30 April 2006

and another thing

Look what I found, broadband users.

http://video.google.com. I 'm looking at you, Betty Sue.

You too can enjoy the video clip for Prince Charming, replete with oiled dancers. I certainly don't remember those from when I was a lass, but am steadfastly ingorning the glaring homosexual overtones, lest it ruin a 20-odd-year-old fantasy that may or may not involve Adam Ant and face-paint. Ahem.

what i'm doing on saturday nite

http://www.abc.net.au/rage/playlist/archive/2006/20060429.htm

Me and the merlot, baby. And loving every minute.

28 April 2006

Rollin Rollin Rollin

My favourite angry-think-necked-resident-of-the-United-States has his own tv show! And you can view all the little clips on the internet! Thank you...little sister's broadband connection.

Anyone who's lived in the US and watched Ann Coulter* check out Henry's love letter. There's also interviews with Werner Hertzog, Frank Black, Ozzy Ozbourne, Chuck D, Oliver Stone, and Sleater Kinney. All together Hunh-ree...

*Her latest book, is titled How to talk to a liberal (If you must) - lovely lady.

26 April 2006

Open up and say ... Ikeeaah

If you'll pardon the lame ass Poison (as in the glam band) reference there, if you were hapily ensconced in an innerwest enclave of groovy yet distinctive and handmade* homewares, you will have happily missed the kerfuffle in Adelaide last week as they got their very own ikea store!

I laughed to myself like a sad old nanna in a large rattly house when I saw that they'd picked it up on MediaWatch on monday night. A very rough estimate by a local PR guru put the value of all the frothing at over 100k, easy. It was a very big deal. I was here. People thought there would be traffic queues delaying entrance to the airport. There weren't. Anyway, I've got a very trivial bit of marketing waffletalk to share, just for my own amusement, and if you'd rather eat glass than talk about marketing tactics then just look away now.

Clearly all the Adelaide competitors to aforementioned flatpacked furniture specialists are bunging on as much tv advertising to avoid taking a major hit. You remember them.. "love it, at LeCornu" etc.. and they all feature a barrage of products and prices kind of spinning and leaping out of the screen. Now icky-ah have a totally different tack. Their classy, clean, ad feautres a six year olds voice talking about what he likes about the store. Not a single couch or magenta lamp to be seen. Just some chicken nuggests and a ball crawl. Perhaps there's some soft-focus flat packs being surreptitiously slid into the station wagon as he says "not bad ...for a shop". So right, in layman's terms, they're not actually trying to sell you any furniture, they're trying to sell you an experience. Horrible, isn't it? Its a leisure activity, all this shopping business. With its own car park, playpen and cafe. And if you happen to buy some nice homewares at the same time, thats just lovely for them isn't it. Now I am first to admit Ikea has some nice things, I've had a good old browse there on more than one occasion. But better that kind of consumption be done by consenting adults, in the privacy of their own credit ratings, surely?

*By old Sri-lankan and Peruvian ladies.

25 April 2006

Anzac - que?

Well I heard The Herd's remake of "I was only 19" and saw the video clip for the first time last night. Thinking how smart they were to release it on the eve of Anzac day, I now realise I'm a tad behind the times. They first performed it on the Triple J show like a version sometime last year, and the studio recording was released on March 17 this year. I think they've done an excellent job, and the man who penned it from Redgum, agrees. The words are certainly not a nationalist call to arms, and in this version they ring out nice and clear in an Australian accent 20 ears on, infused with the cadences of western Europe and the Middle East via Sydney's western suburbs. They've kept great slabs of the original lyrics and just added more description to others. From the original:
"And can you tell me doctor, why I still can'y get to sleep/And the Channgel Seven chopper still chills me to my feet? / And what's this rash that comes and goes, can you tell me what it means? God help me.. I was only 19."

And the Herd's embellishment: "I can still hear Frank, a screaming mess, the bleeding flesh, couldn't retrieve his legs/ y' see the ANZAC legend neglected to mention / the blood, the fear, the blood the tears the tension/Dad's recollection beyond comprehension, didn't seem quite real until we were sent in."
You can hear it and view the video here (quicktime viewer - not good for dialup). I remember this song effecting me when it was on Countdown when I was a kid, and now doing my research I found out it was at number 1 for 40 weeks in 1983. What I didn't know was that apparently it was all the Vets who "latched on immediately" and that its played on ANZAC day all over the country. Always leapt out as one of the most hit-you-in-the-guts anti-war song I've heard. (If you've got others, go ahead and post in comments). I don't think its about glory or reminisence at all - and to hear these young blokes rap it is incredible. A band member, Urthboy, puts it best in an inteview for the SMH , pointing out tht The Herd's audience were not born when the song was originally released, but still responded to its message. "A lot of our audience members are fairly politically aware … [for them] war is an issue that should not be downplayed." Nice one, The Herd.

16 April 2006

Easter quotes

"I remember when jeans first came out" - Nanna (92), while doing the regular Sunday ironing ritual. (She does, too)

"But I'll spill my drink" - Mis J's Aunty L when asked to participate in the over 10s womens running race on Easter Saturday picnin

"I think I'm going home early" - Biz, via text from the big exciting alt-rock festival in Sydney... what??

7 April 2006

Chick lit

Recent reserch by the uni of London has compiled a list of liturature that has changed your life. The reseach, based on about 500 interviews found that "the novel that means most to men is about indifference, alienation and lack of emotional responses. That which means most to women is about deeply held feelings, a struggle to overcome circumstances and passion."

"We found that men do not regard books as a constant companion to their life's journey, as consolers or guides, as women do," said Prof Jardine. "They read novels a bit like they read photography manuals." Women readers used much-loved books to support them through difficult times and emotional turbulence, and tended to employ them as metaphorical guides to behaviour, or assupport and inspiration.

"The men's list was all angst and Orwell. Sort of puberty reading," she said. Ideas touching on isolation and "aloneness" were strong among the men's "milestone" books. "We were completely taken aback by the results," said Prof Jardine, who admitted that they revealed a pattern verging on a gender cliche, with women citing emotional, more domestic works, and men novels about social dislocation and solitary struggle.

Can you pick which list is which?

  • The Outsider by Albert Camus
  • Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
  • Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
  • Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
  • Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
  • High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
  • Ulysses by James Joyce
  • Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
  • The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  • One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  • Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
  • 1984 by George Orwell
  • The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
  • The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
  • The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
  • The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
  • The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
  • Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

  • Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
  • Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
  • The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
  • Middlemarch by George Elliot
  • Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
  • Beloved by Toni Morrison
  • The Golden Notebook by Dorris Lessing
  • Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
  • Rememberence of Things Past by Marcel Proust
  • Persuasion by Jane Austen
  • Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
  • Oranges are not the only fruit by Janette Winterson
  • One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  • The Mill on the Floss by George Elliot
  • Little Women by Lousia May Alcott
  • Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert
  • The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
  • Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
  • Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

6 April 2006

Tourist in my own town


I went to Coogee Beach today. I think I've only been there about 4 times before, once on a sunny winters day to start the cliff top walk to Bondi with two women friends. Today I walked the other direction, south, and discoved the divine Coogee Women's only baths. Its still 20 cents entry (possibly price fixed since the 30s!) and you can swim laps while looking at the little fishies, feeling safely enclosed by a concrete wall from those sharks that made them close the beach a month or so back. It looks like this.

Todays's quote "All knowledge has value". Honours Religious Sociology Student to Council Worker at Sydney Uni Bus Stop.

3 April 2006

Tortugitas


Wildlife conservation is not just about oh so serious scientists with clipboards and population counts. Out on the Uruguayan coastline it means being part of the community. Which means creating a parade (desfile) as part of Carnaval, where a dozen local kids (and adult volunteers) get to dress up in morphologically accurate costumes of the local marine fauna. Of course.

Renos

  • Hi anyone who may occasionally check out the old buzz page. In case you were wondering i am currently:
  • Mooching in the scenic art pad/thinkspace and occupational therapy centre that Miss J is ably running in the Blue Mountains.
  • Procrastinating from a writing task I set myself out of pure love and a desire to keep the spanish up to scratch by redecorating a tired old blog.. lime green..i dunno
  • Thinking about what might be a reasonable form of paid employment that can ward off insanity and moral collapse for a few more years
  • Plotting to obtain a home with a garden. Inspired by baby eggplants at the city crash landing pad under the flight path (many thanks to Miss A and the absentee hosts for that one). Just need to decide what city/state/country to grow those little suckers in
  • Waiting for rolls of film to be developed (Tip: kmart works out cheaper than the photo labs, and still has kodak equipment on site)
  • Taking calls for Biz
  • Cooking and doing craft for expectant mothers (a joy not a chore)
  • Preparing for a sojourn down in Adelaide
  • Pondering being 30 and still wearing novelty teeshirts (its the new 21 I hear)
  • Listening to old time Tango, Johnny Cash and Nick Cave in high rotation
  • Not watching TV