On your marks, get set – EAT!
Two words you really want to hear from a friend who has told you that they will be paying for dinner when you crack open the menus at a fancy restaurant: “Go crazy.”
So, the Ruminator was down for the weekend and we indulged.
Oh, how we ate.
My going-away present was Friday-night dinner at Ondine, downstairs at the corner of LaTrobe and Queen Streets, a stone’s throw from work. Thank you for the recommendations people, it was simply astonishing.
We had the three tastes of salmon and mosaic of duck and fois gras (sp?) for entrées, the ocean trout and saddle of rabbit for mains, and the truffle-centred soufflé with peppermint scented caramel ice cream and the “chocolate and coffee” (another three-tastes dish) for dessert. I’m not sure how food can be both rich and delicate at the same time, but it was. By the end of the entrées, the Ruminator wanted to have Donovan’s (the chef’s) baby, and by the end of the mains I was prepared to have a go at it myself.
Any lingering doubts about my limited sense of smell making my tastebuds defective have been abolished. The Riesling by the glass was also wonderfully fragrant. (A bit of a theme of the weekend was how little we wound up drinking – just too full of food, I guess.)
The service was discreet but unpretentious, the lighting subtle – but still enough to see by, and the music was all Ella and Louis tunes from my collection. The post-communist kinky-sex themed canvas hanging in the landing/foyer near the toilets was an odd touch, but the use of space in the restaurant was interesting. (We also saw someone who might have been Geoffrey Rush, but probably wasn’t.)
The rest of the weekend was pretty nifty too – but had a lot to live up to from that as a starting point. However, as I was late to the office this morning, the rest of the weekend roundup will have to wait for tomorrow.
Monday, July 21, 2003
Thursday, July 17, 2003
Writing exercise: An overdose of insomulin
And so, his imagination soaked with it, each night he dreamed a world of his own. A world the size of that we know, but circling a giant planet as a moon; following its orbit but unrotating on its own axis, so that each night and each day lasted one half a month. Each night would have a coldest part, when the moon passed through its parent’s shadow, both hemispheres out of the light of the sun.
He dreamed of its inhabitants, of pallid Candlemen, their heads crowned with anemone tendrils that gleamed with latern-fish light and gathered smaller creatures of the night into a concealed mouth. Such people might look human in part, but would need no lips or mouth upon their face.
Somnambulists, too, might live in such a world – beings with two nervous and organic systems within the one body, so that half of them might sleep while the other half woke and took control. Two intelligences could thus share one person, each moving between waking sleep and sleeping wide-awake. Somnambulists would be large, but not strong, and have two sets of eyes that never opened together. What social order would serve a race like this? How do four people with two bodies chose to breed or marry?
In all of this strangeness, he dreamt a human colony, founded on a shipwreck, abandoned. A city built about the petrified remains of two giants, and the creature they died fighting: a fist, a face, a talon extruding as vast obsidian slabs from the soil. A city that mixed law and lawlessness, five wards with courts where a judgement is as it was in Irish myth – a doom that alters one’s fate. The wards draw their strength from the giant’s relics. Beyond are the lawless grounds, where all is free but fierce. Among the men and women move people built of perpetual clockwork, able to act out a precisely ordained fate, changing only if by some accident they should ever need re-winding – their memories lasting only as long as their gears turn.
He saw a strange, precise society, turning on its old grooves, run more by judges than its governor and wondered what might come to pass if the colony should even meet its founders once again.
Sometimes the memory of it kept him from sleeping, and sometimes the dreaming of it made him slow to wake.
And so, his imagination soaked with it, each night he dreamed a world of his own. A world the size of that we know, but circling a giant planet as a moon; following its orbit but unrotating on its own axis, so that each night and each day lasted one half a month. Each night would have a coldest part, when the moon passed through its parent’s shadow, both hemispheres out of the light of the sun.
He dreamed of its inhabitants, of pallid Candlemen, their heads crowned with anemone tendrils that gleamed with latern-fish light and gathered smaller creatures of the night into a concealed mouth. Such people might look human in part, but would need no lips or mouth upon their face.
Somnambulists, too, might live in such a world – beings with two nervous and organic systems within the one body, so that half of them might sleep while the other half woke and took control. Two intelligences could thus share one person, each moving between waking sleep and sleeping wide-awake. Somnambulists would be large, but not strong, and have two sets of eyes that never opened together. What social order would serve a race like this? How do four people with two bodies chose to breed or marry?
In all of this strangeness, he dreamt a human colony, founded on a shipwreck, abandoned. A city built about the petrified remains of two giants, and the creature they died fighting: a fist, a face, a talon extruding as vast obsidian slabs from the soil. A city that mixed law and lawlessness, five wards with courts where a judgement is as it was in Irish myth – a doom that alters one’s fate. The wards draw their strength from the giant’s relics. Beyond are the lawless grounds, where all is free but fierce. Among the men and women move people built of perpetual clockwork, able to act out a precisely ordained fate, changing only if by some accident they should ever need re-winding – their memories lasting only as long as their gears turn.
He saw a strange, precise society, turning on its old grooves, run more by judges than its governor and wondered what might come to pass if the colony should even meet its founders once again.
Sometimes the memory of it kept him from sleeping, and sometimes the dreaming of it made him slow to wake.
Wednesday, July 16, 2003
If this is as bad as it gets …
Despite yesterday’s piece of self-indulgence, I have nothing to complain about.
The Ruminator visits this weekend, and with great generosity has volunteered to take me somewhere nice for dinner as a going away present. (She has a new job to celebrate too, come to that.) Of course, it’s up to me to pick and book the restaurant – any ideas, anyone? I’m still thinking.
I think our plan is just to drink and eat our way around a few discreet bits of Melbourne, maybe do some shopping. Still, if anyone knows of some good live music Friday or Saturday, drop me a line or leave a comment.
My new, temporary flatmates are great. (I keep staying up past my bed-time with the night-owl of the two, talking and laughing.)
On a completely separate note, one of the joys of being a morning person is about once a fortnight, I just have an unaccountable sense of wonder at the city in the morning – simple things like morning light on the state library, and the pallet of colours under the red-awning of a brightly lit fruit stand can be just breathtaking. Little moments when everyone on the tram seems really uniquely cool in some way, from the girl with a hugely round baby face but a sharp, sharp chin (and funky red shoes and matching skirt) to the guy with hands so big that change looked like play money as he fed it into the machine.
The peril of being a morning person is that no one else is awake enough to share this with, and if you pointed it out to anyone, they’d slap you.
Despite yesterday’s piece of self-indulgence, I have nothing to complain about.
The Ruminator visits this weekend, and with great generosity has volunteered to take me somewhere nice for dinner as a going away present. (She has a new job to celebrate too, come to that.) Of course, it’s up to me to pick and book the restaurant – any ideas, anyone? I’m still thinking.
I think our plan is just to drink and eat our way around a few discreet bits of Melbourne, maybe do some shopping. Still, if anyone knows of some good live music Friday or Saturday, drop me a line or leave a comment.
My new, temporary flatmates are great. (I keep staying up past my bed-time with the night-owl of the two, talking and laughing.)
On a completely separate note, one of the joys of being a morning person is about once a fortnight, I just have an unaccountable sense of wonder at the city in the morning – simple things like morning light on the state library, and the pallet of colours under the red-awning of a brightly lit fruit stand can be just breathtaking. Little moments when everyone on the tram seems really uniquely cool in some way, from the girl with a hugely round baby face but a sharp, sharp chin (and funky red shoes and matching skirt) to the guy with hands so big that change looked like play money as he fed it into the machine.
The peril of being a morning person is that no one else is awake enough to share this with, and if you pointed it out to anyone, they’d slap you.
Wild mood swings, strong coffee and wardrobes
I had to take two hours off work this morning to supervise the removalists collecting my gorgeous tawny, century-old wardrobe for the auctioneer’s. Past removalists (cowboys) have chipped it, put nicks in the door, and mysteriously warped one handle out of shape.
At least these guys seemed competent, careful and cheerful. Still, I consigned it to their care without even a signed docket. I accepted my boss’ opinion as to a couple of auction places, phoned around, was referred over the phone by an auction house to a removalist, who then delegated the job to another guy. I am trusting to reputation and could just as easily have handed it over to furniture thieves.
But frankly, even if it were stolen, I’d feel relieved. I’d invested that intractably heavy, awkward, beautiful object (and what to do with it) with so much of my angst over moving house, relocating overseas, studying again and the inevitable administrative to and fro between Cambridge and my scholarship organisation.
Much as I loved it, much as its solid presence made everywhere I’ve landed home, I’d really started to see caring for the wardrobe as a liability and was getting guilty about the damage my serial moves were doing to it.
So yesterday, I was almost crippled by paranoia that the removalists would never confirm a pick-up time and I’d have to start over, that I’d not get funding confirmation from the scholarship in time to make Cambridge’s deadline, that I’d lost a library book, that I’d never get my new room in order in time for a guest this weekend, that I need to look at selling my car and booking the next removal of my stuff to my parents’ in Canberra, that the cat I accidentally let out last night would never come back, etc, etc, etc.
This morning, with the wardrobe gone and a triple black coffee at the morning tea, though, I’m now feeling on top of the world – I have the sense of having done my best to find a neglected pet a good home.
Now, if I could just stop jittering enough to do my work.
I had to take two hours off work this morning to supervise the removalists collecting my gorgeous tawny, century-old wardrobe for the auctioneer’s. Past removalists (cowboys) have chipped it, put nicks in the door, and mysteriously warped one handle out of shape.
At least these guys seemed competent, careful and cheerful. Still, I consigned it to their care without even a signed docket. I accepted my boss’ opinion as to a couple of auction places, phoned around, was referred over the phone by an auction house to a removalist, who then delegated the job to another guy. I am trusting to reputation and could just as easily have handed it over to furniture thieves.
But frankly, even if it were stolen, I’d feel relieved. I’d invested that intractably heavy, awkward, beautiful object (and what to do with it) with so much of my angst over moving house, relocating overseas, studying again and the inevitable administrative to and fro between Cambridge and my scholarship organisation.
Much as I loved it, much as its solid presence made everywhere I’ve landed home, I’d really started to see caring for the wardrobe as a liability and was getting guilty about the damage my serial moves were doing to it.
So yesterday, I was almost crippled by paranoia that the removalists would never confirm a pick-up time and I’d have to start over, that I’d not get funding confirmation from the scholarship in time to make Cambridge’s deadline, that I’d lost a library book, that I’d never get my new room in order in time for a guest this weekend, that I need to look at selling my car and booking the next removal of my stuff to my parents’ in Canberra, that the cat I accidentally let out last night would never come back, etc, etc, etc.
This morning, with the wardrobe gone and a triple black coffee at the morning tea, though, I’m now feeling on top of the world – I have the sense of having done my best to find a neglected pet a good home.
Now, if I could just stop jittering enough to do my work.
Tuesday, July 15, 2003
Guantanamo Bay: the view from here
Last week got a bit heavy on law-stuff, so I won’t be repeating that effort.
But prompted by Jonas, I’m just going to slap down my opinion on the disgraceful situation surrounding David Hicks, one of two Australians being held in Guantanamo Bay, and the legal and foreign policy issues it throws up.
First, as an Australian – why are we taking such a softly-softly approach on this compared to the British? Are we, as Malcolm Fraser challenges, just an unthinking appendage to the United States?
(No, comes the official answer, we strongly oppose the death penalty and will oppose the sentence if Hicks receives it. Now there’s an argument that could rapidly become academic.)
Then, the issues to get a civil-libertarian’s blood boiling are legion. That no civilian Court can issue habeas corpus over prisoners detained at Guantanamo, a legal limbo – neither part of US nor Cuban territory, where conditions are bad enough to be driving inmates to attempt suicide – at least one having already died. That it has taken two and a half years to get Hicks to trial. The fact that the trials before the US military tribunals will be secret, have no right of appeal, and can impose the death penalty. The possibility of indefinite detention if the White House does not certify you ready for trial, or maybe even if you’re found innocent. The risk of co-opting civilian lawyers to lend the proceedings credibility. Oh, and the fact that US citizens still have common-law rights of access to the civil courts, just not nasty foreigners, even the nationals of allies.
As for international law – I have still to hear a credible argument as to why the Geneva Conventions do not apply to men captured on a battlefield, fighting for the then effective government in a region. I am still not convinced that the concept of “illegal combatants” (ie not wearing identifiable uniforms) is anything but a political fiction. Captured combatants are POWs until charged with war crimes and tried, or released at the end of hostilities. Otherwise, they are ordinary criminals to be brought before ordinary courts.
But the thing that really sticks in my craw? Western governments are beginning to treat the rule of law, and what Americans would call “due process”, as a shield for the enemy. Wrong. We abandon these things at our peril. When you relax standards of justice to counter terrorism you risk (strangely enough) unjust results and further radicalising the moderates whose support you need (does no one remember Northern Ireland?). And when we engage in legally dubious adventures such as a naval blockade of North Korea, or the occupation of Iraq, all we do is erode the spirit of international co-operation needed to successfully combat terrorism. Further, every dubious trial and detention in the US erodes the chances of any other power bothering to respect the Geneva Conventions if allied forces are taken prisoners of war.
Now I’m grumpy and want my coffee.
PS To answer the question put by everyone with a talkback show or newspaper column (namely, what crime has Hicks committed under Australian law?), he may have breached the Crimes (Foreign Incursions and Recruitment) Act 1978. The Act prohibits engaging in hostile activities against a foreign government while overseas, or training for that purpose, unless you’re performing your duty for the Australian government.
Last week got a bit heavy on law-stuff, so I won’t be repeating that effort.
But prompted by Jonas, I’m just going to slap down my opinion on the disgraceful situation surrounding David Hicks, one of two Australians being held in Guantanamo Bay, and the legal and foreign policy issues it throws up.
First, as an Australian – why are we taking such a softly-softly approach on this compared to the British? Are we, as Malcolm Fraser challenges, just an unthinking appendage to the United States?
(No, comes the official answer, we strongly oppose the death penalty and will oppose the sentence if Hicks receives it. Now there’s an argument that could rapidly become academic.)
Then, the issues to get a civil-libertarian’s blood boiling are legion. That no civilian Court can issue habeas corpus over prisoners detained at Guantanamo, a legal limbo – neither part of US nor Cuban territory, where conditions are bad enough to be driving inmates to attempt suicide – at least one having already died. That it has taken two and a half years to get Hicks to trial. The fact that the trials before the US military tribunals will be secret, have no right of appeal, and can impose the death penalty. The possibility of indefinite detention if the White House does not certify you ready for trial, or maybe even if you’re found innocent. The risk of co-opting civilian lawyers to lend the proceedings credibility. Oh, and the fact that US citizens still have common-law rights of access to the civil courts, just not nasty foreigners, even the nationals of allies.
As for international law – I have still to hear a credible argument as to why the Geneva Conventions do not apply to men captured on a battlefield, fighting for the then effective government in a region. I am still not convinced that the concept of “illegal combatants” (ie not wearing identifiable uniforms) is anything but a political fiction. Captured combatants are POWs until charged with war crimes and tried, or released at the end of hostilities. Otherwise, they are ordinary criminals to be brought before ordinary courts.
But the thing that really sticks in my craw? Western governments are beginning to treat the rule of law, and what Americans would call “due process”, as a shield for the enemy. Wrong. We abandon these things at our peril. When you relax standards of justice to counter terrorism you risk (strangely enough) unjust results and further radicalising the moderates whose support you need (does no one remember Northern Ireland?). And when we engage in legally dubious adventures such as a naval blockade of North Korea, or the occupation of Iraq, all we do is erode the spirit of international co-operation needed to successfully combat terrorism. Further, every dubious trial and detention in the US erodes the chances of any other power bothering to respect the Geneva Conventions if allied forces are taken prisoners of war.
Now I’m grumpy and want my coffee.
PS To answer the question put by everyone with a talkback show or newspaper column (namely, what crime has Hicks committed under Australian law?), he may have breached the Crimes (Foreign Incursions and Recruitment) Act 1978. The Act prohibits engaging in hostile activities against a foreign government while overseas, or training for that purpose, unless you’re performing your duty for the Australian government.
Monday, July 14, 2003
Brown tape, brown cardboard boxes; dear god, it's moving day
So I moved on the weekend. And drunk Belgian beer with Beth and others. But mostly the moving thing.
No, the limp is only temporary and the ligaments will reattach any time soon. Last time I ever: (a) do this without removalists; and (b) turn down spontaneous offers of help from several friends. But at the time, I really did think I’d only need help with my bookshelf, mattress and bed-head. And my old landlord and new flatmates did give me a hand with those and other big items.
Still, I managed to foolishly wind up doing perhaps a bit too much on my own.
There is always so much more stuff than you anticipate, and it takes so much longer. Still, zooming about in a rental one-ton van was pretty nifty, once I got over my initial terror and remembered how to drive a manual.
Observation on moving from Thornbury to East Brunswick: only ten minutes apart by car, and it really does feel like the difference between the suburbs and the inner city – farewell excessively wide nature strips, farewell Italian and Greek pensioners taking their constitutional stroll; hello narrow, grassless pavements and share-house students on bicycles. Big plusses of the new house: it’s warm, the bathroom doesn’t flood every time you step from the shower, and it’s much handier for public transport. (I caught a tram to work this morning and it only took 20 minutes!)
I have also gone from sharing with one cat, to two. Munchka – who is the cutest little thing, enough to warm even the heart of a confirmed cat-sceptic like myself – and her somewhat overweight son, He Who Reigns in Darkness and Terror (actually, he’s been pretty good to me so far, I just don’t recall his name).
Still unpacking though, and I have an inter-state visitor this weekend. Perhaps I’m trying to cram a little too much in at the moment …
So I moved on the weekend. And drunk Belgian beer with Beth and others. But mostly the moving thing.
No, the limp is only temporary and the ligaments will reattach any time soon. Last time I ever: (a) do this without removalists; and (b) turn down spontaneous offers of help from several friends. But at the time, I really did think I’d only need help with my bookshelf, mattress and bed-head. And my old landlord and new flatmates did give me a hand with those and other big items.
Still, I managed to foolishly wind up doing perhaps a bit too much on my own.
There is always so much more stuff than you anticipate, and it takes so much longer. Still, zooming about in a rental one-ton van was pretty nifty, once I got over my initial terror and remembered how to drive a manual.
Observation on moving from Thornbury to East Brunswick: only ten minutes apart by car, and it really does feel like the difference between the suburbs and the inner city – farewell excessively wide nature strips, farewell Italian and Greek pensioners taking their constitutional stroll; hello narrow, grassless pavements and share-house students on bicycles. Big plusses of the new house: it’s warm, the bathroom doesn’t flood every time you step from the shower, and it’s much handier for public transport. (I caught a tram to work this morning and it only took 20 minutes!)
I have also gone from sharing with one cat, to two. Munchka – who is the cutest little thing, enough to warm even the heart of a confirmed cat-sceptic like myself – and her somewhat overweight son, He Who Reigns in Darkness and Terror (actually, he’s been pretty good to me so far, I just don’t recall his name).
Still unpacking though, and I have an inter-state visitor this weekend. Perhaps I’m trying to cram a little too much in at the moment …
Thursday, July 10, 2003
Banning “Ken Park”
(Law and morality, part 4)
Police have now chosen not to prosecute protesters who tried to screen “Ken Park” at Balmain Town Hall – including the Movie Show’s It’s a good result, but it’s a bad law that relies on sensible policing to avoid absurdity.
For those not up to speed, “Ken Park” – accepted as an art film in most of the western world and given either cinema release, or limited release for film festivals – has been banned in Australia for depicting actual sex between, involving or with characters portrayed as minors. The actual sex made it only eligible for, at best, an X rating; while the violence context and suggestions of incest or abuse of minors meant put it beyond what was accepted for an X film. There’s an “art film” exception, but as “Ken Park” clocked in with a hefty 6 minutes of actual sex (most of which is apparently adolescent male masturbation) it exceeded the “art” guidelines. Thus, fitting no category, it was rated “RC” (Refused Classification), making it an offence to distribute it, or screen it in public.
Our “Chatterly-ban” era censorship system works like this. The Classification Board of the Commonwealth government’s Office of Film and Literature Classification reviews publications, assesses what age-group they are suitable for and publishes ratings advice – or can refuse them classification altogether. This is purely advisory, as the Commonwealth has no constitutional power to regulate film and literature. All the enforcement laws are state laws. Classification Board ratings can be challenged before a three-member appeal panel, the Classification Review Board. The CRB said in its statement on “Ken Park”:
“The film depicts scenes of sex and violence in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults to the extent that it warranted Refused Classification status. These included scenes of child sexual abuse, and actual sex by people depicted as minors and sexualised violence.”
Margaret Pomeranz has made the point, having seen the film, that the comments as to child sexual abuse are not at all clear. There is apparently a scene in which a father attempts to fellate his sleeping son, whose age is not directly disclosed in the film and who is portrayed by an actor over the age of eighteen. As for sex between teenagers, Pomeranz has argued publicly that this is not actually a crime anywhere in Australia, provided the parties involved are close in age. This is a film about the bleakness of life in deeply disfunctional urban families, not sex.
I suspect that like “Baise Moi” I’d probably not go see it, if released. And like Pomerantz I support the classification ratings system up to the point where it results in an outright ban. Adults should be allowed to make up their own minds and not be subjected to the rhetoric of obscenity prosecutions that belongs to a time when postal and customs services confiscated “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” (Alan Moore’s graphic novel “From Hell” also suffered this fate first imported). These are deeply subjective judgements that should be left to mature citizens to make, not entrusted to prurient bureaucrats with stopwatches.
Besides, banning things only gives them greater publicity, and prompts people to download it from the internet for private (and legal) viewing. I only hope the upcoming review of this absurd situation by Australian Attorneys-General will result in a more sensible system.
(Law and morality, part 4)
Police have now chosen not to prosecute protesters who tried to screen “Ken Park” at Balmain Town Hall – including the Movie Show’s It’s a good result, but it’s a bad law that relies on sensible policing to avoid absurdity.
For those not up to speed, “Ken Park” – accepted as an art film in most of the western world and given either cinema release, or limited release for film festivals – has been banned in Australia for depicting actual sex between, involving or with characters portrayed as minors. The actual sex made it only eligible for, at best, an X rating; while the violence context and suggestions of incest or abuse of minors meant put it beyond what was accepted for an X film. There’s an “art film” exception, but as “Ken Park” clocked in with a hefty 6 minutes of actual sex (most of which is apparently adolescent male masturbation) it exceeded the “art” guidelines. Thus, fitting no category, it was rated “RC” (Refused Classification), making it an offence to distribute it, or screen it in public.
Our “Chatterly-ban” era censorship system works like this. The Classification Board of the Commonwealth government’s Office of Film and Literature Classification reviews publications, assesses what age-group they are suitable for and publishes ratings advice – or can refuse them classification altogether. This is purely advisory, as the Commonwealth has no constitutional power to regulate film and literature. All the enforcement laws are state laws. Classification Board ratings can be challenged before a three-member appeal panel, the Classification Review Board. The CRB said in its statement on “Ken Park”:
“The film depicts scenes of sex and violence in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults to the extent that it warranted Refused Classification status. These included scenes of child sexual abuse, and actual sex by people depicted as minors and sexualised violence.”
Margaret Pomeranz has made the point, having seen the film, that the comments as to child sexual abuse are not at all clear. There is apparently a scene in which a father attempts to fellate his sleeping son, whose age is not directly disclosed in the film and who is portrayed by an actor over the age of eighteen. As for sex between teenagers, Pomeranz has argued publicly that this is not actually a crime anywhere in Australia, provided the parties involved are close in age. This is a film about the bleakness of life in deeply disfunctional urban families, not sex.
I suspect that like “Baise Moi” I’d probably not go see it, if released. And like Pomerantz I support the classification ratings system up to the point where it results in an outright ban. Adults should be allowed to make up their own minds and not be subjected to the rhetoric of obscenity prosecutions that belongs to a time when postal and customs services confiscated “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” (Alan Moore’s graphic novel “From Hell” also suffered this fate first imported). These are deeply subjective judgements that should be left to mature citizens to make, not entrusted to prurient bureaucrats with stopwatches.
Besides, banning things only gives them greater publicity, and prompts people to download it from the internet for private (and legal) viewing. I only hope the upcoming review of this absurd situation by Australian Attorneys-General will result in a more sensible system.
Judicial light relief
The New South Wales Court of Appeal isn’t generally noted for its sense of humour. However, JPQS P/L v Cosmaran Construction P/L has proved an exception.
Meagher JA, a known curmudgeon, eccentric and brilliant equity lawyer, when setting out the facts referred to land "situated at Bossley Park (wherever that is)".
Mason P couldn’t resist the opportunity to show up his brother Judge’s ignorance of suburbs without a water view:
“MASON P: I have had the benefit of reading in draft the reasons of Meagher JA.
“I also have the benefit of having access to a street directory. Accordingly, I do not share his Honour's customary doubts about the location of well-known Sydney suburbs lying to the west of Darling Point which sit cheek by jowl with his Honour's customary lack of doubts about most other matters. A useful resource for those who need to locate Bossley Park is http://www.travelmate.com.au. By clicking on "map maker" one can find easy ways of getting from, say Darling Point to that suburb. (http://www.nowwhereroute.com/travelmate/mapmaker/mappage.asp?Type=darling%20point-_nsw_bossley%20park_nsw.)
“Otherwise I agree with Meagher JA in the dismissal of this appeal, substantially for the reasons he gives.”
It only gets better if you click on the map, showing the good Meagher JA how to drive from his own Darling Point to Bossley Park.
The President’s tipstaff also clearly had a dry sense of humour, adding this to the headnote as a description of the essential finding of law in the case.
“HELD per Mason P (Beazley JA agreeing)
“A useful resource for those who need to locate Bossley Park is
<http://www.travelmate.com.au>. By clicking on "map maker" one can find
easy ways of getting from, say, Darling Point to that suburb.”
It would appear from his own comments that Beazely JA was judiciously amused by the banter among his brother judges.
(For non-lawyers, JA = Judge of Appeal and P = President of the Court of Appeal. I should also acknowledge this one has been doing the e-mail rounds, and A Bright Cold Day in April beat me to the blog.)
PS this week’s Naylor is up.
The New South Wales Court of Appeal isn’t generally noted for its sense of humour. However, JPQS P/L v Cosmaran Construction P/L has proved an exception.
Meagher JA, a known curmudgeon, eccentric and brilliant equity lawyer, when setting out the facts referred to land "situated at Bossley Park (wherever that is)".
Mason P couldn’t resist the opportunity to show up his brother Judge’s ignorance of suburbs without a water view:
“MASON P: I have had the benefit of reading in draft the reasons of Meagher JA.
“I also have the benefit of having access to a street directory. Accordingly, I do not share his Honour's customary doubts about the location of well-known Sydney suburbs lying to the west of Darling Point which sit cheek by jowl with his Honour's customary lack of doubts about most other matters. A useful resource for those who need to locate Bossley Park is http://www.travelmate.com.au. By clicking on "map maker" one can find easy ways of getting from, say Darling Point to that suburb. (http://www.nowwhereroute.com/travelmate/mapmaker/mappage.asp?Type=darling%20point-_nsw_bossley%20park_nsw.)
“Otherwise I agree with Meagher JA in the dismissal of this appeal, substantially for the reasons he gives.”
It only gets better if you click on the map, showing the good Meagher JA how to drive from his own Darling Point to Bossley Park.
The President’s tipstaff also clearly had a dry sense of humour, adding this to the headnote as a description of the essential finding of law in the case.
“HELD per Mason P (Beazley JA agreeing)
“A useful resource for those who need to locate Bossley Park is
<http://www.travelmate.com.au>. By clicking on "map maker" one can find
easy ways of getting from, say, Darling Point to that suburb.”
It would appear from his own comments that Beazely JA was judiciously amused by the banter among his brother judges.
(For non-lawyers, JA = Judge of Appeal and P = President of the Court of Appeal. I should also acknowledge this one has been doing the e-mail rounds, and A Bright Cold Day in April beat me to the blog.)
PS this week’s Naylor is up.
Wednesday, July 9, 2003
“Go forth and be fruitful”
Prohibiting non-reproductive sex: sodomy, age of consent, and same-sex marriage
(Law and morality, Part 3)
Recently, in Lawrence v Texas the US Supreme Court struck down a state sodomy law, as it applied to consensual acts in private, as an infringement of the Constitutional due-process right to privacy. The case arose when police responded to a misreported disturbance and burst into a private apartment to find two men intimately engaged, and - rather than leaving with a shame-faced apology - arrested them.
To overturn the law, the Court had first to overturn its own precedent in Bowers’ case, which had previous upheld state laws prohibiting sodomy. There is some fine prose in the joint majority judgement of Justice Kennedy:
“ … Bowers [began] as follows: "The issue presented is whether the Federal Constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy and hence invalidates the laws of the many States that still make such conduct illegal and have done so for a very long time." ... That statement, we now conclude, discloses the Court's own failure to appreciate the extent of the liberty at stake. To say that the issue in Bowers was simply the right to engage in certain sexual conduct demeans the claim the individual put forward, just as it would demean a married couple were it to be said marriage is simply about the right to have sexual intercourse. The laws involved in Bowers and here are, to be sure, statutes that purport to do no more than prohibit a particular sexual act. Their penalties and purposes, though, have more far-reaching consequences, touching upon the most private human conduct, sexual behavior, and in the most private of places, the home. The statutes do seek to control a personal relationship that, whether or not entitled to formal recognition in the law, is within the liberty of persons to choose without being punished as criminals.
“This, as a general rule, should counsel against attempts by the State, or a court, to define the meaning of the relationship or to set its boundaries absent injury to a person or abuse of an institution the law protects. It suffices for us to acknowledge that adults may choose to enter upon this relationship in the confines of their homes and their own private lives and still retain their dignity as free persons. When sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring. The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to make this choice.”
The law can indeed, occasionally, produce inspiring prose.
The US case I found more disturbing was, Limon v Kansas involving consensual oral sex between two intellectually disabled teenage boys, one of whom was sentenced to 17 years. (Some state laws in the US include oral acts in the definition of sodomy, and cover acts between persons not of the same sex.) This law was struck down under Lawrence as an infringement of principles of equality: if one of these boys had been a girl, a “Romeo and Juliet” clause would have applied. Under such laws, where “sodomy” occurs between opposite-sex teenagers, a significantly lighter sentence may be meted out.
It is hard to see these laws as doing anything other than trying to prohibit all non-reproductive, penetrative sexual acts. It’s legislating a code of sexual behaviour that goes far beyond prohibiting violence, abuse and incest.
As a result of Lawrence many, of all orientations and political creeds, see same-sex marriage as the next step. Underlying the existence of sodomy laws, laws requiring a higher age of consent to homosexual acts and laws that do not acknowledge marriages other than those between a man and a woman is a similarly bigoted social consensus whose epoch has passed. The social and legal prohibitions on pre- or extra-marital, and especially non-reproductive, sexual acts served a blunt social purpose.
Some 37 US states have passed “defence of marriage” acts, to prohibit marriages other than between one man and one woman, citing the “need” to defend marriage and “traditional” families. (We might think of the Australian government’s mean-spirited approach to superannuation law reform, refusing the gay partners of deceased persons equal rights in their superannuation, to “defend” the family.)
Legally acknowledged or not, the range of possible family structures has already exploded. All children, however raised, should have the same dense web of legal certainties and safeguards that surrounds those of heterosexual couples. The law’s protection already extends to de-facto (straight) couples and their children, why doesn’t the marriage analogue extend to same-sex cohabiters?
Ultimately, though, it’s about more than child-raising. Heterosexual couples may marry without raising children, and with effective contraception may chose to remain childless. Why then should the law privilege cohabiting relationships merely by reference to their odds of procreating?
Our laws should really reflect the irrelevance of who does what to whom by consent and in private and get on with the business of dealing sensibly with social change that is well beyond holding back.
Prohibiting non-reproductive sex: sodomy, age of consent, and same-sex marriage
(Law and morality, Part 3)
Recently, in Lawrence v Texas the US Supreme Court struck down a state sodomy law, as it applied to consensual acts in private, as an infringement of the Constitutional due-process right to privacy. The case arose when police responded to a misreported disturbance and burst into a private apartment to find two men intimately engaged, and - rather than leaving with a shame-faced apology - arrested them.
To overturn the law, the Court had first to overturn its own precedent in Bowers’ case, which had previous upheld state laws prohibiting sodomy. There is some fine prose in the joint majority judgement of Justice Kennedy:
“ … Bowers [began] as follows: "The issue presented is whether the Federal Constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy and hence invalidates the laws of the many States that still make such conduct illegal and have done so for a very long time." ... That statement, we now conclude, discloses the Court's own failure to appreciate the extent of the liberty at stake. To say that the issue in Bowers was simply the right to engage in certain sexual conduct demeans the claim the individual put forward, just as it would demean a married couple were it to be said marriage is simply about the right to have sexual intercourse. The laws involved in Bowers and here are, to be sure, statutes that purport to do no more than prohibit a particular sexual act. Their penalties and purposes, though, have more far-reaching consequences, touching upon the most private human conduct, sexual behavior, and in the most private of places, the home. The statutes do seek to control a personal relationship that, whether or not entitled to formal recognition in the law, is within the liberty of persons to choose without being punished as criminals.
“This, as a general rule, should counsel against attempts by the State, or a court, to define the meaning of the relationship or to set its boundaries absent injury to a person or abuse of an institution the law protects. It suffices for us to acknowledge that adults may choose to enter upon this relationship in the confines of their homes and their own private lives and still retain their dignity as free persons. When sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring. The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to make this choice.”
The law can indeed, occasionally, produce inspiring prose.
The US case I found more disturbing was, Limon v Kansas involving consensual oral sex between two intellectually disabled teenage boys, one of whom was sentenced to 17 years. (Some state laws in the US include oral acts in the definition of sodomy, and cover acts between persons not of the same sex.) This law was struck down under Lawrence as an infringement of principles of equality: if one of these boys had been a girl, a “Romeo and Juliet” clause would have applied. Under such laws, where “sodomy” occurs between opposite-sex teenagers, a significantly lighter sentence may be meted out.
It is hard to see these laws as doing anything other than trying to prohibit all non-reproductive, penetrative sexual acts. It’s legislating a code of sexual behaviour that goes far beyond prohibiting violence, abuse and incest.
As a result of Lawrence many, of all orientations and political creeds, see same-sex marriage as the next step. Underlying the existence of sodomy laws, laws requiring a higher age of consent to homosexual acts and laws that do not acknowledge marriages other than those between a man and a woman is a similarly bigoted social consensus whose epoch has passed. The social and legal prohibitions on pre- or extra-marital, and especially non-reproductive, sexual acts served a blunt social purpose.
Some 37 US states have passed “defence of marriage” acts, to prohibit marriages other than between one man and one woman, citing the “need” to defend marriage and “traditional” families. (We might think of the Australian government’s mean-spirited approach to superannuation law reform, refusing the gay partners of deceased persons equal rights in their superannuation, to “defend” the family.)
Legally acknowledged or not, the range of possible family structures has already exploded. All children, however raised, should have the same dense web of legal certainties and safeguards that surrounds those of heterosexual couples. The law’s protection already extends to de-facto (straight) couples and their children, why doesn’t the marriage analogue extend to same-sex cohabiters?
Ultimately, though, it’s about more than child-raising. Heterosexual couples may marry without raising children, and with effective contraception may chose to remain childless. Why then should the law privilege cohabiting relationships merely by reference to their odds of procreating?
Our laws should really reflect the irrelevance of who does what to whom by consent and in private and get on with the business of dealing sensibly with social change that is well beyond holding back.
Monday, July 7, 2003
Legislating for the moral high ground
(Law and morality, Part 2)
All law-making is an expression of values, because all law-making involves choice - and very often the priority to be given in allocating scarce public resources.
More particularly, some laws express, quite forcefully, a self-consciously moral stance. The classic example is prohibition in the US in the 1920s. Prohibition in the US was not about ending the undoubted social damage caused by alcohol consumption, it was about white ango-saxon Protestants expressing superiority of their puritan, Protestant tradition to that of the newly arrived harder-drinking, Catholic eastern-European and Mediterranean peoples. If it had been about ending drinking, there would have been effective enforcement. The myth of the “Untouchables” aside, customs and police agencies were never given the funding they needed, even to pay their officers well enough that they’d be less likely to take bootleggers’ bribes. Like the three-strikes law it was one which existed to express the superiority of one social group over another, it did not aim to end drinking, just to make criminals of a group of whom the legislative majority disapproved - unless they changed and assimilated into the dominant culture of the law makers.
The realisation that all law is, in some sense, a moral expression came to me with the recent Supreme Court case in the US striking down sodomy statutes (more on that tomorrow). It is a move that has been celebrated, or decried, as ending any morals legislation and opening the door to laws allowing same-sex marriages.
My own reaction was to think: “Great, morals legislation is bad”. Then I realised that as a supporter of homosexual marriage, many would see this as moral legislating, whereas I would see it as simply serving a principle of legal equality. Law-making, then, is always moral: it’s always about value-choice.
You cannot legislate social change any more than you can legislate back the tide, but people still believe in laws’ educative effect. Both advocates and detractors of same-sex marriage can argue it would “send a message” that such relationships are socially acceptable; differing only on whether this is a good thing. People thus use legislation to express the superiority or correctness of their value-choice.
I don’t think “morally neutral” law is really possible. Even fields such as taxation and expenditure are value-laden: consider the uproar about taxing books and sanitary items for the first time under the GST, consider the constant clamouring for more health and education funding.
We do have to make moral choices in legislation: and human dignity, equality and diversity are moral principles. It’s in that context I want to write tomorrow about the Supreme Court decision and same-sex marriage.
(Law and morality, Part 2)
All law-making is an expression of values, because all law-making involves choice - and very often the priority to be given in allocating scarce public resources.
More particularly, some laws express, quite forcefully, a self-consciously moral stance. The classic example is prohibition in the US in the 1920s. Prohibition in the US was not about ending the undoubted social damage caused by alcohol consumption, it was about white ango-saxon Protestants expressing superiority of their puritan, Protestant tradition to that of the newly arrived harder-drinking, Catholic eastern-European and Mediterranean peoples. If it had been about ending drinking, there would have been effective enforcement. The myth of the “Untouchables” aside, customs and police agencies were never given the funding they needed, even to pay their officers well enough that they’d be less likely to take bootleggers’ bribes. Like the three-strikes law it was one which existed to express the superiority of one social group over another, it did not aim to end drinking, just to make criminals of a group of whom the legislative majority disapproved - unless they changed and assimilated into the dominant culture of the law makers.
The realisation that all law is, in some sense, a moral expression came to me with the recent Supreme Court case in the US striking down sodomy statutes (more on that tomorrow). It is a move that has been celebrated, or decried, as ending any morals legislation and opening the door to laws allowing same-sex marriages.
My own reaction was to think: “Great, morals legislation is bad”. Then I realised that as a supporter of homosexual marriage, many would see this as moral legislating, whereas I would see it as simply serving a principle of legal equality. Law-making, then, is always moral: it’s always about value-choice.
You cannot legislate social change any more than you can legislate back the tide, but people still believe in laws’ educative effect. Both advocates and detractors of same-sex marriage can argue it would “send a message” that such relationships are socially acceptable; differing only on whether this is a good thing. People thus use legislation to express the superiority or correctness of their value-choice.
I don’t think “morally neutral” law is really possible. Even fields such as taxation and expenditure are value-laden: consider the uproar about taxing books and sanitary items for the first time under the GST, consider the constant clamouring for more health and education funding.
We do have to make moral choices in legislation: and human dignity, equality and diversity are moral principles. It’s in that context I want to write tomorrow about the Supreme Court decision and same-sex marriage.
“The law in its majesty equally forbids the rich man and the poor man to sleep under bridges”
Criminal law as a system of values
(Law and morality, Part 1)
Beth’s recent post on the operation of three-strikes laws in Western Australia for petty property crime and the disproportionate impact on aboriginal youth has sparked this rant, along with the question posed by Michael as to whether the fact that “a law (or punishment) disproportionately affects one group or another allows one to conclude that it’s [a] bad [law]”.
Well, frankly, I think it does.
The last thing the law is, is neutral - the enforcement of criminal law in particular. Police discretion plays a huge role in its practical application, and an overwhelming role in three-strike systems. If you are white you’re more likely to only be cautioned for minor offences, if you are black you’re more likely to be charged. This crudely racist fact is demonstrable through the “civilised” world. Three-strike laws exacerbate the racially biased impact of police discretion, and in effect move sentencing discretion to the police rather than the courts.
But let’s look beyond implementation to the laws themselves. Any rule (laws, employment conditions or organisational policies) can discriminate directly or indirectly. Southern slave states in the US once expressly barred black people from voting: this is direct discrimination. After emancipation some introduced a “grandfather clause”, allowing you to vote in an election only if your grandfather had been so entitled. While this rule is, on its face, neutral - in practice it had an overwhelmingly racial impact, continuing to prevent black people from voting. Indirect discrimination is only visible in outcomes. Similarly, nineteenth century British laws against vagrancy, and contemporary laws against loitering, superficially apply to everyone - but in practice protect the propertied classes from the homeless, and discriminate according to economic status.
Thus, imposing disproportionately harsh and statute-fixed sentences for petty property crime may have a discriminatory impact. A middle-class business person on his first tax-evasion offence and a young indigenous offender on a third shoplifting charge face radically different outcomes. The net harm of tax evasion to society is certainly greater than petty property offences as it (indirectly) robs public education and health systems of vital funds. The tax evader faces no mandatory sentence unless it is his third time before the court, a serial shoplifter gets jail time. Despite the social damage done each year by financial crimes that, the Western Australian legislature is determined to mete out stiff sentences to people who steal food, clothes and bedding. The law is not rational or proportionate, or directed at the greatest evils - it is capricious, inflexible and aims to send a moral message. The fact that young aboriginal men are vastly over-represented in petty offence prosecutions is such a long-standing fact that to claim a legislature can pass “neutral” law in ignorance of the consequences is beyond credulity.
What such a law expresses is a moral position: “we are not interested in why such crimes occur, only in imposing brute discipline on a social group that refuses to respect our rules.” The overwhelming link between poverty and lack of educational opportunity is not addressed.
Proponents argue the law’s harshness is mitigated by allowing for diversionary sentencing: sending offenders to rehabilitation programs, not jail. In impoverished, isolated, rural aboriginal communities where these offences are at their highest no such programs exist. The exception, in practice, tends to let white kids from good suburbs off easily. After all, their futures shouldn’t be ruined by a few mistakes.
I have so much more to say on this topic, it may consume my week.
Anyone wanting light-hearted entertainment, read last week’s stuff. Especially the fiction. Or the stuff about Cambridge.
Criminal law as a system of values
(Law and morality, Part 1)
Beth’s recent post on the operation of three-strikes laws in Western Australia for petty property crime and the disproportionate impact on aboriginal youth has sparked this rant, along with the question posed by Michael as to whether the fact that “a law (or punishment) disproportionately affects one group or another allows one to conclude that it’s [a] bad [law]”.
Well, frankly, I think it does.
The last thing the law is, is neutral - the enforcement of criminal law in particular. Police discretion plays a huge role in its practical application, and an overwhelming role in three-strike systems. If you are white you’re more likely to only be cautioned for minor offences, if you are black you’re more likely to be charged. This crudely racist fact is demonstrable through the “civilised” world. Three-strike laws exacerbate the racially biased impact of police discretion, and in effect move sentencing discretion to the police rather than the courts.
But let’s look beyond implementation to the laws themselves. Any rule (laws, employment conditions or organisational policies) can discriminate directly or indirectly. Southern slave states in the US once expressly barred black people from voting: this is direct discrimination. After emancipation some introduced a “grandfather clause”, allowing you to vote in an election only if your grandfather had been so entitled. While this rule is, on its face, neutral - in practice it had an overwhelmingly racial impact, continuing to prevent black people from voting. Indirect discrimination is only visible in outcomes. Similarly, nineteenth century British laws against vagrancy, and contemporary laws against loitering, superficially apply to everyone - but in practice protect the propertied classes from the homeless, and discriminate according to economic status.
Thus, imposing disproportionately harsh and statute-fixed sentences for petty property crime may have a discriminatory impact. A middle-class business person on his first tax-evasion offence and a young indigenous offender on a third shoplifting charge face radically different outcomes. The net harm of tax evasion to society is certainly greater than petty property offences as it (indirectly) robs public education and health systems of vital funds. The tax evader faces no mandatory sentence unless it is his third time before the court, a serial shoplifter gets jail time. Despite the social damage done each year by financial crimes that, the Western Australian legislature is determined to mete out stiff sentences to people who steal food, clothes and bedding. The law is not rational or proportionate, or directed at the greatest evils - it is capricious, inflexible and aims to send a moral message. The fact that young aboriginal men are vastly over-represented in petty offence prosecutions is such a long-standing fact that to claim a legislature can pass “neutral” law in ignorance of the consequences is beyond credulity.
What such a law expresses is a moral position: “we are not interested in why such crimes occur, only in imposing brute discipline on a social group that refuses to respect our rules.” The overwhelming link between poverty and lack of educational opportunity is not addressed.
Proponents argue the law’s harshness is mitigated by allowing for diversionary sentencing: sending offenders to rehabilitation programs, not jail. In impoverished, isolated, rural aboriginal communities where these offences are at their highest no such programs exist. The exception, in practice, tends to let white kids from good suburbs off easily. After all, their futures shouldn’t be ruined by a few mistakes.
I have so much more to say on this topic, it may consume my week.
Anyone wanting light-hearted entertainment, read last week’s stuff. Especially the fiction. Or the stuff about Cambridge.
Friday, July 4, 2003
A thought meant for some day in September
Every now and then, when I get bored, I’ll flip through the quotes on my work-issue quote a day desk calendar.
I justified this to myself yesterday by only “spoiling” the surprise of quotes for dates after I leave for England. The one that struck a cord was:
“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possible not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born” – Anais Nin.
I think this is terribly true, through each new friend – or new experience – I learn something about myself and my capacities and capabilities.
Similarly, through talking with people who don’t share my views, I’m forced to re-evaluate my own cosy trendy leftist thinking (as Jonathon Franzen notes in “Being Alone”, few narcissistic pleasures beat that of enthusiastic, impassioned conversation with people who share precisely your views).
We discover our own identities through interaction with others, and through new experiences. I’ve learned a lot about myself, I feel, moving cities twice in three years and starting as many new jobs in that time. Living overseas for a year (or more) now seems like just the next step.
For someone who has always seen himself as risk-averse, change-averse and wedded to his comfort zone, I certainly inflict a good deal of change on myself. I like the resilience and confidence I’ve learned as a result.
Oh, I also liked as a quote:
“If you have any trouble being condescending, find a Unix user to show you how it’s done” – Scott Adams.
It could only be funnier if I understood it.
Every now and then, when I get bored, I’ll flip through the quotes on my work-issue quote a day desk calendar.
I justified this to myself yesterday by only “spoiling” the surprise of quotes for dates after I leave for England. The one that struck a cord was:
“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possible not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born” – Anais Nin.
I think this is terribly true, through each new friend – or new experience – I learn something about myself and my capacities and capabilities.
Similarly, through talking with people who don’t share my views, I’m forced to re-evaluate my own cosy trendy leftist thinking (as Jonathon Franzen notes in “Being Alone”, few narcissistic pleasures beat that of enthusiastic, impassioned conversation with people who share precisely your views).
We discover our own identities through interaction with others, and through new experiences. I’ve learned a lot about myself, I feel, moving cities twice in three years and starting as many new jobs in that time. Living overseas for a year (or more) now seems like just the next step.
For someone who has always seen himself as risk-averse, change-averse and wedded to his comfort zone, I certainly inflict a good deal of change on myself. I like the resilience and confidence I’ve learned as a result.
Oh, I also liked as a quote:
“If you have any trouble being condescending, find a Unix user to show you how it’s done” – Scott Adams.
It could only be funnier if I understood it.
Thursday, July 3, 2003
Very nearly halfway now …
This week’s Naylor is up. The project now clocks in at five draft chapters at 22, 873 words, about half a 50,000 word “typical” novel. Alright, fine, I’ll probably pass half-way two weeks from now.
Still, the reason I’m reflecting on the progress today is that this week’s portion is the first “completely new” part of the project I’ve put up in blog format – everything I’ve posted before now was at least a rough draft before I left Sydney last October. A good portion of it I’d even had the chance to workshop with my writer’s group.
But now, the plot is changing a bit and the section that came this week needed a total re-write. Also, somehow, I lost my electronic copy of that bit. Only around 500 words, but whatever, it sucked.
It’s funny, the writer’s group was a big part of the last three months of my Sydney experience. I really liked getting to know the other writers as storytellers. I got involved with their stories, week to week. Most had finished draft novels they brought in to share with the group chapter by chapter. I learned a good deal from what I saw the others doing well, or less well.
I haven’t missed that though, I suppose the blogging community gives me the same sense of fellowship with people who are writing because they enjoy it. The Naylor site has also attracted some useful feedback, some in comments, some in e-mail. It’s been rewarding. I hope I manage to finish the bastard.
I’m already getting an idea for my next project, but maybe it’s just those China Mieville fuelled, insomniac semi-hallucinations I’ve been having when I should be sleeping of late. Yes, this would be odder than some of my old fantasy novel ideas. (I’ve kinda written the Jeeves and Wooster as twenty-something lawyers piece already – just as a thousand word short-story.)
This week’s Naylor is up. The project now clocks in at five draft chapters at 22, 873 words, about half a 50,000 word “typical” novel. Alright, fine, I’ll probably pass half-way two weeks from now.
Still, the reason I’m reflecting on the progress today is that this week’s portion is the first “completely new” part of the project I’ve put up in blog format – everything I’ve posted before now was at least a rough draft before I left Sydney last October. A good portion of it I’d even had the chance to workshop with my writer’s group.
But now, the plot is changing a bit and the section that came this week needed a total re-write. Also, somehow, I lost my electronic copy of that bit. Only around 500 words, but whatever, it sucked.
It’s funny, the writer’s group was a big part of the last three months of my Sydney experience. I really liked getting to know the other writers as storytellers. I got involved with their stories, week to week. Most had finished draft novels they brought in to share with the group chapter by chapter. I learned a good deal from what I saw the others doing well, or less well.
I haven’t missed that though, I suppose the blogging community gives me the same sense of fellowship with people who are writing because they enjoy it. The Naylor site has also attracted some useful feedback, some in comments, some in e-mail. It’s been rewarding. I hope I manage to finish the bastard.
I’m already getting an idea for my next project, but maybe it’s just those China Mieville fuelled, insomniac semi-hallucinations I’ve been having when I should be sleeping of late. Yes, this would be odder than some of my old fantasy novel ideas. (I’ve kinda written the Jeeves and Wooster as twenty-something lawyers piece already – just as a thousand word short-story.)
Wednesday, July 2, 2003
What in the weird? Weirdness in brief
1. Potter-the-Devil: These sites are everywhere, but this is one of the more amusing - Demon-Buster: Harry Potter. I particularly like “I was informed that REAL curses are in the books”, but don’t worry, they’ve not read the book to see: “DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME DEFENDING HARRY POTTER. WE DON'T READ IT. We read the Bible.”
Of course, children should be allowed to read Tolkein, but never Rowling – as she promotes evil.
It takes all sorts, I suppose.
2. We can keep guns at home, but not swords. I wonder if the local gun-lobby will protest about the right to bear samurai swords or the rights of recreational or sporting crossbow shooters? Despite the recent murderous samurai supermarket rampage in the states, I’ve not yet heard “swords don’t kill people, people kill people”.
It's OK, though, you can keep your machete.
3. Suburban quagmire: how often in inner-urban Melbourne does the fire brigade have to rescue people at night from perilous quicksand? The ABC reports: “Firefighters in Melbourne have rescued two women stuck up to their belly buttons in mud.”
Is it just me, or is the most amusing part of the report the use of “belly buttons” by our national broadcaster?
4. Do this right now before someone fixes it!: Go to www.google.co.uk then type: weapons of mass destruction.
Don't press Search!
Next click the "I'm feeling lucky" button - and read the error message carefully ...
1. Potter-the-Devil: These sites are everywhere, but this is one of the more amusing - Demon-Buster: Harry Potter. I particularly like “I was informed that REAL curses are in the books”, but don’t worry, they’ve not read the book to see: “DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME DEFENDING HARRY POTTER. WE DON'T READ IT. We read the Bible.”
Of course, children should be allowed to read Tolkein, but never Rowling – as she promotes evil.
It takes all sorts, I suppose.
2. We can keep guns at home, but not swords. I wonder if the local gun-lobby will protest about the right to bear samurai swords or the rights of recreational or sporting crossbow shooters? Despite the recent murderous samurai supermarket rampage in the states, I’ve not yet heard “swords don’t kill people, people kill people”.
It's OK, though, you can keep your machete.
3. Suburban quagmire: how often in inner-urban Melbourne does the fire brigade have to rescue people at night from perilous quicksand? The ABC reports: “Firefighters in Melbourne have rescued two women stuck up to their belly buttons in mud.”
Is it just me, or is the most amusing part of the report the use of “belly buttons” by our national broadcaster?
4. Do this right now before someone fixes it!: Go to www.google.co.uk then type: weapons of mass destruction.
Don't press Search!
Next click the "I'm feeling lucky" button - and read the error message carefully ...
Tuesday, July 1, 2003
So, it’s not a Hogwart’s letter by owl …
… but I did receive my college admission pack from Cambridge this week.
If there was any doubt I was stepping into an ancient, occasionally anachronistic institution, it’s been allayed by some of the more useful information provided.
There is a fair bit of jargon to conquer. A formal dinner is a “Hall”. To “matriculate” is to join the college – and requires signing the college register at a formal dinner:
“Please note that the appropriate dress for this event … is evening dress and gown. You will need both these many times during the year.
Evening Dress: … "black tie". Or your own formal National Dress.”
It becomes apparent that “gown” means “academic”, and not “ball”:
You need an academic graduate gown for the Matriculation Dinner, the weekly Grad Hall dinner and a number of other events during your stay. The correct gown is a black Cambridge gown: a BA gown if you are under 25, an MA gown if you are 25 years old or more. Undergraduate gowns are noticeably shorter and you should not wear one. Sources of new and used Gowns include Ede and Ravenscroft [who?] … Also the Porters at Trinity Hall often know of gowns for sale.”
Righto, then. I get to wear a Masters gown just coz I’m old. And I either have to pack a tux or National Dress.
(Where is my Steve Irwin outfit?)
On bicycles:
“A bike is almost essential for getting about. Each bicycle must have the College number assigned to its owner painted on the frame. Numbers are issued by the Porters. Bicycles are forbidden in College except in the racks provided … If you wait a couple of weeks, there is an auction of unclaimed bikes on the first Sunday of Full Term, run by the police ...”
Cars are also regulated:
“If you are under 25 years old you need permission to keep a car from the Graduate Tutor and the University Motor Proctor. … There is very limited parking at Wychfield and … [you] need permission from the Wychfield Residential Manager and Head Porter.”
I am also getting the impression that it’s the Porters who have the inside running on everything. (“Psst … where can I get a gown/bicycle number/parking permit?”). They do everything, it seems other than carry your luggage. (“Do not be confused by literal meanings, grasshopper.”)
There are also numerous warnings about the weather: mild summer, winter with extreme wind chill. It is also noted that:
“An umbrella is very useful.”
I imagine that counts as English understatement.
… but I did receive my college admission pack from Cambridge this week.
If there was any doubt I was stepping into an ancient, occasionally anachronistic institution, it’s been allayed by some of the more useful information provided.
There is a fair bit of jargon to conquer. A formal dinner is a “Hall”. To “matriculate” is to join the college – and requires signing the college register at a formal dinner:
“Please note that the appropriate dress for this event … is evening dress and gown. You will need both these many times during the year.
Evening Dress: … "black tie". Or your own formal National Dress.”
It becomes apparent that “gown” means “academic”, and not “ball”:
You need an academic graduate gown for the Matriculation Dinner, the weekly Grad Hall dinner and a number of other events during your stay. The correct gown is a black Cambridge gown: a BA gown if you are under 25, an MA gown if you are 25 years old or more. Undergraduate gowns are noticeably shorter and you should not wear one. Sources of new and used Gowns include Ede and Ravenscroft [who?] … Also the Porters at Trinity Hall often know of gowns for sale.”
Righto, then. I get to wear a Masters gown just coz I’m old. And I either have to pack a tux or National Dress.
(Where is my Steve Irwin outfit?)
On bicycles:
“A bike is almost essential for getting about. Each bicycle must have the College number assigned to its owner painted on the frame. Numbers are issued by the Porters. Bicycles are forbidden in College except in the racks provided … If you wait a couple of weeks, there is an auction of unclaimed bikes on the first Sunday of Full Term, run by the police ...”
Cars are also regulated:
“If you are under 25 years old you need permission to keep a car from the Graduate Tutor and the University Motor Proctor. … There is very limited parking at Wychfield and … [you] need permission from the Wychfield Residential Manager and Head Porter.”
I am also getting the impression that it’s the Porters who have the inside running on everything. (“Psst … where can I get a gown/bicycle number/parking permit?”). They do everything, it seems other than carry your luggage. (“Do not be confused by literal meanings, grasshopper.”)
There are also numerous warnings about the weather: mild summer, winter with extreme wind chill. It is also noted that:
“An umbrella is very useful.”
I imagine that counts as English understatement.
Monday, June 30, 2003
The travails of a Masters student
(Being a letter to a student under supervision, c. 1927)
My dear Charles,
I am gratified to hear of the progress of your researches and the general comfort of the late General Sedgwick’s country retreat. I trust it has provided a meditative setting for study, and that the various minor disturbances to your sojourn (both waking and hypnagogic) regarding the “grotesque and obscene silhouettes cast by the mill-pond’s curious tower at sunset” have not unnecessarily alarmed you.
Clearly, you have suffered setbacks. The early loss of notes and photographic plates during your stop in Morley Bay, must have come as a disappointment. As you’ve learned, however, the winter solstice rites observed in certain isolated New Hampshire fishing towns are not conducive to outsiders’ participation.
Overall, the Faculty is rather impressed with your persistence.
For my part, I am merely astonished at your survival. Most idle, independently wealthy young men with no particular interest (carnal or social) in the company of man, woman or beast we’ve sent into the hinterland of New England on research grants have lasted not three weeks.
Your archival researches at Sedgwick house into the curious disappearances at seven year intervals dating back to the Civil War is of a much higher than usual standard for first-year students. Your theories on Sedgwick’s blasphemous human experiments at the windowless mill-pond tower in the dark days before emancipation are rather better expressed than Dr Mansour managed in his 1919 paper on the subject. (He has, in fact, expressed envy of your prose style.) The oral histories taken from the degenerate old women of inbred backwaters and the cross-correlation of their ravings about The Masters Outside, and the Unliving Who Hunger To Feed On Human Souls, has been more than competent. Connecting that with the unholy pre-human god Yog Sothoth, and making the further connection with your (supposed) dreams of “inhuman, bestial wailing from throats that have never drawn living breath” at the mill-pond tower was inspired. (Mansour is threatening to quote from that letter extensively.)
Your success and comparative longevity has become, frankly, tedious.
Your complete undoing, however, was your discovery of the personal diaries of the last three Faculty students sent on research grants to Sedgwick’s. Forwarding them to us was an act of idiocy. Had you run, rather than trustingly awaited instruction, you might have outlived the night. Even as you read this, a few of the more depraved villagers will be preparing to sacrifice you to Yog Sothoth at moonrise.
The Ancient Master needs feeding, as you’ve noted, at seven-year intervals.
Most of the faculty is terribly sorry to waste a mind of your calibre on this exercise, but with the planets presently in alignment, there is not time to locate and despatch by express locomotive a less promising student in time to be fed into the Master’s strangely octopus-like, tentacle-encrusted beak.
Besides, your research and writings are unconscionably good. This is a competitive faculty, and I have not remained its chair for over 112 years by allowing every upstart pipsqueak who survives his first encounter with reanimate servants of the Hungry Masters a chance to return from his certain doom to feed my soul scrap by scrap to the Devouring Ones resident in Outer Darkness.
I’ve quite enough trouble keeping the daggers of that cretin Mansour from my back since he raised Servants of the First Lords in Darkness to general acclaim at last year’s staff Antichristmas party.
May the Eternal One enjoy you as a light morsel. Needless to say, your research grant is suspended herewith.
Yours in Cthullu,
HPL
Dean of Cryptoanthropology and Xenoic Studies
Faculty of New Haven University
(Being a letter to a student under supervision, c. 1927)
My dear Charles,
I am gratified to hear of the progress of your researches and the general comfort of the late General Sedgwick’s country retreat. I trust it has provided a meditative setting for study, and that the various minor disturbances to your sojourn (both waking and hypnagogic) regarding the “grotesque and obscene silhouettes cast by the mill-pond’s curious tower at sunset” have not unnecessarily alarmed you.
Clearly, you have suffered setbacks. The early loss of notes and photographic plates during your stop in Morley Bay, must have come as a disappointment. As you’ve learned, however, the winter solstice rites observed in certain isolated New Hampshire fishing towns are not conducive to outsiders’ participation.
Overall, the Faculty is rather impressed with your persistence.
For my part, I am merely astonished at your survival. Most idle, independently wealthy young men with no particular interest (carnal or social) in the company of man, woman or beast we’ve sent into the hinterland of New England on research grants have lasted not three weeks.
Your archival researches at Sedgwick house into the curious disappearances at seven year intervals dating back to the Civil War is of a much higher than usual standard for first-year students. Your theories on Sedgwick’s blasphemous human experiments at the windowless mill-pond tower in the dark days before emancipation are rather better expressed than Dr Mansour managed in his 1919 paper on the subject. (He has, in fact, expressed envy of your prose style.) The oral histories taken from the degenerate old women of inbred backwaters and the cross-correlation of their ravings about The Masters Outside, and the Unliving Who Hunger To Feed On Human Souls, has been more than competent. Connecting that with the unholy pre-human god Yog Sothoth, and making the further connection with your (supposed) dreams of “inhuman, bestial wailing from throats that have never drawn living breath” at the mill-pond tower was inspired. (Mansour is threatening to quote from that letter extensively.)
Your success and comparative longevity has become, frankly, tedious.
Your complete undoing, however, was your discovery of the personal diaries of the last three Faculty students sent on research grants to Sedgwick’s. Forwarding them to us was an act of idiocy. Had you run, rather than trustingly awaited instruction, you might have outlived the night. Even as you read this, a few of the more depraved villagers will be preparing to sacrifice you to Yog Sothoth at moonrise.
The Ancient Master needs feeding, as you’ve noted, at seven-year intervals.
Most of the faculty is terribly sorry to waste a mind of your calibre on this exercise, but with the planets presently in alignment, there is not time to locate and despatch by express locomotive a less promising student in time to be fed into the Master’s strangely octopus-like, tentacle-encrusted beak.
Besides, your research and writings are unconscionably good. This is a competitive faculty, and I have not remained its chair for over 112 years by allowing every upstart pipsqueak who survives his first encounter with reanimate servants of the Hungry Masters a chance to return from his certain doom to feed my soul scrap by scrap to the Devouring Ones resident in Outer Darkness.
I’ve quite enough trouble keeping the daggers of that cretin Mansour from my back since he raised Servants of the First Lords in Darkness to general acclaim at last year’s staff Antichristmas party.
May the Eternal One enjoy you as a light morsel. Needless to say, your research grant is suspended herewith.
Yours in Cthullu,
HPL
Dean of Cryptoanthropology and Xenoic Studies
Faculty of New Haven University
A fictography* (with a nod to Hot Soup Girl)
All I ever wanted was to marry a nice girl, raise three kids, pilot experimental aircraft and bomb the hell out of the commies.
Not original ambitions, I’d admit, but it was the Eisenhower administration.
My own childhood’s kinda blurry. Dad, was mostly a pipe and newspaper. Mom was a towering hourglass: I’d trouble seeing past her skirts. Her face usually got blocked by her two-warhead-caps bust-line anyway. I guess that involved some pretty uncomfortable underwear, but all women sorta looked custom-moulded then. Just like all men arrived starched, pressed and pipe-smoking.
At military school I learned Dad was a psychologist and a biological determinist. Probably explains why he never spoke to me much. He invented a lie-detecting machine called the polygraph. It wasn’t a bomb, but it helped catch commie spies.
I guess I was a determinist too. I never surprised easy. Not even when I survived that test-flight crash-landing on an uncharted island.
It was a bit unusual to find a Hellenic civilisation 50 miles off the South West coast of the USA like that. Especially one that had spent 5,000 isolated from the outside world - and men. The whole place was swarming with female warriors. Greek gods visited sometimes, but only to make trouble, I reckon.
Still, it took me a while to realise I was not in Cuba. (I really didn’t know much about commies.)
The island was OK, but I didn’t fit in. What with being from the twentieth century, not worshipping incestuous gods and being male and all. So they decided to send me back with an ambassador for peace to “Man’s World” (not sure they realised we had women too, or maybe they was just thinking of President Eisenhower’s cabinet).
The best person for Peace Ambassador was gonna be a warrior, so they had a contest to pick one. They didn’t fight too bad for girls, even if their technology was all spears and shields and magic lassoes. (I thought cowboys invent lassoes, but it musta been ancient Greeks.)
The Queen’s daughter, Diana, won.
I never did think on how the Queen got herself a daughter. Or how they got along without men all that time. We didn’t have revisionist scholarship then, it was the 50s.
So, they looked at the bits of my plane and built the Princess an invisible jet. President Eisenhower should have got his hands on some Amazons instead of them left-over Nazi scientists. These gals went from chariots to stealth aircraft in an afternoon! They coulda blown up commies real good.
So, the Princess flew me back. She sure knew how to sell her message in Man’s World - what with the Stars and Stripes style one-piece bathing suit and her tall read boots and all.
After the air force psychologist - who looked a lot like my Dad - was through with me, I got assigned a desk job. Grown men shouldn’t believe in Amazons. Or lady aircraft engineers. Just determinism.
Still, working in the General’s office was fine. He got a new airforce secretary too, pretty girl with glasses. She always gave her name military-style: “Princess, Diana”. Miss Princess always seemed to have eyes for me. But I only had eyes for the Ambassador: swooping from the skies to lasso bad guys.
The rest of my airforce career was a mite strange. I got kidnapped lots. I was killed at least once. A robot-double of me married Miss Princess a couple of times, and I think I was only a clone of myself for a while. I saw the Ambassador plenty though, what with all the rescuing.
One morning I woke up and I was twenty again, and it was the Reagan administration. It was pretty crazy how the whole time-line had just rearranged itself without most folks noticing. I thought of calling my Dad - but he’d just say, “Son, it’s in your genes”. (He started talking to me after Watergate. He took that hard.) Still, I had a whole new chance to fly experimental aircraft and bomb the hell out of commies. I wound up on that dang island again, and got flown out by the Princess again. No invisible jet though - she could fly magically. I missed the jet - but they said the idea was too “phallic” and “sixties”.
I didn’t argue, not while being carried by an Amazon in a patriotic swimsuit.
Things worked out different this time round. It took another three Presidents, and the Princess Ambassador needed a business suit and a PhD in international relations, but now US foreign policy seems ready for an Amazon Warrior Ambassador for Peace.
There may be no more commies, but it’s good to see that World Peace by Armed Force can be a job for a good woman, even a princess.
I sure do miss that lasso, though.
*A fictional character’s autobiography
(more about polygraphs and dad)
All I ever wanted was to marry a nice girl, raise three kids, pilot experimental aircraft and bomb the hell out of the commies.
Not original ambitions, I’d admit, but it was the Eisenhower administration.
My own childhood’s kinda blurry. Dad, was mostly a pipe and newspaper. Mom was a towering hourglass: I’d trouble seeing past her skirts. Her face usually got blocked by her two-warhead-caps bust-line anyway. I guess that involved some pretty uncomfortable underwear, but all women sorta looked custom-moulded then. Just like all men arrived starched, pressed and pipe-smoking.
At military school I learned Dad was a psychologist and a biological determinist. Probably explains why he never spoke to me much. He invented a lie-detecting machine called the polygraph. It wasn’t a bomb, but it helped catch commie spies.
I guess I was a determinist too. I never surprised easy. Not even when I survived that test-flight crash-landing on an uncharted island.
It was a bit unusual to find a Hellenic civilisation 50 miles off the South West coast of the USA like that. Especially one that had spent 5,000 isolated from the outside world - and men. The whole place was swarming with female warriors. Greek gods visited sometimes, but only to make trouble, I reckon.
Still, it took me a while to realise I was not in Cuba. (I really didn’t know much about commies.)
The island was OK, but I didn’t fit in. What with being from the twentieth century, not worshipping incestuous gods and being male and all. So they decided to send me back with an ambassador for peace to “Man’s World” (not sure they realised we had women too, or maybe they was just thinking of President Eisenhower’s cabinet).
The best person for Peace Ambassador was gonna be a warrior, so they had a contest to pick one. They didn’t fight too bad for girls, even if their technology was all spears and shields and magic lassoes. (I thought cowboys invent lassoes, but it musta been ancient Greeks.)
The Queen’s daughter, Diana, won.
I never did think on how the Queen got herself a daughter. Or how they got along without men all that time. We didn’t have revisionist scholarship then, it was the 50s.
So, they looked at the bits of my plane and built the Princess an invisible jet. President Eisenhower should have got his hands on some Amazons instead of them left-over Nazi scientists. These gals went from chariots to stealth aircraft in an afternoon! They coulda blown up commies real good.
So, the Princess flew me back. She sure knew how to sell her message in Man’s World - what with the Stars and Stripes style one-piece bathing suit and her tall read boots and all.
After the air force psychologist - who looked a lot like my Dad - was through with me, I got assigned a desk job. Grown men shouldn’t believe in Amazons. Or lady aircraft engineers. Just determinism.
Still, working in the General’s office was fine. He got a new airforce secretary too, pretty girl with glasses. She always gave her name military-style: “Princess, Diana”. Miss Princess always seemed to have eyes for me. But I only had eyes for the Ambassador: swooping from the skies to lasso bad guys.
The rest of my airforce career was a mite strange. I got kidnapped lots. I was killed at least once. A robot-double of me married Miss Princess a couple of times, and I think I was only a clone of myself for a while. I saw the Ambassador plenty though, what with all the rescuing.
One morning I woke up and I was twenty again, and it was the Reagan administration. It was pretty crazy how the whole time-line had just rearranged itself without most folks noticing. I thought of calling my Dad - but he’d just say, “Son, it’s in your genes”. (He started talking to me after Watergate. He took that hard.) Still, I had a whole new chance to fly experimental aircraft and bomb the hell out of commies. I wound up on that dang island again, and got flown out by the Princess again. No invisible jet though - she could fly magically. I missed the jet - but they said the idea was too “phallic” and “sixties”.
I didn’t argue, not while being carried by an Amazon in a patriotic swimsuit.
Things worked out different this time round. It took another three Presidents, and the Princess Ambassador needed a business suit and a PhD in international relations, but now US foreign policy seems ready for an Amazon Warrior Ambassador for Peace.
There may be no more commies, but it’s good to see that World Peace by Armed Force can be a job for a good woman, even a princess.
I sure do miss that lasso, though.
*A fictional character’s autobiography
(more about polygraphs and dad)
Thursday, June 26, 2003
Literary legislation
In all the fuss about the Senate granting new powers to our security intelligence apparatus to hold detain people incommunicado for a week's worth of fireside chats with a retired judge, an important development in our legal landscape has gone unreported.
The Financial Services Reform Amendment Bill was introduced into Parliament this week. It contained the following at Item 14 of the Schedule of amendments to the Corporations Act 2001:
14 Subsection 766C(7)
Omit "not to be", substitute "to be, or not to be,".
The Bill has been referred to the Senate Economics Legislation Committee. Probably to consider issues of intertextuality and cliche.
And another thing: lost in translation
A story such as this is enough to afright the sternest future globe trotter who posses only a limited grasp of the languages he'll need en route (in my case, Italian).
Check it out; in particular, the comments just left me in hysterics.
(Link found on emptywishes.)
Finally ...
For the handful of fans, Naylor is up for the week.
In all the fuss about the Senate granting new powers to our security intelligence apparatus to hold detain people incommunicado for a week's worth of fireside chats with a retired judge, an important development in our legal landscape has gone unreported.
The Financial Services Reform Amendment Bill was introduced into Parliament this week. It contained the following at Item 14 of the Schedule of amendments to the Corporations Act 2001:
14 Subsection 766C(7)
Omit "not to be", substitute "to be, or not to be,".
The Bill has been referred to the Senate Economics Legislation Committee. Probably to consider issues of intertextuality and cliche.
And another thing: lost in translation
A story such as this is enough to afright the sternest future globe trotter who posses only a limited grasp of the languages he'll need en route (in my case, Italian).
Check it out; in particular, the comments just left me in hysterics.
(Link found on emptywishes.)
Finally ...
For the handful of fans, Naylor is up for the week.
Tuesday, June 24, 2003
Premature nostalgia
I have only nine weekends left in Melbourne. I’m already beginning to encounter things as if I’m saying goodbye to them, or looking at things in memory.
Not all the time, but enough.
It is forcing me to get out and do things I’ve been putting off, like going to Bennett’s Lane on a Sunday for some pretty nifty jazz. I’m glad to have done some “big” things already, like the camping expedition to Wilson’s Promontory. I also really want to take a road trip out into the spa and wine country before I leave, too. (Suggestions anyone? Too late in the year for penguin watching?)
I am certainly going to miss a city riddled with interesting little bars and eateries. As my first mass e-mail to friends on arrival put it:
“Greeting from Melbourne, where the weather is variable and every vacant shop front has been turned into a cafe/retro-bar! … this town is full of little bars. Funky little bars. It was put to me over a drink the other day that this is the cheapest place in Australia to get a liquor license ... If your band can't get a gig ? you may as well open your own bar. And people do.”
I’m also going to miss trams: their cheerful, patriotic green and gold; the low, warning growl and impatient clack-clack of their impending arrival. All right, they’re slow for the suburban commute, but that’s what the trains are for. They’re a damn nifty way of darting about the inner city, though.
I’m going to miss the big-city but kinda-relaxed pace of life here, the prettiness of the gold-rush era Victorian buildings, the gorgeous night view across the Yarra to the city (preferably with your back to the Casino, but anyway). It’s a town that feels extremely comfortable to me, but one that always remains smart and exciting and full of possibility. Strangely, I’m less concerned about leaving old and new friends. In the age of blogging and e-mail I needn’t really lose contact while I’m away – meeting for a chat, a meal or a movie will just have to wait a while.
It’ll be sad to leave after a little less than a year, but it’s not as though I won’t have the chance to come back. What you miss about a city – like a person, I suppose – is the small things: an intangible sense of place, the mosaic in your head made from little pieces of atmosphere and experience. But that mosaic, perhaps the most valuable part of Melbourne for me, I’m allowed to take with me.
I have only nine weekends left in Melbourne. I’m already beginning to encounter things as if I’m saying goodbye to them, or looking at things in memory.
Not all the time, but enough.
It is forcing me to get out and do things I’ve been putting off, like going to Bennett’s Lane on a Sunday for some pretty nifty jazz. I’m glad to have done some “big” things already, like the camping expedition to Wilson’s Promontory. I also really want to take a road trip out into the spa and wine country before I leave, too. (Suggestions anyone? Too late in the year for penguin watching?)
I am certainly going to miss a city riddled with interesting little bars and eateries. As my first mass e-mail to friends on arrival put it:
“Greeting from Melbourne, where the weather is variable and every vacant shop front has been turned into a cafe/retro-bar! … this town is full of little bars. Funky little bars. It was put to me over a drink the other day that this is the cheapest place in Australia to get a liquor license ... If your band can't get a gig ? you may as well open your own bar. And people do.”
I’m also going to miss trams: their cheerful, patriotic green and gold; the low, warning growl and impatient clack-clack of their impending arrival. All right, they’re slow for the suburban commute, but that’s what the trains are for. They’re a damn nifty way of darting about the inner city, though.
I’m going to miss the big-city but kinda-relaxed pace of life here, the prettiness of the gold-rush era Victorian buildings, the gorgeous night view across the Yarra to the city (preferably with your back to the Casino, but anyway). It’s a town that feels extremely comfortable to me, but one that always remains smart and exciting and full of possibility. Strangely, I’m less concerned about leaving old and new friends. In the age of blogging and e-mail I needn’t really lose contact while I’m away – meeting for a chat, a meal or a movie will just have to wait a while.
It’ll be sad to leave after a little less than a year, but it’s not as though I won’t have the chance to come back. What you miss about a city – like a person, I suppose – is the small things: an intangible sense of place, the mosaic in your head made from little pieces of atmosphere and experience. But that mosaic, perhaps the most valuable part of Melbourne for me, I’m allowed to take with me.
Poets kick novelist butt
Work is swamping me at present, so I offer something amusing I found on the web recently, from one of those irritatingly talented New Yorker writers, Rebecca Mead. When you’re a man’s man working in the unclaimed wilderness of the American social-realist novel, what’s the worst thing that could happen to your self esteem?
“There are very few places in America where it can be claimed definitively that poets kick ass, and one of them is the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference … This was amply demonstrated at this year's poets-versus-fiction-writers football game, a regular fixture in which those who traffic in metre and rhyme go head to head on the Bread Loaf meadow with crafters of experimental, semi-autobiographical narratives.
Granted, the poets had the advantage of including among their number Matt Miller, an aspiring writer of lyric verse who happened to have been a defensive starter at Yale five years ago. They also enjoyed a fine showing from their quarterback, a gangly twenty-nine-year-old named Spencer Short, whose recently published début collection, "Tremolo," brings to mind both T. S. Eliot and McSweeney's ("One need only stand in the aisle / marked Produce to understand how the wan light / obscuring the bruised fruit makes all / of our decisions more difficult"). …
"We totally owned the game" was the verdict delivered later that evening by one of the poets, an earnest young man named Chad Reynolds, who teaches English to eighth graders in Cincinnati, and has not yet decided whether to publish under Chad, Charles, or C. L. Reynolds. The literary-fiction writers were crushed. It's humiliating enough to be beaten; but how much more humiliating to be beaten by the only genre that generates even lower book sales than yours.”
- copyright 2001, Rebecca Mead
Check out the full story over here.
Ah, writers and sport. All strangely reminiscent of “The Tournament”.
Work is swamping me at present, so I offer something amusing I found on the web recently, from one of those irritatingly talented New Yorker writers, Rebecca Mead. When you’re a man’s man working in the unclaimed wilderness of the American social-realist novel, what’s the worst thing that could happen to your self esteem?
“There are very few places in America where it can be claimed definitively that poets kick ass, and one of them is the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference … This was amply demonstrated at this year's poets-versus-fiction-writers football game, a regular fixture in which those who traffic in metre and rhyme go head to head on the Bread Loaf meadow with crafters of experimental, semi-autobiographical narratives.
Granted, the poets had the advantage of including among their number Matt Miller, an aspiring writer of lyric verse who happened to have been a defensive starter at Yale five years ago. They also enjoyed a fine showing from their quarterback, a gangly twenty-nine-year-old named Spencer Short, whose recently published début collection, "Tremolo," brings to mind both T. S. Eliot and McSweeney's ("One need only stand in the aisle / marked Produce to understand how the wan light / obscuring the bruised fruit makes all / of our decisions more difficult"). …
"We totally owned the game" was the verdict delivered later that evening by one of the poets, an earnest young man named Chad Reynolds, who teaches English to eighth graders in Cincinnati, and has not yet decided whether to publish under Chad, Charles, or C. L. Reynolds. The literary-fiction writers were crushed. It's humiliating enough to be beaten; but how much more humiliating to be beaten by the only genre that generates even lower book sales than yours.”
- copyright 2001, Rebecca Mead
Check out the full story over here.
Ah, writers and sport. All strangely reminiscent of “The Tournament”.
Monday, June 23, 2003
Andrew McGahan, “Last Drinks”
Where does corruption start? At what point does playing the system or cutting corners become criminal? What explains the progress from citizen to underworld denizen?
For a journalist and a restaurateur in Brisbane in the late seventies, the “when” comes with an effort to get a liquor license from a corrupt government; the “why” is simple human weakness – the bond of their incipient alcoholism.
The central concern of “Last Drinks” is human weakness: not frailty, or fallibility - but the crippling absence of moral strength. The protagonist has an unflinching perspective on his own weakness, one that gathers depth and poignancy as the novel progresses. He should not be a sympathetic character perhaps, but his failures of strength, of good judgement, of any ability to act, sting acutely each time.
The novel is set in Queensland, in a time after an Inquiry into official corruption, an Inquiry loosely modelled on the Fitzgerald Royal Commission. It is the story of a bit player in the days of officially sanctioned, but illegal, all-night bars, unlicensed casinos and brothels – and the scale of corruption that lay behind these visible, small-time rackets.
The prose is taught, sparse, the words of a man who has hidden from his past and is being dragged back to it - back to Brisbane - to confront how he failed his friends, his lover and in his career. A key part of the novel’s success is its claustrophobic atmosphere and mounting sense of the inevitable. Much of the tension comes from how small a world the narrator inhabits, a world as confined as that of a Gothic short story: there are probably fewer than fifteen named characters, and the novel hinges on the relationships between just six.
Its other triumph is a literary, yet unromantic description of the nature of alcoholism: the creeping addiction, the way it robs a person of dignity, judgement, even time; but its power to fuel a sense of boundless possibility, to free the afflicted from boredom or culpability, to make every fool a wit.
It is no accident that it is an alcoholic, a man who understands living in a false ecstatic state and the painful waking to his own degradation, is the one who tells the story of an official culture grown cancerous with corruption.
I found it an extremely well-crafted novel (as one would expect from the author of the award-winning “Praise”), but wonder about the effectiveness of its somewhat “Heart of Darkness” ending and even perhaps about the depth of his female characters. There are few women, each with an interesting story, but they seem more literary ciphers than people. Still, it has a well-paced plot and an unflinching, unromantic, but quietly human quality that I found compelling.
Where does corruption start? At what point does playing the system or cutting corners become criminal? What explains the progress from citizen to underworld denizen?
For a journalist and a restaurateur in Brisbane in the late seventies, the “when” comes with an effort to get a liquor license from a corrupt government; the “why” is simple human weakness – the bond of their incipient alcoholism.
The central concern of “Last Drinks” is human weakness: not frailty, or fallibility - but the crippling absence of moral strength. The protagonist has an unflinching perspective on his own weakness, one that gathers depth and poignancy as the novel progresses. He should not be a sympathetic character perhaps, but his failures of strength, of good judgement, of any ability to act, sting acutely each time.
The novel is set in Queensland, in a time after an Inquiry into official corruption, an Inquiry loosely modelled on the Fitzgerald Royal Commission. It is the story of a bit player in the days of officially sanctioned, but illegal, all-night bars, unlicensed casinos and brothels – and the scale of corruption that lay behind these visible, small-time rackets.
The prose is taught, sparse, the words of a man who has hidden from his past and is being dragged back to it - back to Brisbane - to confront how he failed his friends, his lover and in his career. A key part of the novel’s success is its claustrophobic atmosphere and mounting sense of the inevitable. Much of the tension comes from how small a world the narrator inhabits, a world as confined as that of a Gothic short story: there are probably fewer than fifteen named characters, and the novel hinges on the relationships between just six.
Its other triumph is a literary, yet unromantic description of the nature of alcoholism: the creeping addiction, the way it robs a person of dignity, judgement, even time; but its power to fuel a sense of boundless possibility, to free the afflicted from boredom or culpability, to make every fool a wit.
It is no accident that it is an alcoholic, a man who understands living in a false ecstatic state and the painful waking to his own degradation, is the one who tells the story of an official culture grown cancerous with corruption.
I found it an extremely well-crafted novel (as one would expect from the author of the award-winning “Praise”), but wonder about the effectiveness of its somewhat “Heart of Darkness” ending and even perhaps about the depth of his female characters. There are few women, each with an interesting story, but they seem more literary ciphers than people. Still, it has a well-paced plot and an unflinching, unromantic, but quietly human quality that I found compelling.
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