tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36977842136531921822024-02-20T11:45:56.822+11:00Subtitles & Misc.Mostly misc.The Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697784213653192182.post-53803979632439265522013-08-27T13:41:00.001+10:002013-08-27T13:41:43.683+10:00Letter to a man on the bus.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /></div>
Dear Sir,<P>
Thank you for your comments on the female entrants in the US Open this year. However, I'm afraid that inasmuch as the 'exotic birds' you mentioned are concerned, you've missed a few vital entries including but not limited to:<P>
<li> The golden pheasant
<li> The quetzal
<li> The hoopoe
<li> The Bali bird of paradise
<li> The puffin
<li> The Lear's macaw
<li> The California condor
<li> The African crowned crane
</li><P>
I might also suggest some of the members of the ratite family, as they are particularly interesting - though what tennis has to do with ornithology I have no idea other than the observation it seems to have turned some among us into common tits.The Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697784213653192182.post-50263824385476149762013-08-26T10:42:00.002+10:002013-08-26T10:42:57.838+10:00Dream: In which everybody dies.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br /></div>
It started off as a movie set in Australia. I saw the wreckage of something huge against the Sydney skyline, a cruise liner broken into pieces. There was fire that had not yet been put out and helicopters in the air. Then a friend from work told me that this was a remake of an American movie for local audiences. She was upset that her online forum had chosen to show this one rather than the original, which was apparently much, much better. So the scene shifted to that movie instead.
<P>
It was in the early stages and the great disaster was about to begin. I hadn't much time left, so was running around, up and down columns of people and things, trying to find the final details of my thesis. Everyone else's cover sheets and progress reports were nailed up on the walls and I wanted to find mine before it all got going. On the way, as I clambered over pieces of torn metal wreckage, I encountered old video reports of children who had gone missing or had been taken from their parents. The surviving siblings said that now that their parents were distressed again, this time they knew how to take care of them. I knocked the back of my neck against something. I put my hand back to feel for what had happened and was shocked to see there was blood on my fingers.
<P>
I can't remember if I found my thesis or not, but soon it was too late, because we were all buckled into the plane, a huge aircraft seating hundreds of people, all strapped in tight and all knowing what was about to happen. The voice over the PA said hello and welcome, and so on. He pointed out a few of the guests – look out for that one over there, he was our first casualty last time. I was relieved because the guy in question was quite a distance from me and my friend, so I still had a chance of surviving. As I understood it, some would live and others would die, but it all depended on chaotic things and couldn't be predicted.
<P>
As we flew, the vessel we were on changed into a hybrid thing that was part aeroplane and part cruise liner, like in the movie. We were flying high over the ocean when I turned to my friend and asked, 'What happens next?' She replied, 'We die.' I felt a growing sense of panic. It was never clear what the disaster was – some sort of super-sonic earthquake where everything was upheaval for one deadly, world-changing moment – but as we crossed the point on the map where it was marked, the ship exploded and I was falling through the sky, hurtling down to earth, unable to scream, unable to breathe.
<P>
Some people had parachutes but all I had was a pillow. We were so high up in the sky that we could see the entire map of Australia below us. Other groups of people were falling over other countries, so great was the explosion that it blew them so far - or perhaps so small was the world as we approached death. As for us, those of us over Australia would land all over the country in different spots. The anticipation was that those who survived (the ones with the parachutes) would establish settlements and start looking for food. As for my friend and I, this did not apply – we hadn't much of a chance of surviving. Still, though, we tried to aim for water and wound up descending over southern Tasmania, approaching a bay near Hobart. As we got closer, the soldiers on the ground looked up. Aiming for the water had been a gamble. The idea was if we could some how slow our descent or land in a certain way – maybe using the pillow as a buffer – we might have a chance of surviving, but in the end we missed the water and died instantly.
<P>
I picked myself up and looked around. There was a sense of relief that this was how it had happened – instantly and with much less fear than I'd anticipated. There had been no pain at all. Those who survived would all die later in various ways, some quite awful. The disaster was not yet over and there would me more horror to come – it was one of those movies - and so it was good to have it over and done with.
<P>
Being dead, everything had a sense of permanence to it. I realised, for example, that I'd never lose or gain any more weight, which was good, because weight-loss programs on TV were becoming increasingly demented and cruel. Everything was OK. Everything was DONE.
<P>
We walked into the sunshine, where the rest of the dead had gathered. They were wearing the clothes they'd had on when the plane exploded, and I remember remarking to my friend that I never approved of wearing bikinis on aeroplanes. It was all bouncing tits and bare shoulders in the baking hot sun. I said that even though I was dead and had no skin, I'd still stick to the shade. Cancer's a killer, after all.
<P>
We walked and walked. We saw the dogs that had been in the aircraft's cargo hold fall from the sky and be caught by people on the ground. A Maltese, a border collie, and a golden retriever all landed in the arms of strangers, their new owners, but the golden-coloured staffy never did. It must have died.
<P>
Huge goannas leapt up from the ground into the trees and from there propelled themselves, long, unsettling reptiles, over to the other side of the road. As they made their jump from one side to the other, they held our their stubby limbs and let the dangling flaps of skin act as wings. Turns out they weren't jumping but flying.
<P>
We walked through streets and then through forests, where it was dark. We stumbled across other survivors, who were also dead, who had set up bases of operation for the apocalypse to come. They guarded their territory fiercely and wouldn't let us pass through. It was odd, though. We were dead and impervious to pain or any kind of second death. What on earth were they afraid of?
<P>
We passed a wilderness outfitter's store. I knew I needed boots and a sleeping bag for going hiking, but everything was lying out on the floor in a great big mess and I couldn't find what I was looking for. I knew it was there but... it could not be found. A creeping doubt - I'm dead. Why do I need a sleeping bag when I can't feel the cold? It was frustrating.
<P>
Because I was dead, I was invisible to the living. I realised I could shoplift my groceries, which was probably necessary given I'd never be able to work again, so would have no money to pay for things anyway. I thought, but you don't need bread and milk – you're dead! The reply came: I still want to eat!
<P>
But how do the dead go to the toilet? I was at a meeting with Sifu and the kung fu group and asked to be excused so I could visit the ladies' room. I left the table and went into a dark corridor and was struck by the futility of what I was about to do. I didn't need the bathroom; it was a memory, a habit, that drove me here. I realised that what I actually wanted was to sit in a small room by myself and be by myself, and I'd sought out the bathroom as something at least approximating that in a socially acceptable way. It was a convention that was now useless to me. I turned away in anger and saw there were other dead women who had come looking for the bathroom for the exact same reason, and had suddenly reached the same conclusion. As we walked back to the group, through a flimsy-looking gym, I confessed that I was starting to get angry with accommodating the lie that nothing had changed.
<P>
I left the kung fu group and walked down the road to a Lebanese restaurant, where another friend and I played tricks on the guests, including the cast from Home Improvement. It turned out that though we were invisible to most people, if we focused really hard on them, we could make them see us. This meant we could do what we want. WE COULD DO ANYTHING! We joked and laughed and I called the woman a hypocrite for her double standards in being against various parties in some global conflicts but being for their equivalents in others and not seeing the discrepency. I called her out. I pointed and said, “Hypocrite!”
<P>
Being dead was amazing. Nothing anyone said or did had any hold over me. I was in control. I would live forever. Children could see me, though. This I did not mind so much because children were interesting and it felt like I could help look after them in my own way, be a secret imaginary friend and then go away when I wasn't needed and it was over.
Sometimes, though, we would laugh too loudly and the adults, the living adults, would look around as though they'd heard something and would try to find us with their eyes. I didn't want to be discovered like that. It would be embarrassing.
<P>
I returned to my people, back to where the dead had been basking in the sun and dancing, and I found that things were looking bleak and that the world was grey. As a response, there was a strange program being initiated and they were holding auditions for people to stomp on the ends of large plastic pipes, which was were all jumbled together to make a weird-looking musical instrument. The audition process was tough, but one man made it through.
<P>
Later, when the humans were holding their first of many tearful memorial services for the dead of the great disaster, we, the objects of their distress, gathered above them and played the musical instrument. Though I couldn't hear it at the audition, I could hear it now and it was the most heavenly music. We sent it to the mourners as a gift and to say hello and to say that everything was OK and that we were gone but still with them at the same time.
<P>
I was transported back to the moment many in the aircraft died. For me, it had been instant, crashing down to earth, but for the others who were still strapped in their seats as the cabin filled with water and pieces of razor-sharp debris flew around them - and into them - it was longer. I saw in slow motion the old couple, waking up from their deaths and turning to kiss each other, though their faces were torn and bloody. I saw a young man raise his hand to wipe sweat from his forehead in relief, though his hand had been sliced into seven pieces. I saw a blonde woman screaming out her last breath, trapped in her seat and totally submerged in water, and then not scream any more. Another man with his intestines out, breathing a sigh of relief. I saw all of this, how they had died and how they had felt when they realised that they were now free, and I looked down at the congregation of mourners below, crying as they listened to our music, and I wanted to tell them that everything was OK. I think, on some level, they started to understand.
<P>
I woke up feeling amazing.
The Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697784213653192182.post-15181426623003289762013-07-10T17:31:00.002+10:002013-07-10T17:41:37.042+10:00Dream: Discovery and betrayal<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">I had a couple of nightmares last night. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #222222;">In one - </span><i style="color: #222222;">not </i><span style="color: #222222;">the one where Hilary Clinton hunted a group of Marines and me with a sniper rifle and </span><i style="color: #222222;">not </i><span style="color: #222222;">the one where the White Witch was literally tearing strips of flesh from my back and forcing me to sew them back on here and there, crooked and painful - I was trapped on an island, like in 'Survivor'. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #222222;"> There was no food and we hadn't eaten for three weeks. As a last-ditch effort to find sustenance, we fashioned a net and cast it into the dark water, where if you looked down from a great height, you could see pale, white alien squid-like creatures. They were frightening. We caught one and almost lost one of our number dragging it out of the water. It felt like the other contestants and I were meddling in something we oughtn't, but we had no real choice and there was a sense of inevitability about it - like this was what we were supposed to figure out on our own as part of the game. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #222222;">We cut the animal's head open and where the meat was supposed to be there was instead a box. I opened the box - or maybe ate the box; it's not clear - and fell down a deep and terrifying pit. When I surfaced, it was dark and time had... passed. I was all alone and had this message to give, except I couldn't speak it clearly; I could only stutter. It was dark and cold and I needed a friend to come and get me. I called my friend, telling her I needed help. She couldn't understand me over the phone. She said she was tired and hung up.</span></span></div>
The Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697784213653192182.post-41639254648810779162013-06-04T00:22:00.002+10:002013-06-04T00:22:33.244+10:003rd June, 2013 - Fever dream<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It was a 'Hunger Games' death match and we were being choppered in over a map mostly laid out in grids. Various quadrants would move and overlap over the course of the game, forcing combatants into contact. We would be unable to hide - at least not for very long.<br />
<br />
It started out with three of us, some guy, a small black girl (based off Rue, I guess) and me. I was Katniss in this set-up but I was also myself in that way dreams have. We were camped in the top of a gum tree. The little girl had caught a fairy and attaching a match to its butt, sent it to an outer branch to start a fire for us. We settled in to sleep. The game would begin tomorrow.<br />
<br />
We were on a train with compartments made into cramped dormitories holding two bunk beds each. Between the pillows, blankets, luggage and storage containers, there wasn't much room for anybody. This was where we were starting and trapped in this tiny room, we were already at a disadvantage. We had no weapons and no way of knowing if the coast was clear outside unless we wanted to risk our necks.<br />
<br />
Other teams of people had already been through the dormitories ahead of us and they were coming our way. I had a flash-forward vision the future that awaited: with nothing to do but hide behind pillows, we were sitting ducks as heavily-armed men sprayed the room with bullets. Some of my team-mates, the smaller girls for instance, would be able to hide in the storage space up in the ceiling and down under the bunks. We could move the boxes and containers around them to shield them from view - but not the bullets. Even so, it was better than nothing. As for myself, there was no room for me anywhere. I'd be the one cowering behind the pillows while the kids hid. I wondered if this was how the teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary felt before they died. There was no time left. The counter on the door was ticking down. At zero, the others would arrive with their guns. It reached zero and the door opened.<br />
<br />
The people who came into the room were not the one armed with the automatic weapons and they did not spray the room with bullets. They did, however, have at least one revolver with them and a bunch of knives. Still weaponless, I'd have to wrest something useful from one of them if I was to have any chance. I managed to get hold of a revolver. It only had one bullet but it was special, with an explosive tip. It might only have one shot, but it would be guaranteed lethal and that's what I was going need if I wanted to survive. The ticker started to count down to zero again. Enemies incoming! I fumbled with the chamber but got it loaded just in time.<br />
<br />
The door opened and I fired. The gun jammed.<br />
<br />
--<br />
<br />
Further back in the train there was a great, big warehouse area filled with old pieces of machinery, painted woodwork, old film sets and stage props, giant cogs and spools, and all manner of strange, dusty things.<br />
<br />
With my gun having failed me - now more than once - and having already witnessed the brutality of the game, I was anxious to find a weapon that I could use to survive. There were some knives on a bench and I took one. It was a long, very old boning knife, the same as my dad is keeping for me in the waking world. It would do for now. I used it to pierce the corpse of Mrs Benson, who'd been trussed up on the broken-tree-altar of Catholic suffering. My first use of the blade, I was relieved at how easy it was as opposed to the malfunctioning gun, but relief changed to revulsion at the sight of the viscous black sludge seeping from the wound - and the smell. She looked twisted and abject, like a torture victim in Silent Hill. As the designated effigy of Catholicism, she'd been forced to continue having babies until she died. So it goes.<br />
<br />
I moved away from the strange and dark forest growing around the now ex Mrs Benson, and back down into the warehouse proper. Enemies were approaching and I could hear the sound of gunfire. Somehow my boning knife seemed insufficient but as I put it down, I was attacked by two women. They were not looking so good - torn black mini-dresses, lank hair and bare, bloodstained arms. I looked to the table where I'd first taken my knife and grabbed the only I could - a wobbly saw blade with long jagged teeth. I hoped it would be enough. I slashed at one of the women and managed to cut her thigh. She pulled back, shrieking. I hated this, recoiling from the sight of her splitting flesh. I extended my arm and flicked my wrist, sending the blade out like a bullwhip. It caught the other woman around the neck. I yanked it back and it came, serrated edge slicing her throat as it returned to me. Again, the wound I'd inflicted was sickening. The scene seemed to replay in my mind's eye. My stomach roiled.<br />
<br />
I can't remember what happened next; if the seas boiled and the world changed, or if we just went on killing each other while trying not to die. I can't even remember if the train was going anywhere.</div>
The Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697784213653192182.post-91022622633940692192013-03-31T18:58:00.002+11:002013-03-31T18:58:43.380+11:00NATO exchange@goblinpaladin DEAR NATO MAYBE DON'T MURDER CHILDREN<br />@thegreenrat NATO replies: "shut up you're not my dad!"<br />@thegreenrat *NATO slams door, plays loud music in room*The Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697784213653192182.post-30391677356779790742013-03-29T11:23:00.001+11:002013-03-29T11:23:29.230+11:00And now, the weather - collaborative poetry with Goblinpaladin<br />
<br />
that weather system in the south-west<br />with the blood and the screaming<br />run, southerners<br />our defensive high pressure collapsed<br />we are overrun<br />the ears of our weather shamans started to bleed<br />the wall is broken<br />flee for your lives<br />
all is lost!<br />OBEY THE ORB<br />all that remains<br />silence<br />at last we have peace, the weather gods say<br />now we can get things doneThe Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697784213653192182.post-72990453873378869632013-03-11T10:29:00.001+11:002013-03-16T17:43:27.297+11:00NexusSign your privacy away, render yourself<br />
naked to satellite technology<br />
a Google Gestapo listening to<br />
the lives of others<br />
through tweet text tracking<br />
the latest Angry Birds mod is totally worth itThe Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697784213653192182.post-64102327545700338472013-02-05T22:28:00.002+11:002013-02-05T22:28:38.314+11:00June, 2011. Cairo.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosque_of_Ibn_Tulun" target="_blank">Ibn Talun Mosque</a> was commissioned by the Abbassid governor of Egypt
from 868-884 CE, after whom it is named. It's constructed in a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Mosque_of_Samarra" target="_blank">Samarran</a> style, drawing inspiration from the capital of the Abbasid dynasty at the time before it was relocated to Baghdad. One of the distinguishing
features of this architectural style is the spiral design of the
minaret although interestingly, there is some contention over the Ibn
Talun minaret, which some believe was constructed at a later date.
1296 is one historian's estimation. It would not be surprising; the
mosque like many others in Cairo has been restored several times with
new features added on each occasion. </div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The first of the restorations was in
1177 and was undertaken by Badr al-Jamali, a warlord from Armenia who
rose to prominence in the service of the Fatimid caliphate, eventually
becoming <i>wazir</i>.
The man who took care of the shoe rack by the mosque's entrance showed me the inscription
that Al-Jamali added to the mosque. It's an important piece of
history. According to <a href="http://patachu.com/egypt-fatimids-later-1073-1171-army-and-administration/" target="_blank">patachu.com</a>, the
Fatimid caliphs claimed the divine right to rule based on their
direct lineage from Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, and
the propagation of Fatimid Shi'a Islam as an ideology was vital in
maintaining this legitimacy. Al-Jamali's
rise to power saw the beginning of a trend in Egyptian history where
the Fatimid caliphs became puppets of their <i>wazir
</i>commanders,
figureheads for the military generals to rule from behind. </div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
When he commissioned the
restoration of the Mosque of Ibn Talun, Badr al-Jamali had a slab installed carrying an inscription of
the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahada" target="_blank"><i>Shahada</i></a>,
the Muslim declaration of faith. It reads, “There is no god but
God, Muhammad is the messenger of God.” It then then continues, <i>“wa 'Aliyyun
waliyyu l-L<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">ā</span></i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i>h”</i>
- “and Ali is the </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><i>wali</i></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">
(friend or vice-regent) of God.” This second part is an article of
faith particular to Shi'i Islam. By installing this inscription,
Al-Jamali was seeking to support the existing political order which
he would later use as a mask for his own rule. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">I had my photo taken
next to it. </span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6001/5945974703_f6bb010116.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6001/5945974703_f6bb010116.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">A man with a gun is shouting at me to leave because it's closing time for non-Muslims, </span></div>
<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">but the guy from the shoe rack keeps saying, "Just one more. I think I've got it this time!"</span></div>
</div>
The Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697784213653192182.post-23248939701372600512012-12-26T09:43:00.002+11:002012-12-26T09:44:38.915+11:00Dream: Of Mardi Gras, sharks and the mysterious death of Lindsay Lohan.<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]-->Date: 24th December, 2012.<br />
<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">In the
dream, I didn’t want to do Mardi Gras but I was obliged to attend because of my
membership in a GLBTI martial arts club. It was a damn nuisance on a day
when I had so many other things to do and so many other places I wanted to be. And what’s
more, I was running late. I raced like crazy through hot suburbia to get to the
check-in booths, getting lost a few times on the way as I ran down the endless
nature strips of hot grass baking in the sun. There was no shade. Eventually, I
made it to the stall, which was attended by a disinterested drag queen, but when
I showed by woven rainbow bracelet for ID, she told me that the club that had
signed me up had already filled its quota of attendees and I’d have to wait to
see if there were any cancellations from other affiliated groups. It was exasperating
but at the same time, I caught myself thinking this might be an opportunity to
back out of this annoying commitment.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">While I
waited for word, I noticed that<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sandra
Sully was also in the area. She was getting ready to host the Ten News at
5:00pm and was wearing a large, unflattering pink and blue dress with white spots. It was her
newsreading dress, she told me. She revealed that she didn’t like the sports
anchor Brad Canning very much at all. In fact, no one did. As I saw him come
around the corner, wearing a light blue mink and ermine collar over his clothes
like some kind of pompous city mayor, I wasn’t surprised.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">As we sat
on the bench on the side of the Pacific
Highway at my old high school bus stop, I noticed
there were sharks. They were flying through the air as though it were water -
or perhaps I'd been underwater the entire time and was just breathing it as though it were air. In any case,
these vicious monsters, though not tame, had agreed not to attack people -
although it was hard to put my faith 100% in that undertaking. Using a sheet
for cardboard to create a barrier and bop them away if they came too close, I
swam with the sharks of North Sydney.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Police
sirens rang out on O’Riordan St,
Alexandria. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">There'd been a robbery and I was right closeby. The getaway car filled with dudebros sped past me as I stood at the traffic lights and I got in. Everyone was really excited and we ended up daring one another to do the Ice Sheet Cold Swimming Challenge, which was an endurance test, swimming in icy-cold water for as long as possible. We went to the local pool in Lane Cove and got into the water. There were giant ice cubes bobbing around in it.</span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">When I got out, it was dark and the big news of the day was that Lindsay Lohan had died. A video tribute was to be played as well as a publicly televised reading of her will - both of which I'd have to caption. Behind the scenes in the old house, I could hear the celebrities discussing the momentous event in hushed voices as they sat in the toilet cubicles. Kerri-Anne Kennerly told a friend that Lohan's family life had been disturbed and even though official cause of death was being ruled as suicide, everyone knew how it <i>really</i> happened - it was Bert Newton who'd killed Lindsay Lohan.She also whispered (I was eavesdropping on the conversation) that the evidence was still there to be found. </span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">I went up the stairs to Lohan's bedroom and found it a mess. Things were scattered everywhere - a jacket, CDs, a pair of scissors, ribbons, rubber bands and a massage table. The scissors were suspicious and I knew they were somehow connected to her death. I had a psychic flashback and saw how the murder had happened - Lohan lying face-down on the massage table, passed out from taking drugs. From her perspective, I could see the scissors and ribbons on the carpeted floor through the hole in the massage table. As Bert Newton came into the room, the perspective switched back to the third person and froze as a tableau: Newton with the scissors about to stab down on Lohan's spinal cord at the bottom of her neck.</span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">It faded to black.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Later, as her tribute video was screened on the overhead projector, </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">there was some speculation about whether or not Lindsay Lohan had actually died at all. It was thought she might still be out there, waiting for the big reveal and so although the mood was sad, people still held out hope that everything would be OK. But the question was never resolved one way or the other.</span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
The Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697784213653192182.post-90283335768450891832012-12-24T23:06:00.000+11:002012-12-24T23:06:08.167+11:00Dream: In which I pass the Slayer test. (undated)There was some kind of terror attack being planned against the Hogwarts Express and I was one of a crack team of operatives assigned to stop it - but first I had to get there. It was a tricky journey using the train line and along the way, it was revealed that I was one of the newly activated Slayers from 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'. There were many of us in the world now and it was imperative that I find the others. \<br />
<br />
We were on a road, driving along in a car. The grass on either side was very green and there were one or two trees here and there. I got out. I walked down a path through the park until the trees thinned and the ground gave way to sand. I was in the desert from 'Restless', the season four finale, the desert of the mind where the First Slayer lives, and I was alone. I had to walk through the desert by myself, and only after that would I be allowed to be called by my real name.<br />
<br />
It was hot and I wasn't wearing any shoes but the sand did not burn my feet and with a great deal of perseverance, I made out of the desert, through the scraggly woods and brush and finally back to the park, dragging a sun-bleached tree branch behind me and now an official Slayer. Zoe Thompsett* was in the car and she called out my name - “Nikki!” I got in and off we went.<br />
<br />
There was a strange black and orange animal that was perched on top of a statue. It looked like a kangaroo crossed with a fruit bat but my guide told me that it was a fox. It was swooping down at us with great, terrifying leathery wings. We shot it down. Turns out there was a bounty on each so-called "fox" killed, by order of the Queen. Her Majesty the Queen was there and was able to clarify the point. I made to toss the carcass in the boot of the car but decided against it in the end. The animal had changed now and was no longer dead. It was now a small, furry, red and white stoat, which I decided to hold in my arms while we drove. As we drove through the country side and down Collins St near my flat in Alexandria, the stoat became agitated and started clawing and biting at my hands. It held on to my index finger with both paws and chomped down on it very hard.<br />
<br />
I was reunited with the other Slayers, my new sisters, while I changed my clothes into a purple evening dress so we could get onto the Hogwarts Express undetected. At the last minute, I decided to add a dark olive-green army vest to the outfit. The effect was reminiscent of Alice from 'Resident Evil'. I'd walked through the desert and was ready to go.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
* Zoe Thompsett - a friend with whom I attended both primary school and high school.The Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697784213653192182.post-32443242679312323362012-07-14T17:00:00.001+10:002012-12-24T23:10:32.887+11:00Walking while female<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Hey you. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Yeah, you. That guy from
outside the Rose of Australia pub on Erskineville Rd, Erskineville,
on the afternoon of Saturday, July 14. The ginger guy
with the beard and the husky puppy. I went over to you and said,
“Hey, that's a nice puppy.” And you responded, “You've got some
nice puppies there,” staring at my chest. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
That's right, remember
me? The blonde woman? </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
What you said was way out of line and beyond unacceptable. Seriously, what on earth was your motivation for making a comment
like that? Did you not want me to pat your dog? Because if that's the
case, you should have just bloody well said so. Did you think I would react
favourably? That I'd giggle and say, “Aw, shucks, mister, you mean
these?” and give you a better view? Get fucking real. Does this look like a <i>Carry On </i>movie to you? Or, hey, maybe you thought you were doing me a
favour by commenting on my appearance in front of all those people? Let's be clear. “Nice puppies,” with reference to a stranger's
breasts is never a compliment. As far as justifications go, that is
nothing more than a thin, brown streak of shite, and you know it.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
What happened was that you tried to
reduce me to an object, rather than the human being that I am. You decided to treat me with contempt and derision because you thought it was <i>cool</i>. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Stunned, I froze and did nothing. I
thought, “That did not just happen.” I rewrote the encounter in
my mind minus the sexist put down. Turns out this is something of a
common reaction when women are faced with sexist attacks like this,
and many of the people who engage in this sort of aggression rely on
this delayed reaction. I guess you're one of 'em, aren't you? Does it
make you feel special, like an honoured member of a fraternity of arseholes?</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I gotta say, I'm curious - would you talk like this to your
mother, to your grandmother? Your sister or, if such an unlucky soul
exists, your daughter? How'd you like it if some random mouth-breathing gobshite went up and treated them with such disrespect? And how would they appreciate such dubious attention? Do you think they'd LIKE it, that they'd think it was FUNNY? Do you think they'd be moved to hysterics by the sheer magnitude of your incisive wit? You absolute moron.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
So what's my message, then, you shit-blithering bottom-crawler? It's this: Grow the hell up and stop being such a
creep because the next person you put down might not react so nicely.
The next person you refer to in a derogatory manner might take
matters into her own hands and “nice puppies,” might be the last
thing you say for quite some time. Personally, I'd like to set you on
fire and watch. </div>
</div>
The Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697784213653192182.post-16882989494374451982012-06-30T21:54:00.000+10:002012-06-30T21:54:17.374+10:00Dear Diary - America 5, backtracking<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="tr_bq">
So after the Rat Pack show, that was when we went to the Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon. My entries are all mixed up. This is from my diary (amended some) on that day, the Grand Canyon day.</div>
<br />
<blockquote>
So that was last night. We got the wake up phone call at 5am and HAULED ASS to make it to the shuttle bus at the neighbouring Harrah's Imperial Palace hotel in time. Voice: "It's only a model." <span style="background-color: white;"> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
We're on the bus now.<span style="background-color: white;"> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
The sun is rising over Vegas as we drive past the extravagant resorts (so that's where all the scheduled free live shows are; too late now.) through the middle to lower range hotels, the construction zones that seem to stretch forever and thence suburbia. Jarred somewhat to see how this part looks like a 'real' place. Dusty and hot, with ordinary people and a less blinding ambient arsehole quotient. This is where the people who work in Vegas live. It's called Henderson.<span style="background-color: white;"> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
The road to Henderson and beyond, going through the desert, looks in some ways oddly similar to some of the countryside I saw in Egypt: the hills in the far distance, the colours and the greater sense of age the further out you go. I keep half expecting to see a kid riding a donkey alongside the bus, selling cigarettes.<span style="background-color: white;"> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
Though there are plenty of people collecting money out on the streets for charity, I have so far seen only one guy sleeping rough out in the open. I remember captioning an episode of 'Dateline' on SBS that focused on the underground tunnel people of Las Vegas, living in the old sewers and dark, forgotten passageways beneath the city, who go out at night time to gamble. They've lost their children and partners in divorce cases, their homes to the banks and their jobs to their addictions. They've lost just about all their money but what they can scrounge, and they still go out every night hoping to strike it lucky. One day, one magic day, if you just keep on trying and wishing upon that star.... It was a pretty disturbing program.<span style="background-color: white;"> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
So I've been looking out for scurrying mole people since I got here, not without a guilty sense of ghoulish voyeurism, but I don't think I'm in the right end of town for them. I don't imagine they'd be all that welcome in the posher joints around here. Or anywhere, really, poor deluded souls. <span style="background-color: white;"> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
So that's what happened yesterday.<span style="background-color: white;"> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
We're on this bus still - the shuttle to the coach - and it's likely to be a long day. </blockquote>
</div>The Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697784213653192182.post-7773218954316076932012-06-29T21:34:00.001+10:002012-06-29T22:07:46.182+10:00Dear diary - America 4<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div>
Amended diary entry:</div>
<div>
<blockquote>
<br />
Here I am up at 5am. I'm pretty wrecked. Last night, we went to a tribute show (the 'The Rat Pack is Back!') at the Rio Casino, just off the Strip. We got the shuttle from a neighbouring hotel and voom. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
It was a long wait for the shuttle bus, mainly because we were still traumatised from our airport experience a few days previous and were anxious to be super early. While we were there, we met two nice but rather bracing ladies from Kansas City. They liked my ladybug backpack, I said thank you in my natural accent, and it just went from there. They were extraordinarily friendly, which was lovely, but sadly I was not as receptive as I could have been. I tried my best not to let on. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
Sometimes, when my mind is distracted by important functions like sulking or being hungry, it takes me a little longer than usual to adjust my settings when different social situations suddenly arise. In the case of these two exuberant young ladies, full to the brim with joy, the level of cheer I was faced with required a full system restart. The trick is to not stand still, staring like a stunned mullet while your brain searches for viable options. </blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSp6xD2uthMYCCYwEsfOXkKoS0diwMOS4-ecUBT59buZNDw3Mu_FkId63js1PkkvgxeRQQ9Cf1HEQxPkeMmvD46Mi5A0jAAxj-INDkRV1hOfdhD3_v996YVz813O8fTz1I-FXurpM8Rwr2/s1600/mullet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="128" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSp6xD2uthMYCCYwEsfOXkKoS0diwMOS4-ecUBT59buZNDw3Mu_FkId63js1PkkvgxeRQQ9Cf1HEQxPkeMmvD46Mi5A0jAAxj-INDkRV1hOfdhD3_v996YVz813O8fTz1I-FXurpM8Rwr2/s200/mullet.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A mullet, stunned.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="background-color: white;"></span></blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote>
Anyway, it wasn't long before we were imitating each other's accents, which is to say, they were trying to imitate mine and I was laughing at their attempts. As the bus made its way through the streets of Vegas, the driver filled us in on a couple of pieces of trivia and told a few jokes. By the time we arrived, I was back in good spirits. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
The Rat Pack show was great. I really enjoyed it - the jokes were old and dated, just like the songs and the rest of the audience - and there was a really good vibe among the cast. They looked like a bunch of guys who really enjoyed what they did for a living. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
Maybe about midway through the show, the performers started to go for a bit of audience participation. Dean asked if there was anyone in the audience who was celebrating a birthday, anniversary or anything like that. As she's elbowing me ('shutupshutupshutup!'), I gesture wildly in the direction of my mother. 'Margaret!'<br />
'Oh, Margaret!' says Dean, 'Happy birthday!'<br />
Then Joey came out and said there was a message at the front desk for a Mr Richard Hertz -- "Anyone here who's Dick Hertz?" Audience laughs.<br />
'You can blame Margaret for that!' finishes Dean. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
Later in the show, Sammy complains to Dean after a dance number, 'I'm dyin' here, gimme that,' aiming to pull out a hanky from Dean's suit pocket, which turns out instead to be a pair of lacy red knickers.<br />
'Oh, these? These are Margaret's.' </blockquote>
<blockquote>
So it was a lot of fun - brilliant work from some very good performers. The only unfortunate thing for the cast was that the audience was not very receptive, or at least if they were, they weren't very vocal in expressing it. Most of them were army vets on a yearly holiday. I know this because we got to talking before the show. Included in the group were a man, his wife and cousin, all the way from Louisiana. The man, whose name I have sadly forgotten, was very friendly and was so wisened that he looked like a peanut. They introduced us to the other members of their group, who were mostly all from the Vietnam War, although some were from the Korean War. They all, without exception, spoke fondly of their Australian R&R time in Kings Cross. I asked what the best bit was, and one man replied, "Round-eyed women!" which will teach me to ask a silly question. There was even one guy who was a WWII vet. He laughed most at the affectionate, tongue-in-cheek references to Sammy's homosexuality, which made me smile. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i><br />
</i><i>"What a great pianist!"</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>"The guy playin' the piano's not bad, either!"</i> </blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote>
There were some other silly ones -<br />
<i></i></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>"Hey, man, take a look at these great dancing pants!"</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>"Dancing pants?"</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>"Yeah, dancing pants!"</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>"Ballroom?"</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>"Not much!"</i> </blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote>
<i>"So a bunch of Italians, </i>(says Joey)<i>, die and end up at the the Pearly Gates. 'Hey, can we come in, or what?' St Peter looks 'em up and down and says he'll go check with the boss. Peter goes to God and says, 'Boss, there's these gangsters out front wantin' to come in. What do I do?' God says, 'Let them in, of course.' So Pete, he goes back over there and he says, 'They're gone!' God says, 'What, the gangsters?'</i><i>'No, the Gates!'"</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
Boom-tish!</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Anyway. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
Following the show, we went off to the Rio Casino's rooftop bar, Voodoo. My brother had rung us up from Australia specifically to tell us to do this because it has one of the best views of Las Vegas, and he was not at all wrong. The building we were in was huge and standing out on the top, looking down, it's as though you're seeing glittering sequins set against black cloth but in the distance, beyond all the shiny chaos, there's nothing but the darkness of the outside world. With the full moon suspended above, it was an incredible thing to behold.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
But we had to leave. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
The next day would begin at 5am at the latest and by this time it was past 10pm. We shuttled back to the hotel adjacent to ours, got temporarily diverted (lost) and arrived back at the suite exhausted and complaining of stiff joints. My parents might be described by some as old, but what was my excuse? As they went to bed, I ducked off back through the hotel and casino to the mall. It was Mum's birthday and I'd not got her a present yet. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
It was well past midnight now and the mall was bustling. I passed the ludicrous candy store, the bars and restaurants, assorted knick-knackery, art for sale and designer luggage; withstood the disorienting fake blue summertime noonday sky, clean-shaven singing gondoliers and too-clean-for-Venice canals; only pausing in my mission here and there to take photos of the whole spectacle. Eventually, I found what I was looking for. Rose pink Murano glass. Happy birthday, Mum! </blockquote>
<blockquote>
I made it back to the room, prezzie and other assorted goodies in tow, with only a few hours to go before our 5am wake up call. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
And that's what happened yesterday. Now, for today....</blockquote>
</div>
</div>The Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697784213653192182.post-68243815866080581842012-05-17T09:50:00.001+10:002012-05-17T09:50:45.558+10:00America 3 - the desert<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
So once we'd regrown what little brain could be harvested and used for higher functioning, we hopped onto a shuttle bus and zoomed out to the Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon. And by zoomed I mean caught the bus to another hotel where we queued up for a while as some guy was telling us "what you're gonna wanna do." Then we made little cups of coffee in little paper cups, I learned about that strange thing called 'creamer', and THEN we got to the zooming.<br />
<br />
Our bus driver was very informative, telling us all kinds of interesting and occaisionally not-so-interesting tidbits about the local area and its development. The local area, for what it's worth, is beautiful once you reach an area devoid of human settlement: on all sides, steep hills and ridges follow you as you drive. As the vista opens up, these ridges start to look increasingly like the skeletal remains of long dead super lizards. Snake spine country on a monumental scale. Deserts always feel old and the Mojave is no exception. <br />
<br />
Speaking of all things monumental, the Hoover Dam is impressively huge. a grand total of 112 lives were sacrificed to its construction, not including those who died of illness such as TB or disentry contracted in the workers' camps. Interestingly, the first man to die on the job, J. G. Tierney, and the last, Patrick Tierney, were father and son. J. G. was a surveyor tasked with finding the best spot in the Colorado River to construct the dam. He drowned in 1922 in the midst of his assessment. His son, Patrick, fell from a crane 13 years later <em>to the day. </em><br />
<br />
Back in the present day now, with the construction of the Mike O'Callaghan - Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge completed in 2010, we were able to get views of the Hoover Dam once available only to people in helicopters. It was a nice walk to get up there especially after so many days of enforced sloth, and though I was feeling somewhat unfit, I was guiltily pleased to see that many other people were struggling with the simple walk up the gentle incline to the bridge. Fat Americans, my self-esteem salutes you! Being a dick of epic proportions, I jogged back to the bus.<br />
<br />
The next few hours of driving saw us go through some incredible countryside punctuated here and there by tiny settlements baking in the sun. If there are such things as ghost towns, which there are, these looked to be at death's door. I thought they were beautiful.<br />
<br />
We drove through the Joshua tree forest, the largest of its kind in the world. The Joshua tree (<em>Yucca brevifolia</em>) is an ancient species that can only grow between 400 and 1,800 metres elevation. These trees are technically a kind of cactus and were named by Mormon settlers who thought the bifurcated branches of the trees looked like the arms of the prophet Joshua outstretched in prayer. Of course, some of these plants had many, many branches and unless Joshua bore a striking resemblance to a many-armed Hindu god, I don't really see the connection. At this stage, we cannot rule out dehydration-related mass hallucination. As the Joshua tree is of the cactus family and so has no rings from which to calculate its age, scientists say that if you want to know how old a specimen is, you should count the total number of branch splits and then multiply the number by ten to get an approximate age. Based on that estimate, some of those trees are over 900 years old.<br />
<br />
The section of the Grand Canyon we visited was part of the Hualapai Indian Reserve. The people of the Hualapai tribe commissioned the Grand Canyon Skywalk, which is a bustling tourist attraction. It's a horse-shoe shaped structure made of thick and extremely durable glass that extends out over the Canyon. The views, both horizontally and vertically, are breathtaking. It costs $25 to walk on and you're not allowed to take any camera or mobile phone with you. Instead, staff take photos for you and sell them at exorbitant prices (I bought two). This was infuriating at first, but once you realise that every cent goes to the local people on whose land you're standing around and eating ice-cream on, it's hard to begrudge it.<br />
<br />
The Grand Canyon is well deserving of its title as one of the Wonders of the Natural World. It stretches <em>forever</em> and from where we were standing looked to encompass the whole world. The sense of size that being at such an elevation gives the land is a real stretch for the mind to process; it just seems... not real. You can imagine how a place like this would generate endless stories -- and speaking of stories, one of the best things about the Hualapai area of the Canyon is that we were able to see the incredible Eagle Rock formation, which looks like a giant bird descending on a its prey, talons outstretched. <br />
<br />
If there was one thing disappointing about the Grand Canyon (and I have to really think hard to find any fault), it's that I was really interested in the local legends of the Hualapai people and adjacent tribes. I wanted to know what stories they had about how the Canyon was formed and if they had any stories about the giant Eagle or any other animal. There were lots of ravens around. Was that bird significant? All that side of things. Unfortunately, though there were many local people at the site, there wasn't much information about the Canyon's place in storytelling and spirituality. Something to look into when I get home.</div>The Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697784213653192182.post-66617880725021359692012-05-09T08:08:00.001+10:002012-05-11T12:46:06.983+10:00America 2 - Vegas<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Las Vegas was a strange place to get used to and I think our problem was an inability to approach it in the right frame of mind - i.e., we should have been well rested and enthusiastic rather than jet lagged and homicidal. Or perhaps that's just me. Mum was certainly exhausted to the point of delirium and Dad wasn't that far behind, having already secured the best seats in delirium's VIP area and got the drinks in beforehand, as it were.<br />
<br />
Everything is fake. There's a fake Ancient Rome with fake centurions and a fake Trevi Fountain inside it, a fake pirate ship with battle re-enactments, a fake castle which looks nothing like a real castle as it happens (one way we were able to tell) and where they do fake jousting sans fatalities. There's even a fake Venice, which is where we stayed - the Venetian hotel. Like Caesar's Palace, the shopping mall section of the place is done up to resemble a Venetian street with the stores designed to look like shop fronts. The ceiling is painted light blue with realistic-looking clouds on and with the warm lighting, it looks like you're outside on a late afternoon. This is extremely disconcerting at 10:30pm.<br />
<br />
When nuclear winter happens, we'll have to make our bunkers look like that just to keep our mental health going. As a thing to do in a casino on the other hand, it is decidedly shitty because it's so very easy to lose track of time. "Midnight? Wait, no, it's... Oh. Where is my family?"<br />
<br />
So with all this in mind, we found ourselves wondering if there was a fake Las Vegas resort on the Strip as well. Vegas Town would have its own fake Strip complete with fake Rome, New York, Venice, pirates, pyramids, castles, etc -- and yes, another fake Vegas. And that Vegas Town would follow the same pattern as well ad infinitum. This all begged the question - where does it all end? The answer is obvious, and I suspect you can guess at it: <i>It's Las Vegas all the way down.</i><br />
<br />
Madness takes its toll. <br />
<br />
The Venetian is a massive place; really gorgeous and opulently decorated with marble and (fake) Renaissance art. The suite we booked into was huge, containing two queen beds and a sunken sitting room level with couches, chairs, TV and minibar. Minibar got quite the work-out during our time there. The wallpaper is cream and gold, reflecting the dominant motif of the entire hotel, and the curtains over the beds are heavy with ornate print and tassels. The suite's bathroom was large and decked out in pale marble. In addition to the ordinary showerhead, there were these two other things which looked disconcertingly like nipples from which burst twin jets of water aimed just about at shoulder blade height. It was a great shower.<br />
<br />
So the next three days were exhausting for me because I couldn't get
more than five hours sleep in a row and I also didn't have much
opportunity to get out on my own and so be my own person on this trip
rather than the Dutiful Daughter, or more often than not, Tech Support. Eventually, I did manage to get away, egged on by none other than a street performer doing a disconcertingly sexy rendition of the Joker. What am I saying? An even sexier version.<br />
<br />
The street performers dress up and act in character for tourist photographs and make their money in tips. There was Dora the Explorer (desperately in need of a responsible adult!), Optimus Prime, Spiderman, Wonder Woman, Mickey Mouse and many others. This guy doing a Heath Ledger style Joker, he had it all. The stance, the body language, the make-up, the insinuating himself into your personal space and then standing behind you and whispering in your ear <i>in that voice</i>. Brrrr! He told me to ditch my parents and "go raise some hell." So I did. Well, responsibly. After giving them directions to get back to the hotel. And it wasn't really hell, it was more like aimless wandering, but it was nice to just do that.<br />
<br />
I wandered in and out of casinos and bars, got lost inside another mall decked out to look like the street on a nice summer's day and found myself in a tattoo parlour, sorely tempted to get a little ink. Though there was a very good, simple design of a tree that appealed to me a lot, I couldn't think of anywhere I would want to put it on my body. There were options, but none of them I liked. While I was in there, I watched a woman get her family name tattooed on her foot (Spring) along with a flower. She was telling the guy doing the work that she was going to Paris "in France!" and how excited she was. They got to talking about art and she exclaimed how she didn't really "get" Picasso at all. The tattooist goes, "He's the guy who makes people look like pineapples, right?"And so I left and went to a pole dancing bar.<br />
<br />
There's nothing so lonesome, morbid or drear than to stand in the bar of the pub with no strippers. They were already closing up shop when I walked in. But with that avenue closed, I was at least able to buy one of those silly yard glass slushie cocktails with silly straw everyone over the age of 21 (and some under) was walking around with. Mine had rum in it and a picture of a stripper in pink silhouette. It was also pretty modest compared to some of the giant pacifiers out there. There were huge containers in the shape of the Eiffel Tower, giant plastic steins fit to hold a good two litres of alcopop, gold coloured plastic champagne bottles worn on chains around people's necks like the most nouveau riche of bling. Though at first hilarious to my mind, it quickly became distasteful and then a total turn off. Giant babies sucking on their bottles, looking at the shiny lights.<br />
<br />
This is what I mean about being in the wrong frame of mind when it came to appreciating Las Vegas. The idea is to see the tackiness and artifice for what it is and not be angry at it for failing to meet your standards for what passes as fun; Vegas is not a normal place and you should not have normal(ish) expectations of it.I'm 98% certain my attitude would have been different had we not gone through the horror story of getting there from LAX. I mean, we lost an entire day that we'd scheduled to get over the flight. But after finishing my litre or so of rum and strawberry slushie, I had my photo taken with some women dressed up a sexy lady cops, watched some bouncy go-go dancers and bought a novelty plastic cup. This was sufficient for me and the next day was much better. <br />
<br />
The next day, we went to the Grand Canyon.</div>The Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697784213653192182.post-11210586482567403112012-05-06T05:46:00.002+10:002012-05-07T06:16:31.453+10:00America 1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Where the hell do I begin?<br />
<br />
Let's start with the time of the planned journey and the time it actually took. The flights as scheduled had us on a journey of 17 hours. Sydney to LA, LA to Las Vegas. Easy, right? Well, it ended up being 27 hours from Sydney to Vegas. That's not a typo; twenty-seven fucking hours.<br />
<br />
Here's how it went down.<br />
<br />
All went reasonably well on the flight leaving Australia. Virgin Australia, premium economy. Our travel agent had told us that we'd have access to a special lounge at the airport, but 'twas not to be. Still, no worries, right? We made it into LAX two hours before we left on the same day and then it started - immigrations, customs and the goddamn TSA.<br />
<br />
Being as we were premium economy passengers, we were first off the plane after the well-rested our-seats-recline-fully first class toffs. This meant that we were quite close to the front of the queue for going through customs and immigration. So we lined up in the corridor in front of the escalators, where a TSA official told us to stop and wait while people from a different flight that had also just arrived were hustled through first. Fine. Then after a while, we got clearance to go down the escalators. At the bottom of the escalators, there was a small rectangular room and a woman directing us into different lines. After getting out of the line we'd been mistakenly put into at first, we made it to the front of the queue for foreigners. It was not until all the American citizens had been cleared to go to the next stage that they asked about anyone with connecting flights. Our flight was in an hour and a half, so it was getting close. The woman herding us through these lines was taking her orders from the TSA on the desks in the next room and though the system she was implementing was not of her design, she was doing it atrociously.<br />
<br />
"We have a connecting flight...."<br />
"Ma'am, I will get to you,"<br />
"It's quite soon...."<br />
"Ma'am, step back inside the line, ma'am."<br />
<br />
Time ticked on relentlessly and the room got hotter. There were a fair couple of hundred people to be processed and the queue looked like the final stages of a game of Snake on an old Nokia mobile, where the snake is zig-zagged and curled in and out as much as possible to cram maximum snake into minimum space. And we were at the front of the queue. Poor bastards in the middle or the back couldn't hear what was happening.<br />
<br />
We made it through after a forever and were allowed into the next room and the third queue. This was the immigration check, where they electronically finger printed everyone. It took a while, but it eventually happened. Then to the baggage carousel and out.<br />
<br />
OK, so LAX Arrivals Terminal Styx. Finding ourselves standing blearily on the side of the road, we're trying to figure out how to get to Terminal 1. There's really not much in the way of signage and it's very chaotic, so we ask around and eventually figure out the shuttle bus to get us to the Terminal we want to be at. All systems go, we're winning the race.<br />
<br />
We get off at Terminal 1 and head to the check-in desk but there's a problem. Wrong terminal, wrong airline. Fuck. We're late as it is but the man says if we hurry, we should be able to make it. We race to the shuttle bus stop and hope for the bus to arrive but it takes ages. Other buses pass but do not stop. Dad gets on the wrong one but I check with the driver and we avoid that particular disaster. Eventually bus comes. right, on we hop. Our terminal is 6 stops away and on the 4ths stop, there's some kind of hold up. Are these people asking directions? Why is the driver getting off the bus? FFS. Time passes and we are cutting it super fine. We make it to the check-in counter for United and get in line but when we get to the front, the woman tells us we've missed our connecting flight.<br />
<br />
But all is not lost! She can try to get us on another one leaving at 8:30pm. Right. Tappity, tappity, this lady is working on entering everything into the system. There are three seats left on this flight and we've got them! Yes! My boarding pass is printed first but then there's this error with the computer system. The United woman, who is herself rather disoriented ("they changed the computer system and I haven't used this one.") gets another assistant to help out. The verdict they arrive at and which we accept as fact is that these three remaining seats have been booked for us and when we get to the gate to board, the staff will allocate us the seats. Which are ours. Which are booked as of...... *click* now.<br />
<br />
Right, brilliant, off we go. TSA, shoes off, witnessing pat downs, shoes back on, done. Terminal Lethe, we are in you. The gate is located. It's many, many hours to go until we even come close to approaching boarding time. After a coffee (atrocious) and a sandwich (is this bread sweet?), we we find some seats and wait. I curl up on the floor and sleep like a dog.<br />
<br />
While I've slept (jerking awake every time the PA system booms, "US Service Personnel, we salute you," offering free access to a special lounge - "Become a citizen! Enlist today!"), Mum has been going to the boarding gate every so often to ask about those seat allocations. Staff tell her to wait until the plane is ready to board. The good news out of this is that when at the 11th hour (actually, it was more like the 8th hour, but who's counting?) they change the boarding gate to one a kilometre or so away without making any announcement over the PA, we're already on our way. The plane is arriving shortly and staff are setting up. It's been hours and we feel sick, but we're finally going somewhere and that feels pretty great. We make it to Gate 70B and go up to the guy at the front desk.<br />
<br />
"We missed our connecting flight and the woman at the check-in desk re-booked us new tickets. She told us to tell you so you could allocate our seats."<br />
Tappity tappity tappity "May I see your tickets, please?" Tappity-tappity. "I'm afraid only one of you is booked on this flight," the man says. Reality crumbles, madness sets in. The walls shake and crack; the blackness beyond beckons.<br />
"But the woman at the desk said we were booked on. We've been waiting eight hours. She said it was done."<br />
"You're on the stand-by list. If there is a cancellation, you will be allocated those seats."<br />
"But she said it was just a matter..."<br />
"Yes, the flight is over-booked."<br />
"WHY?"<br />
"I understand you're upset, ma'am, but you are on the stand-by list."<br />
<br />
I have come to the conclusion that in America, "ma'am" is code for "person I happily compare to dog poo." <br />
<br />
Samuel's Adagio plays as we head back to the seats. People are staring. The thing about a situation like this is that although you really want to lay into everyone within a five mile radius, you have to smile and be polite and calm, because when the only way out of this fucking insanity trap at in the discretion of one man, you have got to make that man believe you are not thinking of throttling him.<br />
<br />
We're desolated. It's been so long. Dad has retreated somewhere and Mum is furious. I'm about to cry but am trying to keep calm for the both of them. It's seeing my parents distressed that upsets me the most. I go up and mention to the guy that if there's anything he can do, we'd really appreciate it; "My father has brain damage and this has been very, very distressing." Meanwhile, Mum starts going through her bag, giving me cash, the receipt for the accommodation in Vegas. If they can't get on the plane, I'm going alone.<br />
<br />
You know that scene in 'The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers' when the wild men are rampaging through Rohan aided by Saruman's orcs and a villager puts her two tiny blonde children on a horse to raise the alarm and get to safety? And they're blubbing and it's all very heart-rending?<br />
<br />
Just saying.<br />
<br />
The plane is delayed and it looks like everyone who needs to turn up has. We're out of luck. The guy at the desk calls us up. I'm certain he's going to tell us he's very sorry but, etc --- but he doesn't. Someone's late and they're missing out. We're in. The man is told he is a 'golden god' by the twitching blonde woman in the jacket (i.e., me) and we're boarding. Holy fuck we're boarding. It's been over 24 hours by this point in time and I've slept uninterrupted for.... none of them, really. Approximately 4 hours cumulative, I guess.<br />
<br />
Listening to 'Space Oddity' by David Bowie while a plane goes through turbulence is fucking awesome.<br />
<br />
Eventually, we land. Shuffling like Jack Nicholson at the end of 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest', we disembark (I will NEVER 'deplane') and after a crushing tram ride find ourselves at the baggage carousels. We're through, we've done it. Achievement unlocked: luggage obtained. Let's. Fucking. Go.<br />
<br />
Out the door marked 'taxi pick up', we are greeted with a picture from a post-apocalyptic nightmare. Crowds of people, smoke, noise, confusion, chaos. Men in uniform shout taxis to the side of the road and shout passengers into them. The line stretches down to the corner of the building and then back up towards us, back again to the corner and then back up to us again, and then back up to the corner of the building and then, yes, back to us again. We join the queue and eventually make it up to its first bend at the other end of the building only to find there's an extra bit in it and it GOES AROUND THE CORNER.<br />
<br />
I've never seen anything like it.<br />
<br />
Once I went to New Year's Eve at my brother and his fiancee's flat in Milson's Point and foolishly believed I'd be able to catch the train back into the city afterwards. The teeming throng of revellers stretched on and on, and when I was finally able to start making it up the stairs, seen from above, looked like one of those magic-eye pictures from the 90s.<br />
<br />
That suburb-wide human gridlock has nothing on the despair this crowd of people evoked in me. It was going to take hours.<br />
<br />
Then one of the guards started shouting. Some guys had broken out of the line and had approached the driver of a shuttle bus. "NO HUSTLING! YOU KNOW THE RULES!" But from what we were able to hear from their aborted conversation, there was some hope of alternative transportation.<br />
<br />
Can you believe it that when we made it to the shuttle bus side of the building, the man there said it would be faster if we went back to the taxi queue? Well, when the nice young man in the suit driving the private hire superposh SUV deluxe going-somewhere-not-here-mobile drove up and asked where we were going, we got the fuck in, money be damned. A life saver, a legend, a limo driver.<br />
<br />
Incredulously, Dad ventured, "It's not like this all the time, is it?"<br />
Diplomatically, the best man in the universe replied, "Not ALL the time...." and then less diplomatically, "but most of the time."<br />
<br />
It was midnight when we arrived at the hotel and a while yet before we were able to check in and find our room. But the time in transit stopped at this point at 27.5 hours.<br />
<br />
Twenty fucking seven point fucking five hours. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>The Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697784213653192182.post-81437405966988009472012-01-24T23:12:00.000+11:002012-01-24T23:12:54.919+11:00Dreamin'Hello, blog. It's been almost a year since I started. Time to dust off the keyboard and jump back in.<br />
<br />
I think freudulently should be a word. For example, when I typed (and later deleted) 'time for a kick up the arse,' I accidentally typed 'dick.' Well, no one's perfect and my autopilot mind tends to be rather foul-mouthed. That's fine. But what I would <i>like</I> to now be able to say is, "...I freudulently typed, with rather dull results." Yes, Freudian works but there seems to be no adverb. We need to get a team onto this.<br />
<br />
But I digress.<br />
<br />
I've been trying to remember as much of my dreams as possible lately, feeling in some way that if they're going to make it so hard for me to wake up at all, I might as well take the hint and pay attention. In the grip of a strong dream, I'll sleep through fire alarms and attempted burglaries. Resetting my alarm clock is no problem. If someone calls on the phone, I'll have a perfectly lucid conversation with them only to remember nothing of it when I finally wake up hours later - as if drenched by a bucked of cold water - "20 minutes to get to work!"<br />
<br />
The last big dream I had was after a day when two main things happened: first, I was mopey and despondent, wallowing in my relationship status long designated "forever alone"; second, I went out with a friend and met a really nice young man. There was cider and chips. We exchanged numbers and I've sent a few text messages. Nothing momentous, but very, very unexpected and nice.<br />
<br />
So that night, I had this dream, the main feature of which was this revelation that the stars were not in actual fact up in the heavens, far away and ethereal. Instead, lying in my bed and looking up at them, I realised that they had in fact been painted on. They'd been painted on by the same creative effects team who had worked on the musical episode of 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer.'<br />
<br />
And as I watched the bow and arrow of Sagittarius appear as if by magic (but now as I knew, painted on invisibly and illuminated by fluorescent light wires mixed in with luminescent bug juice synthetic composite), I couldn't stop staring. There was a sense of dissonance that I couldn't look away from. It was like looking into the sun. It made my eyes water.<br />
<br />
Later that day, after I'd woken, I was filled with this a strange sense of sadness. I felt like someone had just told me there was no such person as Santa Claus. Somehow, letting go of a particular way of understanding the world. There was for much of the day a sense that the rug had been pulled out from underneath me a little bit. Time to leave Narnia, kids, and this time you can't come back because you're too old. Bittersweet loss.<br />
<br />
Later, it occurred to me that it was the proximity of the stars that was the major point of interest in the dream. They were still there after all and they were still stars; they were still beautiful and shiny and captivating, and I was still unable to look away from them. But they were less bright and closer as opposed to really bright and far away. Less glossy, more attainable.<br />
<br />
So in terms of interpretation, I'm going with the obvious. My subconscious tends not to be subtle. The stars most likely represent dreams and ambitions - the Holy Grail of 'emotional fulfilment,' which I've been given to understand (with notable resentment and a growing sense of deficiency) requires the involvement of another human being in my life and on a romantic level. My perception of the relationships of other people as being all perfectmagicHollywood and emphatically 'not for me' was revealed in this dream as not a thing that actually exists in this universe. The fake stars never existed. <br />
<br />
So while the 8-year-old Disney princess wannabe part of me felt oddly betrayed by social myths of happily ever after, the rest of me, once I realised the dream's connection with the skewed way I'd been seeing the world and actually understood and felt that revelation ontologically rather than superficially, felt quite liberated and refreshed.The Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697784213653192182.post-46811252330667092142011-04-13T23:32:00.000+10:002011-04-13T23:32:23.154+10:00Urban living (no cows in the city)There's been a bit going on lately that has resulted on all being quiet on the blogging front. It's not that I've nothing to say, but I've been a bit worried about confidentiality and that sort of thing. Relating to the company I work for. I just want to make sure that they're not very easily identifiable based on what I've written here.<br />
<br />
That said, I think there is very little chance of that happening in regard to this post.<br />
<br />
When I was in high school, A friend and I used to toy with the idea of writing children's books. specifically <I>a</I> children's book entitled something along the lines of, <I>"Stories for Bad Children"</I> or something like that. It would be a collection of short tales and rhymes in the theme of Paul Jennings, Edward Scarey, and others I can't be bothered to remember. We wrote two poems, both of which I recite when drunk, so some may have heard them before. <br />
<br />
Here is the first.<br />
<blockquote>'Moo,' went Daisy, as she chewed on the grass<br />
Thinking of the abattoir and horrors not yet past<br />
She thought for a while of old Jimmity Parkett <br />
Whose guts has been sold at the evil Cow Market<br />
She though of her brother and the fate he became<br />
What a horrible Christmas! But still, all the same...<br />
For the field it was green, and the grass it was yummy<br />
'What a sensation!' She thought, as it swirled in her tummy<br />
<br />
Too much thought for a cow of her age<br />
She was unaware of the man on the range<br />
With his gun fully loaded and a bottle of gin<br />
He laughed and he cackled as he did Daisy in.<br />
<br />
Daisy was special now she is gone<br />
Her parting was short<br />
Our grieving was long<br />
O how we will miss you,<br />
Your coat soft as silk<br />
For only you could produce <br />
The best chocolate milk.<br />
</blockquote><br />
And here is the second.<br />
<blockquote><br />
At Christmas when the children cheer<br />
The turkey drowns his angst in beer<br />
In trying to avoid that which is fated<br />
He's become self-marinated<br />
</blockquote><br />
Oh, yeah.<br />
<br />
So I'm waiting for a bus to take me to the shops and it's not turning up, so with homicide not being a viable option, my thoughts return to children's stories. In particular those best suited to an urban environment, which is where<I> "Where's my Bus?"</I> comes in. That's right, it is essentially exactly the same as <I>"Where's my Cow?"</I>, the story that appears in Terry Pratchett's <I>"Thud!"</I> So with apologies to Sir Terry, here are a few ideas:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Page 1.<br />
<br />
I am waiting for a bus but it hasn't come yet.<br />
Where's my bus?<br />
<br />
<br />
Page 2.<br />
<br />
Is that my bus?<br />
It goes, "Get outta the way!"<br />
It's a van.<br />
That's not my bus!<br />
Where's my bus?<br />
<br />
<br />
Page 3.<br />
<br />
Is that my bus?<br />
It goes, "If you kids don't shut up, you can get out and walk!"<br />
It's someone's overworked mum.<br />
That's not my bus!<br />
Where's my bus?<br />
<br />
<br />
Page 4.<br />
<br />
Is that my bus?<br />
It goes, "No, I'm not going in that direction."<br />
It's a taxi. <br />
That's not my bus!<br />
Where's my bus?<br />
<br />
<br />
Page 5.<br />
<br />
Is that my bus?<br />
It goes, "One toke? You poor fool! Wait till you see those goddamn bats."<br />
It's Hunter S. Thompson.<br />
That's not my bus!<br />
Where's my bus?<br />
<br />
</blockquote><br />
And so on and so forth.<br />
<br />
After a while I got bored and went to the other bus stop from where I would watch the dogs running about. It could have been worse; I could have been waiting for a train. Of course, like so many things, the bus is a metaphor. But for what I will leave you to figure out yourself.The Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697784213653192182.post-55991902142689320352011-02-28T18:30:00.001+11:002012-12-27T18:00:12.618+11:00Amateur hour<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I've been a bit depressed lately, so when my brain suddenly kicked into gear last night with a burst of creativity, I had to let it run its course. The result was some sections of rhyme that I would personally hesitate to call poetry on account of the fact that I would feel very silly if I did.<br />
<br />
Here they are.<br />
<blockquote>
<b>1. The Italian (a limerick)</b><br />
The story of old Berlusconi<br />
Regards a man who screwed young women only<br />
With his lad in his hand<br />
Barely able to stand<br />
And supported each side by a croney<br />
<b><br />
2. The Cockroach (to the tune of Twinkle Tinkle Little Star)</b><br />
Little creature scurrying<br />
How I find you annoying<br />
Down around the skirting boards<br />
With your offspring, endless hoards<br />
Little creature scurrying<br />
Hope you find the bait tempting<br />
<br />
<b>3. The Hipster</b><br />
You think it's 'cause I hate you<br />
That I'm cynical and snide<br />
You think I don't respect you<br />
When your interests I deride<br />
Psychologically I'm different<br />
More intellectually fit<br />
This band I've found<br />
Is underground<br />
I doubt you've heard of it.<br />
<br />
<b>4. Headlights</b><br />
Near Derry far<br />
Away a car<br />
With prisoner inside<br />
Swerves to miss<br />
The sheep with which<br />
It'd otherwise collide<br />
The blurring scree<br />
And suddenly<br />
Mere seconds left to think<br />
A cold dark night<br />
Don't fear the light<br />
See car in river sink.</blockquote>
</div>
The Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697784213653192182.post-20438614828306290452011-02-18T20:05:00.000+11:002011-02-18T20:05:30.506+11:00We're all friends here, right?Newsreaders on TV are encouraged to appear all friendly-like. They engage in a bit of witty banter here and there just to keep the flow of the show running smoothly, especially if it's a morning edition. But it's a fine line between being happy colleagues and, well, deeply inappropriate.<br />
<br />
<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="320" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/j8Bc7eRTdWY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
Ouch! I actually went looking for the 'Full Frontal' sketch show's National Nightly Network News clips on YouTube to try and find something to compare with the level of sledgehammer to the face nastiness of that and was left wanting.<br />
<br />
C'est la vie. I found this instead.<br />
<br />
<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/7d6C5s9yU2s" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
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In other news it only took pages of search results on YouTube for "slip of the tongue, news" to turn up a 9/11 conspiracy video. I am disappoint, world.The Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697784213653192182.post-15461595694390717562011-02-08T14:05:00.002+11:002011-02-08T14:07:29.667+11:00Access programming (temporary) failIn relation to a previous post on the Australian flood and cyclone coverage in Queensland, the ABC's <a HREF="http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/">MediaWatch</A> programme also noticed how amazing those Auslan signers were. However, they and their viewers also noticed something else.<br />
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Here is the <a HREF="http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s3132386.htm">link</A> to the MW video. It's a couple of minutes long. <br />
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Basically, in order to get a more dramatic close-up shot of Premier Anna Bligh speaking at the pressers, the cameras of no less than three networks zoomed in on her face and excluded the signer altogether from the picture seen on tellies across the nation. This head and shoulders image of Bligh was then used on a graphic next to exciting but already seen images of flooding set on a loop as she was speaking. <br />
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It was a case of the Magic Disappearing Signer. Thankfully, they got wise to this shitty move soon after and started thinking about the needs of their audience over their own desire for a shiny-loooking end product. Access-friendly coverage resumed.The Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697784213653192182.post-1239002685371783302011-02-07T19:11:00.000+11:002011-02-07T19:11:59.956+11:00The voice recognition software we use was created by IBM, which in this case stands for “It Broke Me.” Or at least, that’s what it feels like after 40 minutes of comprehensively training in age/edge/urge, ages/edges/urges, aged/edged/urged, aging/edging/urging, and urgently. I think I have been successful, but we shall have to wait and see.<br />
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The Muslim Brotherhood is in the news quite a lot recently. They’re a “band opposition group” (worst Guitar Hero spin-off ever), according to some captions I have seen. I’m having trouble with their name as well – it keeps coming out as “Muslim brother what,” or “was the lover would.” These go straight into my house style. A small and irrational part of my brain maintains that making a macro would be like giving up.<br />
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The computer is cynical when it comes to Egyptian politics. This is partly my fault for respeaking verbatim with misrecognisable words. “He has given 60 years of his life to the country he laughs” is either a misrecognition or possibly requires a comma after “country.” An orderly transition needs to “risibly take place.” Is that supposed to be “visibly,” or are you having a laugh, Mr Foreign Minister? Oh well. Into the house style with you.The Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697784213653192182.post-13053538897487541402011-02-05T01:27:00.000+11:002011-02-05T01:27:39.942+11:00Disaster strikes!The big news out of Australia is Tropical Cyclone Yasi, a nasty piece of work weighing in at category 5 - the highest level of measurement for a tropical cyclone. This made landfall a few days ago in northern Queensland, the same Australian state to be recently hit with the biggest floods in the country's history. With Australians still reeling from that catastrophic event, it seemed like this was going to be a double whammy of extremely dramatic proportions. But remarkably, despite the widespread structural damage and the secondary problems associated with that, the initial toll has been minimal. As of tonight, there is one person confirmed dead - from carbon monoxide poisoning due to using a petrol generator in an unventilated room. But although that total may rise as rescue workers and emergency crews cut into isolated communities, and although the damage and the trauma that was incurred will stay with the communities involved for many years to come, this was not the Hurricane Katrina-esque event we had all been dreading. Yay!<br />
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But the almost-apocalypse doesn't just happen every day and the cameras were rolling. Journalists documented dramatic rescues, emotional breakdowns and provided essential advice to those of their viewers that still had power - for example, Do not go outside and walk around your neighbourhood like the nice man on TV is doing because it isn't safe. Not all the messages were mixed, though, and that's where we came in.<br />
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Thankfully the rolling coverage of Tropical Cyclone Yasi didn't seem to have any glaring errors that could have led to distress, danger or confusion - unless people were going to be upset that their "crocs" had been destroyed. "Atherton tablelands" did come out once or twice as "Atherton table LANs," but I think people got the message all in all.<br />
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But while there were journos trying to be both informative and helpful, there were some that seemed to be a bit out of their depth. Maybe it was because they were dealing with rural northern Queenslanders, but listening to a clean-shaven, expensively attired young man in a studio dig deep into the barrel of true blue Aussie mateship blokey bloke-bloke-bloke cobber, me ole mate familiarity was a bit... uncomfortable at times. They did try their best, though. This was one of my favourite exchanges:<br />
<blockquote><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Q: It must be heart-wrenching for everyone this morning. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">A: Yes. It is unbelievable. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Q: How many homes do you think have been affected? </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">A: I would say 40% of the homes. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Q: Out of how many? </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">A: 40% of the number of what is here.</span></span></blockquote><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">It's hard to get that magic number for your headlines when you are dealing with an extremely honest person. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">That was in Australia. Elsewhere in the world, there was this: </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><img src="http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/3483/australiamapfailtcyasi.jpg" HEIGHT=350 WIDTH=500 /> </span></span><br />
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Oh, CNN. I am disappoint. (courtesy of <a href="http://twitter.com/#%21/jasonbelcher">@jasonbelcher</a>.)<br />
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In every disaster coverage, there is the emotional/inspirational montage. It's a clever balancing act between destruction and hope and it has to capture the 'true spirit' of the people the disaster has affected. Themes of resilience, camaraderie and strength in adversity mixed with grief, shock and individual fragility accompanied by emotive strings or a gentle piano melody. Sadly, one network decided to go with Standard Epic Battle Theme Music Track 47. That was... unfortunate.<br />
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For me, the highlight of the cyclone coverage was the inclusion by the QLD disasters emergency committee of an AUSLAN signer at every press conference. Is this woman not awesome?<br />
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She and her colleagues were also included in the QLD flood pressers.The Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697784213653192182.post-91063687284141466732011-01-26T00:09:00.003+11:002012-01-24T22:11:03.995+11:00Something not involving captionsToday is Australia Day. I'm actually quite secure in my own identity, so I don't really see the need to wear a flag like a cape or get drunk and berate 'foreigners.' I'm no fan of bogans and tend to hide away during this time of year. <br />
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This is a sociology essay I wrote in 2006 (I think) while at university. As I'm not pulling an all-nighter for a rapidly approaching due date, I had the luxury of tidying it up a bit and fleshing out the conclusion. It still sort of makes sense, which is nice.<br />
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It is totally tl;dr, by the way.<br />
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Here goes: <br />
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On December 11, 2005, up to 5,000 people (Sydney Morning Herald, 11/12/05a) converged on Cronulla Beach in what ended up as Sydney’s now infamous Cronulla riots, during which the white, Anglo-Celtic gathering of people “chanted racist slogans and attacked people of Middle Eastern appearance in retaliation for the bashing of two lifeguards, which locals blamed on Lebanese gangs” (The Age, 13/12/05a). The exact details of how many people were involved, charged with offences or injured vary according to source, however it can be said that on the day of 11th December, between six (ABC News, 11/12/05) and thirty-one (Daily Telegraph, 12/12/05a) people were injured, including five police officers and two paramedics (Sydney Morning Herald, 11/12/05b). The number of arrests made on the day was reported as between seven (SMH, 11/12/05a) and fourteen people (Daily Telegraph, 12/12/05a). The incident made headlines both nationally and around the world, and was followed by two nights of reprisal attacks on the 11th and 12th of December, during which cars and shops were vandalised in “smash-and-bash attacks” in Cronulla, Maroubra and Brighton-le-Sands (news.com.au, 14/12/05). Once again, the number of participants, arrests and vehicles damaged vary according to source, with some putting the figure at fifty men involved, over one hundred cars damaged and six arrests (The Age, 13/12/05), and others reporting up to fifty “carloads of youths” and forty cars damaged (Sydney Morning Herald, 11/12/05b). In addition, one person was stabbed. Each incident involved text messages and took place against a backdrop of intense media coverage.<br />
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While the usage of new communication technologies, particularly mobile phones, is in itself an interesting study, I shall not be examining it in this essay. Rather, I shall be focusing primarily on the coverage of the issue of ‘ethnic gangs’ in the media, and how this interacted with the social imaginary of Australia and Australian identity, and the power struggle between competing social fields for legitimacy within the broader national field to create the space for this particular manifestation of violence.<br />
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Smith (1996) defines Australian identity as a “general concept...grounded in common-sense thinking and everyday life...a broad set of shared understandings within (Australia) about its people and values...common languages, symbols and practices which help to constitute” an individual as Australian (Smith, 1996, cited in Phillips, 1998: 282). To be in possession of an Australian identity is not only to feel Australian, but also to be perceived as Australian by others who are also Australian. In the field of this symbolic community there are various prescriptive and proscriptive norms (Mizruchi & Perucci, 1968: 154) – do’s and don’ts – attitudes, values and beliefs, as well as roles and expectations the adherence to which enable the individual to gain social, cultural, symbolic and material capital. Such norms and so on generally include speaking English, associating with people already established in the field, and supporting the endeavours of the field. Individuals who wish to ‘achieve’ an Australian identity are in this fashion required to ‘play the game’ of the field in order to be recognised as a valid field member. Through continual interaction with and investment in the field as well as previous socialisation and acculturation, the individual develops a field-specific habitus. This is the internalisation of the requirements and values of the field. According to Bourdieu, this can all be traced to the fundamental drive of humans to be recognised by other humans deemed to be in a position <b>to </b>recognise them with authority; for if the self is seen through the eyes of the projected other, then the positive recognition <b>by </b>that other as regards the value and worth of the self is vitally important to the continuation of the self in its stable, relational form (Bourdieu, 1997: 166); a mirror is required to see the existence of what exists.<br />
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And yet where there are norms, there is by definition, deviance. Individuals within a specific field, who have by virtue of their symbolic, social, cultural and economic capital the symbolic power and authority to shape the <i>doxa</i> of the field “are able to impose their conceptions of deviance and normality onto others” (Roach-Anleu, 2003: 313). While one can rise to ascension and recognition within a specific field through the accumulation of symbolic capital, this capital only has meanings so long as the other field members accept its value. This means that the individual who strives to dominate in the field is in fact reliant <b>on </b>the field and its members to maintain the codes of meaning about the very gained resources through which the actor intends to dominate (Bourdieu, 1997: 166). As a result, the <i>doxa </i>- which shields individuals from realising the socially constructed nature of their accomplishments (potential or otherwise) and identity - <b> must </b>be maintained by a continual process of self-identification against the external, non-field ‘other’. It is through deviance that this can take place, as the moral outrage and repulsion to behaviour deviant to the specific field in which one is operating serve to cement the virtue and legitimacy of those who identify themselves in opposition to those same actions and othered 'dispositions'. It is in this way that we can return to the cultural field of the ethnically Australian and see it in terms of the dichotomous <b>either/or</b> relationship that it has with its polar opposite: the ‘unAustralian’.<br />
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‘UnAustralian’ as a word, while used in the past in reference to non-whites, communists, and foreigners, has enjoyed something of a renaissance in contemporary Australian discourse since the 1990s (Phillips & Smith, 2001: 326). UnAustralian characteristics, according to Phillips and Smith, “seem to acquire their meaning through their opposition to such orthodox ‘Australian’ attributes as mateship, anti-authoritarianism, not thinking you’re better than anyone else, cutting down ‘tall poppies’ and believing in the importance of everyone pulling together for the good of Australia” (2001: 329). It is a kind of anti-nationalism, a nationalistic deviance, which does not respect the sacred sites and values of what is perceived within the Australian cultural field to be the ‘traditional Australian way of life’. These sites and values are determined integral to the definition of Australia by historical discourse, generally dominated by cultural elites – those deemed to be in possession of symbolic capital (Bourdieu) – and shared historical experience (both actual and perceived) within the members of the field. Truly iconic amongst these significations is the beach and the tradition of surf-lifesaving:<br />
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<blockquote><i>“Going to the beach on a summer’s day is a tradition in this country – as Australian as a slouch hat, the Melbourne Cup, a sprig of wattle, the scent of eucalyptus smoke in the air. And there’s an aspect of this tradition we have all been taught to respect – that’s the role of the volunteer army of surf lifesavers who stand guard while we enjoy ourselves. That in this country we have bred a strain of selflessness so ennobling and so constant is something that every decent Australian regards as a stamp of quality on our national character. And every day at the beach – if we are smart – we breathe a silent prayer of thanks for the lifesavers’ work. <b>…in attacking our lifesavers, they attack us all</b>.”</i><br />
(Daily Telegraph, 6/12/05a – emphasis mine)</blockquote><br />
The Australian and the UnAustralian are part of the social imaginary of this country, which while not uniformly ascribed to across the board, still holds true to a large number of social actors within this country. In the same way as the <i>doxa </i>of Bourdieu’s theories, Castoriadis’ conceptualisation of the social imaginary is about the bringing into being of “a world in which society inscribes itself and gives itself a place” (Castoriadis, 1997: 84). As the <i>doxa </i>renders ‘rational’ involvement in the field, the social imaginary with its socialisation, language, norms and values serves to hide the socially constructed nature of the power dynamics and inequalities of society. It is a story, a myth and a narrative that binds the community together in solidarity through “the internalisation, by socially fabricated individuals, of the significations instituted by the society” (Castoriadis, 1997: 85). Through this internalisation, the individual is tied to the social imaginary in the same way as he or she is tied to the field: it gives them meaning, purpose and ontological security.<br />
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However, what is not mentioned in the above editorial piece is that the living, breathing symbols of Australian nationhood – the surf lifesavers – were not in uniform when attacked on December 4th, 2005. As Liz Jackson of the ABC’s<u><i> Four Corners</i></u> reports: “Three volunteer lifesavers were leaving the beach, having finished their patrol.<b> They were not in uniform</b>. There was a verbal altercation with a group of what the locals call Lebs, with<b> provocative insults on both sides</b>” (Four Corners, ABC, 13/3/06 – emphasis mine). This information did not make the initial news releases, giving the impression that the three lifesavers had been ‘in the line of duty’ at the time, and that this was therefore a conscious attack on Australia and Australian identity from a deviant, UnAustralian and therefore ‘anti-national’ group of individuals. That is to say, a direct challenge to everything that the <u><i>Daily Telegraph</i></u> editorial cited above lauds to be the heart and soul of the nation. <br />
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Looking back to my previous discussion of social fields, symbolic power and the social imaginary, it can be clearly seen how this would enrage dedicated field members of both the broader national field and, more specifically, those members who are intimately involved with the very significations that prop up that specific <i>doxa </i>of Australian identity - the beach and beach culture. <br />
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The ethnicisation of appropriate and inappropriate conduct in the Australian/UnAustralian dichotomy - for such is often the implication - can be further seen in the ethnicisation of crime, especially gangs. While ‘youth’ is often coupled with ‘crime’ in media reports, Collins et al (2000) argue that a further link with ethnicity is made to the extent that youth crime becomes racialised, “equating gangs and crime with non-English speaking background (particularly Vietnamese and Lebanese) and Aboriginal youth, implying that therein lies the explanation of the event” (2000: 32). Media representations certainly have a large impact on the way a group of individuals is seen by the general public. The European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia commented on this in 1999, stating that “the race for the fastest headline only leaves time for unverifiable content, simplifications and clichés – all of which are fertile breeding grounds for racial prejudice ... the media encourage a quest for simplistic answers and polarising presentations” (cited in Collins et al, 2000: 33). Brubaker (2002) points to the trouble in classifying people and their acts according to their ethnicity or nationality in that what tends to happen is the reification of entire groups “as if they were internally homogenous, externally bounded groups, even unitary collective actors with common purposes” (2002: 164). This depiction of a “monochrome ethnic...bloc” (Brubaker, 2002: 164) means that entire ethnicities are cast as unified social actors with little distinction between each individual. We can see the real consequences of this in the <i><u>Four Corners</u></i> report, “...For Being Lebanese” (16/9/02): <br />
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<blockquote><i> Stephen McDonell (journalist): Since 14 young Lebanese Muslim men pack-raped several girls in Sydney, the press has been full of talk about race and religion.</i><br />
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<i> Man at mosque: Listen, of all the people that raped girls in the past, did you tell that they were Christians or Catholics or Jews? You say they’re Muslims, OK? We did not go and rape anybody.</i><br />
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<i> Man at mosque 2: Yeah, the whole community has been targeted.</i><br />
<i> (Four Corners, ABC, 16/9/02)</i></blockquote><i><br />
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McDonell goes on to say: “There’s a perception that Sydney’s young Lebanese men are now inextricably linked to gang activities. This could mean anything from a few friends hanging out and wearing tracksuits to men involved in street fights to sophisticated cocaine and car rebirthing rackets. The categories are used like they’re all the same thing.” Certainly in the case of the bashing of two Cronulla lifesavers, what started out as “a group of men” in a car-park (AAP, 5/12/05a) quickly became “a large group of men” (AAP, 5/12/05b), “a gang of youths” (AAP, 5/12/05c), and “a group of thugs” (Daily Telegraph, 6/12/05b). <br />
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Arab and Muslim communities have experienced a dramatic upsurge in racial vilification and abuse since the 9/11 attacks in New York, the Sydney gang-rape cases in which it was alleged that Lebanese youths had “specifically targeted Anglo-Australian girls” (The Age, 13/12/05b), the Tampa ‘crisis’ and the Bali bombings. According to a report by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission launched in June, 2004, “two-thirds of Muslim and Arab Australians...say they have experienced racial vilification”, with “90% of female respondents [out of a sample of 1400 individuals] experiencing racial abuse of violence since September 11” (Sydney Morning Herald, 17/6/04). Adding to this unfortunate rise in anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiment is the fact that six women from Maroubra died in the 2002 Bali bombings, which, according to Federal Liberal backbencher Bruce Baird, whose Cook electorate includes Cronulla, “had fuelled anger towards Middle-Eastern Australians” (The West Australian, 13/12/05). Not only is ethnicity being lumped in with crime, but global terrorism is also ethnicised, becoming a major problem in the way Australians view others of Middle Eastern background or ‘appearance’.<br />
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In conclusion, it would appear to ‘common-sense’ perceptions of ethnicity and crime, viewed within the social imaginary of Australian norms and values versus those of its UnAustralian antithesis, that the bashing of the lifeguards at Cronulla by men of ‘Middle Eastern’ appearance was the final straw in relation to a problem long racliaised in the Australian media. The aggression of the 'protestors' on December 11th arose out of intoxication and anger at the perceived violation of the norms, values and behavioural codes that mean so much to what was interpreted - at most likely unconscious level – as integral to the continuation of a coherent and contained sense of national identity. This identity was constructed via the internalisation of these historically and socially constructed codes of meaning (often couched in racial terms) and therein the sanctification of certain places and people. Also vital in this process is a systematic othering of socially and culturally assigned deviants – UnAustralians - and their alleged instrinsic traits. It is possible to conclude that the Cronulla riots were an attempt by people heavily invested in this code of racialised national identity to draw a line in the sand delineating themselves from the 'other' and thereby cemeting their own membership in the social and cultural field of what it is to be 'Australian'.<br />
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<b>BIBLIOGRAPHY:</b><br />
<i><u>Australian Associated Press</u></i> “NSW: Drop in police leaves lifesavers open to attack: Tink” General News (5/12/05)a<br />
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<i><u>Australian Associated Press</u></i> “NSW: Lifesavers Bashed at Beach” General News (5/12/05)b<br />
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<i><u>Australian Associated Press</u></i> “NSW: Bashing of two lifesavers not an isolated incident” General News (5/12/05)c<br />
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<i><u>Australian Broadcasting Corporation</u></i> “Mob Mentality Shameful: Police Commissioner” (11/12/05) < www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200512/s1528593.htm > [ accessed: 1/6/06 ]<br />
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Four Corners “…For Being Lebanese” <i><u>Australian Broadcasting Corporation</u></i> (16/9/02) <br />
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Four Corners “Riot and Revenge” <i><u>Australian Broadcasting Corporation</u></i> (13/3/06)<br />
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Bourdieu, P. (1997)<i><u> Pascallian Meditations</u></i> Stanford University Press: Stanford<br />
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Brubaker, R. (2002) “Ethnicity without groups” in <i><u>Archive of European Sociology</u></i> (43): 2<br />
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Castoriadis, C. <i><u>World in Fragments </u></i>Stanford University Press: Stanford. 1997.<br />
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Collins, J. et al <i><u>Kebabs, Kids, Cops and Crime: youth, ethnicity and crime</u></i> Sydney Pluto Press: Sydney. 2000<br />
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<i><u>Daily Telegraph</u></i> “New text threats” (12/12/05)<br />
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<i><u>Daily Telegraph</u></i> “Attack on us all”, Editorial (6/12/05)a<br />
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Lawrence, K. “Fight for Cronulla: We want our beach back” <i><u>Daily Telegraph</u></i> (6/12/05)b<br />
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Brigid Delaney & Cynthia Banham “Muslims feel the hands of racism tighten around them” <i><u>Sydney Morning Herald </u></i>(17/6/04)<br />
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Ben Martin “Genesis of Cronulla’s Ugly Sunday began years ago” <i><u>The West Australian</u></i> (13/12/05)<br />
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Mizruchi, E. H. & Perucci, R “Perscription, Proscription and Permissiveness: Aspects of norms and deviant drinking behaviour” in M. Lefton, JK Skipper Jr & CH McCaghy (eds) <i><u>Approaches to Deviance: Theories, Concepts, and Research Findings</u></i> Appleton-Century-Crofts: New York 1968 <br />
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<i><u>news.com.au</u></i> “Police blanket thrown over Sydney” (14/12/05) < www.news.com.au/stroy/print/0,10119,17567226,00.html > [ accessed: 1/6/06 ]<br />
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Phillips, T. (1998) “Popular Views about Australian Identity: research and analysis” in<i><u> Journal of Sociology </u></i>(34): 3 pp281-302<br />
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Phillips, T. and Smith, P (2001) “Popular understandings of ‘UnAustralian’: an investigation of the un-national” in<i><u> Journal of Sociology</u></i> 37(4): pp 323-339<br />
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Roach-Anleu, S. ‘Deviance and Social Control’ in R. Jueidini & M. Poole (eds.) <i><u>Sociology: Australian Connections</u></i>, Allen and Unwin: Sydney. 2003<br />
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<i><u>The Age</u></i> “Fresh Violence Rocks Sydney” (13/12/05)a<br />
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Tony Parkinson “Sons of beaches: Land girt by bigots”<i><u> The Age</u></i> (13/12/05)b<br />
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<i><u>Sydney Morning Herald</u></i> “Mob Violence Envelops Cronulla” (11/12/05)a<br />
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<i><u>Sydney Morning Herald</u></i> “Sydney’s Racist Mob Violence Spreads” (11/12/05)bThe Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697784213653192182.post-20885884977937806002011-01-25T03:38:00.000+11:002011-01-25T03:38:46.633+11:00I wonder if I'll get in trouble for this?Lately, my accuracy has been a bit of a dog's breakfast. I'm pleased to say that today was a marked improvement, but the past week has definitely been problematic for someone with a ginormous perfectionist bug up their arse about Always Being Right. Hem-hem.<br />
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So. In order to maintain a fair level of accuracy, there are so many variables to keep on top of. It's like the circus performer with the long sticks standing vertically, pointing up into the air. And on top of each stick is a spinning plate. Each stick must be somehow adjusted to keep its plate spinning. Failure to maintain equilibrium results in tumbling crockery and being told This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things.<br />
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There are a few variables that are linked to equipment. These include the condition of the computer and whether it is prone to crashing, the quality of the cables connecting the microphone to the computer, the quality of the audio feed, and so on. But 'tis a poor workman who blames his tools, they say. Well, smug bastards say it, at any rate. And there are other variables not related to equipment that need attending to, including tone of voice, pitch, posture, preparation and a few other things I will sum up as 'etc'. <br />
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And when all else fails, you can still bugger it all up by trying to be Smart. This happened the other day, when I thought to myself, "Oho, a story involving people with bows and arrows. But I bet that if I say there are 'archers' this particular featured location, it will come out as 'arches,' and this will shit me no end. So I will say two words that are highly unlikely to be misrecognised - 'archery' and 'enthusiasts'."<br />
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It is true that editing is a great way not to shoot yourself in the foot by substituting tricky words with easy ones. But did it work? Well, yes and... no. Although not <i>necessarily</i> untrue, it might have been a bit of a stretch to expect the deaf and hard of hearing viewers watching at the time to accept the idea of Sherwood Forest being full of <I> "archers and physicists." </I><br />
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It was at that point I gave up entirely. The moral of the story is that sometimes you don't have to state the obvious. People can see the archers on the screen perfectly well. Maybe you only need to say "fog" instead of "mist and fog." Stick to the details that are the most relevant and only go for broke respeaking verbatim if you are having a good day, otherwise it will all come out a garbled mess.<br />
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But still... Robin Hood and his merry band of scientists does sound kind of cool. Robbing the rich to maintain research funding, holding out hope that King Richard will return from the Crusades with the reward of tenure for loyal subjects, and forever battling nasty Prince John and his departmental budget cuts and ominous talk of "streamlining". Yoiks! And away!The Thinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00055822794916613685noreply@blogger.com0