Six degrees of workplace humiliation
We’ve all had them, or seen them. Here are my top six ways (from personal experience or geninune urban legend) to destroy all workplace credibility:
1. Non-work related printer use. I was once, in my days as a law-firm assistant librarian, caught out printing a theme-party invite with a hip-hop flayvah and as I (I thought discreetly) collected it from the printer I had two secretaries smile at me and say “word up?”
2. Inappropriate snail-mail sent to a work address. At my big Sydney firm, one of the partners once had someone sign them up to a porn catalogue snail-mail mailing list. You know, as a prank. Or because they thought they'd like it. I dunno. Anyway, the discreet brown envelope arrived on his desk with a long slit in the paper and a cheery stamp from the mailroom reading “Opened in error”. Mmmm ... credibility in the mailroom, with the mail delivery boy, with your secretary ... strangest part of all, he told this story freely to the junior solicitors.
3. Christmas party madness. After a few drinks I’ll sometimes poke my tongue out and stick my face right in a camera. Blurry, crazy me. Didn’t realise it was the “official” camera. All photos posted to the office intranet. Ouch. (Doesn’t compare though to the urban legend of a Sydney firm Christmas party where a summer clerk snuck a boy backstage so she could kiss him in *ahem* a special way, until that is the curtain went up on what proved a rather special opening to the evening’s entertainment.)
4. E-mail. A law grad at my old firm had a bottle of wine plundered from the fridge. She sent a desperately complaining e-mail around, but instead of “all Sydney” she selected “all Firm” and got answers pleading ignorance of stealing her wine from Sydney ... and Canberra, Brisbane, Perth, Melbourne, London and Hong Kong. Lawyers can be cruel people - and way to look good in front of the partners (on a truly international scale).
5. The phone. Being caught in the middle of long, involved family or personal calls by a boss in a hurry …
6. Workplace relationships. Again, at my old firm, the year of summer clerks before mine had one particular summer-clerk romance. They decided to get hot and heavy on a pinball machine a partner had in his office. Shame he came back to collect some papers late that evening …
Stories, anyone?
Friday, March 14, 2003
Thursday, March 13, 2003
Weirder and weirder ...
I've mentioned below a lawyer arrested in the US for wearing a "give peace a chance" t-shirt. As only the web could, his written indictment is available here.
It's a scary, scary world. That said, a friend in Washington DC reports that any rumoured death of free speech has been greatly exagerrated and anti-War protest is alive and well in the nation's captial. (Apparently people there are wearing pink as an anti-war pride colour?)
Meanwhile, in our nation's capital, people are also getting into t-shirt trouble, it seems with a ban on wearing political slogans into Parliament House. I don't know where to begin on this one ...
I've mentioned below a lawyer arrested in the US for wearing a "give peace a chance" t-shirt. As only the web could, his written indictment is available here.
It's a scary, scary world. That said, a friend in Washington DC reports that any rumoured death of free speech has been greatly exagerrated and anti-War protest is alive and well in the nation's captial. (Apparently people there are wearing pink as an anti-war pride colour?)
Meanwhile, in our nation's capital, people are also getting into t-shirt trouble, it seems with a ban on wearing political slogans into Parliament House. I don't know where to begin on this one ...
Wednesday, March 12, 2003
War and the cultural cringe
(or, is President Bartlet losing his Sheen?)
Okay, so I may feel belittled and marginalised by the Australian in my views on Iraq. But at least no-one’s arrested me for the peaceful expression of an anti-war view – by wearing a t-shirt in a mall.
Nor has anyone suggested that expressing my views as a private citizen are irresponsible and unpatriotic, though I’m not a celebrity protester – which might be why.
(And if US celebrities have vast personal power and are capable of abusing it by commenting on the war – why are they having so much trouble placing their ads on commercial networks?)
And when it comes to plain weird cultural gestures, banning that universal high point of “French” cusine, French fries is clearly the way to go – and certainly not as silly or petty as the “hamburgering” of French cars that went on in Australia during French nuclear testing in the Pacific.
As one Congressman has said over the introduction of “Freedom Fries” and “Freedom toast” to the Capitol’s cafeteria:
"Making Congress look even sillier than it sometimes looks would not be high on my priority list."
But he’s just some wimpy New England democrat like President Bartlet.
(See Beth over at fridaysixpm on the nature of language in this, and Neil Gaiman on why the English have dibs on being mindlessly snooty to the French.)
No, I am not peddling a line that the American people are mindless super-patriots. I think I have consistently tried to keep separate my views on Bush and my views on the American people. And, as I’ve noted, Australians behaved pretty stupidly during French nuclear testing. In fact, loss of trade cost me my job as a “French” waiter during first-year uni. People are just jumping aboard the zeitgeist in insecure times. (And the imperial, triumphalist tone of Australia's neo-conservatives and its breathtaking ability to ignore or marginalise dissent hardly makes Australia a model free-thinking society at present.)
But let's face it, war is always a great time for satirists, so full of inanity and contradiction.
So, get a serving of blog-dissent from the USA here. Strange how anti-war commentators are funnier …
There's those who understand progress is an illusion, Towlie; and those who resist by expressing thier views firmly, but fairly.
And of course, there’s always The Onion.
(or, is President Bartlet losing his Sheen?)
Okay, so I may feel belittled and marginalised by the Australian in my views on Iraq. But at least no-one’s arrested me for the peaceful expression of an anti-war view – by wearing a t-shirt in a mall.
Nor has anyone suggested that expressing my views as a private citizen are irresponsible and unpatriotic, though I’m not a celebrity protester – which might be why.
(And if US celebrities have vast personal power and are capable of abusing it by commenting on the war – why are they having so much trouble placing their ads on commercial networks?)
And when it comes to plain weird cultural gestures, banning that universal high point of “French” cusine, French fries is clearly the way to go – and certainly not as silly or petty as the “hamburgering” of French cars that went on in Australia during French nuclear testing in the Pacific.
As one Congressman has said over the introduction of “Freedom Fries” and “Freedom toast” to the Capitol’s cafeteria:
"Making Congress look even sillier than it sometimes looks would not be high on my priority list."
But he’s just some wimpy New England democrat like President Bartlet.
(See Beth over at fridaysixpm on the nature of language in this, and Neil Gaiman on why the English have dibs on being mindlessly snooty to the French.)
No, I am not peddling a line that the American people are mindless super-patriots. I think I have consistently tried to keep separate my views on Bush and my views on the American people. And, as I’ve noted, Australians behaved pretty stupidly during French nuclear testing. In fact, loss of trade cost me my job as a “French” waiter during first-year uni. People are just jumping aboard the zeitgeist in insecure times. (And the imperial, triumphalist tone of Australia's neo-conservatives and its breathtaking ability to ignore or marginalise dissent hardly makes Australia a model free-thinking society at present.)
But let's face it, war is always a great time for satirists, so full of inanity and contradiction.
So, get a serving of blog-dissent from the USA here. Strange how anti-war commentators are funnier …
There's those who understand progress is an illusion, Towlie; and those who resist by expressing thier views firmly, but fairly.
And of course, there’s always The Onion.
Thursday is Naylor Day
There was an uneasy taste in my mouth, not the dregs of my third coffee, but the growing tang of hypocrisy: coming over to Daphne all kind family concern, when the impetus was all David’s money. Either way, I now had obligations to both of Marina’s parents.
Newly posted Naylor's Canberra here. Thanks again to readers and commenters.
Regular blogging to follow shortly.
There was an uneasy taste in my mouth, not the dregs of my third coffee, but the growing tang of hypocrisy: coming over to Daphne all kind family concern, when the impetus was all David’s money. Either way, I now had obligations to both of Marina’s parents.
Newly posted Naylor's Canberra here. Thanks again to readers and commenters.
Regular blogging to follow shortly.
Tuesday, March 11, 2003
Copycat reviewing: “Chicago”
Missjenjen’s done it.
Erin, I hear tell, in Paris’s done it.
Let’s do it - let’s review Chicago.
Though really, lame Cole Porter gags aside, what could I have to add? (Other than that, I too, had the benefit of seeing it with excellent company and had an absolute ball. As Jonathon Franzen put it, there are few ego-pleasures that beat conversation with someone who agrees with you. Next is seeing a comedy with someone with a synchronised sense of humour. When you’re the only people in the cinema audibly groaning through the trailer for “What a Girl Wants” and then the only ones giggling long after the pathetic humour of trailer for the new Steve Martin vehicle, you know the feature will be a hoot.) I suppose this site has an established rapport with musical comedy, so I should just get on with it.
Chicago. It’s glitzy, it’s glamorous, it’s great - I thoroughly endorse as a plan seeing it under Gold Class conditions or in any other manner which can involve wine and cheese. Look for it in next year’s open-air cinema program. It is so fluffy and over-the-top in its cynicism, and in both it’s seediness and glamour that one could easily tear one’s eyes away to cut cheese or refill a wine glass without losing anything much.
Zeta-Jones is rather impressive, and the only one who can really really dance. Richard Gere is charmingly seedy as the utterly mercenary criminal lawyer. Queen Latifa is just damn saucy and all woman. And Renee Zelwegger - well, yes, she could stand to gain a little weight: she kinda falls into the Kylie Minogue mould here. She knows all her shape is in her cheeks (yes, all four) and they are what she keeps pointed at the camera. Competent, wickedly pouting fun, but overshone by Zeta-Jones’ supporting role.
And, I have to say, I liked it’s cynicism. Yes, viewed cold, the idea of murderesses escaping the gallows and becoming celebrities merely because they could find an expensive lawyer’s fee is odious. But who cares? The joy of satire is seeing exaggeratedly a recognisable version of the way things are. The cattiness, the lack of honour among thieves, the way the laws of fame and publicity are seen to be just as vital (and as fickle) in the show-business of a murder trial as in a life on the stage. As one site says of the play’s origins, it is:
“Based on Maurine Watkin's newspaper reports of two actual Chicago women, Beulah May Annan and Belva Gaertner, who murdered their lovers and parlayed their crimes into fame and stardom, Chicago suggests, in its own hilariously cynical way, that a world of crooked lawyers, famous murderers, and a public who loves violence is just as frightening as the crimes themselves, and that prohibition had caused the public to lose all respect for the law to the point that the "Merry Murderesses" were only slightly outside the mainstream.”
And I did like the idea of the musical numbers being supra-real, a commentary on real events, the more glamorous, meaningful world that exists in the characters’ imaginings. Coz really, don’t we all live a little like that on a good day?
Missjenjen’s done it.
Erin, I hear tell, in Paris’s done it.
Let’s do it - let’s review Chicago.
Though really, lame Cole Porter gags aside, what could I have to add? (Other than that, I too, had the benefit of seeing it with excellent company and had an absolute ball. As Jonathon Franzen put it, there are few ego-pleasures that beat conversation with someone who agrees with you. Next is seeing a comedy with someone with a synchronised sense of humour. When you’re the only people in the cinema audibly groaning through the trailer for “What a Girl Wants” and then the only ones giggling long after the pathetic humour of trailer for the new Steve Martin vehicle, you know the feature will be a hoot.) I suppose this site has an established rapport with musical comedy, so I should just get on with it.
Chicago. It’s glitzy, it’s glamorous, it’s great - I thoroughly endorse as a plan seeing it under Gold Class conditions or in any other manner which can involve wine and cheese. Look for it in next year’s open-air cinema program. It is so fluffy and over-the-top in its cynicism, and in both it’s seediness and glamour that one could easily tear one’s eyes away to cut cheese or refill a wine glass without losing anything much.
Zeta-Jones is rather impressive, and the only one who can really really dance. Richard Gere is charmingly seedy as the utterly mercenary criminal lawyer. Queen Latifa is just damn saucy and all woman. And Renee Zelwegger - well, yes, she could stand to gain a little weight: she kinda falls into the Kylie Minogue mould here. She knows all her shape is in her cheeks (yes, all four) and they are what she keeps pointed at the camera. Competent, wickedly pouting fun, but overshone by Zeta-Jones’ supporting role.
And, I have to say, I liked it’s cynicism. Yes, viewed cold, the idea of murderesses escaping the gallows and becoming celebrities merely because they could find an expensive lawyer’s fee is odious. But who cares? The joy of satire is seeing exaggeratedly a recognisable version of the way things are. The cattiness, the lack of honour among thieves, the way the laws of fame and publicity are seen to be just as vital (and as fickle) in the show-business of a murder trial as in a life on the stage. As one site says of the play’s origins, it is:
“Based on Maurine Watkin's newspaper reports of two actual Chicago women, Beulah May Annan and Belva Gaertner, who murdered their lovers and parlayed their crimes into fame and stardom, Chicago suggests, in its own hilariously cynical way, that a world of crooked lawyers, famous murderers, and a public who loves violence is just as frightening as the crimes themselves, and that prohibition had caused the public to lose all respect for the law to the point that the "Merry Murderesses" were only slightly outside the mainstream.”
And I did like the idea of the musical numbers being supra-real, a commentary on real events, the more glamorous, meaningful world that exists in the characters’ imaginings. Coz really, don’t we all live a little like that on a good day?
And in other news - rejection sucks: a further nail in the coffin of foreign study hopes …
Another day another scholarship foundation’s rejection letter. Dammit, this was the only Australian-administered program that saw fit to interview me.
Realistically, not the end of the show yet. There’s still an application before an outfit in Edinburgh - in fact, the guys who turned me down recommended specifically that I also apply to Edinburgh, so that may be a good sign. Of sorts.
Also, there’s the direct funding application to put in to my first-choice uni. Still, I may not hear back from any UK based funding body until, apparently, September - and that would be for a 7 October start.
Which means: (a) I have to put my back into this last burst of applications NOW; and then, (b) get on with preparing my life in Australia on the assumption I will be here after the end of my present contract on October 15; but (c) come up with an accommodation option for the post July my-landlord-is-selling-my-dream-rental-from-under-me period sufficiently flexible that I can just walk out on it if I say, find myself moving to England on two week’s notice.
Argh.
All for the simple life my arse.
At least this rejection wasn’t that painful. I had the full set of palpitations the last time this scholarship body sent me a letter. (They only send letters to reject you …) In fact, the letter I melted down while opening was only a letter apologising for the delay in the process (glitches with getting their budget approved) and recommending I also apply to their sister-organisation in Edinburgh. Made opening a real rejection a complete anti-climax.
Still, perhaps not as bad as Melbourne-Erin’s being rejected for something for which you had not applied …
Another day another scholarship foundation’s rejection letter. Dammit, this was the only Australian-administered program that saw fit to interview me.
Realistically, not the end of the show yet. There’s still an application before an outfit in Edinburgh - in fact, the guys who turned me down recommended specifically that I also apply to Edinburgh, so that may be a good sign. Of sorts.
Also, there’s the direct funding application to put in to my first-choice uni. Still, I may not hear back from any UK based funding body until, apparently, September - and that would be for a 7 October start.
Which means: (a) I have to put my back into this last burst of applications NOW; and then, (b) get on with preparing my life in Australia on the assumption I will be here after the end of my present contract on October 15; but (c) come up with an accommodation option for the post July my-landlord-is-selling-my-dream-rental-from-under-me period sufficiently flexible that I can just walk out on it if I say, find myself moving to England on two week’s notice.
Argh.
All for the simple life my arse.
At least this rejection wasn’t that painful. I had the full set of palpitations the last time this scholarship body sent me a letter. (They only send letters to reject you …) In fact, the letter I melted down while opening was only a letter apologising for the delay in the process (glitches with getting their budget approved) and recommending I also apply to their sister-organisation in Edinburgh. Made opening a real rejection a complete anti-climax.
Still, perhaps not as bad as Melbourne-Erin’s being rejected for something for which you had not applied …
Monday, March 10, 2003
No, I am not dead - but I am working on it
Okay, so I didn’t post yesterday. My first missed weekday. In my defence it was a public holiday in Victoria - so I wasn’t at work and my local library and internet café were closed. (I like a public holiday atmosphere - all the shops are closed, all the cafes are full. It seems even more relaxed than late Sunday afternoon.)
Anyway, I’m busy wondering who died and left me their social life. Tonight will be my first night with nothing social/after work/out of the house in literally two weeks. I have been out every night for the last thirteen running if you count yoga and the “Joe Millionaire“ Canberra-lawyer-diaspora dinner held by my hosts in Sydney. Earliest time I arrived home was 8.30 pm, latest was 1.45 am.
This is getting to be more than I can handle.
So, I should finish of the tale of my time in Sydney. Friday night Mad Rob and I walked the entire length of the Sydney CBD twice in search of a mythical discount outlet with $2 polo tops for golf. This from a man with expensive taste in suits and business shirts ...
Still, he’s Mad Rob for a reason. (No offence, buddy.) My revenge was to drag him to a dinner of cheap burgers before we caught up the corporate hos at a new suit bar upstairs at the Chifley Plaza food court. The “hostesses“ were - um - buxom, really, really noticeably so. I mean, alarmingly.
But that’s Sydney for you: "in your face" overt.
Anyway, I wound up at Martin Place bar, again, but avoided cocktails for gin and tonic. The rest of the posse were aiming to get ruined, which they apparently did in grand style. Rob and I had a few quiet drinks and snuck off to binge on easter chocolate and Invader Zim episodes at the Coogee flat.
Falling asleep at midnight was a fantastic move. The next morning was a textbook Coogee summer day and we got to the beach relatively early. It was gloriously warm, the water was lovely, Coogee’s baby-waves were at their body-surfable best and there weren’t even any visible flabby, pallid, hung-over backpackers. Everyone was all beach-pretty and summer-perfect.
There were a few dark clouds in the sky, but none as passed the sun. A few waves were, by Coogee’s standards, towering dumpers wanting nothing more than to give the unwary a decent sand-scouring along the bottom - and there was one kinda disturbing homeless guy who wandered into the surf fully clad.
However, for the young, the employed, and those kicking off a long weekend - it simply couldn’t have been better. I had a mediocre café brunch and went back to the flat to nap while Rob went to a golf lesson, awaking in plenty of time to get myself to the airport.
I opted to travel in Coogee-perfect thick green silk, short-sleeved shirt, my tan cargo shorts and sandals. On arrival in Melbourne there was squalling wind and flailing rain lashing the airport terminal.
Welcome home big fella, I thought, rain lashing my ankles.
Saturday night I got even more Sydney action, catching up with Beth of fridaysixpm, her fabulous flatmate, and Beth’s houseguests - a pair of old, mutual ANU friends now resident in Sydney and working as - wait for it - lawyers. I’d seen one of them, in fact, regularly through the week as she works in the Sydney office. (They were up for the Grand Prix, which was made pretty eventful by the wet conditions.) We all went for cocktails and Mexican on Chapel Street.
The rest of the weekend passed in fine form, and now I’m looking forward to work as a break from socialising.
Though it seems Friday night I’m doing front of house for a small-budget political satire show. I get a free show, but have to miss the first 20 minutes to let latecomers in …
Okay, so I didn’t post yesterday. My first missed weekday. In my defence it was a public holiday in Victoria - so I wasn’t at work and my local library and internet café were closed. (I like a public holiday atmosphere - all the shops are closed, all the cafes are full. It seems even more relaxed than late Sunday afternoon.)
Anyway, I’m busy wondering who died and left me their social life. Tonight will be my first night with nothing social/after work/out of the house in literally two weeks. I have been out every night for the last thirteen running if you count yoga and the “Joe Millionaire“ Canberra-lawyer-diaspora dinner held by my hosts in Sydney. Earliest time I arrived home was 8.30 pm, latest was 1.45 am.
This is getting to be more than I can handle.
So, I should finish of the tale of my time in Sydney. Friday night Mad Rob and I walked the entire length of the Sydney CBD twice in search of a mythical discount outlet with $2 polo tops for golf. This from a man with expensive taste in suits and business shirts ...
Still, he’s Mad Rob for a reason. (No offence, buddy.) My revenge was to drag him to a dinner of cheap burgers before we caught up the corporate hos at a new suit bar upstairs at the Chifley Plaza food court. The “hostesses“ were - um - buxom, really, really noticeably so. I mean, alarmingly.
But that’s Sydney for you: "in your face" overt.
Anyway, I wound up at Martin Place bar, again, but avoided cocktails for gin and tonic. The rest of the posse were aiming to get ruined, which they apparently did in grand style. Rob and I had a few quiet drinks and snuck off to binge on easter chocolate and Invader Zim episodes at the Coogee flat.
Falling asleep at midnight was a fantastic move. The next morning was a textbook Coogee summer day and we got to the beach relatively early. It was gloriously warm, the water was lovely, Coogee’s baby-waves were at their body-surfable best and there weren’t even any visible flabby, pallid, hung-over backpackers. Everyone was all beach-pretty and summer-perfect.
There were a few dark clouds in the sky, but none as passed the sun. A few waves were, by Coogee’s standards, towering dumpers wanting nothing more than to give the unwary a decent sand-scouring along the bottom - and there was one kinda disturbing homeless guy who wandered into the surf fully clad.
However, for the young, the employed, and those kicking off a long weekend - it simply couldn’t have been better. I had a mediocre café brunch and went back to the flat to nap while Rob went to a golf lesson, awaking in plenty of time to get myself to the airport.
I opted to travel in Coogee-perfect thick green silk, short-sleeved shirt, my tan cargo shorts and sandals. On arrival in Melbourne there was squalling wind and flailing rain lashing the airport terminal.
Welcome home big fella, I thought, rain lashing my ankles.
Saturday night I got even more Sydney action, catching up with Beth of fridaysixpm, her fabulous flatmate, and Beth’s houseguests - a pair of old, mutual ANU friends now resident in Sydney and working as - wait for it - lawyers. I’d seen one of them, in fact, regularly through the week as she works in the Sydney office. (They were up for the Grand Prix, which was made pretty eventful by the wet conditions.) We all went for cocktails and Mexican on Chapel Street.
The rest of the weekend passed in fine form, and now I’m looking forward to work as a break from socialising.
Though it seems Friday night I’m doing front of house for a small-budget political satire show. I get a free show, but have to miss the first 20 minutes to let latecomers in …
Visit Naylor's Canberra
“Daphne,” I asked quietly, “was there something wrong between David and Marina? Did they fight before she left?”
She exhaled and gave me a simple, unguarded look. We were back on old terms, when she had thought of me, with some fond approval, as a prospective son-in-law.
Fresh Naylor here.
Regular blogging to follow shortly.
“Daphne,” I asked quietly, “was there something wrong between David and Marina? Did they fight before she left?”
She exhaled and gave me a simple, unguarded look. We were back on old terms, when she had thought of me, with some fond approval, as a prospective son-in-law.
Fresh Naylor here.
Regular blogging to follow shortly.
Thursday, March 6, 2003
He is the very model of a modern metrosexual
I was watching “Joe Millionaire” last night with four members of the Canberra diaspora in Sydney.
The end of civilisation is clearly at hand.
Anyway, they were down to three women and white-trash gum-chewing girl got the boot. (Yawn.)
The most bizarre part is that this guy can pass as a millionaire at all. Cretinous just about begins to cover the territory.
“Did you get that dr - breast in Paris?” he asks one date, staring down her tube top.
Another moment, a date comments: “You seem a really regular guy. Like you don’t have a lot on your mind.”
Friend on the couch: “Or a lot in his mind.”
“What do you look for in a woman?” white-trash asks.
“Legs,” he replies. “That’s who I am.”
Actually, who he is - is an underwear model. Well, his hands and feet are certainly huge.
It all put me in mind of Odalisk’s recent entry on the mixed messages of pop culture about materialism/capitalism: yeah, sure it’s bad – but don’t worry, everyone can aspire to be materially successful. Our culture makes some token condemnation of materialism’s evils, while remaining utterly in the thrall of its values.
So in this show, knowing the cruel comeuppance that this guy hasn’t a cent, we get to smugly deride these women for being mercenary and him for being a liar – yet the producers will engineer a happy ending by giving him a million dollars and creating (a much smaller scale) millionaire. Sure, this is no worse a final plot back-flip than the average Gilbert and Sullivan musical – but meanwhile the show sails on with the sexual politics of the middle ages: men need to be well-endowed providers with the profile of a Disney hero, and women should make no threatening intellectual conversation and just flirt and put out to get their man.
But wait - some media icons are challenging the gender mould, apparently. Ian Thorpe “loves Armani, is seen just as often near a catwalk as competing in sport, confesses an adulation for Kylie Minogue, even designs his own jewellery. But he's not gay” proclaims the Sydney Morning Herald.
“Men - of all sexualities - are taking a greater interest in their appearance. They go to hairdressers rather than barbers, avoid using soap because it's too harsh on their skin, visit the gym instead of playing sport and even have difficulty deciding what to wear. They're spending their time differently - not only occupying more of it in front of the mirror but also shopping at boutique stores, drinking at bars rather than pubs, enjoying a dance at a nightclub and going to beauty salons. Cosmetics brands such as Ella Bache say men make up as much as 40 per cent of their salon customers in some areas.”
And the Brit Tabloid term for these modern men? “Metrosexuals”.
I’m not gay, I just shop that way.
Again, what frightens me about this article is it is not about social choices or gender structures – it is about consumerism. Everyone interviewed is a retail-chain purchaser or an advertising guru. We are not the sum of our choices, but the sum of our purchases. Modern sexual equality means making men beauty-obsessed consumers and sexual objects also. Hurrah. (Still it is only the Sydney Morning Herald, analysis or insightful social journalism would be a little much to ask.)
“Joe Millionaire” is also a constructed product, a consumer good, not just to those of us watching – but the women throwing themselves at him. He is a brand name, a status-good, a big wodge of purchasing power. In a grim kind of final equality, we are all consumers now. But, of course, some consumers are more equal than others …
Anyway, you’ll have to excuse me now. There are rumours of 60% off brand name business shirts at a store in Martin Place.
I was watching “Joe Millionaire” last night with four members of the Canberra diaspora in Sydney.
The end of civilisation is clearly at hand.
Anyway, they were down to three women and white-trash gum-chewing girl got the boot. (Yawn.)
The most bizarre part is that this guy can pass as a millionaire at all. Cretinous just about begins to cover the territory.
“Did you get that dr - breast in Paris?” he asks one date, staring down her tube top.
Another moment, a date comments: “You seem a really regular guy. Like you don’t have a lot on your mind.”
Friend on the couch: “Or a lot in his mind.”
“What do you look for in a woman?” white-trash asks.
“Legs,” he replies. “That’s who I am.”
Actually, who he is - is an underwear model. Well, his hands and feet are certainly huge.
It all put me in mind of Odalisk’s recent entry on the mixed messages of pop culture about materialism/capitalism: yeah, sure it’s bad – but don’t worry, everyone can aspire to be materially successful. Our culture makes some token condemnation of materialism’s evils, while remaining utterly in the thrall of its values.
So in this show, knowing the cruel comeuppance that this guy hasn’t a cent, we get to smugly deride these women for being mercenary and him for being a liar – yet the producers will engineer a happy ending by giving him a million dollars and creating (a much smaller scale) millionaire. Sure, this is no worse a final plot back-flip than the average Gilbert and Sullivan musical – but meanwhile the show sails on with the sexual politics of the middle ages: men need to be well-endowed providers with the profile of a Disney hero, and women should make no threatening intellectual conversation and just flirt and put out to get their man.
But wait - some media icons are challenging the gender mould, apparently. Ian Thorpe “loves Armani, is seen just as often near a catwalk as competing in sport, confesses an adulation for Kylie Minogue, even designs his own jewellery. But he's not gay” proclaims the Sydney Morning Herald.
“Men - of all sexualities - are taking a greater interest in their appearance. They go to hairdressers rather than barbers, avoid using soap because it's too harsh on their skin, visit the gym instead of playing sport and even have difficulty deciding what to wear. They're spending their time differently - not only occupying more of it in front of the mirror but also shopping at boutique stores, drinking at bars rather than pubs, enjoying a dance at a nightclub and going to beauty salons. Cosmetics brands such as Ella Bache say men make up as much as 40 per cent of their salon customers in some areas.”
And the Brit Tabloid term for these modern men? “Metrosexuals”.
I’m not gay, I just shop that way.
Again, what frightens me about this article is it is not about social choices or gender structures – it is about consumerism. Everyone interviewed is a retail-chain purchaser or an advertising guru. We are not the sum of our choices, but the sum of our purchases. Modern sexual equality means making men beauty-obsessed consumers and sexual objects also. Hurrah. (Still it is only the Sydney Morning Herald, analysis or insightful social journalism would be a little much to ask.)
“Joe Millionaire” is also a constructed product, a consumer good, not just to those of us watching – but the women throwing themselves at him. He is a brand name, a status-good, a big wodge of purchasing power. In a grim kind of final equality, we are all consumers now. But, of course, some consumers are more equal than others …
Anyway, you’ll have to excuse me now. There are rumours of 60% off brand name business shirts at a store in Martin Place.
Wednesday, March 5, 2003
Confessions of a former skanky corporate ho
Being back in Sydney has been interesting. Much less of the nostalgia-mixed-with-fear semi panic-attack of my last trip through the CBD. Feeling a bit tired though, which I imagine is the socialising and tearing round trying to catch up with people rather than the eminently reasonable office hours I’ve been keeping.
Last night was good. Went with a few work colleagues down to the Lord Nelson in the Rocks (Australia’s oldest pub), then walked round circular quay to the Opera Bar on the lower concourse. Gorgeous night view of the Harbour Bridge, the ferries, the giant ocean-liner “The World”, the city scape and the Museum of Contemporary Art. Some fine sounds too: Mosaic Sonique were playing, a two-man lounge-jazz/techno-funk sort of combo. Not much more than chill-out music, but it set the mood nicely. Ah, Sydney Harbour at night and in summer. I miss that.
That said, I am also remembering why I got desperate to leave a large commercial firm and the Sydney-corporate environment (“the world of corporate-whoredom” as a number of my friends used to refer to it. In this set confessions as to ludicrously excessive stints at work would be greeted with an admiringly-disparaging “you ho!” This reaction greeted my marathon thirty-two hour stretch in the office … admittedly an office with harbour view, but sometimes dawn just isn’t that exciting …)
Anyway, no-one I know here can leave the office before 6.30 pm at the earliest. If they can, they can manage one drink and then need to go back afterwards. Pressure of work means you always have to accept people might not be able to make any given commitment: indeed, many who were hoping they might be able to see me Tuesday night got caught back at the office.
Which was just fine, I knew from personal experience that that might well happen. But the scariest of my Tuesday messages from those who couldn’t make it was the text message I received at 11.20 pm reading: “Just left the office! Sorry to miss you, are you around for the weekend?”
Also on Tuesday, one of my hosts stopped by the bar where I was drinking (perhaps too many) cocktails with Rob to announce: “Yay, I’m so proud – it’s eight o’clock and I’ve left the office! … I’m going home.”
Then there was the poor chap who couldn’t meet me for a drink last night before 9 pm, then missed by minutes his ferry from North Sydney to Circular Quay where I was hanging out with the gang at Opera Bar …
Anyway, I have nothing but admiration for the people who can sustain the pace as lawyers up here (let alone that pace and successful relationships with other lawyers, and I know half-a-dozen couples in this category) – but I’m just not one of them anymore.
Being back in Sydney has been interesting. Much less of the nostalgia-mixed-with-fear semi panic-attack of my last trip through the CBD. Feeling a bit tired though, which I imagine is the socialising and tearing round trying to catch up with people rather than the eminently reasonable office hours I’ve been keeping.
Last night was good. Went with a few work colleagues down to the Lord Nelson in the Rocks (Australia’s oldest pub), then walked round circular quay to the Opera Bar on the lower concourse. Gorgeous night view of the Harbour Bridge, the ferries, the giant ocean-liner “The World”, the city scape and the Museum of Contemporary Art. Some fine sounds too: Mosaic Sonique were playing, a two-man lounge-jazz/techno-funk sort of combo. Not much more than chill-out music, but it set the mood nicely. Ah, Sydney Harbour at night and in summer. I miss that.
That said, I am also remembering why I got desperate to leave a large commercial firm and the Sydney-corporate environment (“the world of corporate-whoredom” as a number of my friends used to refer to it. In this set confessions as to ludicrously excessive stints at work would be greeted with an admiringly-disparaging “you ho!” This reaction greeted my marathon thirty-two hour stretch in the office … admittedly an office with harbour view, but sometimes dawn just isn’t that exciting …)
Anyway, no-one I know here can leave the office before 6.30 pm at the earliest. If they can, they can manage one drink and then need to go back afterwards. Pressure of work means you always have to accept people might not be able to make any given commitment: indeed, many who were hoping they might be able to see me Tuesday night got caught back at the office.
Which was just fine, I knew from personal experience that that might well happen. But the scariest of my Tuesday messages from those who couldn’t make it was the text message I received at 11.20 pm reading: “Just left the office! Sorry to miss you, are you around for the weekend?”
Also on Tuesday, one of my hosts stopped by the bar where I was drinking (perhaps too many) cocktails with Rob to announce: “Yay, I’m so proud – it’s eight o’clock and I’ve left the office! … I’m going home.”
Then there was the poor chap who couldn’t meet me for a drink last night before 9 pm, then missed by minutes his ferry from North Sydney to Circular Quay where I was hanging out with the gang at Opera Bar …
Anyway, I have nothing but admiration for the people who can sustain the pace as lawyers up here (let alone that pace and successful relationships with other lawyers, and I know half-a-dozen couples in this category) – but I’m just not one of them anymore.
Morning coffee with Elliot anyone?
New Naylor today, the fourth installment and beginning of the second chapter!
"When I don’t know what I’m doing, the only thing to do is speak to Eva, the world’s best flatmate. Besides, I needed to scour Sarah’s hippy tea out of my mouth with something black, bitter, and teeth-rattlingly sharp."
New readers still have plent of time to get aboard, as I'm only posting 1000 - 1200 words once or twice a week.
Thanks to those who are supporting the project by reading or with comments!
New Naylor today, the fourth installment and beginning of the second chapter!
"When I don’t know what I’m doing, the only thing to do is speak to Eva, the world’s best flatmate. Besides, I needed to scour Sarah’s hippy tea out of my mouth with something black, bitter, and teeth-rattlingly sharp."
New readers still have plent of time to get aboard, as I'm only posting 1000 - 1200 words once or twice a week.
Thanks to those who are supporting the project by reading or with comments!
Tuesday, March 4, 2003
Potentially un-Australian, and a threat to our way of life
I must admit to having a somewhat hypocritical outlook on this one. I disapprove of them, yet have accepted their growing role in daily life. After reality television, I think they’re doing more to hasten the collapse of civilisation than just about any other aspect of modernity.
I’m talking about mobile phones. (“Cell phones” to those operating on US-standard English).
I was inspired to think about this by missjenjen’s reflections on modern manners yesterday. Here’s my top five ways in which mobiles are destroying our way of life:
1. The total collapse of privacy/dignity inherent in people having intensely personal conversations (at the top of their voices) wherever they happen to be. This is the big public transport no-no. I do not want to know about your relationship problems. Nor do I want to be stuck on a bus for several hours while you test two-dozen new ring tones, you freak.
2. A false sense of safety. No you morons, going hiking in wilderness with no emergency equipment other than a mobile is irresponsible and the rest of the public should not really have to pay for you to be rescued – that is if you don’t die for lack of warm clothing before anyone gets to you. Also, lady, it is not cool for your five-year old to be wandering the streets unsupervised just because you can call him and check he got to the movies OK.
3. Hideous lack of manners. If you are having dinner or a drink with me, you’re having it with ME. Not anyone who phones to shoot the breeze. Switch it to silent, check who your missed calls are from once if you must, then ASK the people you’re with if it’s cool to quickly return a call. Do not leave someone socially stranded and sitting at a table drumming their fingers while you ignore them to talk with someone who hasn’t made the effort to come and meet you.
4. The end of social planning and the rise of plans-to-have-plans. Just because people can be contacted at the last minute is no excuse for leaving arrangements loose until the last minute and then having to run around like mad things. “I’ll call you on the weekend” creates much more stress than “how about brunch Sunday?”
5. Rude last-minute cancellation. If you have a mobile people feel entirely free to either not commit to an event until the last minute, or cancel as you arrive at the venue. For genuinely unexpected circumstances that stop you turning up, fine. However, a last-minute decision that you don’t feel like going out is just not cool. If you’re going to cancel, try and call when people are still at home.
Mobiles are also, apparently, destroying our literacy.
That said, I am absolutely, hypocritically addicted to mine and doubt I would have a functional social life without it … and given how often I move it’s the only stable contact detail I have.
Anyone want to speak in their defence now?
I must admit to having a somewhat hypocritical outlook on this one. I disapprove of them, yet have accepted their growing role in daily life. After reality television, I think they’re doing more to hasten the collapse of civilisation than just about any other aspect of modernity.
I’m talking about mobile phones. (“Cell phones” to those operating on US-standard English).
I was inspired to think about this by missjenjen’s reflections on modern manners yesterday. Here’s my top five ways in which mobiles are destroying our way of life:
1. The total collapse of privacy/dignity inherent in people having intensely personal conversations (at the top of their voices) wherever they happen to be. This is the big public transport no-no. I do not want to know about your relationship problems. Nor do I want to be stuck on a bus for several hours while you test two-dozen new ring tones, you freak.
2. A false sense of safety. No you morons, going hiking in wilderness with no emergency equipment other than a mobile is irresponsible and the rest of the public should not really have to pay for you to be rescued – that is if you don’t die for lack of warm clothing before anyone gets to you. Also, lady, it is not cool for your five-year old to be wandering the streets unsupervised just because you can call him and check he got to the movies OK.
3. Hideous lack of manners. If you are having dinner or a drink with me, you’re having it with ME. Not anyone who phones to shoot the breeze. Switch it to silent, check who your missed calls are from once if you must, then ASK the people you’re with if it’s cool to quickly return a call. Do not leave someone socially stranded and sitting at a table drumming their fingers while you ignore them to talk with someone who hasn’t made the effort to come and meet you.
4. The end of social planning and the rise of plans-to-have-plans. Just because people can be contacted at the last minute is no excuse for leaving arrangements loose until the last minute and then having to run around like mad things. “I’ll call you on the weekend” creates much more stress than “how about brunch Sunday?”
5. Rude last-minute cancellation. If you have a mobile people feel entirely free to either not commit to an event until the last minute, or cancel as you arrive at the venue. For genuinely unexpected circumstances that stop you turning up, fine. However, a last-minute decision that you don’t feel like going out is just not cool. If you’re going to cancel, try and call when people are still at home.
Mobiles are also, apparently, destroying our literacy.
That said, I am absolutely, hypocritically addicted to mine and doubt I would have a functional social life without it … and given how often I move it’s the only stable contact detail I have.
Anyone want to speak in their defence now?
Monday, March 3, 2003
The one-eared beagles of insomnia
Since I started writing again on a daily basis my psuedo-insomnia has returned. It’s as if now my imagination has woken up, turning it off at night’s a challenge.
I’ve always taken quite a while to get to sleep though. Most human beings take less than six minutes to fall asleep, if that. I often take over half an hour. In that six minutes, most people spend less than a minute in a hypnagogic state – that floating not-sleeping not-waking consciousness. I can spend quite a while there. I rather like it, until I have to face the next day realising I never dropped into deep sleep.
All that to say, on top of taking a while to drift off, I wake up during the night a good deal as well. I’m a light sleeper.
At the moment, while in Sydney, I’m sleeping on a particularly comfy single bed owned by some friends in Edgecliff. It folds down out of the wall near the front door at the top of their stairs. It's cubby-house cozy. My friends are both lawyers and other than renting in a fab little inner-city suburb they have one other conspicuous consumption item: Russel the Six Million Dollar Beagle. Russel is sweet, quiet dog who is allergic to most of Sydney. His most recent trip to the vet, yesterday, involved removing some sort of cist from his left ear, giving him sixteen doggy-sized stitches and bandaging the ear back to his head for two weeks.
He now looks like a slightly mournful canine Van Gogh.
As a special treat, he got to sleep indoors last night, in the downstairs area. While having a little waking moment at 1 am (when my body had decided I was too hot and rearranging all my bedding was in order), I heard a pam-pam! rattle! pam! rattle! pam-pam!
Russel was asking to go out onto the downstairs rear balcony and pawing at the loose, but not open door. I padded downstairs and let him out for a drink of water. I left the door open and went back upstairs to bed.
Shortly thereafter I heard a skritter-skritter on the stairs, and some sonorous canine breathing.
“Russel?” I asked.
I stuck my head under the bed and was greeted by moist canine jowls. It appeared I’d made a friend.
There’s something reassuring about the sound of a dog breathing while you fall asleep.
Up until the snoring started.
Then I had to coax Van Gogh back down the stairs and into his basket. From a distant room, his snoring was, once more, kind of reassuring.
I miss having a dog, but my lifestyle at the moment is too peripatetic to justify even keeping my lovely wardrobe, let alone dragging a living creature around in my wake.
Since I started writing again on a daily basis my psuedo-insomnia has returned. It’s as if now my imagination has woken up, turning it off at night’s a challenge.
I’ve always taken quite a while to get to sleep though. Most human beings take less than six minutes to fall asleep, if that. I often take over half an hour. In that six minutes, most people spend less than a minute in a hypnagogic state – that floating not-sleeping not-waking consciousness. I can spend quite a while there. I rather like it, until I have to face the next day realising I never dropped into deep sleep.
All that to say, on top of taking a while to drift off, I wake up during the night a good deal as well. I’m a light sleeper.
At the moment, while in Sydney, I’m sleeping on a particularly comfy single bed owned by some friends in Edgecliff. It folds down out of the wall near the front door at the top of their stairs. It's cubby-house cozy. My friends are both lawyers and other than renting in a fab little inner-city suburb they have one other conspicuous consumption item: Russel the Six Million Dollar Beagle. Russel is sweet, quiet dog who is allergic to most of Sydney. His most recent trip to the vet, yesterday, involved removing some sort of cist from his left ear, giving him sixteen doggy-sized stitches and bandaging the ear back to his head for two weeks.
He now looks like a slightly mournful canine Van Gogh.
As a special treat, he got to sleep indoors last night, in the downstairs area. While having a little waking moment at 1 am (when my body had decided I was too hot and rearranging all my bedding was in order), I heard a pam-pam! rattle! pam! rattle! pam-pam!
Russel was asking to go out onto the downstairs rear balcony and pawing at the loose, but not open door. I padded downstairs and let him out for a drink of water. I left the door open and went back upstairs to bed.
Shortly thereafter I heard a skritter-skritter on the stairs, and some sonorous canine breathing.
“Russel?” I asked.
I stuck my head under the bed and was greeted by moist canine jowls. It appeared I’d made a friend.
There’s something reassuring about the sound of a dog breathing while you fall asleep.
Up until the snoring started.
Then I had to coax Van Gogh back down the stairs and into his basket. From a distant room, his snoring was, once more, kind of reassuring.
I miss having a dog, but my lifestyle at the moment is too peripatetic to justify even keeping my lovely wardrobe, let alone dragging a living creature around in my wake.
Sunday, March 2, 2003
Weekend in Canberra, working week in Sydney: Donnie Darko
I was having drinks and dinner in one of the suburban centres of Canberra, Woden, on Friday and had another weird experience of adolescent mall culture. There was, basically, a promenade of fifteen year old girls (if that) walking to and fro at half hour intervals on the pavement outside the cinema. (We were in a good position to observe, spending some four and half hours eating and drinking - mostly drinking - at the outdoor seating of a nearby bar/café.)
Unlike Christina Aguelira they still had the crotch in their jeans, so I guess that was a start – but the average fashion statement for tweens and teens appeared to be “ho”.
There comes a point when you realise you really are getting older: it’s the moment when you realise teenagers are utterly incomprehensible – their clothes, music, speech, the works. Given what a generally ghastly, self-obsessed and conformist experience being a teenager is, this should come as something of a relief.
So watching “Donnie Darko” on Saturday at Marissa’s – it is at least set in the relatively familiar landscape of being an eighties teenager. (Imaginatively familiar really, I began high school in ’88.) However, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” it is not. It is weird, at times surreal and working out if the protagonist is mad or not occupies a good part of one’s concentration during the film. It also has the most sinister bunny suit I have ever seen in cinema. It’s great strength is in not revealing what the hell was really going on, and leaving you to theorise. The soundtrack is brilliant, and the small Drew Barrymore role is refreshingly good.
Anyway, in Sydney for work today and the rest of the week. Forgot how hot and humid this town is. Not really a city that is good for suits. Monday morning, at work, nursing a dehydration nosebleed … still, the working day can only improve, right?
I was having drinks and dinner in one of the suburban centres of Canberra, Woden, on Friday and had another weird experience of adolescent mall culture. There was, basically, a promenade of fifteen year old girls (if that) walking to and fro at half hour intervals on the pavement outside the cinema. (We were in a good position to observe, spending some four and half hours eating and drinking - mostly drinking - at the outdoor seating of a nearby bar/café.)
Unlike Christina Aguelira they still had the crotch in their jeans, so I guess that was a start – but the average fashion statement for tweens and teens appeared to be “ho”.
There comes a point when you realise you really are getting older: it’s the moment when you realise teenagers are utterly incomprehensible – their clothes, music, speech, the works. Given what a generally ghastly, self-obsessed and conformist experience being a teenager is, this should come as something of a relief.
So watching “Donnie Darko” on Saturday at Marissa’s – it is at least set in the relatively familiar landscape of being an eighties teenager. (Imaginatively familiar really, I began high school in ’88.) However, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” it is not. It is weird, at times surreal and working out if the protagonist is mad or not occupies a good part of one’s concentration during the film. It also has the most sinister bunny suit I have ever seen in cinema. It’s great strength is in not revealing what the hell was really going on, and leaving you to theorise. The soundtrack is brilliant, and the small Drew Barrymore role is refreshingly good.
Anyway, in Sydney for work today and the rest of the week. Forgot how hot and humid this town is. Not really a city that is good for suits. Monday morning, at work, nursing a dehydration nosebleed … still, the working day can only improve, right?
Thursday, February 27, 2003
The yoga craze and me
Yeah, posting from an internet terminal on my day off and my way to Canberra. That's commitment to daily blogging (well each week day at least ...)
Anyway, I think yoga is getting passe. Pilates is now the new yoga, rather like Thai restaurants for a long time now have been the new Chinese. Not having done pilates and having nothing to run on but prejudice, it seems to be yoga for gym junkies: people who really need equipment and weights to feel they’re exercising.
I’ve been going to yoga for two years now (all hatha not iyengar), and have been to three different venues, all based on convenience.
The mega-firm in Sydney has yoga for stressed lawyers twice a week - a 7.45 am class (which was too early even for me) and a 6.00 pm evening class. The evening class was often a bit earlier than I could leave work and would result in me padding back to my desk barefoot in t-shirt and shorts to put in a few more billable units. We had a lovely, encouraging, tiny English instructor who took classes in the big conference room with harbour views.
The best classes were in winter, when you could watch the inner city lights come out in the darkness.
When I did my government-law temping gig in Sydney I worked close to the Queen Victoria building and went to the City Yoga studio which is on the third floor of a building across from the QVB bus interchange. (The mix of businesses out the back of the oh-so-classy QVB always sort of amused me: restaurants, electronic wholesalers, Abbey’s Bookshop, accountants, a shop, and yoga.) It was more expensive than going to the subsidised firm class but you could get a discount rate if you bought ten class tickets in booklet that was only good for the next ten weeks. The use-it-or-lose-it system worked well. The instructors were good, incredibly relaxed women (surprise!) - but the floor space was occasionally at a bit of a premium - and some classes were a bit over-attended.
Still, it offered nine sessions a week, and I liked being able to go after work, or at lunch.
On moving to Melbourne I found a local gym with a yoga sign and decided to give it a go - casual drop-in classes were $10, but I figured if I liked it enough I might join.
I was a little skeptical of the class at first - my Sri Lankan instructor seemed a little too jokey, and a little over-the-top. It also took me a while to adapt to his slight accent. I soon realised that growing up with the discipline he had a far more relaxed and practical attitude towards it - including its meditative/spiritual side. He’s easily the best instructor I’ve had. (He also works as a chef at an inner city restaurant.)
I joined the gym on a membership special and have been going every Sunday morning at 10.30 as a minimum, and try and get along on Wednesday evenings too (when not off drinking with bloggers …) Once a week is enough to feel I’m treading water, twice a week and I feel I’m making progress.
Okay, observations about yoga:
Yes, it is a risky activity if you have back injuries. You should always tell your instructor and take it easy early on.
If you’re a guy, expect to be one of the girls. It’s a very female activity. This is not the social-life boon some might think, as in most classes you’re basically in your own private cocoon and are pretty spaced out afterwards. It’s not a chat-fest.
What do I get out of it? Going twice a week, I definitely feel fitter and stronger. It’s light exercise, but you do often have to support your own weight, and holding postures can be a real bitch. My balance has also improved a fair bit, and my flexibility is slightly better.
Also, as I said, there’s the meditative side. Call it New Age bunk, but it is a mental discipline as well - and I do enter quite a different headspace after class. Once or twice in wind-down meditations I have felt, well, something quite different. It works, and I often feel clearer about my feelings and priorities afterwards, as well as more relaxed.
Best of all, though, I think it really caters to those who (like me) are a trifle intimidated by the whole hard-bodied gym experience. (Remember the Sienfeld joke about getting fit so you could look fit enough just to go to the gym?) Yoga classes often have a real range of ability levels and body types and I love that sense of inclusiveness.
I think this exercise fad will do me, and the other potential benefits of my gym membership are just going to go untouched.
Though it would be cool to go indoor rock-climbing again …
Yeah, posting from an internet terminal on my day off and my way to Canberra. That's commitment to daily blogging (well each week day at least ...)
Anyway, I think yoga is getting passe. Pilates is now the new yoga, rather like Thai restaurants for a long time now have been the new Chinese. Not having done pilates and having nothing to run on but prejudice, it seems to be yoga for gym junkies: people who really need equipment and weights to feel they’re exercising.
I’ve been going to yoga for two years now (all hatha not iyengar), and have been to three different venues, all based on convenience.
The mega-firm in Sydney has yoga for stressed lawyers twice a week - a 7.45 am class (which was too early even for me) and a 6.00 pm evening class. The evening class was often a bit earlier than I could leave work and would result in me padding back to my desk barefoot in t-shirt and shorts to put in a few more billable units. We had a lovely, encouraging, tiny English instructor who took classes in the big conference room with harbour views.
The best classes were in winter, when you could watch the inner city lights come out in the darkness.
When I did my government-law temping gig in Sydney I worked close to the Queen Victoria building and went to the City Yoga studio which is on the third floor of a building across from the QVB bus interchange. (The mix of businesses out the back of the oh-so-classy QVB always sort of amused me: restaurants, electronic wholesalers, Abbey’s Bookshop, accountants, a shop, and yoga.) It was more expensive than going to the subsidised firm class but you could get a discount rate if you bought ten class tickets in booklet that was only good for the next ten weeks. The use-it-or-lose-it system worked well. The instructors were good, incredibly relaxed women (surprise!) - but the floor space was occasionally at a bit of a premium - and some classes were a bit over-attended.
Still, it offered nine sessions a week, and I liked being able to go after work, or at lunch.
On moving to Melbourne I found a local gym with a yoga sign and decided to give it a go - casual drop-in classes were $10, but I figured if I liked it enough I might join.
I was a little skeptical of the class at first - my Sri Lankan instructor seemed a little too jokey, and a little over-the-top. It also took me a while to adapt to his slight accent. I soon realised that growing up with the discipline he had a far more relaxed and practical attitude towards it - including its meditative/spiritual side. He’s easily the best instructor I’ve had. (He also works as a chef at an inner city restaurant.)
I joined the gym on a membership special and have been going every Sunday morning at 10.30 as a minimum, and try and get along on Wednesday evenings too (when not off drinking with bloggers …) Once a week is enough to feel I’m treading water, twice a week and I feel I’m making progress.
Okay, observations about yoga:
Yes, it is a risky activity if you have back injuries. You should always tell your instructor and take it easy early on.
If you’re a guy, expect to be one of the girls. It’s a very female activity. This is not the social-life boon some might think, as in most classes you’re basically in your own private cocoon and are pretty spaced out afterwards. It’s not a chat-fest.
What do I get out of it? Going twice a week, I definitely feel fitter and stronger. It’s light exercise, but you do often have to support your own weight, and holding postures can be a real bitch. My balance has also improved a fair bit, and my flexibility is slightly better.
Also, as I said, there’s the meditative side. Call it New Age bunk, but it is a mental discipline as well - and I do enter quite a different headspace after class. Once or twice in wind-down meditations I have felt, well, something quite different. It works, and I often feel clearer about my feelings and priorities afterwards, as well as more relaxed.
Best of all, though, I think it really caters to those who (like me) are a trifle intimidated by the whole hard-bodied gym experience. (Remember the Sienfeld joke about getting fit so you could look fit enough just to go to the gym?) Yoga classes often have a real range of ability levels and body types and I love that sense of inclusiveness.
I think this exercise fad will do me, and the other potential benefits of my gym membership are just going to go untouched.
Though it would be cool to go indoor rock-climbing again …
Wednesday, February 26, 2003
Reconstruction in Iraq
I promise this will be my last war blog for a while. If I can post tomorrow, given I have a day off and will be travelling to Canberra, I will post on my love affair with a current fad.
Okay, so I’ve argued we should not enter a war in Iraq, especially without Security Council backing, unless we have a plan for post-War humanitarian relief and national reconstruction. It has been pointed out to me that the Bush administration is working on a post-war plan, and mightn’t this imply my position have a problem?
First off, my main contention is that the “humanitarian justification” for the war is bankrupt without such a plan. I mean, if you wanted to alleviate suffering in Iraq you’d lift sanctions. Yes, I know that would give Hussein oil money to re-arm, I’m just saying there’s a calculus here, competing objectives to balance.
Here’s some food for thought:
It’s pretty hard to argue that going in without UN backing is anything but illegal at international law. Pre-emptive defensive strikes are, legally, bunk and unjustified on the facts. Hussein is presently contained.
Also, even East Timor’s José Ramos-Horta, who - unsurprisingly - supports wars of liberation against oppressors, favours giving diplomacy more time:
I agree that the Bush administration must give more time to the weapons inspectors to fulfill their mandate. The United States is an unchallenged world power and will survive its enemies. It can afford to be a little more patient. Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the United Nations, has proved himself to be a strong mediator and no friend of dictators. He and a group of world leaders should use this time to persuade Saddam Hussein to resign and go into exile. In turn, Saddam Hussein could be credited with preventing another war and sparing his people. But even this approach will not work without the continued threat of force.
Read his enormously sane article for the NY Times on unfolding events here.
I am also concerned that the US, going in alone may not have the will to stay if reconstruction gets difficult. After all, the US had to stay in Tokyo for seven years after Hiroshima. As the NY Times puts it:
If America acts virtually on its own, it is hard to imagine either the Bush administration or the American people having the staying power to make things right. Washington may be counting on Iraq's oil revenue to pay for rebuilding the country after the war, but the oil wells could be damaged in the fighting. It seems certain that an administration that will not give up tax cuts to pay for the war itself is not going to inflict economic pain at home to pay for the cleanup. And while Americans have always shown themselves willing to risk anything, even their own children, for a critical cause of high purpose, their support for this particular fight is thin as a wafer and based on misapprehension that Iraq is clearly linked to terrorism.
This must particularly be the case when the war has dubious support among the US people, and many town and city governments are passing resolutions against war.
I am also very concerned that anything other than a UN administered post-war Iraq would be easily painted as “Mc Iraq”, a US client state, which would undermine its ability to become a credible force for stability and democracy in the region. I think this would particularly be the case under a “governor” appointed by the US military. There is already a brewing PR disaster in this war, which will inevitably be seen as a western war on Islam. (If our taxi drivers think all Muslims are terrorists, I imagine subtle distinctions will be lost on the often extremely anti-American populace of much of the Islamic world as well.) At least the Australian government is trying to persuade the Bush administration to take a multi-lateral approach on this one.
The point is, we don’t just need any plan for reconstruction, we need one that will not compound the inevitable damage to world stability done by any attack and that will not heighten the risk of alienating moderate Islamic opinion. Horta is right: there are other options worth trying first.
Craven cowardice?
Excuse me if I see a risk that bombing civilians this year will create a decade of extremist suicide bombers.
Comments to the guestbook, unless backblog is up again.
I promise this will be my last war blog for a while. If I can post tomorrow, given I have a day off and will be travelling to Canberra, I will post on my love affair with a current fad.
Okay, so I’ve argued we should not enter a war in Iraq, especially without Security Council backing, unless we have a plan for post-War humanitarian relief and national reconstruction. It has been pointed out to me that the Bush administration is working on a post-war plan, and mightn’t this imply my position have a problem?
First off, my main contention is that the “humanitarian justification” for the war is bankrupt without such a plan. I mean, if you wanted to alleviate suffering in Iraq you’d lift sanctions. Yes, I know that would give Hussein oil money to re-arm, I’m just saying there’s a calculus here, competing objectives to balance.
Here’s some food for thought:
It’s pretty hard to argue that going in without UN backing is anything but illegal at international law. Pre-emptive defensive strikes are, legally, bunk and unjustified on the facts. Hussein is presently contained.
Also, even East Timor’s José Ramos-Horta, who - unsurprisingly - supports wars of liberation against oppressors, favours giving diplomacy more time:
I agree that the Bush administration must give more time to the weapons inspectors to fulfill their mandate. The United States is an unchallenged world power and will survive its enemies. It can afford to be a little more patient. Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the United Nations, has proved himself to be a strong mediator and no friend of dictators. He and a group of world leaders should use this time to persuade Saddam Hussein to resign and go into exile. In turn, Saddam Hussein could be credited with preventing another war and sparing his people. But even this approach will not work without the continued threat of force.
Read his enormously sane article for the NY Times on unfolding events here.
I am also concerned that the US, going in alone may not have the will to stay if reconstruction gets difficult. After all, the US had to stay in Tokyo for seven years after Hiroshima. As the NY Times puts it:
If America acts virtually on its own, it is hard to imagine either the Bush administration or the American people having the staying power to make things right. Washington may be counting on Iraq's oil revenue to pay for rebuilding the country after the war, but the oil wells could be damaged in the fighting. It seems certain that an administration that will not give up tax cuts to pay for the war itself is not going to inflict economic pain at home to pay for the cleanup. And while Americans have always shown themselves willing to risk anything, even their own children, for a critical cause of high purpose, their support for this particular fight is thin as a wafer and based on misapprehension that Iraq is clearly linked to terrorism.
This must particularly be the case when the war has dubious support among the US people, and many town and city governments are passing resolutions against war.
I am also very concerned that anything other than a UN administered post-war Iraq would be easily painted as “Mc Iraq”, a US client state, which would undermine its ability to become a credible force for stability and democracy in the region. I think this would particularly be the case under a “governor” appointed by the US military. There is already a brewing PR disaster in this war, which will inevitably be seen as a western war on Islam. (If our taxi drivers think all Muslims are terrorists, I imagine subtle distinctions will be lost on the often extremely anti-American populace of much of the Islamic world as well.) At least the Australian government is trying to persuade the Bush administration to take a multi-lateral approach on this one.
The point is, we don’t just need any plan for reconstruction, we need one that will not compound the inevitable damage to world stability done by any attack and that will not heighten the risk of alienating moderate Islamic opinion. Horta is right: there are other options worth trying first.
Craven cowardice?
Excuse me if I see a risk that bombing civilians this year will create a decade of extremist suicide bombers.
Comments to the guestbook, unless backblog is up again.
If it's Thursday, it's Naylor Day
"It seemed I’d been in her room an age: glaciers had swollen, scoured the earth and melted while I crept about shame-faced, ransacking the life of someone I’d once slept with."
New Naylor here.
Argh. The Naylor's Canberra site has been causing me some grief. I have the table of contents links working properly now, and the "next" link at the foot of each instalment is now finally working. Thanks to those who are reading it!
(For those who just want the regular blog, there should be something up inside half an hour. Meantime, why not check out Naylor?)
And yes, comments are down. Remember the guestbook, though?
"It seemed I’d been in her room an age: glaciers had swollen, scoured the earth and melted while I crept about shame-faced, ransacking the life of someone I’d once slept with."
New Naylor here.
Argh. The Naylor's Canberra site has been causing me some grief. I have the table of contents links working properly now, and the "next" link at the foot of each instalment is now finally working. Thanks to those who are reading it!
(For those who just want the regular blog, there should be something up inside half an hour. Meantime, why not check out Naylor?)
And yes, comments are down. Remember the guestbook, though?
Tuesday, February 25, 2003
It’s, like, Alanis-ironical
Odalisk a few weeks ago had a debate running between her entries and some guestbook comments on whether “ironical” is a word. Despite being ugly, and redundant (sarcastical? minimalistic?) it is apparently a legitimate, archaic usage.
I think, though, the word could be subverted, redefined and redeployed in our post-90s world.
I suggest that “ironical” could now be used to describe moments of Alanis-irony - after that fabulous cultural moment in which everyone woke up to the fact that few, if any, of the inconveniences of life described in Ms Morissette’s song “Ironic” were, in fact, ironic.
The song could more aptly have been titled “Isn’t it a bugger?” or “Murphy’s law - it nails you every goddamn time.”
Moments of recent Alanis-irony in my life:
1. Moving to Melbourne in part because my best friend from high-school lived here, only to find he would move to Japan before I arrived.
2. Being a homebody who loves stability, and moving house twice a year, every year, minimum.
3.Organising a visit to Sydney on a long weekend and planning to see some old friends while there, then discovering they had out-of-town holiday plans. (Could only have been more “ironical” if they’d in fact been going to Melbourne.)
4. Going from complaining about being too tired from a work trip to socialise, to complaining about being too tired from socialising to work effectively.
5. Missing out on a cheap airfare by minutes because I thought it would be smart to shop around. (“No-one will want the last internet-deal seat to Canberra in the next five minutes, surely?”)
I think these rank with “it’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife” - although I still contend “it’s a free ride when you’ve already paid” could be an example of dramatic irony (where a character is unaware of circumstances of which the audience is forewarned, resulting in a mocking discrepancy between appearance and reality) - but maybe I’m trying to hard here.
Anyhoo, generate your own Alanis Morissette song lyrics here.
Odalisk a few weeks ago had a debate running between her entries and some guestbook comments on whether “ironical” is a word. Despite being ugly, and redundant (sarcastical? minimalistic?) it is apparently a legitimate, archaic usage.
I think, though, the word could be subverted, redefined and redeployed in our post-90s world.
I suggest that “ironical” could now be used to describe moments of Alanis-irony - after that fabulous cultural moment in which everyone woke up to the fact that few, if any, of the inconveniences of life described in Ms Morissette’s song “Ironic” were, in fact, ironic.
The song could more aptly have been titled “Isn’t it a bugger?” or “Murphy’s law - it nails you every goddamn time.”
Moments of recent Alanis-irony in my life:
1. Moving to Melbourne in part because my best friend from high-school lived here, only to find he would move to Japan before I arrived.
2. Being a homebody who loves stability, and moving house twice a year, every year, minimum.
3.Organising a visit to Sydney on a long weekend and planning to see some old friends while there, then discovering they had out-of-town holiday plans. (Could only have been more “ironical” if they’d in fact been going to Melbourne.)
4. Going from complaining about being too tired from a work trip to socialise, to complaining about being too tired from socialising to work effectively.
5. Missing out on a cheap airfare by minutes because I thought it would be smart to shop around. (“No-one will want the last internet-deal seat to Canberra in the next five minutes, surely?”)
I think these rank with “it’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife” - although I still contend “it’s a free ride when you’ve already paid” could be an example of dramatic irony (where a character is unaware of circumstances of which the audience is forewarned, resulting in a mocking discrepancy between appearance and reality) - but maybe I’m trying to hard here.
Anyhoo, generate your own Alanis Morissette song lyrics here.
Monday, February 24, 2003
Please, let’s just be honest about this war for a moment
I really should stop boiling at The Australian’s beating of war drums, but its continued conflation of the protest movement with selfish-psuedo-humanitarianism, and its Saturday headline “As Aussie troops prepare to invade Iraq … Saddam rewards protests” is really too much for me. I thought I’d calm down and avoid this blog, but no.
Basically, the paper’s editorial line (see the second article on this page) is that anti-Bush puppets and street-theatre, “no blood for oil” banners, and the speeches of John Pilger and Senator Natasha Stott Despoja have demonstrated, as it predicted, that protest would be “hijacked by the far Left”. It then paints Opposition Leader Simon Crean’s “reasonable, pro-UN views” as “too mild” for protesters, as he was heckled in Brisbane. (Imagine, a politician heckled! At a rally!) Thus, it undercuts its own concession that the rallies represented “a very wide spectrum of opinion”.
So, The Australian - echoing our Prime Minister – is running the line that while protest is a democratic right, it is irresponsible to allow Hussien to see a divided west, because it will give him comfort (increasing his intransigence) and therefore protests are only “counter-productive to efforts to peacefully disarm Iraq” and likely to prolong the suffering of the Iraqi population.
Well, fuck me.
By opposing war I am increasing the chances of it.
By marching for my own “reasonable, pro-UN views”, I provide comfort to a loony Left which wants to keep Australians out of a foreign war - regardless of the suffering in Iraq.
The only responsible option, is, apparently, to back war whole-heartedly and without dissent.
Right, let’s be clear on something here - I have no doubt that Hussein is, at international law, a criminal. I have no doubt he has committed acts of genocide. I have no doubt that his draining of ancient Iraqi marshlands was a deliberate act of eco-vandalism to punish a people who rose up against him twelve years ago. I have no doubt that his regime runs a police-state top-heavy with enforcers, informers, torturers and disappearances that would make Pinochet weep. I have no doubt that many human rights agencies, that would never sanction any war, would privately welcome his being deposed.
But I have not been hearing this from the political leaders of the US, Britain or Australia. At least, not until recently. What I have heard is a shifting mass of justifications emanating from Bush and parroted by “the willing”. First, Hussein was linked to Osama Bin Laden, then he wasn’t - but he was prepared to sell weapons to terrorists. Then there was no proof he sold weapons to terrorists, but he was accumulating weapons of mass destruction. Now there’s not a lot of proof of that he has WMD (delivery systems aside) and the pro-War camp are now just beginning to say he’s a dictator who abuses human rights.
If this had been a moral argument from the outset, there might be some public support for this war. But at the moment, conflicting justifications just make a cynical public look for hidden motives.
The case for war has really been made as one for world stability - in the most general, nebulous sense. “He very probably has weapons of mass destruction, and being a very bad man may give them to other very bad men - who could use them against us.”
The case being argued is self-interest. And while thinking of self interest, please - let’s acknowledge what everyone knows - oil is a factor here. British foreign policy expressly includes as a goal “energy security”, which highlights the need to help create a “stable” Middle East. Now, true it is, Hussein would not have invaded Kuwait to begin with if it were not for oil, and allowing his regime to grab a significant slice of the world’s oil production would have been a bad idea.
But - at the cost of staggering civilian suffering, denounced by Medicin Sans Frontiers - he has now been successfully contained by a regime of sanctions and the (basically illegal) no-fly zones. This man is not Hitler. Hitler was never successfully contained within his own borders.
The Right’s belated adoption of the human-rights justification for war leaves only two explanations: a genuine concern for world stability, or economic self-interest. Bush cannot have it both ways on world stability: you cannot use existing UN Security Council resolutions as a justification for war, but deride the UN as “irrelevant” for withholding a further, clear authorisation of force.
I think there would be a case for war if it was genuinely being justified on humanitarian grounds. However, until I hear that case made by our leaders - and backed with a commitment to stay in Iraq and assist with national re-construction, I will remain sceptical and harbour suspicions about the real motives. Removing Hussein is worthless as a humanitarian result if: (a) nothing is done to ameliorate suffering on the ground once our troops withdraw; and (b) nothing is done to prevent a son, nephew or crony of Hussein’s taking the reins.
Until there is a real humanitarian commitment and a clear set of objectives for intervention in Iraq, you’ll have to forgive me for opposing war - even if I am bringing comfort to a dictator.
I really should stop boiling at The Australian’s beating of war drums, but its continued conflation of the protest movement with selfish-psuedo-humanitarianism, and its Saturday headline “As Aussie troops prepare to invade Iraq … Saddam rewards protests” is really too much for me. I thought I’d calm down and avoid this blog, but no.
Basically, the paper’s editorial line (see the second article on this page) is that anti-Bush puppets and street-theatre, “no blood for oil” banners, and the speeches of John Pilger and Senator Natasha Stott Despoja have demonstrated, as it predicted, that protest would be “hijacked by the far Left”. It then paints Opposition Leader Simon Crean’s “reasonable, pro-UN views” as “too mild” for protesters, as he was heckled in Brisbane. (Imagine, a politician heckled! At a rally!) Thus, it undercuts its own concession that the rallies represented “a very wide spectrum of opinion”.
So, The Australian - echoing our Prime Minister – is running the line that while protest is a democratic right, it is irresponsible to allow Hussien to see a divided west, because it will give him comfort (increasing his intransigence) and therefore protests are only “counter-productive to efforts to peacefully disarm Iraq” and likely to prolong the suffering of the Iraqi population.
Well, fuck me.
By opposing war I am increasing the chances of it.
By marching for my own “reasonable, pro-UN views”, I provide comfort to a loony Left which wants to keep Australians out of a foreign war - regardless of the suffering in Iraq.
The only responsible option, is, apparently, to back war whole-heartedly and without dissent.
Right, let’s be clear on something here - I have no doubt that Hussein is, at international law, a criminal. I have no doubt he has committed acts of genocide. I have no doubt that his draining of ancient Iraqi marshlands was a deliberate act of eco-vandalism to punish a people who rose up against him twelve years ago. I have no doubt that his regime runs a police-state top-heavy with enforcers, informers, torturers and disappearances that would make Pinochet weep. I have no doubt that many human rights agencies, that would never sanction any war, would privately welcome his being deposed.
But I have not been hearing this from the political leaders of the US, Britain or Australia. At least, not until recently. What I have heard is a shifting mass of justifications emanating from Bush and parroted by “the willing”. First, Hussein was linked to Osama Bin Laden, then he wasn’t - but he was prepared to sell weapons to terrorists. Then there was no proof he sold weapons to terrorists, but he was accumulating weapons of mass destruction. Now there’s not a lot of proof of that he has WMD (delivery systems aside) and the pro-War camp are now just beginning to say he’s a dictator who abuses human rights.
If this had been a moral argument from the outset, there might be some public support for this war. But at the moment, conflicting justifications just make a cynical public look for hidden motives.
The case for war has really been made as one for world stability - in the most general, nebulous sense. “He very probably has weapons of mass destruction, and being a very bad man may give them to other very bad men - who could use them against us.”
The case being argued is self-interest. And while thinking of self interest, please - let’s acknowledge what everyone knows - oil is a factor here. British foreign policy expressly includes as a goal “energy security”, which highlights the need to help create a “stable” Middle East. Now, true it is, Hussein would not have invaded Kuwait to begin with if it were not for oil, and allowing his regime to grab a significant slice of the world’s oil production would have been a bad idea.
But - at the cost of staggering civilian suffering, denounced by Medicin Sans Frontiers - he has now been successfully contained by a regime of sanctions and the (basically illegal) no-fly zones. This man is not Hitler. Hitler was never successfully contained within his own borders.
The Right’s belated adoption of the human-rights justification for war leaves only two explanations: a genuine concern for world stability, or economic self-interest. Bush cannot have it both ways on world stability: you cannot use existing UN Security Council resolutions as a justification for war, but deride the UN as “irrelevant” for withholding a further, clear authorisation of force.
I think there would be a case for war if it was genuinely being justified on humanitarian grounds. However, until I hear that case made by our leaders - and backed with a commitment to stay in Iraq and assist with national re-construction, I will remain sceptical and harbour suspicions about the real motives. Removing Hussein is worthless as a humanitarian result if: (a) nothing is done to ameliorate suffering on the ground once our troops withdraw; and (b) nothing is done to prevent a son, nephew or crony of Hussein’s taking the reins.
Until there is a real humanitarian commitment and a clear set of objectives for intervention in Iraq, you’ll have to forgive me for opposing war - even if I am bringing comfort to a dictator.
Sunday, February 23, 2003
Life admin day
If I had my time over, I’d still do the eighteen months I spent in Sydney with my first two jobs again. I was glad to have had the experience - but all I miss about the town is a handful of good friends and the mornings I used to commute to work by the Balmain ferry, sipping my coffee from a Kathmandu thermos on the back deck and watching the water.
The rest I’ll live to the ambitious, the natives and ex-pats who love the weather.
I enjoy the slower, less commercial, more European pace of life in Melbourne - but let’s face it, any office job, no matter how good, makes you feel as though you never have enough time to tackle those little, irritating errands. (Check out the Dilbert view of the lunch time errand-run, too.)
I propose a nation-wide working standard of at least one fully-paid day off a month to deal with life maintenance and administration issues, if necessary with the full power of your office’s resources behind you. With such a Scandanvian-socialist-utopia measure behind me I might this year have managed to:
1. Replace the distance-vision glasses I lost new year’s eve. I know this seems ruinously slack, but I only need them for reading signs in the distance, the restaurant specials board, watching movies from a point behind the first five rows, and being able to read street-signs when driving at night. Also, it breaks down into the four component steps of: get new prescription, chose new frames (part with hideous amounts of cash), have prescription made up, make claim on my health insurance.
2. Consolidate my frikken superannuation plans - before management fees fritter it all away.
3. Claim what I can back on health insurance for the re-upholstering of my orthotics that was done last November.
4. Get a new internet banking password for the account I accidentally locked myself out of a while ago. I only use it to manage my travel fund and back-up credit card - and why would I want to know how much I owe/how poorly my saving program may be going?
5. Schlepp over to the Victorian Writers’ Centre and find a writers’ group. I loved the one I attended in Balmain and miss regularly reading other people’s draft novels.
6. Get a dental check-up. (It’ll be the same advice as always: “You’ve got good brush technique, but should floss more.“)
7. Get my grandfather’s fob-watch serviced so it runs for more than a few minutes, and have a new watch-chain attached to it.
So many irritating things I should have done by now. Who’s with me on this one?
PS. Visit Elliot on an easy day for lying
“I hit the street, a cheque bearing a five hundred dollar advance in one bewildered hand. David Carmichael gives away money with the promiscuity most people part with teeth and organs. He was seriously worried ... “
Get your freshly squeezed pulp noir here.
If I had my time over, I’d still do the eighteen months I spent in Sydney with my first two jobs again. I was glad to have had the experience - but all I miss about the town is a handful of good friends and the mornings I used to commute to work by the Balmain ferry, sipping my coffee from a Kathmandu thermos on the back deck and watching the water.
The rest I’ll live to the ambitious, the natives and ex-pats who love the weather.
I enjoy the slower, less commercial, more European pace of life in Melbourne - but let’s face it, any office job, no matter how good, makes you feel as though you never have enough time to tackle those little, irritating errands. (Check out the Dilbert view of the lunch time errand-run, too.)
I propose a nation-wide working standard of at least one fully-paid day off a month to deal with life maintenance and administration issues, if necessary with the full power of your office’s resources behind you. With such a Scandanvian-socialist-utopia measure behind me I might this year have managed to:
1. Replace the distance-vision glasses I lost new year’s eve. I know this seems ruinously slack, but I only need them for reading signs in the distance, the restaurant specials board, watching movies from a point behind the first five rows, and being able to read street-signs when driving at night. Also, it breaks down into the four component steps of: get new prescription, chose new frames (part with hideous amounts of cash), have prescription made up, make claim on my health insurance.
2. Consolidate my frikken superannuation plans - before management fees fritter it all away.
3. Claim what I can back on health insurance for the re-upholstering of my orthotics that was done last November.
4. Get a new internet banking password for the account I accidentally locked myself out of a while ago. I only use it to manage my travel fund and back-up credit card - and why would I want to know how much I owe/how poorly my saving program may be going?
5. Schlepp over to the Victorian Writers’ Centre and find a writers’ group. I loved the one I attended in Balmain and miss regularly reading other people’s draft novels.
6. Get a dental check-up. (It’ll be the same advice as always: “You’ve got good brush technique, but should floss more.“)
7. Get my grandfather’s fob-watch serviced so it runs for more than a few minutes, and have a new watch-chain attached to it.
So many irritating things I should have done by now. Who’s with me on this one?
PS. Visit Elliot on an easy day for lying
“I hit the street, a cheque bearing a five hundred dollar advance in one bewildered hand. David Carmichael gives away money with the promiscuity most people part with teeth and organs. He was seriously worried ... “
Get your freshly squeezed pulp noir here.
Friday, February 21, 2003
New weirdness
Sure, sure I've already posted a long rambling entry for the day.
But I'm (naive and novice enough to be) excited over my first google referral to my site - the combination of search terms "animated avatars funny" brings up my recent Sims entry. (I imagine they were a trifle dissapointed.)
Someone also seems to have been referred here by a legal publishing house. Damn scary.
Sure, sure I've already posted a long rambling entry for the day.
But I'm (naive and novice enough to be) excited over my first google referral to my site - the combination of search terms "animated avatars funny" brings up my recent Sims entry. (I imagine they were a trifle dissapointed.)
Someone also seems to have been referred here by a legal publishing house. Damn scary.
Thursday, February 20, 2003
Week in review: something old, new, borrowed, blue
I’ll tackle the week backwards, I think.
Friday morning: I like rain, I like waking up to it. I also like lying half awake for hours in the night listening to it – until I have to crawl out of bed half-slept and schlep into work on a late train full of wet people. Still, I was amused to be swaying to the train and listening to Oscar Peterson’s “Night Train”, I’m easily amused.
Thursday night: a Book Club member’s “quiet birthday drinks” and pizza. Lovely people, mostly professional writing students busy getting contract work or finishing novels. I had a lot of fun, but was suffering wage-slave fatigue by 11.
Wednesday: the great Blogger meet up! Damn I should have introduced myself to more people rather than just lurk in the “harem corner“ at the Gin Palace with the other early arrivals. Beth and I met for a quick drink and dinner before hand (dinner at the Dumpling restaurant on Tattersalls Lane – so good! So cheap!). On arrival I added a glass of Riesling straight into the mix, but the killer was drinking a Toblerone with missjenjen.
I sometimes get a little loud and take up a lot of conversational space after a drink. And a Toblerone is a drink: cream, Baileys, Kaluha, twist of honey, crushed ice - lethal. Goes down like lime cordial but sneaks back with a sledgehammer. Anyway, I was wearing my new jeans and casual-shirt-that-needs-cufflinks, so I was fine (see Saturday, below). Which compensated for being the guy who so often spoke immediately before a long, awkward silence. Fluke, surely.
So I met funky new people! Sqeeshee has a vibrant orange blog, and a story that shows not even illness was enough to escape last Friday’s protest march zeitgeist. Dee of viscerate has a funky head-to-head, coffee-stained two author blog. A fine addition to the Melbourne blog scene and the general Canberra diaspora down here. She also thought the night was full of witty conversation, and I hope I might just manage to crawl in under that banner. Daniel, blogger Methusula, one of the earliest and most written about was there – and a lovely guy to boot. Erin, the American expat (no not odalisk, another American expat Erin), who was a riot to chat with.
And of course everyone I met last time: missjenjen, Marcus (who’s technology all of those who understood it, wanted – and who better reviews the evening than me), Natalie(who took photos …), Andrew(a mainstay of the scene) and Michael( who I didn’t really say more than “hi” and “bye” to, sorry!). Heaps of people I didn’t really get to speak to, including Vlado.
Tuesday: relatively quiet, a couple of drinks after work with one of the guys visiting from the interestate offices this week at Troika, dropped him at his work dinner, home by 8.
Monday: I organised dinner for the inter-state visitors to the Melbourne office from Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney. Good turn out from my local workmates, too, so we had about nine for a good dinner. Drinks at the Mint, dinner at the Supper Inn, tea and coffee at Sarti near the Gin Palace. Karaoke was averted, to the relief of all.
Sunday: I went to yoga. I tried to be centred. I mostly succeeded. My instructor’s brother, though, is about to be deported ... and some days some of my classmates are distractingly pretty.
Otherwise, I wrote.
Saturday of rampant consumerism: In search of a decent wine shop (futile! doomed!) I went out to my nearest mega-mall Northlands shopping centre and wandered straight into the Myer menswear sale. One shirt was the cocktail hour in-betweener extravagance I wore to the meet-up. It’s allegedly a work-shirt, but has big blue and green candy-stripes on a white background, french cuffs and a collar too loose on me to really wear a tie. It needs cufflinks, but doesn’t support a tie. Too formal for casual, too casual for formal. Loved the colours, bought it anyway.
Two shirts and a woven tie later I was out in the mall. It’s been a while since I mall-surfed, dodging the packs of home-boy teenagers, and Brittany/Christina cast-off adolescent girls. Spooky.
Then I hit a jeans store and a run of good luck. Finally, I found new jeans that fit me without being ludicrously baggy or ludicrously tight. Big issue for a slim man, the answer: Levi 502s, boot-cut. Perfect. A smaller waist than usually fits me, but perfect. Sure, consumerism sucks – but sometimes, it’s just so fulfilling, and the rat race’s only payoff.
And I found a fun DIY carwash! (I've been good through water restrictions, only washing my car once in the last three months, so I kinda went crazy.)
Then Beth and her flatmate made me dinner, I got to drink wine and pay out “Grease“ on TV.
And be totally freaked out by the fact the Mrs. Bartlett of the “West Wing“, sexy-brained Stockard Channing herself, was Rizzo. Freaky.
God, no wonder I’m tired this morning. Maybe at 27 I'm just too prematurely middle-aged for a social life ...
Nah.
Wednesday, February 19, 2003
And now for a cunning plan …
Last night was my second Bloggers meetup, held at that most splendid of venues, the Gin Palace. This time, we commandeered the “harem” area filled with cushions and there was nary a business-wear karma sutra performance in sight.
But more about the blog meet-up and cool, new (to me at least) Blogs tomorrow. This is my Blog – and today is a massive exercise in self-indulgence.
Okay, yesterday I mentioned a cunning plan to force me to finish writing one of my hobby projects.
This is it: Naylor’s Canberra.
Once or twice a week, and certainly every Thursday, I’ll post 1,000 words or so of the Canberra crime novel on-line on my alternate site.
I’ve tried to set it up to be easy to navigate with a table of contents links more than an archive. But we’ll just have to see if anyone reads it. If so, and I if keep to a once-or-twice weekly schedule, I may finish the damn thing.
Hope you read, hope you comment.
Last night was my second Bloggers meetup, held at that most splendid of venues, the Gin Palace. This time, we commandeered the “harem” area filled with cushions and there was nary a business-wear karma sutra performance in sight.
But more about the blog meet-up and cool, new (to me at least) Blogs tomorrow. This is my Blog – and today is a massive exercise in self-indulgence.
Okay, yesterday I mentioned a cunning plan to force me to finish writing one of my hobby projects.
This is it: Naylor’s Canberra.
Once or twice a week, and certainly every Thursday, I’ll post 1,000 words or so of the Canberra crime novel on-line on my alternate site.
I’ve tried to set it up to be easy to navigate with a table of contents links more than an archive. But we’ll just have to see if anyone reads it. If so, and I if keep to a once-or-twice weekly schedule, I may finish the damn thing.
Hope you read, hope you comment.
Tuesday, February 18, 2003
A lawyer's unwritten novels
Most lawyers are frustrated writers, actors, comedians or performers of some bent or another. The number of “unwritten novels” per square foot of floor space I suspect is higher in law firms than any other place on the planet.
So, in the spirit of Neil Gaiman’s library of dreams (which holds all the novels you never wrote, but day-dreamed of writing on the bus), here are my four “concept novels”:
1. A crime novel set in Canberra. Obviously, being the seat of Australian government, there’s the potential for political intrigue. But let’s not forget that Canberra is our very own Scandinavia, where nothing is illegal, just taxable. Prostitution and pornography are both “light industrial” land uses, and possession of marijuana for personal use is the equivalent of a parking offence.
Canberra has Australia’s highest average per capita income and education levels (basically reflecting government jobs); but also the highest rate of heroin overdoses. There have been a number of prominent murder cases, including the shooting of an Assistant Police Commissioner in his driveway, and the decapitation of a diplomat. Then you have the weirdness that comes out of the universities, diplomatic corps, intelligence services and the defence force academy – as well as the fact that with just 350,000 people, it’s a large country town where everyone knows everyone else’s business.
A plot? I see a semi-employed legal librarian, Elliot Naylor, being asked by a barrister to find the barrister’s daughter Marina, Elliot’s ex-girlfriend. Marina’s a ministerial staffer who has failed to return from leave. No one wants the embarrassment of a police investigation. Before too long, Elliot is investigating the barrister’s shady business connections and is implicated in a murder investigation. There would also be a back-plot about why he was refused admission to legal practice and is scaping out a living in a library and not as a solicitor.
2. A late nineteenth century London historical novel. (I did my Arts honours in nineteenth century British social history, okay?) Sure it’s a hackneyed genre: all those “clever” novels with “guest appearances” by the literary and social luminaries of the day. But I still think there’s plenty that can be done with a society so riven with contradictions. My angle? I’d like to write something based around the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a group of occultists that contained several infamous or influential figures including Aleister Crowley, W.B. Yeats and Mrs. Constance (Lloyd) Wilde (yes, he had a wife). The Order was one of the more successful Freemason-offshoot secret societies of the 1890s. (Two members put together the modern design of the Tarot deck – like clan tartans, the present “ancient” design of the Tarot is a Victorian piece of instant tradition.) The Order also included respectable scientists, including a London coroner. The fact that this late in the emergence of modernity, the line between science and magic could be blurred under the rubric of “magnetism” or “invisible forces” fascinates me, as does the spiritualist craze of the time. Several members were also self-invented Scottish aristocracy and all-round frauds.
3. A fantasy novel set in contemporary Sydney that draws on Irish mythology. Whoa! Weird fusion of concepts? Not really - the Irish gods were basically people and they interbred with all and sundry. Practical upshot - I see no trouble with a large family of god-descended Irish folk, called the MacLir (literally, “the children of Lir” as in the fairy tale), having been transported as convicts to Sydney. The novel would revolve around the clan’s internecine conflicts, and hereditary succession to certain positions of influence associated with the various pagan festivals. There are easily enough to fill out a calendar, but instead of calling people Sahmain, Beltaine, etc, I think I’d short-hand them by naming them after months of the year. The pivotal character would be the “youngest of the elders” November MacLir – a girl who’d much rather finish uni than join the family business and spend her life scheming against mad relatives.
4. Along the lines of The Fraudsters, a light comedy of manners set among twenty-somethings in the legal industry. Sort of “Carry On, Jeeves!” meets “This Life” with the plot revolving around a Jeeves and Wooster pairing of brains with endearing haplessness. A bit thin? Well, that sort of novel always is. As P G Wodehouse put it, musical comedy without the music and singing.
At the moment I’m far more motivated about blogging than hobby-creative-writing, but I may have a cunning plan to get myself moving again.
Tomorrow, something different.
Most lawyers are frustrated writers, actors, comedians or performers of some bent or another. The number of “unwritten novels” per square foot of floor space I suspect is higher in law firms than any other place on the planet.
So, in the spirit of Neil Gaiman’s library of dreams (which holds all the novels you never wrote, but day-dreamed of writing on the bus), here are my four “concept novels”:
1. A crime novel set in Canberra. Obviously, being the seat of Australian government, there’s the potential for political intrigue. But let’s not forget that Canberra is our very own Scandinavia, where nothing is illegal, just taxable. Prostitution and pornography are both “light industrial” land uses, and possession of marijuana for personal use is the equivalent of a parking offence.
Canberra has Australia’s highest average per capita income and education levels (basically reflecting government jobs); but also the highest rate of heroin overdoses. There have been a number of prominent murder cases, including the shooting of an Assistant Police Commissioner in his driveway, and the decapitation of a diplomat. Then you have the weirdness that comes out of the universities, diplomatic corps, intelligence services and the defence force academy – as well as the fact that with just 350,000 people, it’s a large country town where everyone knows everyone else’s business.
A plot? I see a semi-employed legal librarian, Elliot Naylor, being asked by a barrister to find the barrister’s daughter Marina, Elliot’s ex-girlfriend. Marina’s a ministerial staffer who has failed to return from leave. No one wants the embarrassment of a police investigation. Before too long, Elliot is investigating the barrister’s shady business connections and is implicated in a murder investigation. There would also be a back-plot about why he was refused admission to legal practice and is scaping out a living in a library and not as a solicitor.
2. A late nineteenth century London historical novel. (I did my Arts honours in nineteenth century British social history, okay?) Sure it’s a hackneyed genre: all those “clever” novels with “guest appearances” by the literary and social luminaries of the day. But I still think there’s plenty that can be done with a society so riven with contradictions. My angle? I’d like to write something based around the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a group of occultists that contained several infamous or influential figures including Aleister Crowley, W.B. Yeats and Mrs. Constance (Lloyd) Wilde (yes, he had a wife). The Order was one of the more successful Freemason-offshoot secret societies of the 1890s. (Two members put together the modern design of the Tarot deck – like clan tartans, the present “ancient” design of the Tarot is a Victorian piece of instant tradition.) The Order also included respectable scientists, including a London coroner. The fact that this late in the emergence of modernity, the line between science and magic could be blurred under the rubric of “magnetism” or “invisible forces” fascinates me, as does the spiritualist craze of the time. Several members were also self-invented Scottish aristocracy and all-round frauds.
3. A fantasy novel set in contemporary Sydney that draws on Irish mythology. Whoa! Weird fusion of concepts? Not really - the Irish gods were basically people and they interbred with all and sundry. Practical upshot - I see no trouble with a large family of god-descended Irish folk, called the MacLir (literally, “the children of Lir” as in the fairy tale), having been transported as convicts to Sydney. The novel would revolve around the clan’s internecine conflicts, and hereditary succession to certain positions of influence associated with the various pagan festivals. There are easily enough to fill out a calendar, but instead of calling people Sahmain, Beltaine, etc, I think I’d short-hand them by naming them after months of the year. The pivotal character would be the “youngest of the elders” November MacLir – a girl who’d much rather finish uni than join the family business and spend her life scheming against mad relatives.
4. Along the lines of The Fraudsters, a light comedy of manners set among twenty-somethings in the legal industry. Sort of “Carry On, Jeeves!” meets “This Life” with the plot revolving around a Jeeves and Wooster pairing of brains with endearing haplessness. A bit thin? Well, that sort of novel always is. As P G Wodehouse put it, musical comedy without the music and singing.
At the moment I’m far more motivated about blogging than hobby-creative-writing, but I may have a cunning plan to get myself moving again.
Tomorrow, something different.
Monday, February 17, 2003
Virtual communities, or on-line suburbia?
Blogging, it seems to me, is a community activity. There’s the imagined community of blogger and readership, often made relatively responsive through the medium of comments. (Indeed, comments sections often take on a life of their own, fostering discussions only tangentially related to the post.) Further to that, there is the cross-pollination of bloggers linking to or commenting on other bloggers’ sites - as well as the phenomenon of the blogger meet-up (where geographically coterminous blog authors can perform the anachronistically embodied act of gathering together as flesh-and-blood avatars of online personas in a physically co-located “offline” space.
Usually to drink beer.)
In fact, I started blogging mere days before going to my first blog meet-up (under the kindly wing of blogger-of-standing Beth) - so I’ve always been able to put faces to certain blogs.
Anyway, if blogging has the capacity to invoke “communities” that may transcend boundaries (is there a time-zone where there’s not someone reading minderella?), what about creating your own virtual suburb?
That’s exactly what the on-line version of "The Sims" is apparently doing (as written up in last week’s "The Weekend Australian" magazine – no online text available). For a wallet-lashing US$50 for the initial game and a US$10 monthly subscription you can join a huge cyber-suburban landscape, your own bourgeois simulacrum. You design your “Sims” inventing personas, or modelling them on people you know, and unleash them into a cyber-social world where they will chose a house and furniture, make friends, go to work, go on dates and have to remember to relieve full bladders, get the kids on the school bus and set out the garbage.
The are, apparently, a gazillion shareware sites with extra clothes, physical appearances, tattoos, lamp-shades and gee-gaws you can select for your little creations. There are no rules and no objectives, unless you want to make the 100 Most Liked characters list. People apparently even set up on-line share houses to act out their little soap-operas and sit coms (DIY “Friends” episodes).
I have to say I find the idea eerily compelling. And am only restrained from hurtling headlong into this experience by (a) expense; (b) the lack of a computer of altogether my very own; and (c) the pressing need to reduce, not expand, the number of distractions in my life.
Perhaps the politics of it should worry me, the rampant consumerism of it, the emphasis on “popularity” and the risk of it becoming a substitute for “real” interaction with people. But frankly, none of it does.
I’ve always had a soft spot for the Sim games - going back to the early, primitive black-and-white Mac edition of Sim City which I would play endless hours of, often at Jason’s house, as we’d advise each other on the finer aspects of urban planning, or mopping up after a nuclear power station meltdown.
Sometimes we’d leave a game running over dinner and return to find half the town razed by an earthquake and the ensuing unattended fires.
Ooops.
I can recall playing so long, I could fall asleep visualising the chunkily-animated B&W visuals behind my eyelids.
I have no idea if they occur, but I also find the idea of “Sim meetups” really funny. I can easily imagine people who have shared a Sim dwelling with a player from another country eventually winding flatmates.
“Damn, why can’t we just download some better wallpaper?”
The real risk, however, seems that a large number of players are just … well, kinda dull. From the Weekend Australian article and the little I’ve seen on-line, there’s lots of bikini babes and bench-press perfect animated guys churning out dialogue that would scarcely pass in a bad 80s teen movie. Like everything in our great trans-national electronic state-of-nature, it’d be a question of sifting through the (what is for you) dross to find (what you consider) a community worth participating in.
Still, it’s one more step towards the world where we truly telecommute to the office, even social occasions, by donning our VR helmet and goggles and entering a dedicated virtual space. I think office jobs would be much easier if it could all be done in one’s PJs sitting up in bed. The Sims may have to relieve full bladders, but I doubt they have to iron shirts.
PS
On the theme of trans-national communities, a cheery “Hello!” to whoever is reading at Berkeley and McGill universities. I have no idea who you are, but I’m sure you’re cool.
Blogging, it seems to me, is a community activity. There’s the imagined community of blogger and readership, often made relatively responsive through the medium of comments. (Indeed, comments sections often take on a life of their own, fostering discussions only tangentially related to the post.) Further to that, there is the cross-pollination of bloggers linking to or commenting on other bloggers’ sites - as well as the phenomenon of the blogger meet-up (where geographically coterminous blog authors can perform the anachronistically embodied act of gathering together as flesh-and-blood avatars of online personas in a physically co-located “offline” space.
Usually to drink beer.)
In fact, I started blogging mere days before going to my first blog meet-up (under the kindly wing of blogger-of-standing Beth) - so I’ve always been able to put faces to certain blogs.
Anyway, if blogging has the capacity to invoke “communities” that may transcend boundaries (is there a time-zone where there’s not someone reading minderella?), what about creating your own virtual suburb?
That’s exactly what the on-line version of "The Sims" is apparently doing (as written up in last week’s "The Weekend Australian" magazine – no online text available). For a wallet-lashing US$50 for the initial game and a US$10 monthly subscription you can join a huge cyber-suburban landscape, your own bourgeois simulacrum. You design your “Sims” inventing personas, or modelling them on people you know, and unleash them into a cyber-social world where they will chose a house and furniture, make friends, go to work, go on dates and have to remember to relieve full bladders, get the kids on the school bus and set out the garbage.
The are, apparently, a gazillion shareware sites with extra clothes, physical appearances, tattoos, lamp-shades and gee-gaws you can select for your little creations. There are no rules and no objectives, unless you want to make the 100 Most Liked characters list. People apparently even set up on-line share houses to act out their little soap-operas and sit coms (DIY “Friends” episodes).
I have to say I find the idea eerily compelling. And am only restrained from hurtling headlong into this experience by (a) expense; (b) the lack of a computer of altogether my very own; and (c) the pressing need to reduce, not expand, the number of distractions in my life.
Perhaps the politics of it should worry me, the rampant consumerism of it, the emphasis on “popularity” and the risk of it becoming a substitute for “real” interaction with people. But frankly, none of it does.
I’ve always had a soft spot for the Sim games - going back to the early, primitive black-and-white Mac edition of Sim City which I would play endless hours of, often at Jason’s house, as we’d advise each other on the finer aspects of urban planning, or mopping up after a nuclear power station meltdown.
Sometimes we’d leave a game running over dinner and return to find half the town razed by an earthquake and the ensuing unattended fires.
Ooops.
I can recall playing so long, I could fall asleep visualising the chunkily-animated B&W visuals behind my eyelids.
I have no idea if they occur, but I also find the idea of “Sim meetups” really funny. I can easily imagine people who have shared a Sim dwelling with a player from another country eventually winding flatmates.
“Damn, why can’t we just download some better wallpaper?”
The real risk, however, seems that a large number of players are just … well, kinda dull. From the Weekend Australian article and the little I’ve seen on-line, there’s lots of bikini babes and bench-press perfect animated guys churning out dialogue that would scarcely pass in a bad 80s teen movie. Like everything in our great trans-national electronic state-of-nature, it’d be a question of sifting through the (what is for you) dross to find (what you consider) a community worth participating in.
Still, it’s one more step towards the world where we truly telecommute to the office, even social occasions, by donning our VR helmet and goggles and entering a dedicated virtual space. I think office jobs would be much easier if it could all be done in one’s PJs sitting up in bed. The Sims may have to relieve full bladders, but I doubt they have to iron shirts.
PS
On the theme of trans-national communities, a cheery “Hello!” to whoever is reading at Berkeley and McGill universities. I have no idea who you are, but I’m sure you’re cool.
Sunday, February 16, 2003
The compulsory rally report, and The Australian’s editorial
So, I went to rally for peace on Friday in Melbourne. As everyone whose followed the coverage will know, they were expecting 10 - 20,000 and got well over 100,000. The rally was to meet up at 5 pm in front of the State Library and then walk the length of Swanston Street down to the crazy cubist delight of Federation Square by the river. Well, at 5.30 the closest I could get to the State Library was about a hundred metres down Little Lonsdale Street on the wrong side of the road. (For non-Melbournians about a block away.) There was absolutely no hearing what was going on, which sort of robbed a participatory element from proceedings, but not really. Even if I was just another suited lawyer there “making up the numbers”, it was a great experience.
What really impressed me was the diversity in the crowd. Yes, it was predominantly under-35s - but there were Fransiscan sisters, aged hippies, families with strollers, school kids, badge-sellers, suits and the usual uni-campus fringe lefties with loudhailers. There were puppets, including big doves, white banners, and little kids with paper cranes on sticks.
Oh, and of course the inevitable, ignored vendor of Green Left Weekly desperately trying to raise consciousness of those desperate to avoid the Green Left street press.
But you get that.
It seriously looked as though marching to Federation Square was going to be impossible, the city’s central axis was already thoroughly clogged with people. Sure everyone could manage to squish up a bit - but march, let alone fit in the Square?
When the walking began, those I was with slipped down a laneway and came out at the next major intersection to see what was going on. Delightfully, there was movement. Even more delightfully, we slipped into the march for peace.
Well, strictly we were ambling for peace. It was an enormously relaxed affair: people were climbing public phones and lamp-posts (I suspect there are people who’d do this all the time if they could, but can only get away with it at a demo), laughter, bad improvised protest songs, and a lot of positive comments flowing to the women in traditional Muslim dress who were walking.
I ambled as far as the Square, which it seemed was going to hold a lot of people - as was the intersection of Flinders and Swanston and a good stretch of surrounding road. We could sort of hear what was going on, and found a view from the front of St Andrew’s cathedral of the big TV screen in the square so we could see what was happening - but after two hours on our feet, including Marching for Peace, it seemed time to Sip Beer for Peace, and then Go Out for Lebanese Food for Peace.
As Valentine’s Day could go - not bad.
Then I opened the weekend paper to check out The Australian’s coverage. I knew the paper had lurched to the right recently, but good god damn. Writing on the marches organised internationally this weekend the editorial said:
If Australia is any example, the protesters will be drawn from every part of the political spectrum. Unfortunately, if Australia really is an example, their humanitarian concerns are likely to be hijacked, as so often before, by the far Left. While there is mainstream opposition to war, people who seriously believe Saddam Hussein is no worse than George W. Bush have in effect lost contact with mainstream political opinion and therefore desperately rely on protests such as this to create the temporary illusion, for the world and themselves, that they are part of a broad-based social movement. They are not.
This woolly-thinking verbal sleight-of-hand really makes my blood boil.
While acknowledging the protest has support from “every part of the political spectrum”, its legitimacy is not-too-subtly impugned on the basis that this creates a “temporary illusion, for the world and themselves” that the far Left have a legitimate point to make, supported by the mainstream. Indeed, these dangerous lefties are likely to “hijack” legitimate protest. Subtext: this sort of protest provides false cover to dangerous elements, and gives them some sort of standing in the “world” media. In fact, the protest can be constructed as not represent a “broad-based social movement” (despite the huge turnout) because those articulating its aims are out of touch with the “mainstream”. While paying lip-service to what it dubs the “fine and honourable thing” of opposing war in a democracy, it basically implies that the protest movement is not in the hands of people with a responsible view of the facts.
It underlines this point with a pathologically brilliant piece of scare-mongering:
And for those who believe the US-lead initiatives are serving only to “radicalise” elements within Islam, this week’s message from Osama bin Laden should have been a wake-up call. It expressed the credo of a movement that is racist, misogynistic, bloodthirsty and already “radicalised” to the very heart of its being.
I think they mislaid the obvious concluding paragraph advocating the internment of all Muslim Australian citizens and residents for the duration of the War on Terror.
To judge Islam by bin Laden’s missives makes is as cretinous as judging Judeo-Christian Western society by the pronouncements of a Grand Imperial Cyclops of the Ku-Klux Klan. On a purely pragmatic level, where are Western nations going to get intelligence agents from if this is the line we take? Oh, sorry, terrorists are Evil - we don’t need anyone who might know something about their languages, cultures or real or perceived grievances.
Bombing the crap out of an innocent civilian population, by contrast, will not “radicalise” anyone. It is a responsible move that will not spawn future generations of terrorists and suicide bombers with real, immediate grievances against the US, Britain and Australia.
But the Prime Minister isn’t convinced that the rallies represent popular opinion, which he intuits is still undecided. So rest assured that the Australian’s editorial staff is a “mainstream” voice, keep a tight hold of your Terrorism hotline fridge-magnets and Prime-Ministerial pamphlet and remain “alert not alarmed” – democracy is presently experiencing turbulence and it may well be a bumpy landing.
Marcus covers the protest with some pictures. Beth also writes on being part of the movement in Melbourne. Canberra coverage by blogger Shauny here.
So, I went to rally for peace on Friday in Melbourne. As everyone whose followed the coverage will know, they were expecting 10 - 20,000 and got well over 100,000. The rally was to meet up at 5 pm in front of the State Library and then walk the length of Swanston Street down to the crazy cubist delight of Federation Square by the river. Well, at 5.30 the closest I could get to the State Library was about a hundred metres down Little Lonsdale Street on the wrong side of the road. (For non-Melbournians about a block away.) There was absolutely no hearing what was going on, which sort of robbed a participatory element from proceedings, but not really. Even if I was just another suited lawyer there “making up the numbers”, it was a great experience.
What really impressed me was the diversity in the crowd. Yes, it was predominantly under-35s - but there were Fransiscan sisters, aged hippies, families with strollers, school kids, badge-sellers, suits and the usual uni-campus fringe lefties with loudhailers. There were puppets, including big doves, white banners, and little kids with paper cranes on sticks.
Oh, and of course the inevitable, ignored vendor of Green Left Weekly desperately trying to raise consciousness of those desperate to avoid the Green Left street press.
But you get that.
It seriously looked as though marching to Federation Square was going to be impossible, the city’s central axis was already thoroughly clogged with people. Sure everyone could manage to squish up a bit - but march, let alone fit in the Square?
When the walking began, those I was with slipped down a laneway and came out at the next major intersection to see what was going on. Delightfully, there was movement. Even more delightfully, we slipped into the march for peace.
Well, strictly we were ambling for peace. It was an enormously relaxed affair: people were climbing public phones and lamp-posts (I suspect there are people who’d do this all the time if they could, but can only get away with it at a demo), laughter, bad improvised protest songs, and a lot of positive comments flowing to the women in traditional Muslim dress who were walking.
I ambled as far as the Square, which it seemed was going to hold a lot of people - as was the intersection of Flinders and Swanston and a good stretch of surrounding road. We could sort of hear what was going on, and found a view from the front of St Andrew’s cathedral of the big TV screen in the square so we could see what was happening - but after two hours on our feet, including Marching for Peace, it seemed time to Sip Beer for Peace, and then Go Out for Lebanese Food for Peace.
As Valentine’s Day could go - not bad.
Then I opened the weekend paper to check out The Australian’s coverage. I knew the paper had lurched to the right recently, but good god damn. Writing on the marches organised internationally this weekend the editorial said:
If Australia is any example, the protesters will be drawn from every part of the political spectrum. Unfortunately, if Australia really is an example, their humanitarian concerns are likely to be hijacked, as so often before, by the far Left. While there is mainstream opposition to war, people who seriously believe Saddam Hussein is no worse than George W. Bush have in effect lost contact with mainstream political opinion and therefore desperately rely on protests such as this to create the temporary illusion, for the world and themselves, that they are part of a broad-based social movement. They are not.
This woolly-thinking verbal sleight-of-hand really makes my blood boil.
While acknowledging the protest has support from “every part of the political spectrum”, its legitimacy is not-too-subtly impugned on the basis that this creates a “temporary illusion, for the world and themselves” that the far Left have a legitimate point to make, supported by the mainstream. Indeed, these dangerous lefties are likely to “hijack” legitimate protest. Subtext: this sort of protest provides false cover to dangerous elements, and gives them some sort of standing in the “world” media. In fact, the protest can be constructed as not represent a “broad-based social movement” (despite the huge turnout) because those articulating its aims are out of touch with the “mainstream”. While paying lip-service to what it dubs the “fine and honourable thing” of opposing war in a democracy, it basically implies that the protest movement is not in the hands of people with a responsible view of the facts.
It underlines this point with a pathologically brilliant piece of scare-mongering:
And for those who believe the US-lead initiatives are serving only to “radicalise” elements within Islam, this week’s message from Osama bin Laden should have been a wake-up call. It expressed the credo of a movement that is racist, misogynistic, bloodthirsty and already “radicalised” to the very heart of its being.
I think they mislaid the obvious concluding paragraph advocating the internment of all Muslim Australian citizens and residents for the duration of the War on Terror.
To judge Islam by bin Laden’s missives makes is as cretinous as judging Judeo-Christian Western society by the pronouncements of a Grand Imperial Cyclops of the Ku-Klux Klan. On a purely pragmatic level, where are Western nations going to get intelligence agents from if this is the line we take? Oh, sorry, terrorists are Evil - we don’t need anyone who might know something about their languages, cultures or real or perceived grievances.
Bombing the crap out of an innocent civilian population, by contrast, will not “radicalise” anyone. It is a responsible move that will not spawn future generations of terrorists and suicide bombers with real, immediate grievances against the US, Britain and Australia.
But the Prime Minister isn’t convinced that the rallies represent popular opinion, which he intuits is still undecided. So rest assured that the Australian’s editorial staff is a “mainstream” voice, keep a tight hold of your Terrorism hotline fridge-magnets and Prime-Ministerial pamphlet and remain “alert not alarmed” – democracy is presently experiencing turbulence and it may well be a bumpy landing.
Marcus covers the protest with some pictures. Beth also writes on being part of the movement in Melbourne. Canberra coverage by blogger Shauny here.
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