A New Year's Self-portrait.

It’s hot, hot, hot! Clothes are worn only when absolutely necessary, but since we have excellent privacy, the only people we are likely to shock are each other.I took this self-portrait on New Year’s morning. Last night we went to dinner with friends after wisely avoiding the New Year’s Eve drunks the night before. The meal featured a pork-loin, marinated and roasted in wine, porcellum oenococtum, an ancient Roman recipe by Apicius, b. 25 bc. It was to die for! I wish all our dear lj friends the happiest of happy New Years.

Ho-ho-hum!

This picture sums-up for me that strange, timeless, kind of run down, zoned-out space between Christmas and New Year’s Day. We spotted him while we were on our search for the entrance to the water-lily ponds at Eastlakes. We still haven’t located it.I saw a documentary about the Mexican freetailed bats of Austin Texas and their migratory flights.honoriartist and our other Austin friends, why haven’t you told us about this amazing natural phenomenon? Are you so used to this spectacle that you take it for granted? I guess we get fairly blasé about our giant fruit bats. There were some good shots of Austin as well, so now I have an idea of what your city looks like.I’ve been feeling a bit tired and irritable. I don’t feel like cooking, which is unusual and reading, which I love, is making me doze off after about ten minutes. I suppose it’s a small dose of post-Christmas ennui. Roll on 2004! Surely the world will have a better year than it did in 2003?

I went to see...

I went to see The Lord of the Rings - the Return of the King today. It didn’t start until we had had at least a half an hour of ear-splitting commercials, which added extra strain to an already bladder-bursting experience. People could be seen in silhouette climbing over crowds and partitions throughout the last third of the film in a desperate struggle, as intense as any on the screen, to have a piss.And so to the movie itself. First the bad news: the Elfy bits with Elrond, Galadriel and Arwen are as boring as ever. Every time someone other than Sam or Gollum makes a speech longer than ”Let’s go kill the bastards”, there is much knitting of eyebrows and lowering of vocal registers and it’s all terribly sententious just like the book. A black vs white theme could be drawn from the movie but I suspect that Jackson just had hundreds of Maoris available whose exotic looks when compared to the white main cast allowed him to differentiate their looks from the men and hobbits when the orc make-up went on. This is possibly the most disturbing aspect of the three films, its potential for racist exploitation by idiots.Now the good news: the big battle is as exciting as anything ever put on screen. The acting of Elijah Wood, Sean Astin and Andy Serkin is excellent. The fantasy architecture, especially of Minas Tireth is everything for which a fan of fantasy architecture could wish. Shelob the spider is truly frightening and the climactic scenes on Mount Doom are an appropriate and thrilling climax to the story. The scenes with the oliphaunts are eye-popping.Do, however, have a whizz just before the movie starts and I would recommend that you don’t buy a soft-drink from the candy counter,The verdict on the trilogy as a whole: though it deletes a few fairly tedious bits, (Tom Bombadil and the scouring of the shire, which, while touching, is anti-climactic), the public got what it paid for, an as faithful as possible film adaptation of an epic cultural phenomenon.Like any epic, (The Bible, The Lion King) it is possible to extract dodgy supremacist messages from the story. Some people would lumber poor old Tolkein with the false philosophic burden of “Defender of European Values against the Encroaching Tainters of the Race”. Actually , with his son fighting in France, it was the encroachment of German facists and their Italian and Spanish allies that he was thinking of.A re-emerging bunch of Euro-neo facists have the usual wooly, absurd philosophic baggage which seems to be a nauseous blend of Opus Dei (renowned for its facist sympathies) and what they term archeo-futurism and plain old-fashioned racism, (we’re being infested with Chinese!). The words, as always, are slightly different but the stench remains the same. And, as ever, people of conscience are not fooled.Fans of the movies will be blissed-out.

Christmas Jingle.

Merry berry, holly jolly, jolly berry, merry holly, jolly jelly, jelly belly, holy holly, jingle jolly, holy merry, beery belly, merry jelly, holy horror, jingle jerry, merry merry. berry merry Christmas to you all. God bless us every one! With love to all our lj mates from Bill and Ian.

Pizza and the Alexandria Summer Movie Festival

When Ian says “Let’s have Pizza!”, he doesn’t mean call Pizza Hut or Dominoes. He doesn’t mean take out a frozen base and cover it, either. He means he’d like one of my specials from scratch, you know, with yeast, flour, gluten and the full performance. So, since it is my sole duty in life to spoil him rotten, that is what he gets, with buffalo mozarella, two other cheeses, artichoke, mushroom, pepperoni, sun-dried tomato, anchovy and olives. He even left some for me!It’s been so stinking hot this week, with 150 percent humidity, that it hasn’t really been outdoor weather. So it’s been summer movies at home festival time. I’ve seen two superb films and one sort of good film this week. The first was “Amacord” which I’ve already talked about and which went straight into my all-time favourites treasure-chest along with several other Fellini favoutites. It joins ” 8 1/2”, “Juliet of the Spirits”, “la Strada” and “Nights of Cabiria” in my never to be forgotten basket. Then came another film which I’d heard of, but never made much effort to see. More fool me! It was the astonishing Yugoslav film, “Underground”. What a funny, horrifying, moving extravaganza. It, like Julie Taymor’s “Titus”, owes a lot to Fellini but in a different way. “Titus” takes a lot from Fellini’s extravagant visual style but is cool and ironical. “Underground” also references Fellini, but it is hot and humane. It’s an attempt to explain and celebrate the passionate, loyal and frequently murderous soul of the Balkans. It also barged straight into my list of all-time favourite films.“The Hours” was a less satisfying experience for me. Nicole was fine but role of Virginia Woolf was underwritten. Virginia Woolf was a lot more than a mental-illness. Julianne Moore was better, (I’ve admired her ever since seeing her perform on TV the Beckett piece in which all you see is her mouth). Her scene with the always excellent Meryl Streep was very good. I’ve loved la Streep ever since “Evil Angels” (US title “A Cry in the Night). Meryl was criticised here for having a lousy Australian accent. What these morons failed to realise was that Lindy Chamberlain was originally from New Zealand and that Meryl impersonated her with a FLAWLESS Kiwi accent.However my favourite moment in “The Hours” was the small, heartrending cameo by Toni Collette, my favourite Australian actress. Nicole can be good, Rachel Griffiths always impresses, Judy Davis is a very distinguished actress, but for me Toni Collette is always perfection.At least this movie has encouraged me to embark on a detailed biography of Virginia Woolf, and to promise myself to re-read some of her novels. I suspect I was too young the first time round.One good effect of the lousy weather is that the birds have been very active. I saw nine magpies in a tiny park yesterday and the koels have been in a noisy delerium for days. The insects have been amazing too, as androkles’ post will affirm

Cross-genres and other ramblings.

Yesterday, while Ian was otherwise engaged, I decided to indulge in the guilty pleasure of a schlock-horror movie. This one was a retro-70’s style number called ”Wrong Turn”. It was, as expected, quite woeful but what intrigued me was the sub-genre cross-references. It was sort of “Deliverance meets the Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets the Blair Witch Project meets Halloween”. I think it’s time for some bolder cross-referencing. How about Mozart meets Tobe Hooper in “The Magic Austrian Chainflute Massacre”? Any other suggestions? I watched “Duck Soup” as a second feature as an antidote.Yesterday we had a broad daylight shotgun holdup at a local mall. What’s going on here? Do we want to end up in Detroit? Not so many years ago, the only people in Sydney who had handguns were the police and half a dozen career criminals. Now they are everywhere, and the courts are handing out sentences for gun-dealing such as $3000 fines or three months imprisonment. I’d give them 20 years.I don’t know what induced me to choose it, as I have almost zero interest in Sadism, but this week I read Neil Schaeffer’s biography of the Marquis de Sade. It was fascinating. He was a childish, infuriating but terribly interesting man who lived through experiences that would have killed anyone else but this uniquely egocentric personality. Not for the squeamish however.I hear that there has been a PBS broadcast in the U.S. of “Angels in America”. Was it a good production? I missed the reputedly excellent Sydney production and would appreciate any feedback on the broadcast.The vile, snide yuppie-queens next door are having their roof replaced so its time to head off before I come down with a hammering-induced migraine.

A BIG SURPRISE IN MY SHORTS

We had set ourselves up under a shady ledge on the sand near the deserted, beautiful rockpools and inlets of Boat Harbour. I had got out a book and was beginning to to happily doze off, lying on my all-too-well padded tummy. Suddenly Ian came up and cried, “Oh Bill, LOOK!” Instantly I was aware that I had been joined by something that was on the back of my thigh and was intruding itself into my bright red shorts. My legs flailed wildly, (giving my foot a minor injury against a sandstone outcrop) and I swatted at my legs and buttocks like a man possessed. The friendly, fearless personage you see pictured life-sized above, scurried away, wondering what all the fuss was about. Ian had taken his picture previously, about a hundred metres down the track.I’m glad to be back on lj. Ian had been quite ill for a few weeks and then had a computer crisis, so I’d had a period of limited access and I’d been a bit down myself. I sometimes have doubts about how well I’m doing as a carer and supporter of this wonderful man. I should have greater reserves of calm and stamina, but I’m afraid that sometimes I let things get to me. A couple of night ago, Sydney’s wonderful and unique SBS channel showed Fellini’s “Amacord”. It is the only major Fellini film I had never managed to see and, Oh how worth the wait it was. I adored it! I know recent revelations about him paint a not-very-flattering portrait of the old maestro, but whatever his collaborators went through, it was worth it. What unalloyed joy his films have afforded me through the years. Once again a magical ship loomed out of the darkness as it does in so many of his films, once again he thrilled me like no other has ever managed to do. (Certainly not James Cameron, Kate, Leonardo and a squillion bucks in “Titanically Fatuous”).Hope to be talking to y’all a bit more regularly for a while.

Helen & Charlotte Etc.

Still unwell with the same lurgi as Ian but I haven’t posted in days so I will offer a couple of random thoughts.First, having seen Charlotte Rampling in “Sous le Sable” and Helen Mirren in “Prime Suspect 6” this week, it is my contention that both actresses in their late 50’s have more sex-appeal in their little fingers than a busload of Britney Spears or Kylies or Beyonces.Secondly, of all the American expressions that have recently found a place in the Australian vernacular, the cruelest, most demeaning and inhumane has to be the repulsively smug term “loser”. Thirdly, please American friends, keep Mr Bush at home and remove him from office as soon as possible.The “reductio ad absurdam” of his administration’s policies would see only a very rich group of people left, inhabiting a wasteland.He seems to me to be capable of making the world of Samuel Beckett a reality.

Me in the backyard

Spring weather

An Afternoon at the Opera

Iv’e just watched a production by the Canadian Opera Company of “ Leporello’s Don Giovanni “, an innovative, exciting production which consists of all the scenes from “ Don Giovanni “ in which Leporello participates or which he witnesses. The same (very sexy ) singer appears as both Leporello and the Don , sometimes singing in duet with himself ( the Don is the subject of a black and white film being shown by Leporello).The women watching Leporello’s film all looked rather like the Duchess of Windsor, and the staging of the filmed performances was very clever.It was the best filmed production of an opera I’ve seen since the San Francisco Opera’s “Mefistofile’ and a very high-tech version of “The Damnation of Faust” by (I think) a German company whose name escapes me. There is also a very funny “Ring Cycle” showing on the tube at the moment, one act at a time. Wotan is a bikie, Seigfreid is a hash-smoking yahoo slob, Mime seems to be the proprietor of a greasy spoon café/ garage. I can’t wait to see what they make of Fafner the dragon. Except maybe for “Tristan and Isolde”, I think the only way Wagner can still be presented is as satire, as in the famous Boulez/ Chereau production. The man, his philosophy and his stage history are too repulsive to be presented without directorial comment for a modern audience unless they happen to be Germans in the 70+ age bracket.The Australian Opera, a few years ago had the good fortune to acquire the services of the wonderful Simone Young, who brought us productions of difficult , challenging works such as “ The Lady Macbeth of Mtensk” by Schostokovitch and “ Lulu “ by Berg. She lifted orchestral standards by enormous leaps. She. of course, had to go. “ Too expensive a vision, too challenging, too....well it’s not what we’re used to! “ So its back to Butterfly, Boheme, Traviata and Mikado for us thank you very much, and the blue-rinse set is able to re-affirms its cultural dominance, the corporate sector is comforted and we can all slip back into our semi-comas. We may have a great building, but Canada is miles ahead in spirit and adventurousness.Australian artistic boards chew up and spit out talented people, The treatment that was meted out to the great Australian choreographer Meryl Tankard and to the American genius director Peter Sellars are two recent embarrassing examples.Having priced themselves out of the reach of “just folks”, most tickets for opera and ballet are snapped up in blocks by corporate types with little appreciation for the arts but a great appreciation for being seen in all the right places. How do I know they have little appreciation for the arts? They behave like they’e at home watching”Big Brother”.Anyway, congratulations to the Canadians on a fabulous production.

Up and Running Again

Today was the first time for a while that both of us have been well enough to get out and about. The pic is of me midst a cloud of begonias at the Botanical Gardens. The day was a Sydney spring jewel - hot sun, cool breeze, ultramarine sky. Everwhere you could hear people saying, “ What a GLORIOUS day ! “The Opera House looked pristine from the Tarpeian Rock in the gardens.So this is my ” nice “ post after my last two political posts which bored or offended some of my friends but made me feel SWELL !Religion next......bring it on ! I enjoy snapping at those who think blogs should be like a Victorian hostess’s dinner conversation:” no politics, no religion, no sex....sorry, lots of sex”I guess I lied, I’m not really “ nice “.

Morning Mantra for Australians

We are all very brave,We are all very generous,We are all very open-hearted,And welcoming.We are all great at sports,We all love sport, We can all play sport, Better than anyone elseWe are all tolerant,Our contribution To the ArtsIs unparalleled.We can drinkEnormous amountsOf beer with noDeleterious effect.We need to be told,How we needTo be toldHow wonderful we areOne dayWe’ll be betterEven thanThe Americans

Australia - I'm standing in it!

Having expressed my disgust at the rapacious foreign policies of the US of A, perhaps it is time to turn a jaundiced eye to the politics of my own country and the once fairly congenial but now increasingly cringe-inducing society of which I am a part.George W., in a statement of remarkable stupidity and insensitivity, has dubbed Australia not America’s Deputy Sheriff in S.E. Asia, but the Sheriff of S.E.Asia. This was, presumably, an endorsement of Australia’s unquestioning loyalty to all US policies. Australia is indeed galloping down a path which I fear may see it end up as a tame tin-pot dictatorship. The loathsome Prime Minister of Oz, John Howard, (they can never get his name right in Washington), has done more to undermine Australian political culture than anyone else in the country’s history. Ever concentrating power in his own person, he has repeatedly usurped the functions of the Governor-General, the official head of state and the ministries of his own Cabinet. More and more ministries have been run, de-facto, from his office. It is now fairly widely realised that the recently demoted Health Minister was not really in charge, but the Prime-Minister’s office was. The same applies to the Defence Department and the Foreign Affairs Department. Parliament has long since been reduced to a talkfest, but at least cabinet used to have a strong voice. Howard has reduced most of his cabinet colleagues to minion status. He appoints a Neanderthal to the Environment portfolio and an ineffective, red-nosed buffoon to the Attorney Generalship. Policy is only to be extensively discussed on user-friendly shock-jock radio. Quality education is not to be squandered on the hoi-polloi. The poor, the vulnerable and the disadvantaged are to be severely punished to demonstrate solidarity with the wealthy. Particularly repulsive political head-kickers have been assigned this happy task.He has surrounded himself with a cloud (170-ish?) of ministerial advisors whose job it is to:intervene in other ministries;make sure that news he doesn’t wish to hear does not officially reach him;make sure no unfortunate outcome or dishonest political act can be sheeted home to him. (”Nobody told me !” )On assuming office he emphasised that a rigorous code of ministerial conduct would be enforced. His administration has been notable for scandals and improprieties on an unprecedented scale. He also pledged that Aboriginal reconciliation would be the major focus of his present term. This process has now officially died of neglect.How then, you ask, has this man managed to stay in power? There are three factors:He has claimed credit for a good economic performance which was built on the reforms of his predecessor and on the vagaries of world economic cycles over which he has no control, but which have favoured him.He has a demoralised and ineffective opposition. So efficiently has he shifted Australian politics to the right that his opposition has difficulty establishing a distinct voice.He has perfected the politics of fear. He promotes fear of refugees, of gays, of unions, of anything that didn’t emerge from a nuclear family surrounded by a white picket fence.I can’t think of an Australian politician that I have hated before, but this man and his trained media parrots, I TRULY DETEST ! ! ! End of rant.

It’s off...

It’s official, Arnold Schwarzeneger is Governor of California.Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha !!!Couldn’t happen to a nicer place, (Well Montana or Texas maybe).To quote the immortal Lina Lamont: “ Whassamadder with the way I tawk? Ya think I’m DUMB or sumpin? “Even Reagan had a long-standing involvement in politcs and even he never made a movie as bad as “Hercules in New York” It makes me feel so proud of our own State Governor, Dr Marie Bashir, internationally respected psychologist and humanitarian of Lebanese descent. As sukk said in his journal, what happened to the moral outrage that boiled within Republican breasts during the Clinton era?Too funny to be tragic, too tragic to be funny

Not the b...

Not the best couple of days.androkles continues in poor health and is very low on the mood-swing meter. The tempest in a teapot that he got into on another person’s journal, which was in part a result of his own testy mood but mostly the result a plain nastiness from some fuckchop he has had no previous interaction with, hasn’t been helpful. He was off to the eye-hospital early this morning to see if they can provide some treatment for the painful aftermath of shingles in and around his eye.He needs a lot of support, both physical and spiritual and after my recent bout of ill health. I’ve been feeling that I haven’t been up to par on both fronts. This has caused me to be feeling a bit low too.I sometimes feel that I’m not doing as well as I should but I realise that feeling guilty isn’t going to help and that no-one else is likely to volunteer for the position. Besides, cuddle-wise, the job has its compensations.All the more reason to be thankful to all of you who provided me with such fun in response to the recent “brush with fame” game . It lifted the spirits.I’m finding the California recall saga nearly incredible but then I remember they made Reagan Governor, then President. Arnie wants to savagely cut-back on spending,(read welfare, services, poverty programmes), which will translate as more poverty, more drugs, more crime, more high-security enclaves for the rich, even higher incarceration rates if that’s possible and even more money for cash-strapped superstars). The cost of his teeth alone could pay off the national debt of a small country. In the Us, as here, it seems that when an administration finds that a state or country is living way beyond its means, the first resort is to whack the poor, not the grasping CEO’s or bloated fat-cats. Why shouldn’t the wealthy pay proportionally more for the provision of services to the public?. It’s the same public that comprise the market from which they derive their often obscene benefits.That’s all for now because, as we’ve been told, bellyaching is Bad !!! (Actually, from my observations, it is one of lj’s most beneficial, cathartic, therapeutic functions.)

Awards Night

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the “Billies”. The standard of name-dropping was extremely high and the judges, as usual, were hard pressed to choose the winners. The judges were undecided whether to have the awards hosted by an unfunny American comedian, or an Australian drunk and in the end decided, mercifully, to dispense with both. So without further ado:The “ No-one Will Be Able To Top This “ Award: goes to kugelblitz, for “I Am Elvis’s Cousin”.The “Exotic Encounters of the First Kind” Award: goes to hlee for “Edward Gorey In Furs”.The “ Condoleeza Rice-Bubble-Butt-Crack-Den” Award for a Political Brush: goes to kugelblitz for “Unstained Adventures With Bill Clinton”.The “Jaw-Dropping Confession” Award: goes to ruralrob for “I Was A Spear Carrier for Joan Sutherland”.The “Oh, He Was Just Some Guy I Knew” Award: goes to susandennis for “I Didn’t Exactly Tell Tou Anything About William H. Macy’s Penis” (an out of competition entry on her own journal ) (some several hours later)Well it’s very, very late Ladies and Gentlemen, and I’m pleased to see that everyone won one of these beautiful awards. I’m sure many of you will be able to think of a number of creative uses for it. Thank-you, and you just keep lovin’ each other, y’hear?

Fobias and Phame

Because we have been unwell, our lives have been a bit dreary and housebound lately and I’ve been wondering what in the hell I have to talk about, as I haven’t done anything interesting. Reading my friends entries though, I have been thinking about two phenomena.The first is phobia, thanks to quetzalcoatl. I told him about a young woman who became hysterical at the sight of a feather. It’s the apparent irrationality of phobias that is so fascinating. My phobias are arachnophobia and acrophobia.I used to be so afraid of spiders that a little money-spider on a fence would make me break out in a cold sweat. This fear was much reduced when I remembered what triggered it: having a large back spider held up to my face by two big boys when I was about four. (Incidentally, arachnophobia is not so irrational in Sydney, we have the world’s deadliest spider (Atrax robustus) here. It’s not seen all that often around here fortunately. Recently an effective anti-venene was developed. My other fear is heights. Sometimes I’ve just had to bite the bullet and plough ahead despite my fears, having had no real choice but to proceed. Thus I’ve driven over high, narrow passes in the Hindu-Kush and the Swiss Alps, but I can’t say I found it very enjoyable.I think I’ve recently realised what sparked my fear of heights. One stimulus was watching firework rockets take off when I was only about three. They made me feel as if they were going to pull me up into the sky with them. The other was that my grandmother, a la Wacko Jacko, used to hold me out over the second-floor balcony to show me to passers-by. Maybe now that phobia will lessen too.The other thing I’ve been thinking about is celebrity and modern society’s obsession with it. This started me thinking of my brushes with fame. For a true brush with fame you have to have spoken to, or been near enough to touch the famous one. My brushes have been with:Vivien Leigh - she visited an amateur performance I was in and was EXTREMELY gracious.Deborah Kerr - You’d never believe it.Princess Anne - I was seated behind her at the opera after buying late rush tickets. I was very scruffily dressed, she had very expensive skin. It wouldn’t happen today.Bernadette Peters- I spoke to her and Sondheim at the stage-door after “Into the Woods”.Stephen SondheimAnna Russell - Late in life she toured outback NSW in a show called “The Last Gasp of Anna Russell with Resuscitations by Colin Croft”. I spent much of one week-end with her. She was one of the funniest people I ever came across and she could turn her face inside-out, or pin you to a wall with a raised eyebrow,So instead of a rather po-faced, serious conversation on celebrity, let’s play “My Brushes With Fame”

Anne Rice and other dishes

I woke up this morning to an amazingly lurid sunrise. androkles got up and took a photo. Check it out.To my shame I have succumbed to the temptation of taking out of the library another book in the fast-read franchise that is Anne Rice. This one is called “Blackwater Farm”.The Usual Suspects, the usual formula, I have composed a doggerel, herewith:Vice, Anne RiceIs all very nice,But your character, LestatIs a twat.His addictionTo pederastyLeaves the kiddiesFeeling pastyThe godlike powers Conferred by his fallSeem devoted to purposesRather banal.As a penance, I have taken out the rather formidable looking “Mason & Dixon” by Thomas Pynchon. That’ll teach me! I read “Gravity’s Rainbow” about thirty years ago but I confess I have no memory of the book except that it was rather difficult, and I have the vague image of the very tip of a WMD rocket about to fall on the top of someone’s head. I have just seen the first episode of the American series of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”. I know it’s set in the States but in what century? Just as well all us gay guys are wealthy. It gives us so much freedom with image management.I’m slowly getting better, but the trouble with any other illness for a diabetic is that it throws your control regime all over the place.

IR...

I’ve been missing from lj for a few days because I’ve been feeling very ordinary and about as alert as the first summer blowflies (blowies) , which have begun to appear with the first heat. They are immensely slow and stupid and irritating if you are trying to take a nap. You are faced with the prospect of poison , squashed blowfly or chasing them physically out of the house.While I’ve been hors de combat, I,ve been exposed to more than the usual amount of television. It reduces everything to the same value: an atrocity in Africa is given the same weight and excitement value as a new snack.Trying to stay informed without becoming depressed can be difficult. Sometimes I like turning the programmes into a continuous opera, with basso-profundo arias for right-wing politicians and counter-tenor ariettas for soft-drink and snack-foods. Appearances by Arnold Schwarzenegger have severely strained my heldentenor. I was very moved by my rendition for John Ashcroft and Osama Bin Laden of the duet from “I Purtitani” There is also an extended coluratura aria for Prime Minister before parliament, The words are a bit repetetive and drained of meaning, but the florid decoration of the vocal line seems to thrill the nation. The words go: “Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker....(variously).I am a bit worried about the large cracks in the walls of our old house. They are making me feel a bit Edgar Alan Poe. For now though, hiking the mortgage enough to do much about it is out of the questiont. I may have to change my name to Roderick.

"The Birds" - Again.

Feeding an Australian MagpieWe went to see my mother, Alice, at her new place in a luxury retirement village. It has pools, cinemas, bowling-greens, beauticians and a restaurant/ bar. I hope they tighten the security though, she still seems to be able to leave quite easily!It is built on the site of an historic convict mutiny. I hope it doesn’t give her ideas. While we were there, I made friends with the handsome fellow you see above. There is a pair of them nesting nearby, and they’re very hungry. They are so bold they will come in through her patio door, looking for food.Alice lives next door to her sister and her husband, my father’s brother (which makes three of my cousins, genetically, more like siblings). She seems very happy there.

Someone...

Someone was talking about what they believed. I’m a bit sick of belief. I want to know what you know, what you’ve experienced, what you feel, what you think, what you deduce, even what you intuit., but I no longer much care what you believe. I’m over it. I think belief is what you get when “magical thinking” congeals.On a lighter note, there’s an utterly hilarious satirical news programme showing on the public broadcaster here in Sydney. It’s called “CNNNN” Its sends up CNN, Fox, in fact any commercial network news. My favourites are the “ Dow-Jones Dancers” who spell out the market trends, Busby Berkely style. The newscast has its own band, a la Letterman. Its advertising is for a burger called Fungry’s which features “Patty the Cow”. The is also a range of cosmetic products called “Esteem, Because you need it!” Last night it sent up Australia’s infantile obsession with sport. Donald Bradman, a nasty man who played cricket very well, has, with the help of our Prime Minister been put on the fast track to secular sainthood. Thousands of dollars have been raised to return some of his “baggy-green” sports caps to Australia, CNNNN launched an appeal to “Bring back the great man’s sock” ....and all the while that little line of text at the bottom drivelled on and on. I love it.Ian’s gone off collecting and photographing shells. I have an extremely glamorous load of washing to do but not before a nice cup of tea. I must get out over the weekend, the wildflowers the other day were breathtaking.

Hibernating

The computer mouse was playing up yesterday amd I was sick, so no post. Since I was diagnosed as diabetic a couple of years ago I have learnt that the simplest viral infection can leave you feeling like you’ve been on the wrong end of a rhino stampede. Ian’s been sick too and is still suffering some effects of the shingles, so we were two sore, grumpy bunnies. We took to bed for most of the day.I think I’ll spend a quiet afternoon watching “The Two Towers”. I enjoyed it more than I expected at the cinema and thought it much better than ”The Fellowship of the Ring”. In fact I have enjoyed the movies more than the often turgid and, to my mind, rather over-rated books. (Yes, I know what an amazing achievement they are but iI must confess to having been more than a teensy bit bored.)I saw the final part of the excellent but very depressing BBC doco-series about terrorism. This episode was about state-sponsored terrorism. Iran, Libya and Argentina may have a lot to answer for, but US activities in Nicauragua under Reagan/Bush surely qualify as state-sponsored terrorism in my book (not to mention Chile and a few other little interventions). The truth is out there, but it’s buried miles deep in mass-media spin and patriotic bombast. I admire so much about America but its foreign policy often seems to me so self-defeating. Barbara Tuchman spelt it out in “The March of Folly” but no-one, especially in the Pentagon or the neo-conservative think-tanks was listening. With the formation, after WWII, of the National Security State, perpetual warfare became a necessity for its own continuation. Little vassal states like Australia adopt the polemic and you end up with messes like the one we face now.There are two other factors that I think are at work here: the intimidation of moderate Muslim voices by the extreme Wahabi form of Islam and the failure to engage with the rest of the world by the average American. Over 200 people (88 Australians) were killed in the Bali bombing. I was amazed that one lj’er that Ian and I talk to had never heard of it. I was also amazed when travelling the US how many people had no idea where Australia, Iran or Woop-Woop were. Maybe its all the testosterone generated by all those quasi-military gym classes in high-school. Don’t get me wrong, apathy is a very Australian sin, but our highly multi-cultural society does tend to make us aware of more than our own back-yards. Now I’ll just grump off ‘til I feel better.

Little Billy

Sydney, Winter of 1951

Shakespeare and Shakespere

I’ve been having another Shakespeare binge, having recently re-read the best book of Shakespearean analysis that I have ever read, Ted Hughes’ “Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being.” Now Hughes has his own barrow to push, but if you skip his repetitive explanations of his thesis, this is the best analysis of the underlying themes of Shakespearean Drama you’ll get anywhere.I have also been reading books about the authorship controversy. I have always dismissed claims about alternative authors as nonsense, but if you look at some of the genuine mysteries surrounding the authorship of Shakespeare, you begin to realise it’s not all pie-in-the-sky fantasy. Certainly there was an actor/ businessman called Shakespere active in the theatre, but it seems increasingly unlikely that we have got the whole story from our brilliant but oh-so-slippery Elizabethan/Jacobean ancestors. For a good overview of this enigma, see ”Who Wrote Shakespeare” by John Michell. Also for an excellent read about the events leading up to the murder of Christopher Marlowe, try “The Reckoning” by Charles Nicholl. It reads like a thriller .Ah, English History of the late-sixteenth/early-seventeenth centuries, a bottomless well of fascination!

Advertising subtext

I’m amazed at the apparent subtexts of some commecials. The new MacDonald’s ad has a smarmy Mom who is flogging the new”less fatty, more healthy’ menu. She says:”I used to come here for the kids. Now I come here for lunch!” To me the subtext seems to scream”I have no control over my kids diet, so I’ll just look after myself”and the sub-subtext is,” I’m happy to feed my Kids unhealthy crap,but now they’ve come up with something I can eat without going into cholesterol-shock”, The lies that tell the truth.

susanden...

susandennis, what have you wrought? He only started last night and now its impossible to drag androkles from his knitting. You have to be so careful with these compulsive types!

My first time.

Encouraged by androkles, I am making my first tentative attempt at an lj entry. Some of you will know a little about me from Ian’s entries and I know several of you reasonably well from following your journals, so hi to Robbie, Bruce, Ondine, Annie and all of Ian’s fabulous cast of online friends. It’s a long time since I did any writing, so I ‘m not so confident that I have much that’s very rivetting to say but my anger at the state of the world and my joy in nature and people’s creativity is bound to prompt some musings as I get the hang of this. I do have a back catalogue, (some of it ancient) of old photos which some of you might find interesting. Now if I can only persuade Ian to show me how to post them, (he says he’s a lousy teacher and believes self-help is best).Oh, well....every journey begins with one step.

My first time.

Encouraged by androkles, I am making my first tentative attempt at an lj entry. Some of you will know a little about me from Ian’s entries and I know several of you reasonably well from following your journals, so hi to Robbie, Bruce, Ondine, Annie and all of Ian’s fabulous cast of online friends. It’s a long time since I did any writing, so I ‘m not so confident that I have much that’s very rivetting to say but my anger at the state of the world and my joy in nature and people’s creativity is bound to prompt some musings as I get the hang of this. I do have a back catalogue, (some of it ancient) of old photos which some of you might find interesting. Now if I can only persuade Ian to show me how to post them, (he says he’s a lousy teacher and believes self-help is best).Oh, well....every journey begins with one step.