like "how much can we mend it if we all pitch in?"
All those extinct species won't come back, but maybe we won't all have to genetically merge with salamanders to survive.
Monday, May 04, 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Australians all let us rejoice, for we are protected by our paternalistic government from seeing complicated things on the interwebs
This week it was easy to shake one's head sadly at those poor Chinese people who have suffered the indignity of the whole world knowing that their internet feeds censored Barack Obama's inauguration speech. In a double-whammy they got fucked by their own government and they missed a few good lines. Poor bastards. But then that's what you get for living in a politically shit country, like Australia China.
Of course Australia is a pretty cool and democratic place where if someone proposed that kind of thing it would be laughed at byme the rude people and heavily debated and considered and then rejected by all the polite &/ thinking people. Not just implemented. Not our style.
Aussies like to think of ourselves as easy going and fairdinkum enough to not really need the pain-in-the-arse paperwork. We as a nation are happy to sign up for things that sound like good ideas (with all the best intentions,) but we don't necessarily turn them into anything specific here at home. Our constitution reads like a random chunk of tax law. I guess that's what happens when you're set up by bureaucrats rather than Enlightenment idealists, but I digress.
Australia isn't the kind of place to freak out over, say, art or worry too much about people taking responsibility for their own lives, no way mate! So when our government says that blocking nasty things is for our own good, they probably really know what they're doing. We should just stay relaxed and comfortable, and let them take care of it.
After all, it'll be completely painless. You won't even know there's anything missing!
404 NOT FOUND
Of course Australia is a pretty cool and democratic place where if someone proposed that kind of thing it would be laughed at by
Aussies like to think of ourselves as easy going and fairdinkum enough to not really need the pain-in-the-arse paperwork. We as a nation are happy to sign up for things that sound like good ideas (with all the best intentions,) but we don't necessarily turn them into anything specific here at home. Our constitution reads like a random chunk of tax law. I guess that's what happens when you're set up by bureaucrats rather than Enlightenment idealists, but I digress.
Australia isn't the kind of place to freak out over, say, art or worry too much about people taking responsibility for their own lives, no way mate! So when our government says that blocking nasty things is for our own good, they probably really know what they're doing. We should just stay relaxed and comfortable, and let them take care of it.
After all, it'll be completely painless. You won't even know there's anything missing!
404 NOT FOUND
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Craft Rage
Knitting while watching "Blades of Glory" last night I dropped a stitch. I should have seen it coming (if you can excuse the pun, please do), I had the lights off, I wasn't paying attention to either activity and I'd consumed a 'slightly' over-large dinner so was sprawled skewed on my side, whale style. Uncomfortable and irritable is not the right attitude for almost anything other than perhaps voting and deciding on one's funeral arrangements. But I digress.
So I don't immediately notice I've dropped this stitch because ball #2 of the originally cute and fun wool ("Snowball" from Lincraft. I would link you through it it, but even their web site sucks) has turned out to be a ball of scraps and so far I've had to re-join it 3 times in the first 4 rows. Cue gritted teeth and irritation spiking into unfocused anger. So I was trying to check that my knot hadn't come undone and inadvertently gave the dropped stitch a nudge and BANG down she goes about 5 rows. Shit. I fumbled it and another 2 rows gone. Oh man. Lots of fiddly stuffing around will have to happen in strong daylight if this project is going to be salvaged and it is already late. Weeks late. It was going to be a gift, then a belated gift, now, now I'm just a shit friend who couldn't get it together to finish a simple project.
Having learnt from dealing with my Father and Microsoft products that there is simply no use in cursing and railing at an inanimate object, I put it down. Mid row, mid stitch, mid cluster fuck. Walked away.
Craft is pitched as something that is easy and fun. Magazine TV shows, soft cover coffee table books, catchy little projects at the back near the recipes and crossword puzzles or the odd feature article about some gorgeous design savant who only wears moccasins and silk and here's something you can try at home.
Well the reality is that most projects are an exercise in salvaging the beautiful vision from the miscalculations, errors, accidents and monumental fuck-ups that we the unskilled, we the incapable, we the deluded perform upon the project. These usually start in the infancy as we chose the materials but always always appear and manifest in the execution. Most of us have crappy taste or no visual eye for matching patterns and colours and create truly grotesque items even we can't bear to look at. From the garish colours to the badly constructed angles and fully creepy eyes or lopsided mouths. We spawn horrors. I spawn horrors.
I suck at this. I am ashamed that I persevere and, sin of all sins, give my pitiful pathetic mewling aberrations as gifts to my suffering friends. I'm sorry. Actually, it's just me... I'm certain that it is just me. After all, my friends make things, and they're beautiful (the things and the friends in this particular example). Some of them are complicated and technical (things) and all of them (both friends and things again now) are excellent. So it must just be me, and a secret workshop somewhere designated to create Crap Craft for resale in op-shops. Maybe I should go and work in that secret workshop. Maybe that's my true calling. My chance for redemption, for a meaningful life.
Or I could just sleep on it. After all, not every day can be a Monday.
So I don't immediately notice I've dropped this stitch because ball #2 of the originally cute and fun wool ("Snowball" from Lincraft. I would link you through it it, but even their web site sucks) has turned out to be a ball of scraps and so far I've had to re-join it 3 times in the first 4 rows. Cue gritted teeth and irritation spiking into unfocused anger. So I was trying to check that my knot hadn't come undone and inadvertently gave the dropped stitch a nudge and BANG down she goes about 5 rows. Shit. I fumbled it and another 2 rows gone. Oh man. Lots of fiddly stuffing around will have to happen in strong daylight if this project is going to be salvaged and it is already late. Weeks late. It was going to be a gift, then a belated gift, now, now I'm just a shit friend who couldn't get it together to finish a simple project.
Having learnt from dealing with my Father and Microsoft products that there is simply no use in cursing and railing at an inanimate object, I put it down. Mid row, mid stitch, mid cluster fuck. Walked away.
Craft is pitched as something that is easy and fun. Magazine TV shows, soft cover coffee table books, catchy little projects at the back near the recipes and crossword puzzles or the odd feature article about some gorgeous design savant who only wears moccasins and silk and here's something you can try at home.
Well the reality is that most projects are an exercise in salvaging the beautiful vision from the miscalculations, errors, accidents and monumental fuck-ups that we the unskilled, we the incapable, we the deluded perform upon the project. These usually start in the infancy as we chose the materials but always always appear and manifest in the execution. Most of us have crappy taste or no visual eye for matching patterns and colours and create truly grotesque items even we can't bear to look at. From the garish colours to the badly constructed angles and fully creepy eyes or lopsided mouths. We spawn horrors. I spawn horrors.
I suck at this. I am ashamed that I persevere and, sin of all sins, give my pitiful pathetic mewling aberrations as gifts to my suffering friends. I'm sorry. Actually, it's just me... I'm certain that it is just me. After all, my friends make things, and they're beautiful (the things and the friends in this particular example). Some of them are complicated and technical (things) and all of them (both friends and things again now) are excellent. So it must just be me, and a secret workshop somewhere designated to create Crap Craft for resale in op-shops. Maybe I should go and work in that secret workshop. Maybe that's my true calling. My chance for redemption, for a meaningful life.
Or I could just sleep on it. After all, not every day can be a Monday.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Stop the Madness or the Robots Will Get You
The specter of a grim future under the control of Robot Overlords is undoubtedly something which haunts us all (ok, well mostly just paranoid SF nuts, and people who actually understand networking intelligence and have time on their hands for contemplating the possible consequences).
Now, I do not want Skynet to wake up any more than the next person. Much as Caprica 6 really sells the idea that sexy, intelligent, independent women can be robots too, the bottom line is that there is no scenario so far in which the genocide of humans is not an outcome. Apart from anything else, on the off-chance I was a survivor, I would make a crappy guerrilla fighter and a very poor motivating leader for the resistance.
However it is hard to remember these disincentives when once again the anticipated serenity of a weekend (or a public holiday in this particular instance) is unattainable due to the suburban love of power tools and mowers. Both yesterday and today there has been a cacophony of tedium. Vacuum cleaners, quad bikes, angle-grinders, whipper-snippers and the ever-ready, every-present, ever-painfully noisy 2-stroke mower. I don't mind loud and late parties, I can deal with (if ungraciously) the thoughtless tumult created by feral children. I can even usually bear to endure the tortured screams and furious rampages of the domestically violent couples in the street. These, after all, are all are among the fundamental of human activities. Power tools are not.
Down Tools!
How simple it would be to incorporate a small amount of programmable logic into these and other irritating items. It need not be networked to achieve the goals I have in mind. I just want none of these items to work on state recognised public holidays or on a weekend prior to 9am or after 6pm. Fair enough!
The proles have had long enough to self-regulate in these matters and have proven themselves incapable of doing so. It is time for the elite to assist them in this, as we do in so many other ways with our taxes, entertainments, intellectual specialisations (where do they think those plasma screens come from anyway? Santa's Freakin workshop?) and generally in resisting the spread of informational germs (it's true - stupid people are more likely to believe other stupid people. Sorry "easily influenced people"). Anyway, we could camouflage it as a clock, or a battery readout, or an FM radio and in this way it would become a feature the proles would aspire to owning and the phase-out would be swift. Those with a legitimate reason, and or the ability to read owner's manuals would be able to circumvent the programming and thus earn the ability to use these tools at these times, but I suggest to you that persons of such capacities probably have better things to do with their time during the targeted periods (such as, say, blogging about how the world could be a better, more loving place).
Self Control
I could stop there. I could, really. There's no real need to tamper in a permanent way with the car of the idiot doing burnouts at 2am mid-week. There's no justifiable reason to apply any liquor rationing to the unemployed or those with criminal/violent records. There's no need to restrict the breeding .... No. Our freedoms as humans are absolute and inalienable. Well they might be if we in Australia had ever enacted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into law. Which we haven't. We aren't the only peoples to look the other way on this one, we're in good company (Malaysia, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Vatican City, China and more have all overlooked signing or ratifying the declaration). In light of what some signatories do feel ok about doing my software control proposition seems pretty innocent.
Yeah, really. It's for their own good.
... hey! What do you mean my access to the internet might be curtailed. That's not fair!
Fine. Frack you. Now where's that manual...
Now, I do not want Skynet to wake up any more than the next person. Much as Caprica 6 really sells the idea that sexy, intelligent, independent women can be robots too, the bottom line is that there is no scenario so far in which the genocide of humans is not an outcome. Apart from anything else, on the off-chance I was a survivor, I would make a crappy guerrilla fighter and a very poor motivating leader for the resistance.
However it is hard to remember these disincentives when once again the anticipated serenity of a weekend (or a public holiday in this particular instance) is unattainable due to the suburban love of power tools and mowers. Both yesterday and today there has been a cacophony of tedium. Vacuum cleaners, quad bikes, angle-grinders, whipper-snippers and the ever-ready, every-present, ever-painfully noisy 2-stroke mower. I don't mind loud and late parties, I can deal with (if ungraciously) the thoughtless tumult created by feral children. I can even usually bear to endure the tortured screams and furious rampages of the domestically violent couples in the street. These, after all, are all are among the fundamental of human activities. Power tools are not.
Down Tools!
How simple it would be to incorporate a small amount of programmable logic into these and other irritating items. It need not be networked to achieve the goals I have in mind. I just want none of these items to work on state recognised public holidays or on a weekend prior to 9am or after 6pm. Fair enough!
The proles have had long enough to self-regulate in these matters and have proven themselves incapable of doing so. It is time for the elite to assist them in this, as we do in so many other ways with our taxes, entertainments, intellectual specialisations (where do they think those plasma screens come from anyway? Santa's Freakin workshop?) and generally in resisting the spread of informational germs (it's true - stupid people are more likely to believe other stupid people. Sorry "easily influenced people"). Anyway, we could camouflage it as a clock, or a battery readout, or an FM radio and in this way it would become a feature the proles would aspire to owning and the phase-out would be swift. Those with a legitimate reason, and or the ability to read owner's manuals would be able to circumvent the programming and thus earn the ability to use these tools at these times, but I suggest to you that persons of such capacities probably have better things to do with their time during the targeted periods (such as, say, blogging about how the world could be a better, more loving place).
Self Control
I could stop there. I could, really. There's no real need to tamper in a permanent way with the car of the idiot doing burnouts at 2am mid-week. There's no justifiable reason to apply any liquor rationing to the unemployed or those with criminal/violent records. There's no need to restrict the breeding .... No. Our freedoms as humans are absolute and inalienable. Well they might be if we in Australia had ever enacted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into law. Which we haven't. We aren't the only peoples to look the other way on this one, we're in good company (Malaysia, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Vatican City, China and more have all overlooked signing or ratifying the declaration). In light of what some signatories do feel ok about doing my software control proposition seems pretty innocent.
Yeah, really. It's for their own good.
... hey! What do you mean my access to the internet might be curtailed. That's not fair!
Fine. Frack you. Now where's that manual...
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
You Might be a Qlder If....
Next Sunday will mark the two year date for my move to Queensland. Two Years. 731 days. It feels like a lot longer than that.
I remember thinking through the plan in lots of years, One year for this and this, two years for this, and maybe five in total, max and thinking, "yeah, that's do-able. How hard can it be?! A few years of inconvenience is not such a big price to pay."
That was the voice of inexperience. That was the voice of someone who has played strategic games often enough to grasp the need for room/time to maneuver, but who has had all experiences of social and cultural deprivation fade into softness from the passage of time. Going without by choice in Sydney for a month is very different to going without for two years because even if you try and hunt it down there's nothing to be had locally.
This has not been my only learning. I have had a while now to observe the locals from my camouflaged blind and based on actual events and overheard conversations, I can now present to you the top 10 possibilitites that you're a Queenslander...
You Might be a Queenslander If:
10. You can have a normal shower in under 3 minutes with or without a timer. You would use the full 3 minutes if you needed to wash your hair.
9. You don't own a winter coat and wonder why people do (surely a pullover is enough?).
8. You think Brisbane is all grown-up now.
7. You have 'good' thongs for going out in (for when you really think you should probably wear shoes).
6. You've considered wearing formal beachwear to your court hearing.
5. You went to Sydney once (for a weekend) but didn't like it.
4. You think it is perfectly natural to operate your whippersnipper/mower/chainsaw/anglegrinder whilst wearing thongs or even just bare feet.
3. You exclusively drink Fourex beer, and consider all southern beers (such as, say VB) to be "gay."
=2. During a 42 degree day you've thought it would be a good idea to get some mowing done (and been surprised that you died of heat stroke/coronary attack).
=2. After a wild storm you've thought it would be a good idea to help the SES by 'tidying up' those fallen power lines.
1. You decorate with maroon.
Oh yes. My time here has been well spent.
I remember thinking through the plan in lots of years, One year for this and this, two years for this, and maybe five in total, max and thinking, "yeah, that's do-able. How hard can it be?! A few years of inconvenience is not such a big price to pay."
That was the voice of inexperience. That was the voice of someone who has played strategic games often enough to grasp the need for room/time to maneuver, but who has had all experiences of social and cultural deprivation fade into softness from the passage of time. Going without by choice in Sydney for a month is very different to going without for two years because even if you try and hunt it down there's nothing to be had locally.
This has not been my only learning. I have had a while now to observe the locals from my camouflaged blind and based on actual events and overheard conversations, I can now present to you the top 10 possibilitites that you're a Queenslander...
You Might be a Queenslander If:
10. You can have a normal shower in under 3 minutes with or without a timer. You would use the full 3 minutes if you needed to wash your hair.
9. You don't own a winter coat and wonder why people do (surely a pullover is enough?).
8. You think Brisbane is all grown-up now.
7. You have 'good' thongs for going out in (for when you really think you should probably wear shoes).
6. You've considered wearing formal beachwear to your court hearing.
5. You went to Sydney once (for a weekend) but didn't like it.
4. You think it is perfectly natural to operate your whippersnipper/mower/chainsaw/anglegrinder whilst wearing thongs or even just bare feet.
3. You exclusively drink Fourex beer, and consider all southern beers (such as, say VB) to be "gay."
=2. During a 42 degree day you've thought it would be a good idea to get some mowing done (and been surprised that you died of heat stroke/coronary attack).
=2. After a wild storm you've thought it would be a good idea to help the SES by 'tidying up' those fallen power lines.
1. You decorate with maroon.
Oh yes. My time here has been well spent.
Monday, September 08, 2008
Rancid World View
What an unutterably foul mood has descended upon me today. Bored, angry and spilling over with acidic derision for all the world has to offer.
No reason.
Perhaps because it's Monday, perhaps because there's days yet until I can play, and perhaps because I didn't get my own way with anything on the weekend.
What would be opposite of Rose Coloured Glasses? Turd Breath? This is beyond cranky pants and into Devil Diapers.
No reason.
Perhaps because it's Monday, perhaps because there's days yet until I can play, and perhaps because I didn't get my own way with anything on the weekend.
What would be opposite of Rose Coloured Glasses? Turd Breath? This is beyond cranky pants and into Devil Diapers.
Friday, July 04, 2008
"Use Your Baby Bonus to Buy a Plasma!"*
I guess it had to happen at some point.
I can almost see the entire picture now, sometime in the future, in a cluster of plastic chairs filled with sullen, shifty people in dark colours, there I am. The recovering advertisers support group. The first step is to acknowledge you have a problem.
But that's the future. Right now, what I have is a sneaky addiction to learning about advertising. Oh sure, I learnt semiotics theory in uni (and used it in part to do a Nietzschean analysis of Batman), I've written academic essays on the portrayal of motherhood, I've skimmed through copy-writing books and screen writing books and watched the odd documentary here and there about design or typography. We've all been there ... it's recreational use only.
To state the obvious - the signal to noise ratio in modern life (even in a total backwater like Trash City) is horrendous. Thank-you Brain for filtering so much of it out. In the last week or so I have asked for the filters to ease back a little to I can see it all again, and it is everywhere. Really all over the place. Walls, Streets, rooms, flashing , bleating, radio - I don't even need to mention the TV do I?! Why do this to myself? Well, The Client wants a lot more advertising than they did when I started. Before, they just wanted some promotion, some press releases, some web copy. Nice, low key pull-stuff. Now, now they want branding and positionals and targeted ads and direct mailers that aren't letters. Shit that I, frankly, just don't understand and have spent some effort to avoid up to now.
Ok so the library card is getting a flogging, and I am learning some things including jargon. I have no qualms about learning jargon - I use it on the client whenever I feel the bullshit quotient needs adjusting. Jargon often means I can do the common-sense thing that I suggested in the first place, but the cool/official sounding jargon for it makes it all sound very upmarket and professional. So instead of sending a group a personalised letter, we will send them "A direct mail "feel good" response initiator to a targeted demographic utilising below-the-line best-practise." I'm clearly making stuff up there, and I'm laying it on as an example. Those of you reading with any background in actual marketing will know how that barely even makes sense. But wow! Can you believe how clients lap it up!? So jargon is a great tool when used sparingly/ lathered around like jelly.
It is slow-going to pick up how to critically read these things from a capitalist/product point of view rather than from my existing (almost second nature) dissident political POV. Perhaps that is what is addictive - this feeling of "insider secrets revealed!" One of the first books I read was written in about 1910 (I'm falling in love with ebooks too - another thing I never thought would happen!) and it is pretty much all still there, and in his intro he was "capturing these time-proven methods" etc. Hi-Larious!
Will I use this power for the greater good? Or will I, like the fuckarsebaby boomers, just sell out and get loads of cash and drive a Kompressor? oooh, a Kompressor. So sleek, so powerful....
NO! I work for an art gallery goddammit! I will lull stupid bogans into bringing their snot-nosed brats in for edifying art encounters! YES! And if it takes shouting FREE! in all the material, well so be it. I'm not above a gratuitous sausage sizzle either. Don't start me. I've sunk so low now that an alley cat would avoid eye contact.
* Actual sign seen in local TV retailing store
I can almost see the entire picture now, sometime in the future, in a cluster of plastic chairs filled with sullen, shifty people in dark colours, there I am. The recovering advertisers support group. The first step is to acknowledge you have a problem.
But that's the future. Right now, what I have is a sneaky addiction to learning about advertising. Oh sure, I learnt semiotics theory in uni (and used it in part to do a Nietzschean analysis of Batman), I've written academic essays on the portrayal of motherhood, I've skimmed through copy-writing books and screen writing books and watched the odd documentary here and there about design or typography. We've all been there ... it's recreational use only.
To state the obvious - the signal to noise ratio in modern life (even in a total backwater like Trash City) is horrendous. Thank-you Brain for filtering so much of it out. In the last week or so I have asked for the filters to ease back a little to I can see it all again, and it is everywhere. Really all over the place. Walls, Streets, rooms, flashing , bleating, radio - I don't even need to mention the TV do I?! Why do this to myself? Well, The Client wants a lot more advertising than they did when I started. Before, they just wanted some promotion, some press releases, some web copy. Nice, low key pull-stuff. Now, now they want branding and positionals and targeted ads and direct mailers that aren't letters. Shit that I, frankly, just don't understand and have spent some effort to avoid up to now.
Ok so the library card is getting a flogging, and I am learning some things including jargon. I have no qualms about learning jargon - I use it on the client whenever I feel the bullshit quotient needs adjusting. Jargon often means I can do the common-sense thing that I suggested in the first place, but the cool/official sounding jargon for it makes it all sound very upmarket and professional. So instead of sending a group a personalised letter, we will send them "A direct mail "feel good" response initiator to a targeted demographic utilising below-the-line best-practise." I'm clearly making stuff up there, and I'm laying it on as an example. Those of you reading with any background in actual marketing will know how that barely even makes sense. But wow! Can you believe how clients lap it up!? So jargon is a great tool when used sparingly/ lathered around like jelly.
It is slow-going to pick up how to critically read these things from a capitalist/product point of view rather than from my existing (almost second nature) dissident political POV. Perhaps that is what is addictive - this feeling of "insider secrets revealed!" One of the first books I read was written in about 1910 (I'm falling in love with ebooks too - another thing I never thought would happen!) and it is pretty much all still there, and in his intro he was "capturing these time-proven methods" etc. Hi-Larious!
Will I use this power for the greater good? Or will I, like the fuckarsebaby boomers, just sell out and get loads of cash and drive a Kompressor? oooh, a Kompressor. So sleek, so powerful....
NO! I work for an art gallery goddammit! I will lull stupid bogans into bringing their snot-nosed brats in for edifying art encounters! YES! And if it takes shouting FREE! in all the material, well so be it. I'm not above a gratuitous sausage sizzle either. Don't start me. I've sunk so low now that an alley cat would avoid eye contact.
* Actual sign seen in local TV retailing store
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Hollow Promises
This afternoon I found myself looking forward to grocery shopping. I had decided to go to the bigger store over the river which is set in a big complex thing rather than the normal strip of shops type place. You know the kind of place I mean, it's large enough to have 3 or 4 major traders and then a B-list string of food franchises and XXX "Specialty Stores". Lots of white lights rather than 'warm' lights. Why was I looking forward to it?
I don't know.
I hate the place.
The larger store stocks items I don't need very often and can't get at the normal store. It has a wider range of vegetables and cheeses, but is the same in every other regard - except for the tempting idea of neighbouring "specialty stores".
This is the pattern. I go, and wander for nearly an hour getting sore feet and a headache, not finding anything of a special nature. Instead I am shocked and awed by the physical and emotional parade of my fellow shoppers, I am numbed by the blandness on offer. This is not a particular insult to this town. I think it's fair to say that most if not all suburban shopping centers are like this. Middle-ness in essence.
The logic is that folk want roughly 20% of stuff 80% of the time. Think about groceries - bread and milk and potatoes every shop, but all those other 10 aisles .... well we pick and choose. I skip about a third of aisles every visit and probably you do too. Anyway, of that 20% ... most folk then have only one or two preferences.
Ice cream? "Sure!" Says most folks, then they split between Chocolate and Vanilla. There's the odd statistical anomaly who wants Strawberry, and then there's all those "special occasion" ice-creams, but for the bog-standard 4litre Ice Cream purchase (yes, I said 4L!) it's choc or vanilla. So extrapolate that out, and let the logic run for a while. No wonder there are people who just don't realise that you can get pistachio ice-cream, because even in an internationally award-winning mid-sized city with XXX specialty stores, there's not a one selling anything too far different from everything else everyone already has. They're offering hollow promises,
So to come back to where I started, I grocery shopped tonight with speed, precision and organisation (possibly the only realm of my life where I can muster all three skills in one place) and was in and out of there in 50 minutes (almost a personal best!). I looked in the windows of the stores as I walked briskly past them, and confirmed that I don't need any of that shit. I was grateful to be able to get the stuff I did need, but came home as quickly as possible to enjoy my time and thoughts (and maybe a little bit of ebay activity, where the 80/20 rule does not hold sway and the erratic and irrational have their power returned).
It was good to get out unscathed, but I am am not always this calm and controlled. I resent the foggy numbness that sometimes comes over me. I don't even have to be in the endless mall/centre for it to happen (so I can't blame the lights or the mirrors or that insidious fake-food smell that Subway pumps out) but when it does I become a wandering, impulse-shopping zombie. Something that works to snap me out of it, if I have any intelligence left flickering in my cranium, is to imagine the stare of withering derision that Henry Rollins would give me if he caught me doing this, and that sorts me out quick smart. Of course, Hank wouldn't know me from a baboon, but in some Jungian way I have taken all that I admire from him and Batman that possibly has a faint echo in myself and given it his face (the cowl was too hidden in the end for my own already hidden corners) so I can accord it some respect. Having said that if the chance to actually differentiate myself from a baboon in Henry Rollins' consciousness ever did present itself I would jump on him. I mean it, jump on it. The opportunity, I'd be all over it, not Henry. He's too big. Not that I'd try, you know, to literally *jump* on him, but, oh forget it. This is going from bad to worse.
I am so uncool. I'll just stop there.
I don't know.
I hate the place.
The larger store stocks items I don't need very often and can't get at the normal store. It has a wider range of vegetables and cheeses, but is the same in every other regard - except for the tempting idea of neighbouring "specialty stores".
This is the pattern. I go, and wander for nearly an hour getting sore feet and a headache, not finding anything of a special nature. Instead I am shocked and awed by the physical and emotional parade of my fellow shoppers, I am numbed by the blandness on offer. This is not a particular insult to this town. I think it's fair to say that most if not all suburban shopping centers are like this. Middle-ness in essence.
The logic is that folk want roughly 20% of stuff 80% of the time. Think about groceries - bread and milk and potatoes every shop, but all those other 10 aisles .... well we pick and choose. I skip about a third of aisles every visit and probably you do too. Anyway, of that 20% ... most folk then have only one or two preferences.
Ice cream? "Sure!" Says most folks, then they split between Chocolate and Vanilla. There's the odd statistical anomaly who wants Strawberry, and then there's all those "special occasion" ice-creams, but for the bog-standard 4litre Ice Cream purchase (yes, I said 4L!) it's choc or vanilla. So extrapolate that out, and let the logic run for a while. No wonder there are people who just don't realise that you can get pistachio ice-cream, because even in an internationally award-winning mid-sized city with XXX specialty stores, there's not a one selling anything too far different from everything else everyone already has. They're offering hollow promises,
So to come back to where I started, I grocery shopped tonight with speed, precision and organisation (possibly the only realm of my life where I can muster all three skills in one place) and was in and out of there in 50 minutes (almost a personal best!). I looked in the windows of the stores as I walked briskly past them, and confirmed that I don't need any of that shit. I was grateful to be able to get the stuff I did need, but came home as quickly as possible to enjoy my time and thoughts (and maybe a little bit of ebay activity, where the 80/20 rule does not hold sway and the erratic and irrational have their power returned).
It was good to get out unscathed, but I am am not always this calm and controlled. I resent the foggy numbness that sometimes comes over me. I don't even have to be in the endless mall/centre for it to happen (so I can't blame the lights or the mirrors or that insidious fake-food smell that Subway pumps out) but when it does I become a wandering, impulse-shopping zombie. Something that works to snap me out of it, if I have any intelligence left flickering in my cranium, is to imagine the stare of withering derision that Henry Rollins would give me if he caught me doing this, and that sorts me out quick smart. Of course, Hank wouldn't know me from a baboon, but in some Jungian way I have taken all that I admire from him and Batman that possibly has a faint echo in myself and given it his face (the cowl was too hidden in the end for my own already hidden corners) so I can accord it some respect. Having said that if the chance to actually differentiate myself from a baboon in Henry Rollins' consciousness ever did present itself I would jump on him. I mean it, jump on it. The opportunity, I'd be all over it, not Henry. He's too big. Not that I'd try, you know, to literally *jump* on him, but, oh forget it. This is going from bad to worse.
I am so uncool. I'll just stop there.
Monday, May 26, 2008
A Great Day for Science, and a pretty Crap day for Art
Woo!
What a crazy little while it's been!
How totally frackin exciting was it that Phoenix landed safely on the Mars polar region. Woot! Go you crazy rocket guys!! Yeah! Those rocket thrusters were fully sick. Why has it taken so long for actual space missions to look like our very well rendered games? I swear that "artists impression" footage was taken almost directly from "Masters of Orion". We all knew the airbags were dodgy as all fuck.
Congratulations earthlings on taking one more step towards becoming Martians.
Here's the master on the subject:
"Fools, fools. There is life on Mars, and it's us. We are the Martians now."
Ray Bradbury, Mars's first poet-in-non-residence.
Also, in other news of massive importance to the geek community, Neal Stephenson is releasing a new novel on September 9 of this year! So soon! Only 4 short years since "System of the World" was unleashed upon our puny minds we will receive "Anathem" (no, that's not a typo). I don't know anything else about it! Wait, and read it, and be happy.
Oh, that's right, and then there's this utterly utterly ridiculous situation where the NSW police force seem to think that it's about 1898, and that art is to blame! In a classic, one might be tempted to say textbook implementation, during a period of high economic stress (rates increasing! petrol prices increasing! chinese workers distracted from their factories by unpredictable natural phenomena!) what do we have? Why look, it's a very public condemnation of art as dirty pornography (I note, somewhat cynically, that many of the online news sources chose to run the unpixellated versions of the images). I refer, of course, to the new series of work by Australian photographer, Bill Henson.
his images are amazing. There's so much pap-art, it can be possible to forget what it's like to be confronted, really asked to engage with an artwork. I saw the image that went out to invite people to this opening (our Director is on the invite list) and it was captivating. Utterly astonishing and confronting. Sure. It's confronting.
That's what makes it so great - because this is the power of art - to reflect what you the viewer carry around inside you and never question. Then when it's projected - what do you see? You see your own darknesses, your own fears, or your own wonder and beauty. In these images, I see sadness and vulnerability. One of my work colleagues sees beauty of an almost transcendent nature. Talking to her about this has opened my eyes to her beauty and generosity (which has been a marvelous and unexpected benefit of this discussion!).
It is the yabbering and thoughtless reactions of people (such as, I'm sorry to say, Prime Minister Rudd) that contribute to an environment in which art of this nature and power is even more necessary. I think the attacks on this work make perfect sense for a culture where we have continued to dumb-down our public discourse, and where we have all but eliminated situations where there is any ambiguity or nuance. One of his previous series' images was in the Strange Cargo exhibition we hosted over last summer. Because of this kind of response, we arranged a "preview" viewing for the media and marketing teams of council so we could explain his work - knowing that if we were going to receive any complaints from our local audience, it would probably be for this naked and muddied girl being carried/dragged by two naked young men .... and yet (maybe because the town is so catholic) there was no complaint about this (but I got complaints about the monster/sculpture scaring young children)!
As a feminist I am sensitive to images of women which are exploitative, and his work asks us to look at that space, but from an angle of reflection about our own devaluation of youth, innocence and powerful transitional states. Any commercial on television is likely to be far more harmful and fundamentally exploitative than these amazing creatively fashioned (and I mean fashioned in the sense of consciously made, not in the modern sense of fashionably designed) images.
BTW, I'm not sure I *like* them ... I would buy different art for my walls (and I acknowledge too, that I am a long long way from being able to buy artworks of this status, so my opinion and knowledge must he held in that context). But I do know that when I am standing in front of one of his works from these series, I have that inner turmoil and satisfaction that comes from making an unexpected relationship with something, and that's when I know I've met some Art, and it has made a mark on me.
What a crazy little while it's been!
How totally frackin exciting was it that Phoenix landed safely on the Mars polar region. Woot! Go you crazy rocket guys!! Yeah! Those rocket thrusters were fully sick. Why has it taken so long for actual space missions to look like our very well rendered games? I swear that "artists impression" footage was taken almost directly from "Masters of Orion". We all knew the airbags were dodgy as all fuck.
Congratulations earthlings on taking one more step towards becoming Martians.
Here's the master on the subject:
"Fools, fools. There is life on Mars, and it's us. We are the Martians now."
Ray Bradbury, Mars's first poet-in-non-residence.
Also, in other news of massive importance to the geek community, Neal Stephenson is releasing a new novel on September 9 of this year! So soon! Only 4 short years since "System of the World" was unleashed upon our puny minds we will receive "Anathem" (no, that's not a typo). I don't know anything else about it! Wait, and read it, and be happy.
Oh, that's right, and then there's this utterly utterly ridiculous situation where the NSW police force seem to think that it's about 1898, and that art is to blame! In a classic, one might be tempted to say textbook implementation, during a period of high economic stress (rates increasing! petrol prices increasing! chinese workers distracted from their factories by unpredictable natural phenomena!) what do we have? Why look, it's a very public condemnation of art as dirty pornography (I note, somewhat cynically, that many of the online news sources chose to run the unpixellated versions of the images). I refer, of course, to the new series of work by Australian photographer, Bill Henson.
his images are amazing. There's so much pap-art, it can be possible to forget what it's like to be confronted, really asked to engage with an artwork. I saw the image that went out to invite people to this opening (our Director is on the invite list) and it was captivating. Utterly astonishing and confronting. Sure. It's confronting.
That's what makes it so great - because this is the power of art - to reflect what you the viewer carry around inside you and never question. Then when it's projected - what do you see? You see your own darknesses, your own fears, or your own wonder and beauty. In these images, I see sadness and vulnerability. One of my work colleagues sees beauty of an almost transcendent nature. Talking to her about this has opened my eyes to her beauty and generosity (which has been a marvelous and unexpected benefit of this discussion!).
It is the yabbering and thoughtless reactions of people (such as, I'm sorry to say, Prime Minister Rudd) that contribute to an environment in which art of this nature and power is even more necessary. I think the attacks on this work make perfect sense for a culture where we have continued to dumb-down our public discourse, and where we have all but eliminated situations where there is any ambiguity or nuance. One of his previous series' images was in the Strange Cargo exhibition we hosted over last summer. Because of this kind of response, we arranged a "preview" viewing for the media and marketing teams of council so we could explain his work - knowing that if we were going to receive any complaints from our local audience, it would probably be for this naked and muddied girl being carried/dragged by two naked young men .... and yet (maybe because the town is so catholic) there was no complaint about this (but I got complaints about the monster/sculpture scaring young children)!
As a feminist I am sensitive to images of women which are exploitative, and his work asks us to look at that space, but from an angle of reflection about our own devaluation of youth, innocence and powerful transitional states. Any commercial on television is likely to be far more harmful and fundamentally exploitative than these amazing creatively fashioned (and I mean fashioned in the sense of consciously made, not in the modern sense of fashionably designed) images.
BTW, I'm not sure I *like* them ... I would buy different art for my walls (and I acknowledge too, that I am a long long way from being able to buy artworks of this status, so my opinion and knowledge must he held in that context). But I do know that when I am standing in front of one of his works from these series, I have that inner turmoil and satisfaction that comes from making an unexpected relationship with something, and that's when I know I've met some Art, and it has made a mark on me.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Politics anyone? (Rated: MA)
Are you interested in politics? Well now, let me see if we agree what we're talking about here (English - such a sloppy language).
If we're talking about the bastard child of vigilante justice and corrupt management masquerading as leadership and patriotic paternalism, then yeah, we're probably on the same page, and my quick, accurate and honest answer is "no way". Am I addicted to it in the way of cheezy soaps and sleazy lying two-timing boyfriends - "way!".
It's my dirty secret, I don't think I'm worth a good life any more than the next sad, overweight, brain dead tv-addled moron. And I'm right. I get what I deserve, and I'm getting a lot of politics. And a new season of Biggest Looser - 6 nights a week. Alternated with "Big Brother". Right there in the juxtaposition of those two titles tells you all you need to know about the state of our country and it's info-tainment mindset. It's ok, you don't need to ask - yes I do feel dirty and hate myself for it. But that's the beauty of self-hatred, it's a perfect cycle, leading directly to self harm, self sabotage and indulgence in reckless behaviour - like reading the newspaper, watching the TV or just believing any guy when he says he'll call you.
I'm not even feeling especially bitter today, just bored with being bland, and sick up to the back pass with living in the suburbs. What fucking shit-holes we make for ourselves, and then squabble over the price of buying into them like sarky ill-mannered little rats. Ignorant, angry rats, gagging to hole-up somewhere and gnaw away at the wiring and stray dog kibble. Breeding as fast as we can so it's our bigoted, bored offspring tunneling away into the next natural area of our dwindling stockpile and roaming the streets bored and jacked up on cheap drugs and subsidised petrol looking for a new abuse to amuse for a few minutes. As long as it's not those icky fuckin rats from over the water. In the immortal words of Ms J: Fuck that shit.
Ex-xactly.
So, here I am. Sending out to you from the impacted colon of the arse of Australia. Since the Roman senate, politics has been about paying off the noisiest interests and distracting the dimmest or least powerful interests. The only fracture in this process at the moment - sport disappearing off the free-to-air. Bring back our circus! Riiiiiight. Not the creeping corporatisation of our public services, not the preventable diseases and deaths from reckless driving or the huge amount of money we as a country piss away in corrupt defence contracts or "lost" armaments, or the fact that our literacy levels are heading towards the same levels as Nelson's approval rating. No, we're pleasantly distracted by Guillard's haircut (or lack thereof) and the liberal party failing to grow a new head.
Well I don't have any answers. I'm part of the problem and I know it. I am disillusioned, cynical and fed-up. I've got more than half of my life in front of me - almost enough time to make sure that if I work 'hard enough' I can "self-fund" my decrepitude. Gee, thanks. It's not like I can even plan to do the reasonable thing and top myself when the time comes. That's been outlawed. Good thinking guys. And can anyone give a real reason for the criminalisation of self-responsibility in one's end days that isn't soft wet hand-wringing? No? I didn't think so.
I'm no more interested in politics than I am interested in the practise trepanning to relieve back-ache.
If we're talking about the bastard child of vigilante justice and corrupt management masquerading as leadership and patriotic paternalism, then yeah, we're probably on the same page, and my quick, accurate and honest answer is "no way". Am I addicted to it in the way of cheezy soaps and sleazy lying two-timing boyfriends - "way!".
It's my dirty secret, I don't think I'm worth a good life any more than the next sad, overweight, brain dead tv-addled moron. And I'm right. I get what I deserve, and I'm getting a lot of politics. And a new season of Biggest Looser - 6 nights a week. Alternated with "Big Brother". Right there in the juxtaposition of those two titles tells you all you need to know about the state of our country and it's info-tainment mindset. It's ok, you don't need to ask - yes I do feel dirty and hate myself for it. But that's the beauty of self-hatred, it's a perfect cycle, leading directly to self harm, self sabotage and indulgence in reckless behaviour - like reading the newspaper, watching the TV or just believing any guy when he says he'll call you.
I'm not even feeling especially bitter today, just bored with being bland, and sick up to the back pass with living in the suburbs. What fucking shit-holes we make for ourselves, and then squabble over the price of buying into them like sarky ill-mannered little rats. Ignorant, angry rats, gagging to hole-up somewhere and gnaw away at the wiring and stray dog kibble. Breeding as fast as we can so it's our bigoted, bored offspring tunneling away into the next natural area of our dwindling stockpile and roaming the streets bored and jacked up on cheap drugs and subsidised petrol looking for a new abuse to amuse for a few minutes. As long as it's not those icky fuckin rats from over the water. In the immortal words of Ms J: Fuck that shit.
Ex-xactly.
So, here I am. Sending out to you from the impacted colon of the arse of Australia. Since the Roman senate, politics has been about paying off the noisiest interests and distracting the dimmest or least powerful interests. The only fracture in this process at the moment - sport disappearing off the free-to-air. Bring back our circus! Riiiiiight. Not the creeping corporatisation of our public services, not the preventable diseases and deaths from reckless driving or the huge amount of money we as a country piss away in corrupt defence contracts or "lost" armaments, or the fact that our literacy levels are heading towards the same levels as Nelson's approval rating. No, we're pleasantly distracted by Guillard's haircut (or lack thereof) and the liberal party failing to grow a new head.
Well I don't have any answers. I'm part of the problem and I know it. I am disillusioned, cynical and fed-up. I've got more than half of my life in front of me - almost enough time to make sure that if I work 'hard enough' I can "self-fund" my decrepitude. Gee, thanks. It's not like I can even plan to do the reasonable thing and top myself when the time comes. That's been outlawed. Good thinking guys. And can anyone give a real reason for the criminalisation of self-responsibility in one's end days that isn't soft wet hand-wringing? No? I didn't think so.
I'm no more interested in politics than I am interested in the practise trepanning to relieve back-ache.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Status: Denied
The Company's New Year resolution was to withdraw net access to Facebook. Ah well, it had to happen sooner or later. You could almost feel the slow drag each morning as hundreds of slightly bored and disaffected staff started to idly log-in and check their buds, super-poke someone or upload some more fun-in-sun shots from the weekend at Wet'n'Wild or the Caxton.
Our new staff member who started this Tuesday looked at me incredulously "What do you mean you can't access any web email or networking?!"
"I *know*!" I said. "Stuck here in every way."
I meant to write yesterday, but I went to my boss's office to ask a single question (that needed a yes/no level answer) and lurched out gasping over 2 hours later with about 5 pages of action points. So, work has picked up again and things are quite busy. That's good really. Instead of it being hump day and me trying to find a way to motivate myself, it's already the end of Thursday. Excellent!
Roll the dice, get paid, pass Go, collect $200.
In other news, I am fascinated with Corey and his unfolding melodrama of the Myspace open party. What a modern moment! The publicity, the posed shots, the inarticulateness, the fuming parents copping flak for having such a dickhead for a son and/or for having left him unattended with an internet account. Hi-Larious! Almost as good as the storm this week in Trash City papers over a local being charged $10 for a chicken and salad sandwich at the new shopping centre. No really - it made the front page!! Plenty of finger-pointing in the Letter to the Editor sections too, I can tell you.
"You have to laugh," I tell myself "but don't try satirising it!"
Reality is plenty strange enough right now.
Our new staff member who started this Tuesday looked at me incredulously "What do you mean you can't access any web email or networking?!"
"I *know*!" I said. "Stuck here in every way."
I meant to write yesterday, but I went to my boss's office to ask a single question (that needed a yes/no level answer) and lurched out gasping over 2 hours later with about 5 pages of action points. So, work has picked up again and things are quite busy. That's good really. Instead of it being hump day and me trying to find a way to motivate myself, it's already the end of Thursday. Excellent!
Roll the dice, get paid, pass Go, collect $200.
In other news, I am fascinated with Corey and his unfolding melodrama of the Myspace open party. What a modern moment! The publicity, the posed shots, the inarticulateness, the fuming parents copping flak for having such a dickhead for a son and/or for having left him unattended with an internet account. Hi-Larious! Almost as good as the storm this week in Trash City papers over a local being charged $10 for a chicken and salad sandwich at the new shopping centre. No really - it made the front page!! Plenty of finger-pointing in the Letter to the Editor sections too, I can tell you.
"You have to laugh," I tell myself "but don't try satirising it!"
Reality is plenty strange enough right now.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)