It's about a quarter to ten on a mid-week night (you know it's wednesday - the damn post is time stamped!) and my week of house-sitting for Sis2 is halfway over. The highway out the front is pumping with the flow of semi-trailers both in towards Brisbane and out towards the range and the inland highways. They're properly called a B-double Combination but of course are contracted to "B-Double" and I would like to think but cannot assert with any veracity (but shall put it out there anyway), to "B-Dub", my sister-of-the-wife-of -a-real-trucker access only gets me so far and no farther (even if I were to show my tatt it wouldn't help - wrong kind of ink for this crowd). Anyway, this is the only time day to day that you can be in the house and really notice that you're only a few hundred meters from a major transport artery. There's plenty of traffic during the day, but the general noises of the house cover most of it, and something about the traffic flow keeps it all a bit muted (I don't want to point any fingers here, but I think it's because during the day the speed limits are only flaunted by 10 or 20 kloms per hr). Tonight, as each night, it sounds like I'm under a runway for cargo planes that never leave the ground.
Australia leads the way in the use of B-Doubles. They can clear a port up to 17% more quickly (fascinating isn't it? Read the rest of that article here or delve deeply here go on, live a little). We're a big trucking country. Excuse me if I'm repeating myself about the importance of the B-Dub in the road transport world. They are the lion of the asphalt plains! The haemoglobin on our economic bloodstream! And after three days of sharing the road to and from work with the general public (a whole nother kettle of stinking rotten dead fish) and these giant trucks I was curious as to what they might weigh. I know how fast they're moving, and for some macabre reason I thought I might try and figure out what their momentum is (ie to see how dead I would be if they ran over my little car, even a bit). Sometimes as they change lanes there's a particularly terrifying wobble that moves through the load and I seem very close to a lot of very large wheels. Upon further reflection, I think I should not figure this out, even roughly. These are not the kinds of informational tidbits that will make the long drives easier, nor are likely to endear me to any random persons I may be in conversation with anytime in the next, say, 3 to 5 years.
Because that's the risk - there's some things you can't un-hear, un-see or un-know. Dropping even a single one of them into conversation can expose you as the fraudulent, freaky, or flat-out weird person that no-one wants to sit next to at a work function, live near, or invite to parties or go out for coffee with (unless, oh happy days, they too harbour curiosity that leads them into knowledge, strange philosophies and odd tastes in reading matter ... but there are other, safer secret handshakes with which to gather this kind of intel. "What do you think of that Dexter show?", "How cool is that Mars ice?!" but again I digress).
Knowing that the Panama Canal was first crossed on a Tuesday is an exactly fine tidbit to have floating around the noggin. It doesn't even have to be right! (I got this from a film and haven't even bothered to verify it, but have shamelessly used it on a number of occasions.) It can pop up when small talk is required but is too taxing in relation to the expected return and creates a small burst of conversational frisson to get over the hump into actual dialogue or out of the elevator. Telling people ways they can die in everyday situations - never popular. I'm unpopular enough without further handicap.
Showing posts with label Wednesday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wednesday. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Quarterly Essay
They just keep delivering the good stuff.
Here's a short excerpt from the intro (pg3/4) to the current Quarterly Essay "His Master’s Voice: The corruption of Public Debate under Howard" by David Marr.
"At the heart of democracy is a contest of conversations. The tone of a democracy is set by the dialogue between a nation and its leaders. For the last decade, Australia has had a prime minister who thinks it beneath him to admit mistakes…
But after being belittled for most of his political career, Howard came to power determined public debate would be conducted on his terms. They are subtle, bizarre and at times brutal. This essay is about those terms and why Australians put up with them. Since 1996, Howard has cowed his critics, muffled the press, intimidated the ABC, gagged scientists, silenced non-government organisations, neutered Canberra’s mandarins, curtailed parliamentary scrutiny, censored the arts, banned books, criminalised protest and prosecuted whistleblowers."
This is just him warming up. There's a great essay here, and also really enjoyable, rhythmic writing. Just the thing to go with watching Deadwood.
Here's a short excerpt from the intro (pg3/4) to the current Quarterly Essay "His Master’s Voice: The corruption of Public Debate under Howard" by David Marr.
"At the heart of democracy is a contest of conversations. The tone of a democracy is set by the dialogue between a nation and its leaders. For the last decade, Australia has had a prime minister who thinks it beneath him to admit mistakes…
But after being belittled for most of his political career, Howard came to power determined public debate would be conducted on his terms. They are subtle, bizarre and at times brutal. This essay is about those terms and why Australians put up with them. Since 1996, Howard has cowed his critics, muffled the press, intimidated the ABC, gagged scientists, silenced non-government organisations, neutered Canberra’s mandarins, curtailed parliamentary scrutiny, censored the arts, banned books, criminalised protest and prosecuted whistleblowers."
This is just him warming up. There's a great essay here, and also really enjoyable, rhythmic writing. Just the thing to go with watching Deadwood.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
ANZAC Day
Here it is again, dawn services to commemorate the sacrifices of our brave soldiers and fighting forces in wars and military actions of all shapes and sizes but basically the landing at Channackle in the Dardanelles as part of an English offensive to piss Russia off, and put pressure on the Turkish.
Was it the right kind of pressure to put on a degenerate state?
I learnt something about our history this year that shocked me.
It's been a long time since I was shocked by atrocity, usually i feel resigned and numb to what has happened and seems like will always happen. Humans are such shit-bags so much of the time. Somehow, this cut through to me so that yesterday and today have been made fresh again. Perhaps this is old news for you, so patience please for those among us to whom this is new. Ordinarily I wouldn't try and parse something this big, I would refer you to a text or to a web page.
So here's Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_massacre
and another Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANZAC_Day
and my story for today falls in the gap between the two.
The massacre and then our landing. Do we hold any responsibility for the actions of the Ottomans against the Armenians? Perhaps not - certainly not directly - but should this atrocity have it's place in our commemoration of this time? Absolutely!
After all, isn't that the point of ANZAC Day? That it's important to remember these things, and wars are bad but it's good people who fight them, and so on. But that doesn't seem to be what we do so much anymore. We seem to be glorifying, mythologising and embroidering a story about war, getting further and further from the messy truth of the matter rather than feeling the immediacy of loss and interrogating our present actions as a nation in light of the pain of the past.
Which is to say that the landing in that small shingle cove was wrapped up in a flow of other events that we deliberately stay blind to.
If we insist that we "came of age as a nation" in that landing, then we must remember the full nature of that phrase. A loss of innocence is important because it is about accepting the full range of costs an adult can understand. We were not just as a fighting force mis-used at the hands of our British masters, but as must accept our complicity in a bungled foreign policy where a whole race of people suffered the consequences. That is what has been lost along the way.
That our heartfelt pilgrimages to the cove (Yes, I went there, as so many people my age have done, and like them, I didn't hear of the Armenian massacre from my charming Turkish hosts) and the hair-raising on our arms and necks during these most solemn services are sincere is not in question, but the point of these services must also to refresh the sense of responsibility that we as citizens have for the actions of our warriors and their leaders.
Australian and New Zealand troops landed on a small cove, north of the main English action. They weren't quite in the right spot, but no real matter - warfare is like that. The ground rose steeply and their objective was to take the high ground. Soldiers since Sun Tzu would recognise the objective. A dawn landing would give them the advantage of surprise - it's all by the book. Our enemy was known to be ruthless, vicious and ready to defend their land, and they did so successfully.
Knowing they could not fight on two fronts, they slaughtered the civilians who were rebelling against mistreatment, and focused their energies on repelling the foreign invaders. We turned the Turks into a part of our fairytale about manhood and nationhood and for all our rhetoric about *remembrance* we seem deeply unwilling to remember the cost the invasion had for the Armenian people. They should be our partners in this story. They should have a place in our services and our myth.
It turns out that even now, the victors still get to write the history.
Today, as I made the traditional biscuits that will go up to Ma & Pa picking in the patch, and I know that Grandad would be coming home from the service, and even now, as I finish writing, my work colleagues are laying wreaths and listening to speeches, I could not think of anything but how horrible, how utterly saddening that slaughter was in thought and in deed. How interwoven it is with our small, blind role in a ill-managed battle, how it is but a thread in what was to become the Second World War, where Hitler remembered what the Turks had gotten away with when he had his own *troublesome* internal populations to deal with.
I honour our warriors and commemorate their personal sacrifices. As a thinking citizen, I also interrogate our role in wars, in battles, in invading other countries. If we do not remember the ugly consequences of some of these actions, we risk diminishing those sacrifices. Sun Tzu also pointed out that the best way to win was to plan to not fight - that negotiation, maneuvering, information, terrain, politics, so many things could be used by a good leader before force should be deployed.
Today I am sorrowful for the deaths of the soldiers on that harsh ground and am shaken that we choose not to remember the full actions of our enemies at that time in preference for glorifying our ability to take a beating. Not much of a myth to live up to when you look at it that way.
Was it the right kind of pressure to put on a degenerate state?
I learnt something about our history this year that shocked me.
It's been a long time since I was shocked by atrocity, usually i feel resigned and numb to what has happened and seems like will always happen. Humans are such shit-bags so much of the time. Somehow, this cut through to me so that yesterday and today have been made fresh again. Perhaps this is old news for you, so patience please for those among us to whom this is new. Ordinarily I wouldn't try and parse something this big, I would refer you to a text or to a web page.
So here's Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_massacre
and another Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANZAC_Day
and my story for today falls in the gap between the two.
The massacre and then our landing. Do we hold any responsibility for the actions of the Ottomans against the Armenians? Perhaps not - certainly not directly - but should this atrocity have it's place in our commemoration of this time? Absolutely!
After all, isn't that the point of ANZAC Day? That it's important to remember these things, and wars are bad but it's good people who fight them, and so on. But that doesn't seem to be what we do so much anymore. We seem to be glorifying, mythologising and embroidering a story about war, getting further and further from the messy truth of the matter rather than feeling the immediacy of loss and interrogating our present actions as a nation in light of the pain of the past.
Which is to say that the landing in that small shingle cove was wrapped up in a flow of other events that we deliberately stay blind to.
If we insist that we "came of age as a nation" in that landing, then we must remember the full nature of that phrase. A loss of innocence is important because it is about accepting the full range of costs an adult can understand. We were not just as a fighting force mis-used at the hands of our British masters, but as must accept our complicity in a bungled foreign policy where a whole race of people suffered the consequences. That is what has been lost along the way.
That our heartfelt pilgrimages to the cove (Yes, I went there, as so many people my age have done, and like them, I didn't hear of the Armenian massacre from my charming Turkish hosts) and the hair-raising on our arms and necks during these most solemn services are sincere is not in question, but the point of these services must also to refresh the sense of responsibility that we as citizens have for the actions of our warriors and their leaders.
Australian and New Zealand troops landed on a small cove, north of the main English action. They weren't quite in the right spot, but no real matter - warfare is like that. The ground rose steeply and their objective was to take the high ground. Soldiers since Sun Tzu would recognise the objective. A dawn landing would give them the advantage of surprise - it's all by the book. Our enemy was known to be ruthless, vicious and ready to defend their land, and they did so successfully.
Knowing they could not fight on two fronts, they slaughtered the civilians who were rebelling against mistreatment, and focused their energies on repelling the foreign invaders. We turned the Turks into a part of our fairytale about manhood and nationhood and for all our rhetoric about *remembrance* we seem deeply unwilling to remember the cost the invasion had for the Armenian people. They should be our partners in this story. They should have a place in our services and our myth.
It turns out that even now, the victors still get to write the history.
Today, as I made the traditional biscuits that will go up to Ma & Pa picking in the patch, and I know that Grandad would be coming home from the service, and even now, as I finish writing, my work colleagues are laying wreaths and listening to speeches, I could not think of anything but how horrible, how utterly saddening that slaughter was in thought and in deed. How interwoven it is with our small, blind role in a ill-managed battle, how it is but a thread in what was to become the Second World War, where Hitler remembered what the Turks had gotten away with when he had his own *troublesome* internal populations to deal with.
I honour our warriors and commemorate their personal sacrifices. As a thinking citizen, I also interrogate our role in wars, in battles, in invading other countries. If we do not remember the ugly consequences of some of these actions, we risk diminishing those sacrifices. Sun Tzu also pointed out that the best way to win was to plan to not fight - that negotiation, maneuvering, information, terrain, politics, so many things could be used by a good leader before force should be deployed.
Today I am sorrowful for the deaths of the soldiers on that harsh ground and am shaken that we choose not to remember the full actions of our enemies at that time in preference for glorifying our ability to take a beating. Not much of a myth to live up to when you look at it that way.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Drudge
Wednesday. Hump Day.
Kirsty brings around the payslips at morning tea. Not many people have to wonder what they’ll spend it on, or even have to look to know who much will be there. It’s still enough of a novelty for me that I enjoy tearing along the little perforations and reading how much tax I paid, and perhaps even circling the amount that will be in my account some mysterious time tomorrow. But not today. Today is Hump Day and the day before pay day.
Today my goal is to stay awake and respond to my name when it is called.
It’s 4.40pm – the office has emptied out apart from the lifers.
Made it.
Kirsty brings around the payslips at morning tea. Not many people have to wonder what they’ll spend it on, or even have to look to know who much will be there. It’s still enough of a novelty for me that I enjoy tearing along the little perforations and reading how much tax I paid, and perhaps even circling the amount that will be in my account some mysterious time tomorrow. But not today. Today is Hump Day and the day before pay day.
Today my goal is to stay awake and respond to my name when it is called.
It’s 4.40pm – the office has emptied out apart from the lifers.
Made it.
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