Thursday early arvo

I am at a complete loss today. So, a stolen meme:

Listening to: Club 8, Strangely Beautiful
Wearing: Carhartt daks, Kronstadt top, Merrell shoes, M&S socks, n a pair of Rio underwear my mother gave me the morning I took these photos. Aint mums grand?
Fragrance: L'eau par Kenzo pour homme (I had to look for a visual cue. Bad metrosexual.)
Nails: N/A
Drinking: Moccona: snow white, two dwarves, from the tea room.
Eating: "ham, brie, seeded mustard and leaf pide" from the café round the corner.
Dreaming: of not crunching these sales stats anymore (moi? sales stats? never!) , and of January 2006.

Not that he deserves any more column inches...

"Before I was a Scientologist, I never agreed with psychiatry," Cruise said. "And when I started studying the history of psychiatry, I understood more and more why I didn't believe in psychology. ... And I know that psychiatry is a pseudo science." Tom Cruise, care of Reuters.

Studying psychiatry will help you understand psychology? Just like studying astrology will help you understand astronomy. Go somewhere and die please.

Which is what the American version of The Office has done. There is a god!

Oh, and while I'm on the teev: as soon as I saw the magnanimous reprieve Kate gave Christie on BB05, I was sure we'd be seeing the back end of Glenn. As sure as the day is long. Until I read about what Dean and Logan have done, that is. Ugh.

But slightly more upbeat(ish), Four Corners on the Nelson reforms last night was a very interesting program. Much more so than the tripe on 7. The systematic gutting of our proud publicly-funded traditions in this country by the Howard Government turns my stomach as much as the above article did.

Mamma Mia!

Gotta love the Italians. If only we in this country were less apathetic, we might do something like this.

Er hat ein mund bei ein katzen assloch

An old schoolmate of mine texted me at about 1am on Sunday:

«Ins Österreich heute.»

Yep, he used the umlaut—we did three years of German together. Him having mentioned going to Vienna for the weekend for a date (a date!), I replied:

«Sehr gut. Wie geht es mit dein konduktor?»
«Jetzt sehe ich Rage auf der tele.»

Excuse any faulty German syntax. I have hardly used it since 1989. The conversation continued...

«I will be in a box next to the orchestra pit»
«Lucky you! Enjoy!»

After which I resumed devoting my full attention to Tori Amos and her Rage selections. Which I must praise. Seminal video clips like Aha's "Take on me", Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" (remember that?) and the Bjõrk/Spike Jonze take on Singing in the Rain for "It's oh so quiet" that I hadn't seen for years. And that was just a brief selection which she chose because she liked the clips themselves.

«Is attempting to bust up a loveless 7 yr relationship morally wrong?»
«Not if he's worth it. Not unless less you're doing it just for sport. Hang on, haven't you two been together before?»
«Yes»
«Are you serious about him?»
«I would like to be—he lives in Berlin»
«Where does he stand on you?»
«Not sure—the sex seems to work»
«Go for it. Blow his mind. Do your darndest. And on that note I'n going to put my sleepy antipodian head to bed. I wish you all the best on your mission.»

It wasn't until about 3:46am this morning that I received the next message.

«Oh Vienna! Went well!»

I don't know where that puts the loveless seven year relationship, but it sounds like my old mate had a good time, and the plan is on track. He does seem to like doomed trans-continental relationships, but he also likes Berlin, and German-speakers. Funny for a jewish boy, no?

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog. Yo.

I have fallen in love twice this week.

I have read this comment of Ruth's over at Jess's Lefty Tim to Win campaign repeatedly, everyday this week. And I still chuckle, still, even now. I heart it:

I’m certainly not delving into the Behind BB live feed archives to find the exact wording, but one night the boys were teasing [Lefty Tim] about being a geek, and he said, “I’d never get called a geek in the outside world. I was smoking cones before any of you had even tasted beer.” To which one of the Logans smarmed, “Smoking dope doesn’t make you cool.” Lefty Tim replied, “Yes it does”.

It’s funny because it’s true.

And because those Logans are both fucksticks. Who don't or can't open their mouths properly when they speak. Just like Kane from Home and Away.

But Ruth's live-feed observation has been replaced in my fickle heart (already! Ah me!), by Jess' chronicling of the Bogart and Bacall love story for the ages, Romance: 21st Century Stylee. Not a more beautiful and honest tale has been told since Lang and Rose:

My heart beats as one with Ausculture. It was this post what did it.

Conversations with Taxi Drivers #467

Our brief exchange went something like this:

"Holy Shit!"
"%$@!%$$#@"
*gasp*
*gasp*

On Saturday night I opened the door to get out of a taxi. And it was promptly taken off by a passing tram.

Tuesday 9pm

Grammar Nazi

I hear these two all the bloody time:

"There are incidences of this sort of anti-social behaviour occurring all the time." It's incidents not incidences.
and
"I'm obligated to do visit my parent in the nursing home." No the fuck you're not, you're obliged to do it, and it is an obligation to visit them, but you are not obligated to do it. Or anything else for that matter.

I think I'm fighting a losing war on the second one.

New Neighbour

Back posted from Spy2, The Sunday Age, June 19, 2005.

When you've finished the Da Vinci Code...

I got hit up for a recommendation of something to read today. Initially blank, as I'm spending waaay too much time pinging between an epic RPG and a children's book at the mo', it got me thinking. At my last workplace, the beer-sodden Friday night conversation would often turn to books once the backstabbing and breaches of confidence had been exhausted. My new one is all about AV: it's what's on TV, what's on DVD, what on at the cinema. It's also younger. And there's less drinking (and less beeyotching too). What does this say about the youth of today?

So Dawei, a handful of books, fiction being my bag:

• Death of an Ancient King by Laurent Gaudé. An awesome little parable, about war and brotherhood, fantastic, bliblical, mythic. An easy couple of days read, with shades of Italo Calvino or early Paolo Coelho.
  
• The Leopard by Guiseppe Tommasi di Lampedusa. Ok, so I studied it in year 12. And I still rock out just thinking about it. Tancredi, Angelica, Don Fabrizio, the joke and that dog. In the throes of revolution, watch as the gentry mutate to survive.
  
• The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst. It beat the bookie's, and my, favourite, David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, to the Booker Prize; but it's a great piece of writing about the excesses of London society in the mid to late 1980s. And it's all worth it in the end.
• Atonement by Ian McEwan. Like watching a car crash in slow-motion, you know what's going to happen, but it's all too fascinating and grizzly to look away.
  
• Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. One man's life charts the history of India from independence.
• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Because he has to be on any list of books. And because love conquers all. Eventually.
  
• Anything by David Mitchell or Laurence Durrell. I'm simply not worthy.

I have to draw a line somewhere. So consider it drawn.

Scratch that. If you like Could Atlas, check out If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino. Postmodernity in type. I'm feeling weak at the knees jus' thinking about it.

And finally The Periodic Table by Primo Levi. Existential chemistry from a man who threw himself down a set of stairs.

Cardinal Puff has his first drink for the evening

After a heated conversation I had last night, what are everyone's ideas of an acceptible level of alcohol consumption?

I had always thought that a glass or two of wine each day was acceptible, so let's say that's equal to a couple of beers, or a shared bottle of wine over dinner. And then let's throw in one, maybe even two, proper nights on the piss a week, not falling over drunk but a good solid Friday night session sorta thing, a few laughs and the like, maybe a mild hangover, and a dry day. I was told that this was the position of an alcoholic. My response was, predictably, that according to most of those sort of labels, everyone I know is an alcoholic because the common definition is some sort of prudish Seppo self-help-book definition of consumption of more than two glasses of elderberry-wine three times a week is 'alocohol addiction'.

What do fellow residents of the blog-o-sphere think?

And while we're at it, where do you stand on the regularlity of recreation drug use? Or a healthy level of exercise?

Anorak

I get excited by things like this.

Seriously.

Old Glory

I am ashamed. This is not the Australia I grew up in, not the open, tolerant, enthusiastic, outward-looking, well-liked Australia, Paul Keating's Australia. This is Pauline Hanson's Australia, John Howard's Australia, bigotted, jingoistic, mean-spirited and small-minded. Yes, John, I blame YOU. Personally.

Last Saturday, The SMH's Alan Ramsey wrote about the various ways we are all dealing with the changes that have been wrought over the past 10 years, in the name of fashioning "John Howard's Australia":

[Social Researcher Hugh] Mackay thinks he sees "three emerging responses" to ... John Howard's Australia.

"First, there is increasing talk about the need to 'restore balance', to 'get my life under control', to 'live the way I want to live'. This quiet revolution will be led by women, who are increasingly reaching levels of authority and influence in business and the professions and, looking around them, are concluding that 'this is no way to live'.

"The second trend is less attractive.

"It is heard in the growing voice of those who are not saying, 'I want to get my life under control', but 'I want to get your life under control'. This is the voice of regulation.

"These are the religious, social and cultural fundamentalists - the people who want to see tougher sentencing, more censorship, more laws to control everything that moves. That is their answer to the instability and uncertainty of contemporary life - 'if only we had more rules and regulations' to restore our sense of security.

"The third signpost comes from the rising generation of Australians, who are showing us how to make sense of life in an uncertain world. Having never known anything but an accelerating rate of change and an unpredictable future, they have developed three strategies for coping: keep your options open, as a way of incorporating 'realistic uncertainty'; a spiritual framework is leading them to explore post-material values; and they have become our most tribal generation, having realised the most precious resource for coping with an uncertain world is each other."

Mackay concluded: "It is hard to be confident, but the emerging culture may be the best news we've had for a long time. Good for individuals who need the security of the herd, good for nuclear families who will not be under the same pressure to satisfy the herd instinct, good for communities as people move out to find new and creative ways of connecting."

Mr Howard, recognise yourself in the second of these categories? You should. You have nutured them and given them succour—and now we as a nation are reaping as you have sowed.

Give me the honest and honourable Australia of Malcolm Fraser, of Bill Dean, of Gareth Evans any day. The Australia of sunburnt faces and eyes squinting into the sun, of "she'll be right, mate" and "go for your life", of dust and heat and salt on my skin, of the click-click-click of sprinklers, the bang of wire-doors and the 6 pips marking the hour followed by the ABC news theme , of vernadahs and lemon trees and bowls of roses; of dim-sims and souvlakis, of red curry duck and mozzarella di buffala and roast lamb with home-made mint sauce; of beer and wine and gins and tonic; and the smells of lanolin and eucalyptus and sausage fat and freshly cut grass; of people who are interested in difference, who want to see the world, be a part of the world, and accept the world as it is, as different and intriguing and instructive, not mould it into a palimpsest of a picket fence and separationist tea party, some veneer of civility covering a dark, prejudiced, jealous heart. Bah!