Blindspot

2002-01-05T20:35:00.000+10:00

Rachel's blog is very funny. I'm home! Have spent this afternoon playing on my new bike. Zoom!

2001-12-30T19:20:00.000+10:00

Hey strangers...I don't suppose anyone checks this anymore, it has been so long. 'Sporadic' is not even the word, here. So, no promises this time! It's raining outside as i type this - yes, I am in Darwin! The room is also rocking up and down slightly. Due I think to me not quite being recovered from 4 days on a boat over christmas. It's a bit strange, this rocking. I hope it goes away soon. Darwin, though, is wonderful. I do have the luxury of an air-conditioned caravan, without which I would whinge a bit more about the heat. It's fine provided you don't have to do anything strenuous. Which i have emphatically not been doing. There's the usual holiday-malaise, as everything slows down. I have not blogged for ages due to working a lot, so it is incredibly bizarre to worry about nothing but which book to pick up next, or whether to have a swim now or in the afternoon. I've been racing through Rushdie's 'Midnight's Children', perfect in this heat - he writes of the heat inspiring acts of madness - me it just slows down. Wha? which day? breakfast? The book is wonderful. If I could write like anybody it would be that man. KABOOM!I love these storms. Unfortunately we haven't had too many of them. Last week Michael picked us up and took us to a bridge, where we watched the lightning as the storm came in. It's one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen, this Darwin lightning. There are the sharp, bright forked flashes that you'd expect (electrons being stripped - how wonderful!) but also these fluttering back-lit things - as different layers of cloud are lit for a second, pale or purple or (as when we were on the boat) bright pink and orange. It's difficult to watch for lightning, and after it is gone it's hard to believe it was ever there. This night, we walked back over the bridge and to the 'Fury' (a pub) for a beer. By our second we'd moved into the sheltered part of the verandah and it was belting down. By the time we'd finished our third the rain had stopped and we went down to the jetty (this all in Nightcliff) to watch the storm roll out. An excellent way to spend a night.

2001-11-10T15:44:00.000+10:00

oh my, it has been a while. this is just a little note to say that i DO intend to start this up again soon. i've relocated to the lovely lennox st, am almost finished my last essay, getting there, getting there - soon to have time to think, write, amuse you all, etc ;)

2001-10-11T23:06:00.000+10:00

Anyone want to write a conclusion to my thesis? I'll pay. Money, sexual favours, whatever. I'm over this thesis shit.

ps. another big peace protest on Saturday morning at town hall. 11am i think. show howard and beasley that we don't all thirst for blood of strangers.

pps. i'm serious about the thesis thing.

2001-10-01T14:43:00.000+10:00

And thanks to Peter for his link to the Chaser's hilarious and astute take on the Tampa debacle

2001-10-01T14:33:00.000+10:00

This dude is on the money as to the way in which people are reassured by losing their civil liberties, and also has the best idea as to how to 'win the war against terrorism' that i have heard so far: we have to love-bomb islam. Excellent stuff.

2001-09-28T23:02:00.000+10:00

Friday, September 28, 2001

Tonight I was part of the studio audience for a 60 Minutes debate about refugees. Since I doubt the ability or inclination of the channel 9 editors to adequately represent what happened over three hours tonight in less than one hour of tv on Sunday, I'll describe what happened here for you.

Driving along Delhi Rd in North Ryde, there was no missing the studio. There was a long queue of cars at the gate and lots of people milling around. Most of us waited outside for about an hour before going in. there were clearly a lot of community groups there - people from many different ethnic backgrounds, older people, nuns, some kids. Lawyers in suits, people in sneakers. I was one of very few people who went along alone, and was standing there mooching when a woman nearby broke off and started up a conversation. Rita is about my age, most of the way through a uni degree, like me. she is Afghani, came here as a refugee with her family when she was three. She was like, 'well, I can imagine how these people feel. They could be me.' Having saved me from being bored and feeling like a doof on my own, Rita is also the first person I have met who arrived here as a refugee. Soon I am also talking to an older friend of hers, a warm, smart woman involved in an Afghani women's organisation. She tells me the number of orphans they are trying to support back in Afghanistan and it is some mind-boggling number. I also meet Abeda, who came here when she was 7, is now finishing her Psych degree and definite about the sort of work she wants to do, family therapy, helping bridge the generation gap in migrant families. I'm excited that I've been able to meet these women, they are funny and committed and friendly, interested in the same things as me, and from a community I don't usually have much contact with.

So I went into the studio feeling pretty positive. The mood inside turned sharply after Liz Hayes introduced the segment and showed the pre-recorded pieces of the show. These, as you will see if you watch on Sunday, are about people-smugglers. 60 minutes' had an Australian Pakistani man pretend to want to go to Australia, with a secret camera, showing how easy it is to get here, how exploitative the people-smugglers are, and how some of them encourage rich Pakistani people to pretend to be poor Afghani asylum seekers. It was literally a set-up, not questioning the troubles people might have in leaving these countries legally, only contrasting the fate of the very poor in huge refugee camps with those who are rich enough to 'jump the queue.' At no point in the entire forum did anyone raise the question of whether for some it is impossible to join the queue, if indeed there is one. At the conclusion of the video 15 or so people stood up and began walking out, many people loudly protesting about the inappropriateness and one-sidedness about the segment we had just watched. We were there to talk about Australia's policies towards refugees, not about people-smugglers. How they get here, as Robert Manne pointed out, is not the important issue here. Several also pointed out that this kind of reporting enforces the idea of asylum-seekers as criminal or illegal. It was a shoddy piece of journalism and was not a good start to the 'debate.'

Liz Hayes failed to provide any effective mediation or facilitation of what was a very heated and chaotic discussion. There were several in the audience she targeted for specific quesitons: Philip Ruddock, Robert Manne, David Oldfield, and others. Bizarrely, Philip Ruddock was the only person to speak against more generous treatment of refugees with any intelligence. There were too many people there with enormously important things to say; there was never going to be any hope of getting them all in. and because of the lack of facilitation, those who spoke were those who stood up and shouted. The woman sitting in front of me sat with her hand in the air for the entire 2 hours of the debate. She was not heard. Some very idiosyncratic views were. As a debate it lacked coherence all together, often swinging far from what I'd consider to be the important points. There was a great deal of shouting, boo-ing, clapping - though I don't doubt that we will see this, more sensational, stuff on the show on Sunday. People were so upset, so angry, so anxious to have their say. It was pretty upsetting, as a few people yelled abuse at others. 'wog!' someone yelled, and 'send them all home!' at another point. The people making these comments were few - there would only have been 2 of them (4 if you include the One Nation candidates, one of whom managed to make a complete fool of herself.) The vast majority of this varied audience were in favour of a more compassionate stance towards refugees. People argued statistics, as they always will - the question of just how generous Australia is in relation to other countries came up AGAIN, as did that of how many we actually take and whether those we take from onshore (from boats, etc) take up spaces that would otherwise go to those waiting in camps overseas. Everyone seemed to agree that more had to be done to address the crises facing these refugees closer to their countries of origin. Some argued for the importance of protecting our borders, our sovereignty, etc. I was surprised to here people arguing over the merits or otherwise of multiculturalism. Several spoke proudly of Australia's cultural diversity, of how vital this is to our identity as a nation, others thought that it had gone too far and that we are in danger of being 'swamped.' Hayes put the question, 'what sort of Australia do you want to live in' and most people said they wanted a multicultural, harmonious one. There were a few religious figures, all of whom called forcefully for compassion. Others spoke also of caring, generosity, considering what it would be like in some other person's shoes.

It is a pity, though, that some important voices and arguments were not heard. Much of the time went to a few people airing strange personal grievances or theories, and not enough to the broader context, the details of Australia's policies, or the recent changes to legislation. We heard from very few migrant women (although there were many who had their hands up) nor were the Amnesty delegates asked any specific questions (as we had expected them to.) It was a very angry, very polarised argument. It was nasty. A few people walked out, which is always a bad sign. If people can't even participate, what hope is there? I was frustrated and sad and this kind of water-treading, and at the extremity of the distress shown by several of the migrants in the room, as well as the virulence of the few very racist members of the audience. It was more of a Jerry Springer-style shitfight than a debate. It was polarising, and will be even more so on TV. Moderate voices are not heard in this kind of discussion. Public debates are important - there should be more of them - but they must be diligently facilitated, and the ratings must not be involved.

2001-09-20T09:44:00.000+10:00

Will respond more fully to the disastrous state of things at present, but for now just wanted to pass on that there is going to be an anti-retaliation rally tomorrow afternoon (Fri Sept 21) at town hall steps at 4.30pm.

2001-08-31T10:59:00.000+10:00

For those of you who, like me, are a bit disgusted at our Dear Government's recent actions in relation to the Tampa, go to Amnesty's site for people to write to, fax, bug. This is one instance in which writing letters etc can make a tangible difference, as the issue seems likely to be political - polls are showing (apparently) that most Australians think we should not take the asylum seekers. I think those of us who disagree should make a bit of noise.

2001-08-30T23:28:00.000+10:00

Triple J are doing a 'Winter Songs' special tonight, and I'm glad for it, as it's given me a chance to hear again Paul Kelly's "Winter Coat." What to say about this song. There's nothing like a song about nostalgia that you listened to with an old love - what is it about romance that makes you nostalgic before you've even lost anything? Walter Benjamin would say that 'the idea of happiness is always linked to an idea of redemption. the same applies to our view of the past.' Anyhoo... they're playing Black Sabbath now, and I'm happy to say that i have no redemptive fantasies attatched to that band.

Here's to music and nostalgia, old and new loves.

2001-08-29T11:04:00.000+10:00

It's not all that often you hear pollies and political commentators talk about 'morals' in the Australian press. But they are this week, in what looks like a perfect floating showcase for the Howard Government's stubborn refusal to bite the bullet and be a bit generous, and to accept, publicly, that asylum seekers are not necessarily illegal. That most of those who get to Australia through people smugglers etc are not trying to jump the queue but have no choice. That these are, as one commentator in

check it out.

2001-07-27T15:48:00.000+10:00

Well look- Australia's representatives are doing even more to try to render the Kyoto Protocol entirely useless. I am continually flabbergasted by the fact that the people who govern us don't even try to hide the fact that they don't give a shit about what happens to other people in the world, or even to what will happen to people in Australia in years to come. Or, if they do give a shit, are too shitscared to look around the monolith that is America to do anything about it. Ok, maybe I was naive to even think that sense (science, knowledge, research, whatever) might prevail. Some places to register disapproval or learn more.

2001-07-27T14:17:00.000+10:00

Hey, Peter's finally got the website for the Fourplay Remix Album, up and running. Lots of juicy info about Sydney (and some Adelaide and Melbourne) music of the electronic variety. If you have not bought the thing, you should. It's gorgeous.

2001-07-24T12:33:00.000+10:00

Oh man, I’m trying not to blog. I am supposed to be reading about postmodernism…which is not even as fun as it sounds. what to report? I went to Melbourne on the weekend for sweet Simone’s wedding, and have this to say: old friends rock. Flew in after 3 hours sleep (why not, I thought to myself, work til midnight, go see the last 2 hours of Squarepusher – just for some light entertainment – and then fly to Melbourne at 8am the following day?) on Virgin Blue. It all looks and sounds a bit dodgemeister (“Good morning ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. We’re here to make your flight as fun and memorable as we possibly can.”) but friendly and easy and cheap as hell. So, recommended for the laughs and the fares. Thence to Spencer St station to be collected by the lovely Bonnie (“Just get there, and sit. Don’t move.”) – I wanted to buy Mone some flowers which was easy, considering she lives right near an enormous cemetary. There are 24-hour florists there. There is a DRIVE THRU florist there. Wacky shit. (Bizarre Melbourne graffiti: “NIKE SWEATSHOP LABOUR IS WACK”) Crazy kitchen antics, house full of friends, old and new. Mottliest bloody wedding party you’re ever going to see. There’s something about friends who’ve known you for years. It’s just GOOD. They also metamorphose bizarrely from year to year. Last year one friend was doing not much and wearing big jeans and cool hair. She rocks up to wedding looking every bit the art student that she is, all black, silver jewellry, poppy lipshtick.

Registry weddings are pretty funny. They don’t go for very long. Like, 5 minutes. We had a bit of paparazzi happening though (most of mone’s friends have nice SLR cameras and were going nana with them)

My ten cents about weddings. I think I’m on a growing-older-downhill-slide on this one. I never really saw the need for them. This, damn unconventional by anybody’s standards, was such an amazing day. You get to be so publicly happy for someone, to participate and celebrate, and say, ‘hey, you guys are great and I’m glad of this thing.’ You don’t often have such an excuse to be loving in public (I mean everyone, not just bride and groom). There should be more of it.

Excellent dinner, much boozing and good chat. Allround merriment. All up – grand occasion. Thanks, Mrs U. After another 3 hours sleep I piled myself boozily back on to Virgin Blue at 6.30 am and slept soundly all the way to Sydney. Yawn. Home. Boyo. Good. Sleep…

2001-07-19T11:02:00.000+10:00

Hello lovies, sorry it has been a while. I became, for one short week, SuperProductive Girl. Five shifts at the ever-lovin' bookshop, and an entire essay read for and written. I rock.
Now it's back to much nicer, slower things, like eating home-made pasta at my mum's place (the woman is obsessed with this new ,and admittedly, very cool kitchen appliance.), walking the crazy dog, reading for thesis. Doing yoga. Life is good. Which is why you haven't been hearing so much from me - urge to blog is less when happily occupied. So, nah.

2001-07-08T08:19:00.000+10:00

Erin asks why we blog - I could go on for days, but this is perhaps an effect of the joys of the thing itself. Blogging is a way to express yourself to a bizarrely indirect audience - you have no control over who reads it, or how, but there is the possibility of 'talking' to people most removed from yourself. It's like art, but -ah, I was going to say less wanky, but nup, it's just as wanky. But sometimes, just sometimes, its easier to read... what am I saying? it's fun, in a voyeuristic, egotistical, sheer joy of writing sort of way. and it means you dont have to send out group emails when travelling. I like reading other people's blogs, because i like hearing what other people have to say, and seeing how the form changes both what they have to say and how they say it. just a few scattered responses...

2001-07-06T22:10:00.000+10:00

Hello loves. Back home. Well, at work at the moment. Dinner break - waaay jetlagged. It's nice to be home. Nice to be home with boyo, nice to be back at work (no, I'm not insane, I just have a lovely job), and solidly settling down to some study. Maybe this is just the jetlag talking :) My sister knitted me a scarf while I was away so I am keeping warm throughout the bizarre weather change. Cold? What do you mean, cold? Two days ago I was strolling along the Seine looking at houseboats in the sunshine at 10pm!

Our last night in Paris, we found a nice restaurant near the Pompidou Centre (seems like the queer district - seeing as there was a place called 'Bears Den' which was full of, well, bears...) had a cheap dinner and an expensive bottle of champagne, and swung home on the metro... nice... I still feel like Paris was kind of hiding from me. Like I'll have to go back another time to find her out. So many things I have not written about - the sculptures in the Louvre, those huge light galleries full of beautiful bodies suspended in motion, all those angels and beautiful backs and calves and bellies. Sure, I was perving in the Louvre, ok? The venus de milo is much more exciting than the mona lisa. The 16th-odd century religious paintings were incredible too - so bloody. Vast symbolic cartoon landscapes. Needless to say I bought a lot of postcards! Other eye-and-heart food was the Sacre Coeur. Despite the throng of people selling all sorts of weird shit out the front, I walked in and wanted to kneel down and pray. Now I've been through enough Catholic schooling to have no urge to go anywhere near that stuff ever again, but some places can be made sacred simply by people's belief in them. The Notre Dame was a different matter. Wealth, bombast - the tourists were out of place but also entirely in keeping with the place. The outside of it is very cool, however. Worth it for the gargoyles. Ok, best be back to work.

2001-07-03T04:31:00.000+10:00

The Great Erin finally has her blog up. Stay tuned for blogging pleasure. This girl rocks.

2001-07-03T04:24:00.000+10:00

Hello my dears... ah, so behind on all this blogging business.... last night in paris, so this will be a short one. Have had a lovely sunny time here. everything is very expensive unless you buy it all at the supermarket, which is what we've started doing... met up with the lovely penny and emma on the weekend. with emma we went to monmartre, wondered around, found some great quiche, then ended up at an excellent bar the name of which i do not know, drinking beer and declining the free couscous... monmartre is windy, cobbled, fabulous, and quite near where we are staying. the barbes-rocheford station (where we are) is pretty dodgy. even your pastry is at risk! we were completely flabbergasted when someone stole mark's croissant the other day. walking up the steps on sunday morning, eating our breakfast, some guy comes up and snatches the paper bag, grabbing half of it and one croissant. fortunately m had a tight grip on the croissant in his hand, but my god...

2001-06-28T21:54:00.000+10:00

Bonjour mes cheres! Oui, nous sommes en Paris! And french keyboards are fiendishly different from Australian ones, so this is slow going... oh la la. Whqt to tell you? new york let us under her blankets a few times - most amazing was Nesh, a pqrty to celebrate the opening of a new Warp store in Brooklyn. We get to where we think it is (a pier in Chelsea) to find that the gig is in fact mostly moored off the pier, on a falling-to-pieces boat called the Frying Pan - this was no holds barred the best venue i have ever seen. We landed on this pier just in time to have Squarepusher fuck with our inner ear and psyches - never heard music like this. Very strange, very loud. Dizzying. On this pier crawling with a varied mass of groovers, a big bar, a murky night, the river. Then Two Lone Swordsmen and some excellent dancy stuff, and dance we did... oh, the pleasures of a good crowd, a good dance... We crossed the gangplank (this sounds like a euphemism doesnt it?) on to the frying pan, which is simply unbelievable. An old boat that has not gone anywhere for a long time. People climbing all over the thing - up on to the decks and the prow, into the body of the boat where you can cross metal bridges and look through portholes down into the hull, where another dj is playing and people are dancing, sitting, wondering around. the whole dark and rusted and labyrinthine. a little room with (made!) bunkbeds, a locked cabinet containing preserved lizards and bits of god knows what. and excellent beats pounding through the whole thing.

the day i lost amaris we ended up in the village for the pride parade - didnt see too much of that but that night we found our way to the annual Queer poetry slam at urbana , which was inspiring. Id wanted for ages to see how these things worked - there is an open mike, then a guest reader, then a kind of competition. Ariana Waynes was the guest this night, and she was fabulous. This was joyous, angry, witty body poetry. Shes sexy as hell and a beautiful reader. The slams are poetry spilled out in, and all over bodies and peoples stories and voices. more about that later i think. this typing is giving me hell.

Paris...its pretty as anything. if ever a building could crouch it is the notre dame. it is pretty terrifying not to be able to speak to people properly - boyo is finding it particularly hard i think, but we're not so jetlagged today and are getting around a bit better. i'm wanting to turn myself into fearless-traveller-woman. not quite there yet ;) but am managing maps and the metro. to get here we walked down a street fully of nurseries and pet shops. it's summer, the flowers are beautiful. i can understand why europeans would find the australian landscape so unruly, alien. i had a hilarious conversation with a man in the pharmacie trying to buy 'preservatifs' - great buzz in speaking french, it's damn cool. enough for now, gotta get back out into that sunshine...

2001-06-25T06:38:00.000+10:00

Don't get me wrong, until just now it's all been great. But I have learnt another important lesson. When in another country, there must ALWAYS be a backup plan. Haven't seen Am for 2 years, saw her for a couple of hours yesterday and now may not catch her at all again. Very grumpy. I guess there's no point blogging at my disappointment, but today's been a dead loss so might as well waste time huh? Am now off to M's (ex) boss Dan's for dinner, then to a poetry slam (to which i am very much looking forward). Last night had happy catch-up with Amaris, drinking many and various beers, then to a very average piece of improv theatre. then to lovely tribeca bar, and chat with wendy and nick about ball room dancing.

2001-06-25T06:24:00.000+10:00

If anyone has any suggestions as to how to contact someone in New York, when neither of you has a cell phone, give me a ring huh?

:/

2001-06-25T06:22:00.000+10:00

Bad day. Stupid me made stupid unprecise plans and now we've lost amaris, who goes back home tomorrow. Can't believe it. Spent the whole day trying improbable means of contacting the girl. Dumb dumb dumb.

2001-06-23T02:57:00.000+10:00

Quick blog from crazy land. We are settling into a kind of pattern - late nights and long sleep-ins. I like this city so much better at night. We are continuing to develop important problem-solving skills. Getting up at 11am makes breakfast difficult (we are staying in a not-very-foody part of town) - we have however discovered that delis will, for a couple of dollars, fry you some eggs and put them in a roll with some cheese. That works. We are also getting fitter, slowly but surely, despite the steady intake of eggs and g+t - this because we are on the 6th floor of our lovely hostel, with no lift! Ca alors!

It's been hot - burning clammy kind of hot. Best thing for this, we've discovered, is trekking to the park and sitting under a tree, or reading in a cool cafe or bookshop. Oh my, the bookshops here are something else. A brief rundown for those of you who are interested: first stop was of course the Strand - apparently the world's biggest second-hand bookstore. Bad for those of yez who, like me, are scared of heights - to get at the gorgeous cheap and dusty gems on these huge shelves you have to climb a ladder... very big bookstore. I'm deciding whether or not to buy some stuff that is cheaper over here - unfortunately the things that i am eyeing off are big fat hardcover volumes of Walter Benjamin - Mark's despairing because our luggage it is getting unmanageable! Philosophy and theory books are noticeably cheaper here. The poetry at the Strand was excellent as well.

I am in love with the Village. ok, i'm a university chick through and through, but we were walking around as the sun was going down the other day, and ever window made me want to go in. Restaurants and shops and bars... people can dress down there, too. So we went into East Village Books and Records, a very small and dusty second-hand place, made me sneeze like nothing else. There is a section for "Right wing politics" (on the left) containing, mads will be amused to hear, Machiavelli amongst other oddities. unsurprisingly the "Left wing" section was larger - even larger was their "Small presses and anti-thisestablishment" section within which you find books on how to stalk someone, how to cook with hash, how to start a conspiracy, etc...

General bookstores take their poetry much more seriously than their australian counterparts. oops, gotta go, will finish later...

2001-06-20T03:11:00.000+10:00

Ok, Tuesday already.Hard to keep up with all of this. What the hell have we been doing? Saying 'go away' to inevitable bangers-on-doors at 10am - only yesterday did i start feeling normal again. if there is such a thing in this city. we make important personal discoveries every day - boyo had decided against cream cheese. I have realised that i am in fact a fussy eater - there are LOTS of thing in america that i don't like to eat. A whole array of foods that go by other names (like cookie,donut, pastry, etc) all should be called cake. They all taste like cake. I am also realising just what it means to be Australian: I cannot stop myself from saying "ta"even though no one understands what I mean when I say it.I say "ta" about 20 times a day.

The city itself - it's hard to say. We consult a deeply-folded subway map out of Mark's pocket, we descend into a hot, confusing, dingy and somehow comforting series of passageways. A train arrives immediately. We sit on orange plastic seats and look at one repeated ad - nesquik in a bottle, divorce lawyers, how to get your child a pay-out for an imaginary head injury which suddenly accounts for 6 years of acting like a shit, etc, and also other passengers. The voices, clothes, faces of people here are very different from one another. We arrive at a particular co-ordinate (checked on aforementioned map) ,exit train, climb some stairs, and then my favourite feeling in New York. You step up out of the subway and have no idea what the world is going to look like - even at the same station you can exit from several staircases onto different streets - a moment of complete unknowingness. It's like alice in wonderland, or willie wonka and the chocolate factory. We stand stock still, blocking people traffic behind us. Where are we? Where are we going? We've developed a little dance: we walk for half a block in one direction, then realise it's the wrong direction, turn around, walk the other way. Turn around again. We get there eventually. It's really fun - like acting out the generally prevaricating nature of our everyday existences in a giant board or video game. So I am beginning to know new york as a series of chunks - verses,scenes, whatever. i kind of know where they are in relation to one another,but i haven't connected them on foot.Boyo has new shoes so the walking's getting to him a little.

What verses, then, what scenes? Chronology is probably my best bet, here. Saturday. Sleep in. We stayed the first few nights in the Pensylvannia Hotel, near 34th street.It's like a shopping mall around which interminable tourists queue and lug luggage. Our window looked down onto Macy's; a non-stop video billboard showing couples walking along the beach or through forests then stopping to embrace, flick hair about in slow motion, put whatever clothes they are advertising to best advantage. So at night there was a weird green flashing along the edge of the window-blind. Saturday morning we proved my advance theory about travelling (actually it was more advanced by Catherine from my work, who said that you need to know something of a place in order to enjoy travelling in it) - travelling, i think, is like shopping. It's no fun going shopping if you know exactly what you want and where to get it - that's the supermarket, the pharmacy. The best shopping (and travelling) is when you have an area of interest, an inkling of the kinds of placs you might find it, then are surprised,finding something you were looking for but had forgotten. So we looked for breakfast in NY, kind of aimlessly,and we found it hard to find. Eventually we found a place that M had been before, the Kitchenette near TriBeCa. Lovely vibe, and excellent food, but my god they feed you SO MUCH here! It's all rich and fried or creamy or baked or all three.A bit much for me, but their "biscuits"(like crunchy heavy savoury scones) are divine.

Then down past washington square (sidetracked on the way to buying squarepusher tickets at Other Music) - a woman sitting on a park bench with her arm around a big black labrador as though he was her boyfriend, too scared to go down and play with all the other dogs...

After ogling Other Music ( i was most restrained - only came away with a live Nick Drake disc I had not seen before), we made for the park. Mark bought a suspiciously cake-like cookie at a place where you could pick your own everything - bage, cream-cheese, sandwhich, smoothie, salad... perfectly emblematic NY institution - complete illusion of choice. Multitude of small choices to distract one from the big ones. Democracy, mayhap?

I love central park. It's HUGE! There's a kind of outdoor roller-disco;a dj and abunch of people boogieing around on skates.Fabulous. Then i did some yoga while Mark juggled. Upside-down, i saw a man in a black suit and hat talking into a mobile (sorry, cell phone) and bobbing up and down in time with the music.

Dinner in a dark italian jazzy restaurant called "Ecco". A bottle of chianti and a happy subway home. I'm worn out with all this blogging. will get to sunday and monday later... love and miss you, friends.

2001-06-16T12:35:00.000+10:00

I'm very tired. New York is insane. Mark is good.

i guess i should give you more detail than that, but I arrived this afternoon and have gone a couple of days without sleeping, so am feeling somewhat off the planet. New York is just something else - just went and got some dinner tonight, good cheap vego food at 'Zen Palate' - Times Square on a Friday night - too much colour, flashing lights, amazing depth of field of video billboards - like it's all too 3D. None of it feels in the slightest bit real - but I think that's not just exhaustion, seems like it's always like that. Alison will be glad to hear that I caught the "A train" from the airport a la the Ella Fitzgerald song. The LA transit lounge was also very surreal - long long corridor edged in brown tinted glass, smelling of popcorn. The flight was sleepless but not too bad -some nice hours cruising through the dark listening to Amnesiac, the Fourplay remixes, Tim Buckley, and Talvin Singh - excellent travel music. Also read the first story in Paul Auster's "New York Trilogy" - he is really very good. I didn't think i'd see it through, boysy metafictive detective stories not being my thing, but he writes excellent story - allusive and evocative and clever, without tying up the edges neatly - it's a mystery, and in that sense trancsends what i thought to be the boundaries of the "detective fiction" genre. And, of course, is set in NY, with lots of maps and meanderings. De Certeau, eat your heart out.

I'm blogging at an "easy everything" (I love that) with something like 800 computers. What the fuck is that about? This place, the people in it, seem like charicatures of themselves. We just walked past an old guy, thick bronxy accent, saying, "Only in New York. Only in New York." Indeed.

2001-06-15T10:06:00.000+10:00

Hey, this is cool. I am blogging from inside the airport.. I've never been behind customs before - it's a whole other airport in here! I have purchased my duty free electrical goods, read the instructions. Started reading Walter Benjamin's "One Way Street" which I think is perfect for this kind of situation. Reading, in transit, his fragments about writing and travel and dreams. I'm thinking about Stephen Muecke sounding like a wanker, reading Derrida in the desert. Benjamin in the international terminal? Just as bad, I think...

2001-06-14T22:52:00.000+10:00

ok loves, this is my last post before take-off. I have nothing to say, really. Am reduced to making zooming sounds accompanied by appropriate hand gestures, lifting of one foot off the floor, etc. This is my favourite kind of life - so excited my mind doesn't touch the ground, talking to people I love on the phone, lots of hugs, and most of all the knowledge that this time tomorrow I will be in the arms of my boy.

2001-06-13T21:52:00.000+10:00

Another mannerly reading tonight - this blog's getting all a bit literary, isn't it? It's just the people I hang out with, I don't know...

This one organised by Ivor Indyk, a very odd man and the editor of Heat magazine. It was at Grammar (one of those swish sydney boys schools, for youse elsewherers), and you walk in to have drinks under a set of assembled whale bones in the museum. Strange indeed. But inside, the reading was much more my scene - Joanne Burns, J.S.Harry and Antigone Kefala. JS Harry's poems are incredible: small things, rabbits and stuff, but much wisdom. I love hearing Joanne Burns read - I like one of her poems so much i am going to reproduce it in full:

Revisionism.

king lear in a mr.whippy van
ulysses in a greyhound bus
heathcliff in a honda
miss havisham waiting for the lights to change.

henry lawson in a holden commodore
silas marner in a mercedes
gertrude stein as a taxi driver
jane austen in a panel van

tennyson in a toyota
emily dickinson in a cadillac
voss in a campervan
hamlet in a valiant

huck finn in a volvo
lady macbeth as a removalist
the man from snowy river in a rolls
sartre as a petrol tank driver

dickens in a mini moke
lawrence in a jaguar
hardy as a hearse driver
whitman in a four wheel drive

sylvia plath as an ambulance driver
eliot as a chauffeur
evelyn waugh as a rickshaw driver
proust with a flat tyre

2001-06-09T12:37:00.000+10:00

I think I have just reserved tickets to see Talvin Singh play in Paris, at the Elsee Monmartre. In French. So don't quote me on that...

2001-06-07T22:35:00.000+10:00

I couldn't find the CD I wanted tonight so I dragged out The Cure's "Entreat". Nup, it's not just nostalgia. I love this music.

I went to a reading today that made me feel like an idiot for having gone on about how 'no one reads poetry' - Noel Rowe and Nicolette Stasko read poetry that filled me up like the best music. It was just pleasure, hearing their poems in their voices. Poems do things that stories can't. Sure, they're an elite kind of pleasure, but I don't think they have to be. A good poem makes me feel like I want to live better. Like I want to tell nothing but the truth. These poems were pure voice, the closest these people could get to describing their worlds to you. Good like close talk, like long hugs, like sudden learning.

2001-06-07T09:58:00.000+10:00

blogger, what's going on?

2001-06-02T21:51:00.000+10:00

Grumbleblog. It's that time of year boys and girls. MMMMmmmmmessaayyys. Honing my unique ability to sit in front of a computer and think absolutely nothing. Anyone has any thoughts on whether the Bloomsbury group overrated the self-absorbed world of art and underrated the world of everyday life and politics, my email address is over on the left. If anyone has any ideas about the distinction between the two, that'd be useful as well. To be honest, I think Virginia Woolf and EM Forster were both terrible snobs but they really tried to imagine what it would be like to be someone else. You know, like, poor. They both have great zooming techniques. that's about all i want to say really. i have made it to 3000 words so far though! I have also revived my obsession with wordcount. I would not be exaggerating to say that i spend more time checking how many words I have written than actually writing the words. You don't need to point out how self-defeating this is...

It's difficult, also, to write essays when you have a big suitcase parked next to your bed and a bunch of flowers on your desk and a plane ticket in your top drawer... ;)

BTW, the Clouds rock. Or, rocked. Nah, they still rock. Been dancing and cooking soup. Much more fun than literary criticism.

2001-06-01T15:03:00.000+10:00

Just returned from the Sydney Uni Arts Faculty Annual Prizes and Awards ceremony. Only just defrosted. Very cold in Ye Olde Maclaurin Hall. At these events various professors and such like extol the virtues of the arts degree, and these days do so sounding very defensive, combative. Was it always so? At any rate, now that we have to defend ourselves, it is heartening to see people like Penny Gay do so with such gusto. Even our dear VC Gavin Brown (who is as the years go by coming to resemble more and more the gargoyles of the prestigious buildings over which he lumpily presides) put a good case for the arts, though i find it hard not to grumble and squirm as i think of his salary, his attitude of taking-for-granted the increasing corporatisation of the university. He spoke about humanities and social sciences as encouraging imagination, new ideas, a humane society. Great ideas in the abstract, yeah, i agree with you, but the way you're overworking your poor teachers, and the increasing inaccessibility of university educations to those of little means, Mr Brown, i see no evidence of such humanity in you.

Sigh.

2001-05-31T15:00:00.000+10:00

Today I got sent a whopping bunch of flowers. Blue irises and yellow roses. *grin*

2001-05-30T10:50:00.000+10:00

Yesterday I got a happy bellyfull of Sydney... woke up to find the street streaming with water, covered in red leaves - needed gumboots to get to work, but I don't have any, so I got wet. Lovely, cruisy day at work, then to the schmick Longrain with Harrie and Bosco for a cocktail - only one mind you. Ouch, a bit pricey, but the one with Myrtle liquor in it is much to be recommended. The waitress passed us disapprovingly every ten minutes as we didn't seem to be drinking fast enough... then to chinatown with sweet Bosco to eat cheap good food. Good talk, good food. All good...

2001-05-30T10:43:00.000+10:00

Hey blog, we're a Blog of Note! That's very cool...

2001-05-27T11:29:00.000+10:00

Sorry guys, blogger was being strange for a few days there - fellow bloggers, you must go and republish your blog to get it back in the reading eye!

2001-05-26T10:36:00.000+10:00

We all know that Pauline Hanson 'seeks to exploit anti-Asian sentiment', but I was intrigued to hear some clarification of this sparkling policy:
'"We are not talking about individual Asians being a problem," Ms
Spencer said. "It's not that we're on track to being 25 per cent
Asian, but how that changes our values and our institutions.

"What we are against is government policies that bring all sorts of
people into Australia and how that has an enormous impact on our
country."

What values? What institutions? What impact? I think what she's trying to say is that "all sorts" of people is bad. We want monoculture! Stupid gits.

2001-05-23T12:08:00.000+10:00

Ah, I love a good hoax. A few weeks ago I read about Virginia Woolf's involvement in the Dreadnought Hoax of 1910, in which a few Bloomsbury fellows (and our Virginia) dressed up as the Emperor of Abyssinia and his suite, sent a telegram, practised their Swahili on the train, and were promptly shown around the Dreadnought, one of the Biggest and Newest warships of Her Majesty's Fleet. (!) The whole thing, as Hermione Lee points out in her biography of Woolf, 'depended to a breathtaking degree on the general ignorance of all things African'.

On Indymedia this morning I found another doozie: the Yes Men, a group of activist scammers, got themselves invited to speak for the WTO at a conference of distinguished lawyers... and did so, with great aplomb! You guys rock.

2001-05-18T16:08:00.000+10:00

he he he... a policeman in WA managed to lock himself in one of his own cells at the police station and then pulled a pretty absurd (and obviously kind of embarrassed Houdini-act to get himself out. It's a lovely summary on the ABC's main page: "A Western Australian policeman has distinguished himself by escaping from his own station lockup." Distinguished indeed...

2001-05-16T16:38:00.000+10:00

Feelin all a bit fluey this fine wednesday (at least, it's fine outside, but the House Of The Deathly Chill is still- well, chilly). Good week. Not too much panic over work. Made some good soups. Went to two very fine parties on the weekend, both on the same night. Got drunk and played twister and enjoyed having extended conversations with new and old friends alike. Lovely mothers day with Veronica, John, and Cousins (the folks being in Germany and sending me lots of postcards - they know me well). And Bonnie arrives on Friday, which is great cause for rejoicing. Miss her greatly. Hope that I'm over whatever is making me so stuffy and useless today by then. Oh, and have come up with a topic for my theory essay - very appropriate don't you think? THEORY AND CRISIS. Oh, it's ALL a crisis where i'm concerned. Though re-reading EM Forster's first novel, 'The Longest Journey', I feel better about my own angsting. His lame(literally and metaphorically), philosophising, prevaricating sop of a protagonist never fails to make me feel better about myself. It is also, incidentally, in places quite a good novel. Not so good as 'Howard's End' or 'Passage to India', though. The man is not anywhere near as tedious as I thought he'd be. Bedside reading of late has been Hermione Lee's bio of Virginia Woolf, though i must admit that I am skipping bits. Like, the first hundred and fifty pages? And i skipped a chapter to get to the bit about Vita Sackville-West. I mean, I KNOW no-one knows if they had sex, but i can't help but be nosey. Life's a soapie, boys and girls, or at least it is in retrospect ;)

2001-05-12T10:09:00.000+10:00

It makes me grumpy on a saturday morning to read about universities the same way as i've been reading about big business in the paper. (oh, sorry, i forgot, university is big business) Just LOOK at how much our esteemed VC is getting paid. Can't help but place that alongside little department with enormously overworked lecturers/teachers/administrators...

2001-05-10T09:52:00.000+10:00

Sorry folks. Been a while. I'm trying to study, so might be blogging a bit thin on the ground...

Study. Work. Dinner. Drinks. Study. yoga. study.... that's the update.

2001-05-02T11:32:00.000+10:00

Margo Kingston is, as usual, a lone 'hurrah!' from inside the echoing bowels of the smh.

2001-05-02T11:26:00.000+10:00

Actually, I wussbagged out of M1. No excuses, but here are some Indymedia reports. The Herald is happy that trading went on as usual; in fact, they made lots and lots of money that day. Duh, guys, that wasn't the point. In the 'features and arts'section there's a 'first-hand' account of a lone protestor(not part of any 'movement'. That piece is kinda sad. He just wanted to go along and weigh in against the bad guys. I doubt the Herald would have printed the piece were it not for the fact that this guy apparently has nothing to do with the 'evil' (oh, sorry, radical) folks who organised the thing, and the ending:"Nothing achieved, apart from the waste of a good mid-morning." Feel a bit like the papers can write this sort of thing down, out of existence. Nothing was gained. Who says? God, I don't know.

2001-04-29T10:45:00.000+10:00

Holy fuck, look at what the police have planned in response to the M1 protests. I'm thinking, please be peaceful, please be peaceful. Will be there to witness it, anyways.

2001-04-29T02:02:00.000+10:00

Hey, I'm writing these fortnightly pieces of blah about webmagazines for Honi, figured I might as well start putting them up here. So that you of my friends who DO know shit about computers can laugh about the fact that I don't.

So: the latest: Tranter and his Jacket

Poetry and the Revolution (or, like, an online magazine):

Poetry magazines are strange creatures. Purveyors, victims and creators of literary canons; they can also become little more than regular exercises of in-houserie or elitism. Ideally, I suppose, the poetry magazine would function so as to get the poems to the readers. Getting a book of poetry published these days is like trying to move a large building with a pipe cleaner, so your only bet, apart from self publishing, and miraculous small publishers like Vagabond Press, is getting one or two things in a magazine. There are a fair few of these creatures, some bigger than others. Some pay, some don't. Getting published in a 'serious' journal like Meanjin or Southerly puts you one step closer to an Australia Council grant, and helps your chances of publication elsewhere. But, you ask, does anyone read such things? Apart from literary critics/academics and, in occasional fits of jealous rage, other poets? I'm guessing probably not, and this of course does not render them useless, but how (oh how, echo the howls of centuries of well-meaning writers) does one get the poems "out there"?

The internet! Of course! Why didn't we think of that before?

Uh, sorry. We did think of that before. Repeatedly. The internet is supposed to be able to get every form of information out to everyone, and of course the it will only succeed in getting poetry out to people who look for poetry on the net; in other words, those same lasses and lads who read Meanjin and Southerly. The thing about internet publishing, obviously, is that there doesn't need to be an editor. You don't need to be part of, or even know someone who is part of a canon in order to put your poems or stories or essays on the net. You can just make a site and pop them on. The problem with this, as with everything you read on the net, is the sheer volume of stuff that goes up. As John Tranter points out, 'Anyone can publish anything at all on the Internet, and broadcast it all around
the world, without the bothersome interference of censors, style police, or
cantankerous editors. Cool!'
He goes on:
But as it happens, the bothersome interference of editors is what most readers
want. They don't like having to wade through some amateur's first draft. They
would much rather read a final draft by a writer who's talented enough to attract
the interest of a publisher, and professional enough to listen to an editor's advice.

Herein lies the self-stated role of Tranter, and of his magazine Jacket. Here we have a respected member of Australia's poetry establishment embracing the possibilities of online publishing and producing, since 1997, a Very Respectable Online Journal. John Tranter is a talented and prolific poet, who has been doing the poetry thang since the 1960's. By creating Jacket he has enabled the traditional poetry journal in Australia to have a presence on the web, and to expand its own possibilities: usually, for example, journals are expensive. Jacket, as Tranter points out repeatedly (and somewhat cantankerously, having been refused Aus. Council funding to pay his contributors), is free. Paper journals are difficult to print and distribute. Jacket, obviously, is not. The fact that it is online (and free) means that you can drop by it to read one or two poems, or an article, instead of paying twenty bucks and feeling obliged to read the whole thing. This means he can shove lots and lots and lots of stuff in there. And this he does: each issue of Jacket is enormous. Theoretically, it will reach more people than the paper journals - and indeed, Jacket does seem to have succeeded in enabling some Australian poetry to reach an international audience.

Tranter does a good job with Jacket. It is very user-friendly, easy to read, loads up fast. He has included a wonderful page of links to (and commentary on) other online literary magazines. All contributions are solicited (so don't go bombarding him with your masterpieces, kids) and so it also functions as a kind of record of the kinds of writing in which Tranter is interested. And there's nothing wrong with that. The mix is generally an interesting one of local and overseas poetry, with excellent special features on certain poets, and also some engaging essays and criticism.

I agree with Tranter, in that it can be useful for those of us who are time and energy-strapped to have editing presences on the web, to point us towards what we might find particularly inspiring or useful. Jacket does, however, present to me the possibility of existing Establishments setting up their own bastions on the net. It would be cheap and easy for me to set up my own little poetry mag, but it wouldn't get the readership of Jacket (as, last time I checked, I'm no John Tranter). Maybe that doesn't matter. It's a big room on the internet; we don't have to jostle for space. I'm not even sure that we need to compete. (as Tranter so succinctly puts it, 'Weird things happen to capitalism on the Internet.') There's still a canon, there always will be. Canons serve certain functions in a culture and are not evil in themselves - they only become a problem when they take up all the available space. Which they're sure as hell not doing online.

2001-04-29T01:21:00.000+10:00

well my dears, it's been a while huh? As you can see below, I did attempt to blog from the national library in Canberra last week. But my post disappeared. Blogger is like my hair - I've lost the battle. No control. My blog and my hair, they do their own thing.

So... Canberra. Wacky place. I was there to work, and work I did. One day spending ELEVEN HOURS, yes, ELEVEN HOURS in the library. Yes, I know I'm a nerd. Proud of it. I was looking at the papers of Vance and Nettie Palmer, two pretty important players on the Australian literary scene back in the 30's-50's. There are so many letters in there. I was looking mainly at those written by Marjorie Barnard and Frank Dalby Davison during the war; there's something particularly odd about being able to read the letters of all these strangers. It's intriguing, that's for sure. Probably wont use much of it in the thesis, but spent a few happy days working solidly in that beautiful library. You look out the window, and there's the lake, and mountains, and misty trees with leaves turning purple and red. Also, the most helpful librarians I have ever encountered.

But Canberra... so much LAWN. so few people. Whilst engaged in my rampant nerdism i came across a letter from Kylie Tennant in 1941 (when Canberra was only 10 or so years old):

'canberra... laid out beautifully, like a corpse. The answer to any complaint in Canberra is: "oh but now the trees have grown!"

Sums up all I have to say about Canberra, really.

Since then, blog has been left alone so as to attend to things like seeing friends, and films: Memento impressed me only mildly, but then thrillers have never been my thing. Amores Perros, on the other hand, is one of the best films I've seen in a long time. Proof that something can be poetic without being wank.

And I've been trying to work some more: but have decided that I will do only as much as I get a chance to do. No point working myself up into a frenzy about futuristic writing in Australia during World War Two. Not anywhere near as important as seeing Rella and Madeleine, and dinner with Bron and Peter, and coffee with Amy and talking to boyo on the phone, and doing the dishes, and ORGANISING A TRIP TO PARIS. Oh. Did I not mention that? WE'RE GOING TO PARIS! After New York. How does my life come to this? I don't know. I'm asking no questions. Not risking it. It's all looking too good...

2001-04-18T16:57:00.000+10:00

does blog like canberra?

2001-04-16T23:37:00.000+10:00

Since this entire weekend has been inadvertently designated study-free, I watched TV tonight. Saw a Jane Fonda and (very young) Michael Douglas film,The China Syndrome. It was made in 1979, about a newsreader and an accident in a nuclear power plant. ok, the hair's pretty bad, but it's quite gripping (the film, not the hair, although the hairspray effect is very impressive) It seems like the template genre for that film about tobacco companies, 'the insider'; inside guy (in this case the marvellous Jack Lemmon) realises the evil effects of his work, attempts to make the truth known, is threatened by big corparate baddies, can only get his message out through good-guy renegade media.

Did a google on the film, came upon the Three Mile Island Alert site - maybe because i was not quite born at the time, I had never heard about this quite serious nuclear accident that happened in the US, also in 1979.

I'm having this experience a lot lately - reading for my thesis about Australia during WW2, then reading futuristic disaster novels written just before or during it. Unsurprising echoes between them, but also a pretty dismal concurrence - people (in the case of my novels, trashy sf writers) could guess that these things were going to happen, wrote (or made movies) about them. And then they happen. Sorry Michael Douglas honey, your media/culture circus can rattle on for aeons, warning against disaster... the fact that the disasters that are subject of these predictions are so obvious as to pop up in such popular culture is indicative of the risks business and government and all our other easy-target bad guys take...

Anyways, reading the account of the three mile island thing is pretty gripping also. It's a circus. A flashing light is obstructed by a yellow safety tag. Crazy shit... worth a read. I've never given the whole nuclear debacle much thought before. Hey, maybe those conscience pricking/allaying socially conscious films are good for something after all ;)

2001-04-16T17:42:00.000+10:00

This is also a special edition with links for my uncle John. here, are some articles on slashdot on napster. salon is a page I think you'll like, and you will no doubt find disinformation amusing, too.. more later, but for now i have to help with the dishes...

2001-04-16T17:36:00.000+10:00

happy easter, boys and girls - i hope that you are sick on too much chocolate... I am smug today. Beautiful day, with family and Mittagong sunshine and lovely food and wine... also, a baby calf born, suitable for easter/rebirth/slightly off whack easter theme - his name is veronica, after my aunt who spotted him first, and ridiculous lunch table conversation about my uncle/aunt (not veronica - Geena)'s recent sex change... just wandered down with mum and dad. stood at the fence as the sun went down all pearly and blue above the trees on the hill and watched mum cow lick wobbly baby calf, who gets up, staggers a few feet, collapses down again. good effort, i say.

2001-04-08T10:32:00.000+10:00

Listening to Pecadillo. Lovely, lovely music.

Writing a silly and raving article for honi about blogger, I've come across some nice blogs: href = "http://www.captainfez.com/blog/index">the lukelog is a nice lad with good taste in music,
NowThis is smart and newsy (if anyone else knows of good
newsy blogs, can you mail me and let me know?), Mark, you'll like "http://www.aigeek.com/entropy/">Entropy -an 'ai geek's page, with a nice sense of humour
and good politics, and I've always liked reading "http://cocobowjet.blogspot.com/">Cocobowjet. Will she/wont she finish her PhD? Anyways, I
like her. She's cool.

What's going on with my links? They're not working like they should. anyways...

Looking at random blogs is interesting for learning about one's gender assumptions. If people
write about emotional stuff at all, i assume they're female. Fucking
shoddy, that is. On the other hand, someone being, for instance, an 'ai geek' has no gender
assumptions for me. It's from tone that i try to pick it (not, mind you, that there's any need
to know - the web's supposed to be genderless, hm?) I always get shitty at the idea of an
'ecriture feminine', and yet here i am...Out, damned spot of theory, leave me be! I don't care
if you're a boy or a girl.

2001-04-06T10:30:00.000+10:00

Today's Disinfo newsletter had this to offer:

Today's Quote: "Democracy--if it has any hope of working--depends
on a fully-informed electorate. Ironically, the behavior of the members
of the media cartel during the deliberations over the Telecommunications
Act--intense congressional lobbying, massive cash outlays, and an
almost complete news blackout--perfectly illustrate how democracy does
not, and will not, work in an American media landscape dominated by so
few corporations. Whether by conspiracy or by having mutual goals,
the mega-media corporations have shown an ability to shape and limit
news coverage to meet their own narrow needs, and a united willingness
to exploit that ability. Because the media's needs are often, by
definition, in opposition to the need of an American public to be
fully informed on issues, and because there is virtually no other
recourse for Americans to get their information, American democracy
is threatened in the most insidious way possible."
~~ Richard Huffman

2001-04-06T10:26:00.000+10:00

How bizarre. I just edited a post to add some links, and blogger smooshed two posts together. VERY strange...

2001-04-06T10:19:00.000+10:00

Things are moving very slowly on my server tonight, so I'll do this offline in the hope of something better, later. Serendipity are very impressive producers of icecream. Yes indeed. Where was I? Ok. Today. Went to National Day of Action re the education debacle (read: liberal party's education policy.) Not a terribly impressive crowd, but some people were there, at least. We had a shout. There were some good(well, depressing, but necessarily so) speeches. There were some minor baffled altercations with liberal supporters who followed us for a while and then skedaddled. We knew that they were liberal supporters because they were holding aloft not only the australian flag but also big glossy cardboard prints of dear john howard's head. Wacky shit. I don't know how good I felt about yelling 'liberal scum' as I wasn't there specifically for anti-liberal reasons. Nothing in the labor party's education policy has inspired me at all, either. I'm voting food for thought for all you university folks - an American article about the "university crisis", particularly in the humanities, and the anti-PC debacle (this guy, Christian Gregory, talks about it as if it was over. Nobody told me.) How's this:

"the ultimately political function of academic
culture and the humanities in reproducing a particular set of social
and political relationships "

or

"the somewhat obvious fact that the
university has typically served a mediating function between the
liberal state and capital"

Ever get that feeling that you've been a bit idealistic? Don't worry. It passes.

Speaking of university, I did some reading tonight. Dominick LaCapra's 'History, Politics and the Novel' is the most sensible, witty and engaging piece of theory I've read so far. Which isn't saying much, to be honest, but anyways...

2001-03-31T17:50:00.000+10:00

Greetings, earthlings. I say this as I have turned a rather alien speckled sunburnt shade today, as a result of several hours at the Head of the River schoolboys rowing regatta. No, I have not developed a sudden fetish for young men in tight clothing (apart from the Bowie circa 1970 thing, but that's nothing new) but was there to see young brother coxing the first eight. Strange day. Strange business, all in all, but sparkling saturday. Alison and I ended by drinking beer and washing our cars together on the lawn. I've decided that the only way to deal with honours without being an insufferable grump the whole time (sorry mark!) is to do lots of other things as well. Like blog, and wash my car, and take up lovely mysterious projects offered over email today...

2001-03-30T10:19:00.000+10:00

NB. Whilst looking for sites on Deleuze and Guattari I came across Beliefnet, a site on ethics. Funniest thing about this is that the banner ad at the top of the page for ediets:"Lose 10 Pounds by April 30th!"

Ah, advertising irony. Gotta love it.

2001-03-30T10:12:00.000+10:00

Blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Literary theory is a wank.* I didn't just say that. I'm supposed to be writing a thesis using quite a bit of it. What I was thinking? I don't know. Theory is weird. (der fred) It is weird in that it is particularly seductive. It wants to fix all of the problems encountered by people trying to solve problems in the Humanities Academe. It often sounds as if it has fixed all the problems. I'll give Deleuze and Guattari as an example, here. I want their theory to be as revolutionary and political as it sounds. But I read it and am not convinced. This is surely because I am not reading it carefully enough, nor have I read enough (I have never read enough, of anything.I have been readiing antipasto for 4 years - still haven't got to the main course - not sure that I ever will, either.There is the outside, and friends and yoga to attend to)

The theory thing: You read an introduction, and you think, this! This is it! The theory that will help me look at things in a truly different way! (BTW, some theory has really made me look at the world in a different way. In fact, my entire world view is more or less attributable to theory I have read - is that really sad?) This theory will enable me to make my work political! To theorise the "real world" (and I cannot make those commas inverted enough) in a way that is effective! To MAKE A DIFFERENCE! And then you read and read and realise that it is only a tool. It's not a religion. And more or less skilled practitioners of the theory can put it to political or creative or maybe even only interesting uses. But it's a fine line between getting excited enough to actually put yourself through pages and pages of dense solipsism/philosophy, and realising that it's not going to change the world.

So, Julieanne. Guess what? Your thesis is not going to change the world. Except in making this particular blogger (and perhaps her loved ones) slightly more dotty than before.

* I just did a search on "Literary Theory Wank" - all i came up with is that there is some poor bastard who's name is David L.Wank.

2001-03-14T09:33:00.000+10:00

Those of you who know me, DONT FORGET: HOUSEWARMING TONIGHT. Be there or be square. Or be both. (Which is how I like my friends ;) )

I feel like Mrs Dalloway this morning, rushing around to the shops, organising candles and food and wine...

2001-03-10T21:59:00.000+10:00

From yesterday's Disinformation newsletter:

"Sometimes I wonder if the biggest conspiracy is really Stupidity."

2001-03-10T21:30:00.000+10:00

Saturday night. Tried to go out. Ended up ingesting all my lipstick and walking home. Listening to Dead Can Dance's Spiritchaser. Hoped for some email, but end up on my own. First time in a while I guess I'm using this as a stupid last-ditch cowardly attempt to find "company" - when I have lots of friends i could just ring. Should be listening to Tom Waits, 'looking for the heart of saturday night.' I'm just gonna wander off and read some more EM Forster. Most of the way through 'The Longest Journey' - to my surprise, am really enjoying it. After a bit of a hike tonight, from boring house party in Surry Hills (I don't know, I just feel like I know enough people - don't need to 'network' in someone else's backyard) into the city to catch a bus, lost half an hour reading. That rare space where you forget where you are and just follow the story - to write like that! His protagonist has fucked up in a fairly irretrievable way by denying his true nature (gay writer) and marrying a stupid soulless woman (all Forster's female characters are stupid and soulless) - he is lame, and grappling with the implications of his 'vulgar', (and very sexy) half-brother. Fun reading. Characters certainly more miserable than me! So I'll leave you all to your own saturday nights...

2001-03-09T15:29:00.000+10:00

Hello my dears. Little news from Julieanne-land. Honours is more interesting than i had intended, though if anyone wants to come up with a thesis topic for me, feel free to do so! Having to DECIDE is always such a drag... University doesn't change. Manning's new, but Holme is nicer. I'm about ready to be outta there. Boyo is in New York, which is, apparently, very snowy. Here is hot and rainy - very odd. Give me back Adelaide, any day.

2001-03-05T15:02:00.000+10:00

Perhaps I will post in small sections…this post is old, but blog and i have been having some issues.

There's some wierd shit going on in Australian politics.

I've got to admit I'm enjoying it. Particularly when I walk to work yesterday to be greeted, at every newsstand, with the Australian's headline: HOWARD NEEDS A MIRACLE.

I am enjoying this, not only because the Liberal party would appear to be getting hammered, but for the simple fact that it is all looking a little anarchic. Pauline, She Of Little Policy, just directs preferences against the sitting member. The "Git fucked" vote is more than a little compelling, and it would seem to be having effects more heartening than more seats to One Nation. It's the little things. Saturday's Herald gave me my money's worth again last weekend, with Mike Seccombe's excellent article on the recent debacles in the wacky world of Aussie politics:

"JOHN Howard's chief-of-staff, Arthur Sinodinos, is not given to colourful public pronouncements, but two weeks ago in a speech to businesspeople, he announced: "People are feral out there."

The question is why, and Sinodinos's answer was that many Australians "don't believe they are participating in the benefits of economic change".

It was hardly a revelation."

People are feral and guess what? They're not stupid, either. It's not ok for economic growth to fail to trickle-down.

I know the revolution's not about to come. And I know, as Rod pointed out on the bus the other day, that no one has much of a plan as to what would happen, even if it did. But people are voting away from the major parties because we all know they're corrupt. I'm heartened in my optimism by the fact that the Greens did better than One Nation, and by god were the liberals hammered in Queensland.

I've always been pretty simple in my politics. Left is good, Right is bad. It's not quite that simple anymore. I thought Left was good because it was most concerned with what's better for everyone, not just the elite. But what happens when lots of the 'everyone' tend to agree with the Right?

Maybe it's not really about Left and Right anymore. People are Voting 1 One Nation and 2 Green. What does that mean? A party called "Liberals for Forests" did ok in WA as well. Guess what Mr Howard? People have opinions. About issues.

2001-03-05T14:53:00.000+10:00

blog, are you working today?

2001-02-16T23:47:00.000+10:00

That's not all for tonight. Looking at Petey's blog, I was glad to see a link to an article I read with some interest in last weekend's herald. In it, Helena Echlin talks about her experience within the quagmire of Literary Criticism at Yale. In doing so she adds a vital 2-cents worth to an argument I have been having with myself for several years now. This over the question of how the fuck to justify Literary Criticism, or indeed, the Academe as it exists today. Unlike Petey, I do not think that Echlin's article was about "the woeful effect of postmodernism (or Critical Theory, or Theory) on the academic arts." This is an old chestnut, older than 'po-mo' or Theory. This is about the academic arts themselves.

I am almost at the end of M.Barnard Eldershaw's remarkable 'Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow'. Written in 1947 by two Australian women, this novel is set in a utopic Australian future. This future has been built upon a complete destruction of Sydney (and thus Australia's capitalist system) that the writers imagine taking place shortly after WWII. As Sydney burns, the professors of the university make a last-ditch attempt to save themselves and the university. They form a procession, flapping their robes through the ruined city, and present themselves to the leader of the 'revolution', the destruction, or whatever you want to call it:

"The chancellor began to speak his piece. The words fell thin and dead, they died away like snowflakes in thin air. Places change the complexion of arguments, thought the Professor, not listening to the words but feeling their full impact. The whole scene was dull, neutral, apathetic. They drooped under the fatigue of their long walk and the burden of their academic robes. Sid's fist, crashing down on the table, made them all jump ludicrously. For the first time he turned his face to them, his eyes blazing. He shouted, "You've had your chance. Centuries of it. What does education, your sort of education, mean to anyone but the over-privileged few? It's just another gadget for keeping the common man in his place and letting the silvertails through into the goldrush. You're bloody damn profiteers, just like all the rest. You say the University is part of the common heritage, do you? You've had your chance, why didn't you make it that way? You've been on top, why didn't you make a decent world men could live in? You talk about advantages. You've had them. what did you do with them? That's all over now. You're sacked. See? People like you aren't going to have charge of education when there is any. We'll burn down your precious university and everything in it because if we leave it there, or you there, the past will breed again from you. You're not worth that," He made a sudden gesture, expressive and obscene. "Get out. You're just like any other mob of pot-bellied old men now. See how you get on without your bloody privileges. Show us how clever you are." (391)

The practise of Academia seems sometimes like a closed loop. It's an industry, and for all that I believe, more than anything else, in the drastic need to have people who think, who find stuff out, who fight hard against the fuckedness that a politics based on ignorance can herald, something like lit crit has, as Echlin points out, become self-perpetuating and self-congratulatory:

"Why then do so many people still pursue PhDs in English? After all, this is America, where a college dropout, Bill Gates, became one of the richest men in the world. Now, more than ever, outside the academy there are fortunes to be made. The answer is partly economic.In Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Orwell's hero takes up a career in advertising and makes his fortune with the marketing of PPP, Pedic Perspiration Powder. Smelly feet do exist of course, but do we really need to combat the problem with a medical powder? Orwell's advertising agency makes us think we do, partly by packaging the solution in jargon - the neologism, 'pedic' and the latinate 'perspiration.' Something similar has happened with literary criticism.

Everybody should of course read literature, but spying a commercial opportunity, universities have turned
this activity into something that requires an arsenal of theories and an army of professors. Because
universities stood to make money from literary criticism, they developed a supply that far exceeds the
demand. They drew paying undergraduates with a greater range of courses (and rather popular ones too).
They made money from graduate tuition fees - usually paid at least in part by the students themselves. In addition, each new graduate student was a source of profit because departments needed teachers for
freshman introductory courses in writing and literature, and graduate students provided a pool of
comparatively cheap labour. In the second half of the last century, undergraduate admissions expanded
rapidly, leading to an increasingly diverse and consequently often unprepared body of students. Inexpensive graduate teachers became increasingly necessary. Professors shied away from this work because they saw it both as too hard and not hard enough - tough work without much intellectual challenge or cachet. Instead, they were left to compete for the rewards of promotion and tenure by pursuing ever more recherché research. Literary criticism has reached its current overdeveloped state at Yale as a result of the profit motive. It has become the Pedic Perspiration Powder of the academy."

I must point out that the same is not true for all departments. I am lucky. The department in which I study has a bunch of academics who are concerned primarily with the stuff that Echin cites as being missing at Yale: the pleasures of the text, and the ethics of writing, of engaging literature and politics. An undergraduate degree in Auslit at Sydney has been an amazing experience for me. I've been encouraged to think hard (and use short sentences.) - the values of undergrad study in lit crit are not mentioned by Echlin, but are also not the subject of her argument)But I have come to the conclusion that to pursue a post-grad career in this discipline is, for someone like me, too easy. It's a cop-out. I've made a kind of inadvertent argument, here - what we read, particularly with the critical eye developed in a good arts degree, can have so much to do with the frameworks with which we deal with what happens to us. Echlin and I both, almost without thinking, use episodes from novels so as to be able to work out how to describe what we mean. I have thought hard about a lot of stories, a lot of people's experiences - it is this connection with people far removed from me that I so value in the studying of literature.

But the situations in our universities is pretty dire. You have to be something of a careerist to be young and to do well,now. You have to prove (particularly if you are a woman, to be honest) how smart you are. You can't be idealistic.

Literature is wonderful, but it is not enough. Theory can help to politicise it, but it's too easy for theory to self-inflate, just float there holding itself up, not doing anything.

I've no conlcusions. More questions, as ever. I have an inkling, though, that studying for studying's sake might cease to be funded as a career, might become a hobby like rockclimbing or crochet.

Unless, of course, we make it work.

2001-02-16T22:47:00.000+10:00

Blog likes new house! I'll explain, before you think I've entered The Next Stage - I've had continual problems posting from my own computer. It seems to work fine from everyone else's computer. Just not mine. I'm testing a completely irrational theory that says that blog did not like old phone line. I'm going on faith. Seems to be ok tonight...

Sorry it's been so long, chooks. Moving is exhausting.This place is, however, beginning to feel like home. It has high ceilings and lots of space and light, and (almost) enough room for all my books. No other news of note I am afraid - boyo left yesterday, all a bit teary but of course could be worse. New York, hey, that must suck, man.

2001-02-16T22:39:00.000+10:00

How does blog like new house?

2001-02-01T21:46:00.000+10:00

So moving makes me sentimental. So I'm sentimental at the best of times. Making my whole life portable (like the cd case Mark received in the mail: "Automatically becomes portable when carried") i have to try to decide what is meaningful and what is not, what gets thrown out... How much I have accumulated in four years...

If anybody wants an old record player that doesn't work, several disc drives for long-gone laptops, obsolete fashion items like kulottes and ra-ra skirts (na, I'm keeping the ra-ra skirt), you can contact me at julieanne_l at hotmail. Postage and handling included of course.

I realise I haven't got around to telling you about PJ Harvey. A concert I had been waiting for for quite a few years now. Surpassed my expectations (and how often, my dears, does that happen these days?) - the woman is an immaculate performer, she sings like you've just been plugged into the world, she's beautiful and gracious and her songs are just so good... if you ever get a chance, just GO SEE HER.

2001-01-31T10:53:00.000+10:00

I love moving house. Always have. You have to face all of the things that
have accumulated in the corners of your life, the stuff that just sits there
in drawers and on shelves that you mentally file 'miscellaneous', that you
can't find a place for at all. I love this stuff, it's a relief story of
everything I've done over the past four years. Half-written letters and
theatre tickets and nail polish and candles and pegs and bubble-blowing pink
stamp-pens given to me as a joke by Greg however long ago. Do you keep this
stuff? A wiggle-pen? Old school diaries? These I adore. Photos of,
progressively, Jim Morrisson and Janis Joplin, then Pearl Jam then Bjork and
Pulp and bits of zen poetry on their covers, inside my mother's beautifully
ambiguous notes getting me out of swimming carnivals or getting me the day
off to go to a concert: "Julieanne has an important event that has been
planned for a long time and so will not be at school on…" And old phone
numbers and people I'd forgotten. And because this flat has been the
landing-pad for that many Adelaide friends I end up with other people's
miscellany as well - a receipt from a Melbourne shop for Dave's "Powder-blue
1970's Bomber Jacket $70". All sorts of airline tickets. Other people's
earrings and towels and books. I will, everyone, I promise, return your
books and cd's…

2001-01-18T21:16:00.000+10:00

Good evening, chooks. Over the past few days I have discovered something remarkable - people actually read this thing! I'm quite taken aback. Sure, you're all my friends, but still...

thanks, friends.

Much fun to be had last night - dinner with the gorgeous young boy who keeps hanging around ;) at the new Bodhi next to St Mary's Cathedral. The bizarre liberty of an all-vegetarian menu...I'm not used to being able to choose, I mean really choose food from a menu. Though there is no decision, really, when vegan peking duck is on the list. ohyumindeed. Thoroughly recommend the place - nice atmosphere (kind of bomb-shelter meets sydney chic), lovely waiters and not too expensive. The wine isn't cheap, but the enormity of the glasses almost makes up for that. You could get lost in one of those...

Taking into consideration the aforementioned beverages, we had a fairly surreal experience in what was, at any rate, a suitably surreal production of Patrick White's A Cheery Soul. Neil Armfield is a bit of a star from where I'm sitting. This production was fabulous to look at, extremely bizarre and really quite good. The oddest thing the STC have pumped out in a while. It's a kind of suburban tragi-comedy, hilarious and sad. No idea what to think at the end. Someone at a party once, hailing me up about Australian Literature (should never mention what I do at parties - can lead to some intensely tedious conversations) whinged to me about how Mr White has "no humanity". Bollocks to that, I say. Humanity is black and absurd and funny and depressing - and that's all I have to say about that.

Then to nothing less than Frigid at the *** Festival Club. I love my Frigid I do, having missed it for the past six months due to the unhappy coincidence of working Sunday nights. Prop were excellent as ever, with Sub Bass Snarl and Sir Robbo doing their respective thangs with their usual aplomb. Thanks, lads. Wot ho, I'm to bed, before this sudden Britishness takes me over.

Everyone wish happy birthday to Rella, as well, who is in Vietnam and sorely missed.

2001-01-11T20:47:00.000+10:00

Sydney's a good city to be in, tonight. Sparkling evening that it is. I went and did something kind of out of character this afternoon - I did some exercise. Not just any exercise, though - no gyms or jogging for this chicken. I went kickboxing! Though I'd like to point out that I don't really want to enter actively into a...erm...culture of violence? I don't want to imagine someone's head where the punching bag is. Nonetheless, kickboxing is kind of fun. I had a rare burst of energy (oooohhh endorphins!) and consider it to be a way to learn how to move differently from how I've been taught to - ie not so much like a girl. Will see...

2001-01-11T15:41:00.000+10:00

I thought that I'd escaped from computer games. But I have just regressed to year seven, when I used to go into school early to play this one game. I have found a new, and much more fun, version . Fun for activists, and for kiddies, too...

2001-01-10T13:57:00.000+10:00

Aloha, all.

Just in case you think I have not paid enough notice of the turning of the new year (millenium, whatever), I will take note of one sum-up of sorts: young Peter , despite his avowed hatred of all definitive-seeming lists, has let loose upon the world his best-ofs for 2000. Well worth a squiz, particularly for his lovely links. Thank you once again, Mr P, for sharing so much stuff... hey, isn't that what this blog business is all about?

The best thing about holidays is that you can actually go and see movies that interest you, instead of talking about wanting to seen them. Having survived "Breaking the Waves" only just, such was the extent of my despair, and having loved Bjork's stuff on and off ever since her gorgeous Debut (and her gaspingly good show at the Adelaide Big Day Out in 1993, i think it was), I went to see Dancer In The Dark last week. It's been playing over and over in my head ever since. Beautiful, beautiful film, though I must warn you dear friends that it is also an incredibly sad one. I cried for a good deal of the time, leaving the cinema looking pretty damn red and puffy, clutching the sodden remains of my last tissue to my chest. It is a very sad film. It is also, at least for those of us who remain idealistic enough to believe that music helps, inspiring. I'm on and off about musicals, generally, but what this film seems to do is move towards a point where it might be able to knit together the imaginary world in which people suddenly start to sing and dance and everything is ok, with the world in which some people are entirely powerless, and can be fucked over in such a way as to make them seem entirely in the wrong. It is as damning of American culture and politics (or at least one idea of American culture and politics) as 'Breaking the Waves' is of institutionalised religion. But it is also a film about learning to listen. A lesson I am trying to learn, and learn, and learn...

ps. I got published today! Well, very recently. My first paid gig: Check out Southerly 3 2000. There's some interesting stuff in there anyway, particularly an excellent story by a woman I consider to be The Future Of Australian Fiction, one Erin Gough, and a good article about anthologising Australia by Sydney poet and critic Greg Mclaren. And there's also a pretty average story by yours truly. A story, nonetheless. A start.

2001-01-02T08:50:00.000+10:00

Happy New Year, blog.

Bring on the year, I say. I'm ready for ya.

2000-12-29T18:46:00.000+10:00

Back from 3 days of back-to-back eating,drinking,reading and sleeping, and I promise, no more preaching.

Mittagong is dead quiet, this time of year. You can sit outside and hear not a thing, except trees and the occasional cow. I took the mad dalmation/border collie for a walk down towards the state forest, and had a very Rushdie moment - this cloud of butterflies followed us the whole way. There must have been twenty of them, those orange, black and white ones, formed this cloud around me and the dog for a good hour, like the town in Satanic Verses . Very strange, but not the kind of strange I'm going to start complaining about...

2000-12-22T11:15:00.000+10:00

I don't want to jump on the "oooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhh Christmas is an evil time of year" bandwagon. Really I don't. It's just madness, though. Working in retail gives you a unique perspective on just how deeply this time of year messes people around. Normally lovely individuals become, in this enforced period of intense purchasing and tradition-fulfilling, complete nutters. They become angry and anxious and resentful and stressed. It is a little depressing. The woman downstairs from me is getting kinda old, and I meet her in the hallway or out at the letterbox, and ask her (admittedly in a fairly tokenistic kind of way) how she is. She's not so great at this time of year: her husband and both her parents died in December, and she spends christmas alone with her sick son. Why relate this sad story? Because tradition is not good in and of itself. For Christians, fair enough. Christmas is an important religious holiday, rah. (I don't mean to be dismissive but I had 13 years of Catholic education. I need to be!) But often it seems to me to be a doomed attempt to fulfil an impossible ideal of family and togetherness. Which is fine for lucky chickens like me who have happy enough families. But mindless repitition can be pretty destructive. (what was i saying about 13 years of catholic education...?) Oooh this is all becoming a bit didactic. Sorry chooks, but see? this is what christmas does to me... ;)

Here's a tasty tidbit for anyone voyeuristic and wanting to know what goes on with me: looks like I might be sprouting wings in feb and heading to the big big city - you got it, NEW YORK! Donations or suggestions welcome...

2000-12-12T23:06:00.000+10:00

Hello chickens... quick late-night, worn-out blog. There's an amazing storm outside tonight, or rather storm incipient. The sky keeps flashing like a fucked-up neon globe, it's beautiful but SO HOT. But it's a change I suppose so that's ok. I've been beaching it with Madeleine the Very Brown and working on my standard bright red summer "glow". I've also been doing some housework and some reading... I wasn't going to admit this in such a public forum, but on my mother's recommendation I read "No Night Is Too Long" by Barbara Vine (alias Ruth Rendell) and have concluded that I just don't get crime. Also quite homophobic in a way that presents itself as openminded. When the gay man falls for a woman then is forced to go back to his male lover, he "feels his maleness being sapped." Well then... On the other hand, she does some lovely metafictive stuff with the ending, and fucks quite effectively with the (usually very standard) narrative structure of crime novels. You end up realising that you've been duped, which is quite nice. It's a good lesson to learn - the stories that you're told are rarely, if ever, the whole story...

On a much more enjoyable note, I just finished Joanna Russ' "Extra (ordinary) People", a spunky mid-80's collection of speculative short stories. Very queer and feministy and smart, but also with a sweet fantasy edge. Her vision of the future is one I'd like to share - where being a boy or a girl is not meaningful anymore, and it is no great ideology that saves us all, but individuals triumphing with small acts of resistance and love. ok, ok, I'm an idealist. leave me alone... anyway, she's an excellent writer, highly reccommended.

2000-12-06T14:29:00.000+10:00

At home after work, with a glass of red and Mark's nice autechre
compilation. Where to start? Holidays are beginning despite themselves.
Saturday we went for a gorgeous hike (well, stroll really) in the Royal
National Park. The place is beautiful - bush unlike any I've seen here.
Ocean and cliffs and covered paths and much green and wildflowers, lizards
glaring up at us. We started about 4pm, so caught these views in a great
shifting light. We can add another to the list of Julieanne's Classic
Stacks 2000 - we stopped and clambered down to have a bit of a paddle in the
river - the kind of place you dream of to fall asleep in the sun on a
Saturday afternoon. I took off my shoes and rolled up my jeans and headed
in. Mark says, 'looks kind of slippery.' I say, 'yeah, it is kind of…' the
sentence was cut off by a beautiful sprawling crash as I land, all knees and
elbows, in the water. I think M thought I was badly hurt as I was laughing
so hard as to be rendered completely immobile. Covered in mud. Almost, but
not quite, as funny as me falling on my arse at the Hopetoun a few weeks
ago, nearly breaking my coccyx. That was 'cause I tried to do a karate kick
and young Greg interfered. Some would say I bring these things upon myself…
;)

A note along the same lines as my last entry: There were 3 car salesmen in
the restaurant tonight, and I was eavesdropping, as is the prerogative of
every bored waitress. They were laughing at the idea of LEV's (Low Emission
Vehicles) and one particularly offensive bloke says:

"I've never met a greenie who can afford a haircut, let alone a new car"

I think he might have hit the nail on the head, there. Capitalism is evil,
and short-sighted to boot.

2000-11-29T09:17:00.000+10:00

Here's Greenpeace's final "update" on the recent Climate change conference in Hague:

"If governments continue to act irresponsibly, as they have done this week,
then people from rich countries should prepare to build ever higher and wider
dikes, from which they can watch the rest of the world suffer and drown from
climate change. Either that or demand that politicians give them access to
the solutions to climate change in the form of clean energy and energy efficiency".

It's completely fucked. And it's official. People don't care what happens when they're gone. It's nice to know. Forms a good barrier to any further faith in...erm...anything?

And Australia has played an embarrassingly major role in this monumental act of irresponsibility. Clever country my arse.

2000-11-27T11:23:00.000+10:00

Hey chickadees - sorry it's been a while. I've been off galivanting about the countryside. Mark, the little green car, and me, took ourselves down to Albury for a very lovely wedding. I love these drives - we left at about 2pm and drove through what felt like three or four different days, different weathers. Down past Goulbourn through thundery overcast seemingly neverending afternoon, then out the other side into dazzling sun. And there were butterflies everywhere! We didn't take a camera so I have to write it down to remember it. The sunset went on and on - a great spreading peachy thing. We stopped the car and climbed a hill to look at it for a while, have a stretch. Big spiderwebs catching the light. Then fade to purple and dark, driving too fast as always.

Lazy Saturday in Albury, reading the paper in the park, then to the wedding - I am revising my opinion of weddings. This one was a bunch of people getting together to celebrate the fact that these two want to spend their lives together. Buzzy afternoon, a reading from Tennyson with lazy sunshine and more butterflies and much laughter. Nice stuff.

One lesson from the drive home: DO NOT STOP AT GUNNING. You may not get out. There's something wierd about this town. It is so quiet and so slow. We got sandwhiches from a hamburger shop - the woman behind the counter said nothing but 'yep'. Then sat on a log in a park in silence. Everything slowed down. It was like an episode of Buffy or Xena - stepped into a different dimension in which agency was almost impossible. Dragged ourselves out of the town's votex of apathy and drove speedily onwards...

Before I go, on piece of shameless promotion: Tomorrow night all of you who are poetically inclined must come along to Per/Verse at the Balmain library at 7pm. Fabulous sydney poets David Brooks and Joanne Burns will be reading, along with a fairly speccy open section including...erm...me. So come along. Support local poetry bollocks. We couldn't do it without you....

2000-11-20T13:25:00.000+10:00

Post Party Post Part II

I've been thinking some more about my music tanty at the party. As it does
have something to do with why I think the whole blog thing can be cool.
Bron asked me a few weeks ago why on earth I would want to put a kind of
diary on the web. Well, I like to write. And writing makes a little more
sense when someone reads it. Part of why I like to write so much is that I
like the idea of sharing things, what I learn from the people around me and
the things that I do. Blogging's a good way to do this. Because we have
these ways of valuing things - authoritizing kinds of systems, usually
directed by people who have power in the sense of having money or influence.
This becomes the "mainstream" - how we work out if something is good by
standards other than our own, ie believe that something is popular. What I
think that blogs, and other forms of alternative media can do is widen the
idea of whose authority you trust in deciding how to value things. Having
lots of authorities.

At my party I wanted to share the new kinds of music that I'm listening to
with my friends. But when I put it on, everyone sat down. No one knew how to
dance to it, and it didn't fit their idea of what dancing music was like, or
what a party was like, for that matter. I didn't want everyone to have a bad
time. But I wanted it all to be different .

I know that I can be a snob, certainly: I can't deal with Savage Garden
however hard I try. But I want for 'weird' to not mean 'bad' anymore, so
that people who are weird in a situation - who are different because of
their background or their queerness or their nerdishness or the way they
talk or whatever - don't get treated badly.

The problem with weirdness is that it's hard to understand sometimes. People
freak out at weird stuff because they don't get it - and I don't think the
solution to this lies in any sort of homogenization. I think a way to start
is by breaking down ideas about the normal and the authoritative. Obviously
lots of queer and feminist theory and activism has this as its aim. And
another way to have a crack at this is by becoming authorities ourselves. So
I blog. And hope that someone reads it…

2000-11-19T18:22:00.000+10:00

It was a dark and rainy night. There was a shed, some sushi, and a bathtub full of beer. What happened next is at once a complicated and a simple matter. I'm not sure if I can even describe it to you. Not only because I dipped heartily into aforementioned bathtub. An invitation had been circulated for quite some time, right across the country (well, to Adelaide.) It mentioned a garden, a party, and a dress code. A collection of musicians, academics, accountants, actors, jugglers and sundry unemployables tarted themselves up and came down to our shed in Mittagong, where we celebrated my birthday in a belated and fabulous fashion. It was gloriously untraumatic - those of you who have been around me at parties before will know how remarkable this is. Well, there was one incident involving a borrowed van and a boggy field, but thankfully we did not have to resort to enlisting Reg next door and his tractor. I'm not sure he would have appreciated either Paul's tiara or Rod and Kelly's handcuffs. And I did throw a tanty when my parents attempted to put Abba on. And when I realised that my taste in music is truly my own; there is no middle ground amongst my friends except Aretha. There was also a guitar and some cheesy singing-along, but unfortunately I went to bed before the whipping began.

Ok, here I go again: my friends are damn cool. DAMN cool. La gave a speech and I didn't cry, though I did laugh. Much hilarity, tons of mud and some very silly ties. Thanks all, I had a blast.

2000-11-12T20:40:00.000+10:00

what a surprise. Another test post. Madeleine, I'm thinking of you baby...

2000-11-11T23:21:00.000+10:00

Okeydokey. This is a third attempt at this post, as my computer and blogger seem to be having some issues with one another. Remote entry no 1:

This is the first in what will probably be a series of rants about friends. My friends in particular. Because they are quite simply the biggest and best thing in my life. Not only do they appreciate my cooking (and if they don't, they say they do, which is all that matters ;) ) but they keep me topped up with the thing that keeps us all from grinding to a halt: that cheezy ol' chestnut: inspiration.

Really good friends are not only people who you love to bits and who lurve you back, but it's the sort of love that makes you want to share stuff. I learn so much from my friends: about music and history and fixing bicycles and setting up weblogs and how the legal system works (or doesn't); how to have relationships (or how not to have them); how to go about becoming the sort of person I might want to be.

I had a good day yesterday. Spent the morning playing "you've got to hear this song" with the ever-so-lovely M, then the rest of the day and evening laughing with the "inner sanctum" ;) this fabulous group of friends who are so rarely in one place. Between a more than usually hilarious belching contest (which i didn't participate it, btw - only because i'm no good at it), and a fairly hefty conversation about industrial relations, how easy it is to be powerless in the workplace, whether HR can be of any use, why women are still disadvantaged on so many levels when it comes to work, and periodic bursts of Starship Troopers, I have that burstingly happy desire to know more, do more, and go on having these amazing relationships....

2000-11-11T22:27:00.000+10:00

This is aNOTHER test post. this thing hates me. or i'm just paranoid... or both...

2000-11-05T23:42:00.000+10:00

So my luverlies, this is it. I am overcoming endemic computer illiteracy and beginning this thing. What will there be here? You're just going to have to hang around and find out...