Quotable

From a new book by DBC Pierre , Lights Out in Wonderland. Too bleak for facebook, which I try to keep positive and for 'sharing nice things'. But man, this nails perfectly some other views I share of humanity. 

I can see too clearly the dark motions of humans in action, and find these predatory and false. [. . ] All I needed to know about human dealings I could've learnt watching nine-year-olds in a playground. Like any monkey we merely vie for each other's mental handles in order to gain invisible control. After this, the process called maturity is simply one of disguise, community life simply an opportunity to learn that God dislikes the poor.

Love, touted as a principal reason to live is just a Velcro of mental detriments which find an antagonist and stick to it. Love is a calcification of spirit. Love is an invitation to death, not life and it's flutters in the heart are as much the knell of an ending as the rattle in a corpse's throat.

magnificent, black hearted basterd your are, DBC. 

Dear Nick and Susie Cave

Dear Nick Cave

I am sure no words can add even a drop of solace to what you are going through.  The relationship between artist and audience is a strange one in our modern world. You have been a constant companion to me, since I turned 17. Only just a some precious months longer than the age of your own son, Arthur, who was lost just this week. I will be 40 in a few months.

Knowing some of my own contemporaries with artist's souls, I get it, I figure you are likely driven to create, to tell stories, not necessarily through ego but through a core part of your being. To make sense of the world, to join the dots, and to reflect it back to itself in a mirror. Showing the cracks and the misery as well as the joy and fire and anger and delight.

You are an artist with a place in  the the home of probably millions. Today I cried real tears for you, for Susy, for your other sons.

Yes, I have been a fan, since I saw you play in 1992, and a fan is not  friend. Of course. But also true, you have been a friend to me. You have given me permission to cry. You have also given me an outlet for  the wildness and the yell inside that demands an outlet from time to time, for the solitary sadness and introspection times that come into every life.

I don't have a child.  I don't know what it is to lose one.  I think I will always be a little sad that I didn't experience that part of life that takes your own existence and makes it connected to an other's.

But from the years of stories and songs I have just a small window into your feelings. Standing  beside all the word's artist and storytellers you can take them,  share them with the rest of us and help us know that our experiences are alike. You have lived, loved, lost and also shared.

This week your experience must be primal and horrible. I wish there was some way I could give back some hundredth of what you've given me over the years. But I can't.  

All I can say is sorry.

Yours,
B.

Humans of New York: Reality has a known left-wing bias

Heard of Human's of New York?  It's a great website, I check it nearly daily for spoonfuls of information about total strangers on the opposite side of the planet.  Each post is just a street portrait and a single quote from that person.

I like to think it reminds me of infinite human diversity, how everyone has their struggles no matter their age, gender, race, child-having status, professions, housing status etc. It helps with perspective. And I need frequent reminding. And often times that's easier than connecting with one's real flesh-and-blood friends.

Brandon Stanton, the photographer, has about 8 million followers on social media. This month (January, 2015) he launched a fund-raiser for a school in Brownsville, Brooklyn. He calls it "under-served" - I think that means high crime, low income.

The fundraiser started when Stanton visited the school after meeting a kid on the street who spoke about his principal, saying "she made every student stand up, one at a time, and she told each one of us that we matter.”  Mrs Lopez, it turns out, is on a mission to help her school kids care about their future and keep them out of jail.

She conceived the fund raiser together with the photographer (who is familiar with the power of the crowd and has done this a few times before). They aimed for a fund to send classes on a field trip to Harvard, for three years, because students often can't afford to ever leave their own area. And to show them alternative futures and that they can belong anywhere.

They shot for $100,000 and a couple of days ago passed a million bucks.  They've got enough for 10 years of trips plus some student scholarships.

Bloody genius.

Simple - if you show people an obvious situation of disparity in resources and a simple, easy way to redress it, it's obvious. They go for it. This one is such an obvious way to also re-balance opportunity. It's clear these children are trapped by the genetic accident of where they are born and are fundamentally unequal to kids born in other areas, with different expectations, wealth and support networks.

Over 35,000 people gave around $20-$50 to this school, and now ten years' worth of classes will get to go see the most prestigious Uni in USA. Inferring, that if your $20 can send a kid to look at a different possible future then there's a chance they can enter that future, too. That's a very cheap way to address equality of opportunity.  Of millions of readers, a solid proportion will say, yes, I'll chip in.  That's what this post title is about - I still reckon plenty of humans just fundamentally get fairness. It's pre-programmed and doesn't even need explanation. Reality has a left-wing bias. (Quote: Stephen Colbert)

Internet is beautiful when it does this - provides the network infrastructure for small payments, combined with immediacy and storytelling. Stanton's achievement in creating his own personal nation of followers, taps into the power of many. Same as unionism, public health and public schools.

Why then, can't we ever seem to understand or embrace the basics of income tax?

Looks like there's over 68,000 elementary schools in USA. Brandon can't visit them all in several lifetimes. All provide a service to kids who haven't got much money behind them. All could do with extra-curricular activities, and even just good teachers, up to date facilities and support/ mentoring/ counseling for outside the curriculum.

Who picks the ones that are most deserving? Why should that be something that pops up at random due to the skills and connections of one talented individual? Who maps where the lowest income areas in the country are? 

Bureacracy does. Paid for by tax. With process. They are not dirty words. Australian commentator and former public servant Greg Jericho wrote a great piece this week titled:

Joe Hockey either doesn't understand how tax works or he is deliberately misleading the public.

Here's the crux:

Australia’s income tax system is a progressive one. We pay higher rates of taxation the more we earn. There are five tax brackets:
$0 - $18,200 – 0%
$18,201 - $37,000 – 19%
$37,001 - $80,000 – 32.5%
$80,001 - $180,000 – 37%
$180,001 + – 45%

A distribution system so that those with all the opportunities can share some of their rewards for the genetic lottery of where they were born, with those with fewer opportunities thanks to where they were born.

So, yeah. Tax. It's like a million heart warming  internet fundraisers. Every day of the year.

And congratulations Brownville, you guys are fab.  Image c) Stanton/HONY: 

Birdman review: Mutually assured destruction

I saw Birdman two weeks ago and have just about recovered from it enough to write about it.

Briefly, I think it was brilliant and original, technically stunning, and makes you gasp and squirm and really invest in it emotionally. If you've read any reviews then you'll know it looks like it's all one continuous shot. Worth going just for that. It's about people doing a play, (on one level) - but it's a film that looks like a play and talks about theatre and art and truth. It also portrays madness and delusion. At one point it forces the audience to recognise their own minds' responses to violent action in a rude shock. 

Some reviews have talked about the character's "fractured pysche" (Empire) the multiple "collapsing walls - between character and actor, onstage and off, representation and reality" (NY Times) and the amazing performances and "thrill ride" of the film (RogerEbert.com). They all nod to the fact that the real life actors Keaton and Norton are reflecting aspects of their real careers and public reputations in these performances.

I want to talk about the outright, hard-assed verballing that goes on in this film. I saw it on a Saturday, the day after once again facing my own tendency of unwitting criticism towards the person I would most like to be close to, at a moment when I feel unloved.  I've been working on breaking this habit for ages, practicing identifying what's going on underneath before unleashing the barbs, and thought I was getting better. Sadly this time, something went quite wrong, and probably marked the end of the relationship. I still don't quite know why. So, grieving and Birdman on a hot Sunday arvo.

But enough about me. Onto this screenplay. 

I'm only a beginner in understanding story arc, pacing, structure, but a keen student. This film felt like it had a series of grenades in it -a set of one-to-one dialogues that were like bass beats, that broke up the movie into its main Acts. 

The exchanges most seared into my mind are:

• The main lead character, Riggan Thompson (a 60 year old former action movie star) and the actor, Mike Shiner (a famous stage actor brought in to save the play).
•  Riggan and his daughter, Sam who is recently out of rehab.
• Riggan and the voice of Birdman (essentially his own inner monologue).  
• Riggan and the NYT Film critic.

Folks, these characters are mean.  They say things that - if it were real life - would smash and shatter any bond you had with the human on the receiving end. Forever. I guess that's part of the thrill of working with a script. Holy moley, the pointed and destructive power of those words! I wonder how the screenwriter/s feel when they are getting that stuff down. Gleeful, cathartic, powerful,  shocked at the power of their own poison pen? Are they excited perhaps, or laughing at how close to the bone they can get, or do they feel a little disgusted that this stuff resides inside them.

To me, the thing that all these exchanges had in common was that they nailed the exact, worst fears the person under attack would have about themselves. If between real people, they would have taken still-healing emotional wounds and metaphorically reamed a butchers knife into them and opened them up bleeding and raw.

Perhaps it's just me and I'm too much of an empath. Perhaps other people just laughed and enjoyed that visceral pleasure of a real telling off (or truth telling in some people's eyes). Or maybe the writer is just characterising New Yorkers/ actors as the ultimate in hard-talking, pin pointed insulters, who can take kryponite verbal bullets, catch them in their teeth, spit them out and keep walking.

For studies sake, I've downloaded the screenplay to find a quote from each of these exchanges, and pinpoint what I reckon they are doing to their scene 'partner'. Spoilers from here on.

Screenwriter credit: Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr., Armando Bo.
 Downloaded from here.

Between actors - I know your weak spot.
RIGGAN I have a lot riding on this play.
MIKE Is that right?
RIGGAN People know who I am, and--
MIKE Bullshit.
RIGGAN Mike--
MIKE Bullshit. People don’t know you. They know the guy in the bird suit. They know the guy who tells those quaint, slightly vomitous stories on Letterman.
 ...
MIKE .. This doesn't work out for you, you get to go home to your studio pals and jump right back into that cultural genocide you guys are perpetrating. “There’s a douchbag born every minute”. That was P.T. Barnum’s premise when he got rich inventing the circus. And you and your pals know nothing’s changed, and whatever toxic shit you make people are still gonna pay to see it.

So by this stage, we've learnt Mike is an A-grade asshole from a previous scene. But he managed to pinpoint Riggan's worst fear- that he's not really an artist. In 76 words.

Father Daughter - mutually assured destruction
RIGGAN  It's important to me! Alright? Maybe not to you, or your cynical playmates whose sole ambition is to end up going viral and who, by the way, will only be remembered as the generation that finally stopped talking to one another. But to me... To me... This is-- God. This is my career, this is my chance to do some work that actually means something.

SAM Means something to who? You had a career before the third comic book movie, before people began to forget who was inside the bird costume. You're doing a play based on a book that was written 60 years ago, for a thousand rich, old white people whose only real concern is gonna be where they go to have their cake and coffee when it's over. Nobody gives a shit but you. And let's face it, Dad, it's not for the sake of art. It's because you just want to feel relevant again. Well, there's a whole world out there where people fight to be relevant every day. And you act like it doesn't even exist! Things are happening in a place that you willfully ignore, a place that has already forgotten you. I mean who are you? You hate bloggers. You make fun of twitter. You don't even have a Facebook page. You're the one who doesn't exist. You're doing this because you're scared to death, like the rest of us, that you don't matter. And you know what? You're right. You don't. It's not important. You're not important. Get used to it.

Triple whammy. This scene starts off as a potential reconciliation and acceptance (of the father's absence and the daughter's mistakes). But it changes up in an instance - to father voicing daughter's inner fear - of smallness, irrelevance - and daughter coming back with a bigger, more powerful arsenal, of total meaninglessness, after he's lived most of his life and can't start again - while hers is just beginning. 


A voice in your head -
BIRDMAN (V.O.) You were a movie star, remember? Pretentious, but happy...
[Riggan opens his eyes, slowly. A sad expression on his face.]
RIGGAN I was not happy.
BIRDMAN...Ignorant but charming. Now you are a tiny bitter cocksucker.
RIGGAN Shut up! Stop whining! I was miserable!
BIRDMAN (V.O.)Yeah. But fake miserable. Hollywood miserable.
[Riggan points his fingers at a lamp and sends it flying.]
BIRDMAN (V.O.)What are you trying to prove? Huh? That you’re an artist? You’re not.

This one was tough - Birdman is essentially Riggan's self-doubt speaking out loud. And it's the bluntest of all critics.  His self-esteem is trying to keep the upper hand and failing. It intensifies from this, go see it.

And here's one from the theatre critic, professional destroyer 
TABITHA
... why? Because I hate you. And everyone you represent. Entitled. Spoiled. Selfish. Children. Blissfully untrained, unversed and unprepared to even attempt real art. Handing each other awards for cartoons and  pornography. Measuring your worth in weekends. Well, this is the theater, and you don't get to come in here and pretend you can write, direct and act in your own propaganda piece without going through me first. So, break a leg.

Just prior to this she declared "I am going to destroy your play". Riggan does fire back with a similarly scathing responses about her self worth, I don't want to transcribe all the most intense parts. Holy smoking character assassination, batman.

So in summary, these exchanges to me are the the throbbing, bleeding heart of this film. Each time one happens, the pressure ratchets up a notch, towards the denouement. I don't know what that means for us, and for the fact that it won awards. In some comedies these kind of brutal attacks get the audience weeping with laughter - in a catharsis to our own frustrations and anger towards some comic 'enemy' or barrier to getting fulfillment. Birdman is painfully funny in parts, but these monologues aren't played for laughs.

I'm torn between thinking it is a commentary on how not to live your life (for anyone, not just performers and creative people); essentially a forensic case study in the destructiveness of unchecked criticism and "truth telling". Or perhaps some kind of kinky celebration of harsh truths, tough love, and perversely shining a bright light on all your failures and self doubt in order to excoriate them, and push on through to the other side. Did you see it? What do you think?

Travel wish list 2015

Places and experienced I would put on a list of world destinations for the next ten years.

Petra, Jordan

A trading city founded a couple of centuries, BC by Nabateans. Seen on 'Human Planet'. They did extensive water engineering. Pictures from this blog.

Ethiopian carved churches - Lalibela

Three stories high, and built as an alternative Jerusalem. 900 years old. As seen in Daily Mail.


Mongolian Ger (Yurt)

Inspired by reading Tim Cope's on the Trail of Ghengis Khan where he travels across Mongolia and Russia on horseback. Photo from this tourism company.

Nunavut, Canada

Ok I might never get to this one, really. But I heard about it many years ago helping to tell the stories of WWF Climate Witness program. It's in the Arctic circle and they do dogsledding and stuff up there. Photo from Nunavut tourism.

Iceland and Norway

One day. Photo from Black Tomato guide to Iceland. Driving over from Netherland germany over the road bridge via Denmark always seemed like fun.

Cycling Loire Valley France

Looks pretty easy to do independently via a train from Paris and hire bikes.  Photo from cycling-loire.com


The cooler climate in many of these may be influenced by the hot sticky weather in Sydney this last week, 18 Jan 2015.

Ear Worms

Hi bloggers, Do you get phrases, lyrics and snippts of conversation stuck in your brain going round and round like a record while you process your actual experiences? I do. Here's some - all from memory and playing the CD so apologies for any misquoting.

Now the world can be an unfair place at times
But your lows will have their complement of highs
And if anyone should cheat you, take advantage of you or beat you
Raise your hand and wear your wounds with pride

You must stick up for yourself son, never mind what anybody else done  

Yeasayer, "Ambling Alp" - first heard played at Splendour in the Grass, on a Sunny mid-afternoon. Takes me back there every time I hear it

"For every pot, there is a lid"  
Russian Proverb, quoted by my hairdresser Natasha.

My therapist said/ not to see you no more
She said you're like a disease/ without any cure
She said I'm so obsessed that I'm becoming a bore, oh no
I think you're so pretty - oh - eh- oh

Moved out the house/ saw you moved next door
I locked you out/ you cut a hole in the wall
I found you sleeping next to me/ I thought I was alone
You're driving me crazy / when are you coming home

James, mid nineties indie band in their song "Laid"

When you're laying on your death bed and everyone's gathered around to say goodbye, you're never going to think "I wish I spent more time at work."  

My Dad, from his life experience, I gather.

We talk about it all night long
We define our moral ground
And when I fall into your arms
Everything; it comes tumbling down.

Nick Cave, "The Ship Song" - I have had this one on repeat ever since I was about 17 and bought the Good Son album after seeing hime play live at the first national, touring Big Day Out (199-cough-3)

Merching for my snooze, part 3

It's other people really, isn't it? That's where stories come from. Vistas, nature, monkeys and all aside. Unless the monkey sits up on his hind legs and recites from the Rubyiat there's not a huge amount you can say about him is there?

What I learned today - I don't really *like* bargaining. Probably just cultural upbringing. One is supposed to remain chilled and smiley, but I just don't care about objects and gewgaws enough to try to get 30% off some crumpled old lady.

Searching for my muse, Part 2

It’s impossible not to be a cliché right now. Sitting, as I am, in a beautiful garden, veritably neck-deep in frangipanis, my room overlooks the terrace where a steady stream of variously grey-haired, be-saronged solo women tippity tap away on lap tops in the early evening. We are a vertible hoard I swear: in the café over the road there were no less than three this morning - one even had an ipad with an eco-organic-recycled slip cover.

Yesterday I went looking for that slippery siren on a push bike. Much like the tour experience in many parts of the world, the brochure promised to experience the REAL *insert place name here* which we can of course we can all see past as Marketing can’t we – as we are picked up by one of I think about four mini buses operating that day, eating in large barns, getting told how coffee is made (let me guess, picked, shelled then roasted, right?) and being given the low-down on rice farming.

But eventually, coast downhill we did, serene it was, and a porthole view of other people’s lives, we saw. Just quietly, I quite like having a nosy into hundreds of front yards and fields as you can do on bike and having practiced this in Nord-Holland. In this case though I can’t even say at least we were quiet, because the van following downhill was probably rumbling enough to annoy the locals with tinnitus from their motor-scooters.

I’m grateful to have seen it actually, especially to someone who has taken it upon himself to explain bits and pieces of family life here, the ancestor shrines, the ritual of a new birth, where the placenta goes and how the main forces in life are a kind of triumvirate of hindu deities representing creation, destruction, and um, crumbs, what was that other one.. growth…? (Enlighten me in comments, blog buddies if you are out there). The concept of regular tooth filing, to help control our bad karmic forces was something I didn't know; its is for keeping an upper hand on anger, jealousy, lust (darn) and confusion (interesting), and probably a few others.

It was a bit post-modern when we were all stopped to walk into a rice field where three men were planting, bent backs, like all the pictures, and our guide explained how the Balinese rice farmers typically have quite bad back problems pointing out the oldest one with an almost lower back hump. As a group of Dutch, Danish, French and Australian I suspect none of us would know a manual job if it ran up and kicked us in the shins - yet we were being openly invited to photograph those who do. I had an image of bent-over shearers at home or perhaps labourers being treated like exhibits, would they be cool with that? I suppose they’d just find it wryly amusing – probably the riggers on the Harbour Bridge get photographed by all the bridge climbers ... except they wouldn't experience such a massive disparity in salary so much I would imagine.

So I also read in a local rag amidst ads for massage and yoga a short piece querying whether it is right that a rice farming family, with increasing frequency will sell their paddies for a villa development, to make a wad of upfront cash in place of the rice harvest which typically is grown just to feed the family. I don’t pretend to know what this means for the economics of the Bali, or how it effects people’s lives. But I can only ponder how common it is for visitors to contribute to destroying the very thing they come to a place to enjoy (or discover, if you don’t mind the use of the verb even after 500 million people have done it before you). We love looking out over those paddies, but we need nice buildings to sleep in, so people build on top of those very vistas and their kids become tour guides and their grandmas sell sarongs instead.

Koyaanistquatsi, huh, life out of balance. Little bit too much destruction and only creation of a bricky, housey kind. I really hope those daily offerings to the shrines and statues are helping to put something back into the ‘credit’ side of the ledger.

And as a post-script, I recall that the ID of this computer is “Durga II” (named for the original Durga, the Toshiba that all Amsterdam blogging was done on). So when I connect to the Wi-fi to post then anyone looking at the router could see the name of the Destroyer – the feminine energy of rage and vengeance, if I recall correctly. Eat your heart out, Elizabeth Gilbert. I hope one of the staff here who follows his or her Hindu pantheon gets a laugh out of that one.

Searching for my muse, day 1

Greetings from Ubud Monkey Forest. For some reason I have decided to stay on the street of the primates. It's rather like a whole lot of small, grey hairy people walking round a dirt track. I have so far failed to find enlightenment. In fact, I've failed to even find a yoga class. Which, if you know this part of the world, is like saying I have not yet found my backside with both hands. This town is renowned for its veritable king's banquet of every kind of spiritual, yogic, karmic service you can imagine. In fact after a rather hot and sweaty trek up the main street it is clearly full to overflowing with the fulfillment to be found in material possessions. Yes, Bali-files, I did find "Yoga Barn" on the main street but for some perverse reason decided to stay in a little satellite town-ette which is a taxi ride away from the all day-drop in centres. I actually intended to stay at "Swasti Eco-retreat" a bamboo-dominated, green and luscious, be-pooled and somewhat self-righteous compound with its own massage centre, only to find 'no room at the inn' - so am next door at the less glamorous pad which appears to have some kind of building work going on. Ah the serenity.

After this truly most western of disappointments, I was then chuffed to be directed immediately over the road and down an enchanting little footpath to the ashtanga yoga teachers. Bingo, I thought. Om shanti. I was serenely greeted by a lithe blond American clad only in cotton hotpants and a bandeau who asked how long I was staying. Turns out a few nights isn't enough to learn anything at this particular spot - minimum two weeks for this particular discipline. (Ashtangaworld dot com I am informed if I wish to look at the website). Yes, "we require somewhat of a commitment here, you can go to drop in classes all day at Yoga Barn in town", she kindly explains. Since I had just caught a glimpse of hubby's retreating figure wearing little but a white loincloth and a long grey beard, I wasn't too fussed to be honest.

So judging from the dearth of blogging, I lost track of my muse somewhere between the Zeedyke and Tamarama Surf Club. I'm not sure what she'd be doing here in Bali, but if I can find some asanas then she may be tempted into returning to me. I fear however she may be distracted by the shiny things and be trapped in some endless gauntlet run beset on both sides by people calling out for transport/ taksi/ sunglasses/ and offering random wood carvings of harley davidsons and interlocked elephants.

Speaking of which, the run from this internet cafe back to the pad will be a monkey-laden night time stroll. I hope they all remain calm and don't turn into some b-grade swarm that has decided it likes the taste of human flesh.

Namaste from cyberspace.

Washington post: why acting on climate change is conservative

Good article, from Washington Post, which gets to its point about halfway down.

In fact, far from being conservative, the Republican stance on global warming shows a stunning appetite for risk. When faced with uncertainty and the possibility of costly outcomes, smart businessmen buy insurance, reduce their downside exposure and protect their assets. When confronted with a disease outbreak of unknown proportions, front-line public health workers get busy producing vaccines, pre-positioning supplies and tracking pathogens. And when military planners assess an enemy, they get ready for a worst-case encounter.

When it comes to climate change, conservatives are doing none of this. Instead, they are recklessly betting the farm on a single, best-case scenario: That the scientific consensus about global warming will turn out to be wrong. This is bad risk management and an irresponsible way to run anything, whether a business, an economy or a planet.

The great irony is that, should their high-stakes bet prove wrong, adapting to a destabilized climate would mean a far bigger, more intrusive government than would most of the "big government" solutions to our energy problems that have been discussed so far.

I'm done with 2010

Really, it's been a year with no point. I mean, I guess there was an election and all wasn't there. We did get our first lady PM, but it was like a giant grudge match to get any kind of government at all. Now she's there hanging on by her lovely manicured nails, it seems a bit like old' Julia's been dished some instant karma of the "you like consultation so much, here, consult on everything with everyone just to get the basics of your job done" variety.

Oh, and that climate change thing that I've been working on for nearly a decade? Apperently not so much of an issue now. Its a big conspiracy cooked up by the same people that made tonnes of money out of Y2K or something. Not sure how that happened, the IPCC being discredited, and all, but oh well, guess I can move on and do something different.

Anyway this wasn't going to be about national or global politics. Just I'm fed up with 2010 and would like to put in application for 2011 to start now thanks. I think maybe there's nicer times waiting in that year. It looks better in print too (post code for Surry Hills by the way, which is a nice part of town).

Spring Clean

Well, even though spring this year seems to be made up of torrential rain, wind and thunderstorms, there must be something in the circadian rythyms that says its time for a freshen up. I want to write and blog more, you see and this space seems a bit daggy. I like the wood background because it reminds me of hand-made things. This mustard colour template is still a bit drab, so more changes may be underway.

Note the delicious link list on the left, also need to update this a bit, but its quite a neat little bit of rss there I thought. I think there might be some posts coming up on the internet itself, social media, isolation and connection. Also grass rootsy marketing stuff, or possibilty just a list of links to cool facebook pages I like. Or maybe just random blather. Anway, how are you ladies? Anyone there is blog land? I'm working in parallel to update my work website and link up my other social media presence there, so perhaps a whole new professional blog will be born soon. I guess there's more than one type of conception, too.

Infidelity

Last night I copied a downloaded version of the new Grinderman album (Grinderman 2) from a friend. Now, I've been to about 5, maybe 6 Bad Seeds concerts since 1993 when I first went to a Big Day Out and snogged a stranger when Deanna played live. I've paid cash money for about a dozen Nick Cave CDs including spoken word and a live and rare triple CD. I've been to the exhibition at the National Library (paid) and I've bought the lyrics book. Heck, I even bought tickets to the ballet Underworld which should have generated some royalties. I've probably played my part in keeping Australia's National Treasure in black hair-dye. I haven't listened to the new album yet, only because its not very housemate friendly, and *still* have a little pang of guilt that I've obtained it without rewarding the man's Muse. I think that might be the lamest example of oldest-child-over-adherence-to-authority-and-moralism that I know of.

I think I kinda hate bars

Well, no doubt I'll be in one again inside of 72 hours. But I just had a realisation that even while fetishising the best kind of bar, my long love affair might be souring. Sydney is supposed to be undergoing a much-vaunted 'renaissance' of its drinking culture. Clover Moore has made it easier to get a licence, and entrepreneurial groovers have responded by setting up these Melbourne style "small bars" - complete with hard-to-find unmarked entrances. Apparently, the grown up approach to sharing a bevvy with friends is supposed to make us more responsible drinkers too. That, or the prices. So I've been to Pocket Bar, Shady Pines Saloon, the recently re-furbed Flinders Hotel, LL bar in the Cross, Libertines, Grasshopper Bar where they serve cocktails in jars which is frankly GROSS and reminds me of a disfunctional student sharehouse, The Falconer, Madame Fling Flongs and probably some others.

I thought I really liked them at the time. I did. The warm glow of the candles/bordello lamps/ironic chandelier, the retro-funky stuffed animals, the background chatter, paying the best part of $20 for a martini and sucking up the meaninglessness of existence while talking about how great it is that they have all these small bars in Sydney. It just hit me like a brick, that they are all just rooms with tables, stools, glasses, some form of paint on the walls (or wallpaper if you are in the so-groovy-it-hurts ones), women with their best makeup and shiny frocks, and guys who are spending more on drinks that than they can afford. A limited number of permutations to the above. But I guess we keep going because these dens are usually central, the ritual of getting a bottle and some glasses is known, and you can generally catch your friends for a couple of hours and get back on a major public transport route.

Maybe I'm inspired to write this post by seeing a minor trend amongst women with small children, who may feel a bit like they are missing frocking up and going out. I think perhaps I have been racking up the hours in these places on your behalf. I've hit the limit. I'm experiencing low-level rage at the people in these bars. I can't really hear the person I'm talking to so I tend to tell stories and monologue too much. I spend money I'd rather go on holiday with. Mums: you can have some hours back - I'll take a couple of shifts with the ankle-biters. (Especially if we can go see Despicable Me, or the Dinosaur Gallery. Yeh).

As the well known poets regurgitator put it - right now, I'd rather dance in daggy pants to the funky music playing on your stereo. Oh. Oh. oh-oh.

In the meantime, see you at the next awesome new place. You know, the one with the wood panelling taken from a vintage Holden Station Wagon. The one with the stencils and the egg cartons on the walls, the one with the rooftop sculpture. The cactuses. Yeah, that one.

Fitting in

From this week's astrobarry

Do you really give a rat's-ass how 'other people' (in quotes because, at its base, it's an abstraction) are apt to judge you? Seriously, Pisces, this whole notion of fitting in—or, its identical twin, purposely not fitting in (so you'll, of course, fit into a different sort of reactionary niche)—is terribly junior-high. And yet, at the same time, I want you to acknowledge how profoundly your psyche has been impacted by past experiences of rejection or incompatibility… if only so that you may understand why your adult self may still censor its distinctive individuality at certain moments, in order to gain supposed favor from that same cool older-sibling or trendy schoolyard clique reimagined with today's cast of characters. We've all hit up against our protrusive oddness through such exclusions. The difference in your case? You're so sensitive, they might've felt like mortal wounds. Before you automatically assume the role of outsider, pause to consider whether you have now become the preemptive judger (of yourself, of others, of others' judgments of you)… instead of leaving open the possibility you actually do belong somewhere, based on who you really are.

Wow he's really convinced Pisces are the true outsiders.

I got a little golden oldie tip for living from a date, of all the things, the other night (no laughing in the back). Ascribed to the Dalai Lama, but probably off the back of a conflake packet: "Happiness comes when what we think, what we do, and what we say are the same".

Yeah baby, missy b# is on an integrity jag.

Rat rat ratty

I appear to be playing chicken with a rat in the kitchen.

Unbeknownst to me, I appear to have a primal fear of the little fucker. He ran out when I went in, then when I went out he ran back into the kitchen and under the fridge. I am absolutely goddam starving because I just got home at 9pm and am trying to heat up some curry I cooked last night, but the thought of mr ratty underfoot while reheating is making my stomach turn.

But I live on the 2nd floor, so I don't know how to encourage him out. Too late go and buy rat traps and the thought of emptying one tomorrow is disgusting too.

This is a moment when I could really do with a goddam husband. And I don't say that too often.

Emerald City

I have a hate-love relationship with Sydney sometimes. On a rainy windy day last week I exited Central station via the tunnel on the Devonshire street side. I'll be the first to admit I have a habit of checking out the general populace probably more than I should. It's not a sexy thing it's just that I like to visually register interesting things, tall people with their trousers too short, neat little asian couples looking like they just stepped of the plane from Harijuku district Tokyo, buskers doing steel-string guitar. So on this morning I glanced at a really obese lady in a bright floral smock probably for about half a second too long - she swerved diagonally across the steps to specifically say "SHIIT!" right in my ear, then carried on walking behind me. Sigh, whoops, making the unstable feel threatened.

Cross the street, unfold the massive golf umbrealla I got last time we had a week of non-stop rain in Sydney. Arrived in the cafe for one of my regular "what can we do next" meeting with friend and fellow entrepreneurial colleague, shaking out the brolly and the rain out of my hair and coat. After our meeting I went to leave the cafe and yep, my special, giant, keep the monson rains off brolly was missing. Bastard inner city yuppies.

Got in a cab and scooted up to the big end of town, where I slipped into a silent lift where the doors snicked shut. Slid up to the top of a tower of steel and glass to talk about a genuinely interesting attempt by a wealthy company to do something that takes a step forward in making lots of people use less resources, every day, without even knowing it. Nice. Inspiring.

Sometimes my work is dissonant

So I've been exchanging emails with a marketing coordinator for the United Nations High Comission for Refugees (UNHCR). Looks like I got the gig of doing some newsletter writing for them.

When you work for yourself, project to project, this kind of news is very good news indeed. Something that comes in once a month, reliably, and with a client that seems very systematic and clear about what she wants. Based in Europe, too, so she just sends a package of material, I work with it and send it back. Excellent regular incomce, and for a highly reputable and worthy organisation.

It's like "yay, I got the job". Then, the realisation, oh I'm writing about really terrible stuff. The first line of their last newsletter reads:

Thousands of people have fled across the Oubangui River to escape intertribal violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Equateur province.

Nasty, meaningless violence is the reason this organisation exists. Well that and floods, earthquake, poltical turmoil, etc. But mostly the kind of crap I've never even seen, let alone had any experience of. And because I can (mostly) string a sentence together, I can do something for them for some of the folding stuff. Sigh.

Oh well, the rest of my clients are trying to stop the world turning into Mars in about the same time as since the Doomsday book was written. I can suck it up and deal with the reports coming in from Sudan.

I often wish Lord Monckton and Ayn Rand were right you know. Charity is evil, no global warming. Then I could just work in advertising. I'd enjoy doing ads.

Things I see in the city

Today, when entering the Devonshire tunnel from Railway square, I saw a guy who was about 21 with a Guns and Roses tee-shirt where Axl Rose was mid-high-note and looked like a baby-faced angel with wax-like skin and an an ecstatic expression.

A few weeks ago on a sultry day, I saw a middle-aged woman stop on the main concourse of Town Hall station and put her face right up to the big industrial fan they had parked there. She shut her eyes, and was lost in a moment's relief from the overheated an suffocating underground air.

Then, I went out to George Street, where I watched a fancy car rev up to the lights. A bogan party girl was in the passenger seat and the driver was a middle-eastern beauty in a hijab, smoking a cigarette and playing the radio loud.

Later, I watched a young sk8tr girl zoom towards me on a down-hill section of Cleveland Street, crouching low on her board, doing slalem-moves while wearing a bowler hat and letting her fingers skim the ashphalt - apparently out of the sheer joy of a body in motion.

I wish I'd..

... strutted on the Central Park Runway at 1 am
... gone to Oslo that time
... worried less about getting travel sick on those trips
... asked that guy in that cab out for a drink
... been less apologetic in that meeting
... done more Karaoke before everyone had kids
... been a bit more demanding sometimes

Was reminded of a film quote the other day "When opportunity knocks - you don't wanna say Who is it?"