The Assorted Ramblings of Algernon Misanthrope

Finger Lickin' Good?

2010-01-07T21:27:00.004+11:00

Wherein a possible racist slur opens up discussion regarding postmodernist theory and 'the global village'.

Dear Jouissance fiends, and free-play addicts!

So, it's been three weeks without Internet. I've moved house deep into the bushland of Van Diemen's Land to a place with neither garbage disposal, mail, or broadband Internet except via wireless connection. It's all a little too much 'The Hills Have Eyes' for my liking during my more sceptical moments.

But, as you can see, I have Internet on. And what shall I see when I first log on, but Australia, my very own antipodean paradise, once again falling into cyberland's headlines for another racist slur debate.

Now, I'm willing to go along with a theme for a while here. But I really don't want to turn this blog into another 'Defense of Australia's Inter-Racial Record' diatribe. Especially when the circumstances surrounding the whole affair are so ...juicy.

It's almost disappointing really when one sees the actual clip. So here it is:

Now, this really stunned me. Because, for a while, in all honesty I simply couldn't understand the reason as to why the advertisement really was racist. And then it hit me. This is all about what the post-modernists would call a discourse. Of course!

How does fried chicken possibly equate with post-modernist theory you may ask. Well it has to do with the whole idea, that a text is no longer a text by itself. A text must be read by a reader who then melds that text and filters it through the discourse that he/she identifies with. For instance, Derrida, I believe, talks about how its fine for us to watch two grown men attack one another when viewed through the discourse of a 'sport' such as boxing. But when seen outside of that context viewed by people who do not share this discourse where two men stripped down to their underwear attacking one another in a canvas square is socially acceptable because its a sport, when viewed by such people incapable of sharing in this narrative of meaning, suddenly the entire scene of ducking weaving and punching takes on a much more nightmarish context.

And we all have a context. We all have certain tropes that we consider to be normal. "Of course," we say, "but doesn't everybody do that?" Well no. The world is a big place. After all, it is still being argued as to whether there are cultures in the world who would find Shakespeare not only un-entertaining, but totally offensive. (And having watched The Taming of the Shrew recently with a modern third millennium discourse I have to agree!)

So this is what two cultures in the world, each with their different discourses would see when viewing the said advertisement.

The Australian:

A lone Australian supporter, watches a cricket game as the sole away team supporter amidst a sea of West Indies supporters who are being loud and distracting, but no more than the Australian supporting crowds are at home as well. In order to quieten the crowds down the supporter buys KFC, (who sponsor the cricket) and everyone shares in the meal and it's all 'too easy.' There are no slurs in the advertisement because it is one in a series of advertisements where crowds of people are quietened down by the same scenario. It's simply taking a theme used by the food company, KFC and making it more relevant to the cricket context in which it wedges its advertisements during change overs.

The American:

A lone white man sits civilised and quiet in an audience as raucous African Americans who dance and gyrate around him. In desperation to quieten them down, he turns to something that he knows will quieten down all African-Americans: fried chicken. He hands out fried chicken, which has long been associated with the poor southern African-American, and lo and behold the masses are satiated and quieten down, just like a crowd of children, or, if you like, just like all the racist caricatures would have you believe. And controlling such an unruly crowd of African-Americans is too the lone white man 'too easy'.

So, the question remains, is the advertisement racist. And there is a really simple answer to the whole debate: Yes and No.

American's may find this hard to believe, but no one in Australia who viewed that ad, even for a second would have assumed that they were African-American's, and really, in Australia, there simply isn't a racial stereotype involving poultry goods, deep fried or otherwise.

Read that statement very carefully. That's not someone saying "Oh but its all in good fun", but is instead someone stating that to millions of people in the world, outside of the American discourse, the very tropes that made such an advertisement offensive simply don't exist.

This being said, I can, when viewing the advertisement through the discourse of an American see how the advertisement could be interpreted as offensive. And I can see why KFC as a multi-national company, pulled the ad immediately when the furor arose. No company likes negative press.

But then, that very action immediately rose the hackles of all full blooded Australians as well. For you see, while Australians are without the social discourses regarding relations between white Caucasians and African-Americans (especially regarding chicken) that abound thick and fast in the American psyche, we do however, have heaps of tropes regarding inferiority complexes and love of the underdog which has been argued is a natural result of a nation the size of a continent formed for the express purpose of being a penal colony. So American Imperialism having a say on what can and can not be aired on Australian TV is considered entirely galling to the average Australian. Especially when looking at the Turk clip, where we can see that the commentators are obviously clueless regarding Australian culture.

And while I think, one nation imposing their culture over the top of another is repugnant in most cases, an interesting point is made: Most Australians would like the advertisement to remain, played in the context that is is watched by an all Australian audience where a pocket of understanding regarding the tropes is already possessed. But, in the age of cyberland or terra virtualis is this kind of anti-global thinking simply parochial and unrealistic.

But then, if we begin making concessions regarding the plethora of nationalities Internet viewers may be, should we then avoid showing souls of feet in all media clips just in case its seen in arabic youtube? That will of course, make filming traditional Japanese rituals very difficult!

The above is a hyperbolic example, but as we can see by a single fast-food advertisement, small things can become extremely problematic for international relations. This simple example of an inter-cultural cock-up will undoubtedly cost the Australian tourist trade greatly.

And where does district or national culture fit into the idea of the global village? And if we start taking views in regards to what is offensive and what is not, then whose views should we take in particular? America's? They have been in the past the great exporters of media. But in a new millennium of self created and informally viewed media in the form of the Internet, we can now say that China and India would be the bulk of numbers of Internet audience members. Should we then be turning to our Asian fellows in regards to Internet etiquette?

Either way, this sordid little affair has been fabulous for opening up a can of worms regarding who gets to dictate the international discourse of acceptable behaviour regarding internet relations, and it's a shame that al of the really interesting aspects of the affair have been sidelined to make way for more salacious but superficial race-debates.

Education and Aboriginality

2009-12-05T15:04:00.006+11:00

Wherein is contained some musings on native culture and indigenous affairs in Terra Australis.

Dear Native and Alien species!

What better way to follow up an article on the distasteful entertainment genre of minstrelsy than to discuss Aboriginal affairs?

I don't actually have race on the mind, dear reader, far from it. But I recently felt the need to educate some of my students in regards to some home truths surrounding their place of birth.

Having recently explored the bravery and determination of some of Europe's most famous explorers I felt the need to point out the darker flip-side to such expeditions. -The primary one being that, after such heroes, against all odds, forged their way through unknown waters, having pitted their wills and flimsiest of sailing vessels against all of Nature's whims, having managed to sail, halfway across the world and having discovered exotic lands with unknown peoples and animals far far away from their homes, after overcoming such huge odds, these very same heroic white explorers seemed to suffer from an unfortunate tendency to then stick little flags in said grounds and, well, begin to invade said lands, for their own Empire's gains, much to the indigenous population's detriment.

The game of Global Imperial Expansion was Europe's favourite past time for the last six hundred years. And it was a game that was played by nearly everyone. It was loads of fun! Bring your friends! Make it an event! Take over some other people's lands with hilarious results! B.Y.O though because the natives don't always have the ability to ferment drinks yet!

And of course, now, in the 20th and 21st Centuries, the game is over, and we are sort of dealing sweeping up the refuse and coping with the god awful hang-over of such tom-foolery from our past.

Nothing makes you sober up quite like racial genocide, does it?

I think, in fact nearly every major example of upheaval in the 20 and 21st Century to date, could be expressed as a direct consequence from Imperial Expansionism, either from it's invasion into a land, or its sudden and catastrophic departure without the proper institutions to support the population post-departure.

Don't believe me? WWI was caused largely by two Empire's flexing their muscles and escalating the violence until something had to give, especially when the Ottoman empire fell apart and well, it was such a juicy prize, someone, had to take it over.

WWII is largely a direct result of the disastrous end of WWI.

Vietnam is largely due to the Viet Cong shrugging off their French government.

The Rwanda Massacres are largely due to disastrous tribal relations, encouraged by the Belgians.

Even the current Middle East Crisis can be chartered back to fat white Europeans, dividing up the post war world like it was a game of Risk.

Not to mention The Berlin Wall, Afghanistan and even 9/11. -All of which are caused, in part if not, entirely by some sort of Empire trying to expand its borders.

But as you may know, dear reader, I am fromTerra Australis, and in particular from Van Diemen's Land, as the Portuguese named it. Or Tasmania, as the English named it. And, to be specific, I live on theD'Entrecasteaux Channel as the French called, it. All in the name of Imperial Expansion. However, I didn't until recently know what the people living here for the past 35,000 years (as can be supported by archaeological research) call this land. And in fact I doubt that most people who live here in Van Diemens Land would know, that for the longest time, the indigenous population called this lovely island Trowenna. And I would be certain for a fact that very VERY few people indeed would know that the indigenous population around said D'Entrecasteaux Channel did not in fact call Trowenna by that name at all, but had a different name entirely:

Loetrouwitter.

So here I am, a mainlander, having moved to Loetrowitter to work as a teacher of English and History at a school with a strong multicultural and inclusive culture and code of conduct. And I think it would be a good idea to teach my students a little bit about the negative side of Global Imperial Expansionism and in particular, the effects of said expansionism upon the local indigenous culture.

Enter, H.G. Wells. And his fabulous Science Fiction novel, War of the Worlds. Now, dear reader, I'm an unabashed nerd. So I love a good Science-fiction yarn. (With the emphasis on good.) So Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley and Ray Bradbury really crank my tractor academically speaking.

But what on earth could a science fiction novel have to do with Indigenous affairs in Australia? This is a question, you may well ask, and indeed a lot of people did ask me this question when I told others about what I was teaching in my English lessons. Well, I could answer this question myself. But instead, I think I'll let H.G. Wells explain himself, in his own words.

"And before we judge them [the Martians] too harshly, we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished Bison and the Dodo, but upon its own inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?"

—Chapter I, "The Eve of the War"

Putting aside for a moment, the ghastly racist Victorian sentiments that such a term as 'inferior races' conjures, we can clearly see here that what started out as geek-fodder and an inspiration for some fabulous 70's rock-opera, is, in actual fact an extended allegory against the cultural genocide that occurred to the indigenous peoples of Loetrowitter.

And of course, what a stunningly nasty chapter in race relations the history of English "settlement" in Loetrowitter makes.

I won't belabour the details. Because you can find it anywhere. If you bother to look it up.

What I found particularly odd though, was that such crucial pieces of Australia's history, like the war against the Aboriginals of Tasmania, like the black line, like the Aboriginal resistance, like the Flinders Island concentration camp were all completely non-existent in my own Australian history lessons in favour of much more important topics like 'When did Australia's train lines finally become a regulation width?'

So immediately, I can see a massive hole in my own education regarding Indigenous culture and affairs. In fact, I think this is something nearly all Australians can claim. I recall many moments of token "lets learn an aboriginal myth" lessons involving Tidalik the Big Green Frog because somewhere down the line, someone had made it a song which meant for great kodak moments involving children's school plays. I also recall being taught, as recently as 1988 for a musical performance about the history of Australia, Rolf Harris' Carra Barra Wirra Canna which uses the word 'piccaninnies' not once, but several times. Apparently finding an actual aboriginal song to represent the aboriginal period in Australia's history, was too arduous a task for our music teacher.

So with such educational faux pas in mind, I set out to rectify this situation with my own students. -My own students who have bee fed the soul-milk of Greek myths, Egyptian mysteries, Norse sagas, Indian myths, Celtic Wondertales, Judaeo-Christian myths and other indigenous peoples tales fables and cultures. These are students who know what the Rig Veda is and are familiar with the Eddas and the Torah, and the Koran. And yet, what can I provide them in regards to their local Aboriginal Culture?

Well, I set out to see what I could find, and promptly borrowed from the library, text after text of books surrounding this topic. And I have to say, dear reader, I was frightened by what I found. Not by the dearth of information regarding Tasmanian Aboriginal Culture, but rather, by the fact that what was called Tasmanian Aboriginal Culture, should have been called Tasmanian Aboriginal History, and in particular, Tasmanian Aboriginal Genocide post-European Invasion.

Now, please, don't misunderstand me here. What happened to the Tasmanian Aboriginal population is beyond horrific. And I am certainly not of the 'build a bridge, and get over it' school of apologists that abound in white-anglo society. But I find it extremely concerning for a culture any culture to be so intrinsically linked with the story of it's demise, to the detriment of the actual culture it proclaims to be discussing and dissemenating!

When I pick up a book labelled The Aboriginal Tasmanians for instance, I expect to see something, ANYTHING on pre-European Tasmanian Aboriginal culture. In short, my studies showed to me that any knowledge regarding this subject was being cannibalised by the historical and political aspects of the issue.

And then I found a stunning piece called Our Land: Our Living History. It is by, presumably, Kaye Price. And it has been the most illuminating piece of literature I have found to date regarding Tasmanian Aboriginal Culture. But unfortunately I can't call it a book. Because it's not.

It's a white folder with some A4 sheets of rough copy material bound inside, with an incomplete index. Its 239 pages long, and I know this because someone has hand-written the page numbers in the bottom right corner. You can't buy this text. I looked it up on Google and it is only referred to in passing. Hell, ebay didn't even offer to sell it to me, and ebay offers to sell me anything I type up on Google.

So there it is. The best resource of Tasmanian Aboriginal Culture I've ever found, with loads of information. And it's not even made it to a book format. It's not even out there in the general public.

And this highlights for me a major problem with Indigenous Affairs in Australia. For there to be any reconciliation between two cultures there must first be an understanding. We expect our Indigenous population to understand our laws our religion, our ethics and morals. And yet, there is not a lot of understanding in the opposite way. And in fact, I would argue that there can not be unless there is information. Australia's epic failure regarding indigenous affairs stems from a lack of education regarding Aboriginal culture. Without that education, the majority of this country spouts views and opinions about such things that they are completely ignorant about.

Australia needs to understand the ability that education plays in shaping the opinions and behaviours of the next generation. I know intimately the effects of education, both as a teacher, and as a student that was educated through the politically-correct era of the early 90's.

The Australian government needs to work very closely with our indigenous population to make sure that there is real and credible resources out there for our schools. Such resources will aid in providing a new-generation who has an educated understanding of our nation's indigenous cultures, as opposed to our current behaviour of, at best, well-meaningly sympathetic, but grasping in the dark, ever-so-slightly-patronising ignorance.

A Map showing Australia's Indigenous Population's Language Groupings of which there are more than 200 different tribal and language variations, and no less the 48 in Tasmania.

A Study Into A Race Relations Nightmare

2009-10-09T21:13:00.005+11:00

Wherein the state of Terra Australis is called into question regarding its racist tendencies.

Dear Melatonin deficients and proficients!

I blame Madonna actually. No, I do. See, it's this album right here:

Look at it. LOOK AT IT!!! Here is a woman desperately trying to cling to her youth. I don't know if she wants to fallate that leather strap or if she's about lick it and scrub some dirt off my face with it. Either way this album is a testimony to our Western capitalist inability to let age pass us by in a graceful manner (Youth and beauty is, after all, the greatest commodities in the English speaking world).

So here comes Madonna, chicken limbed, and krumping her way to the next hip replacement centre, putting out a record when really she ought to stop and let the next generation have a go. And what happens? Well with her reputation, at the end of the day it doesn't matter that the album is mediocre and cringeworthy, people will buy it. And mediocre sales means that she will still get at least some money.

And every fifty year old entertainer who is passed their prime stood up and took notice.

Enter Daryl Somers:

If Tracy Grimshaw is the Lucifer of Australian TV, the Daryl Somers is Satan.

I've never mentioned him up until now as I was concerned that it would invoke his presence like the 'Candyman'. But alas, having clinged to our TV sets like an STD for two decades and refusing to die while hosting Dancing with the Stars, Daryl Somers has resurged like beubonic plague onto our screens yet again this time with a Hey Hey it's Saturday Remake, with all the original cast whooping it up like it was 1989.

Of course its not actually on Saturday because it would get totally destroyed by Midsomer Murders and the latest Stuart Little movie. So Hey Hey it's Saturday has moved its decrepid zimmer frame haulin' ass to Wednesdays, where it can be the 'highest ranking show' (in comparison to Border Security and Celebrity Masterchef)!

Please excuse me for discussing TV. I don't actually own one. But it was hard to miss what happened because it flooded the internet and therefore entered the youtube and international media really quickly. See, Daryl and his troop of 'hilarious misfits and laugh-a-minute geriatrics' just aren't that aware of information dissemination in the post-millenium age. This whole inter-ma-net-thing-a-mi-bob is all Gen XY craziness and beyond their baby-boomer mindset.

As is their political correctness as we shall see:

OK. So as we can see here we have a major case of Minstrelsy going on here....

Oh wait. Don't you know what Minstrelsy is?

Well, believe it or not, Australians really don't have a great deal of knowledge regarding Minstrelsy. I had to look it up after watching a Rotten Tomatoes Post regarding Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno. But boy am I glad I did. Because a lot of things made a lot of sense then.

But rather than tell you what it is, maybe you could glean an idea of minstrelsy from the following youtube clip:

Minstrelsy: Wikipedia (are they ever wrong?) describes this term as meaning: 'The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface.' Wikipedia then declares this fine tradition of 'blackface' as being: 'the first distinctly American theatrical form.'

Who knew there was a whole genre of this sort of thing? Well, unfortunately for the rest of the world this sort of thing is news for most Australians.

Why is this? Well it comes down to our historical legacy. You see, this is Terra Australis, The Great White Southern Land. We (as in white people, but you knew that because when does a history book ever say we and not mean 'Europeans'?) arrived at this land very recently. Only two hundred and a bit years ago. Then, having killed lots of the original inhabitants and then attempting most vigorously at absorbing the leftovers into our 'collective hive' we are left with a primarily white anglo culture with Indigenous Aboriginals consisting of less than 5% of our population.

Australia's relationship with it indigenous peoples is its greatest shame. It is truly a logistical, beuareaucratic and legal nightmare. But this is a nightmare which has endless repercussions on the human world of suffering over and over again.

Our name is dirt in the UN. Why? Because of the blatant poor living conditions for Indigenous Australians. Whilst we white anglo/celts are kicking back in the first world, our indigenous population is experiencing third world living conditions. AND THEN they get our scorn and condemnation for not 'getting their act together'.

So what's the solution? Well, the previous conservative government created a fabulous policy, (one still in affect to this day with our new liberal government may I add) that was based entirely around race. We call it the 'Nothern Territory Intervention. '

That's right, we in Australia actually have two laws, one set of laws for those of us in main-stream culture, and another if you are living in an Northern Territory Aboriginal Community.

Now, one could argue that the problems faced by Aboriginal Australians are unique to Aboriginal Australians and therefore require specific laws that address these issues. Indeed, as there are rampant issues of domestic abuse against women in the Nothern Territory Aboriginal Communities, fueled by a hideous level of alcoholism one could argue that this was a humanitarian requirement in order to stop abuse against women and children and to stop the cycle of abuse.

Not that I am jumping on the 'blame and shame wagon' here. As Jane Elliot of Blue Eyes Brown Eyes fame said (I paraphrase, and she was talking at the time in regards to the first nation peoples of Canada) 'let's take away a people's way of life and then get them to sit around for days on end with nothing to do in neat and tidy reservations in the middle of nowhere and then let's see if they'll turn to alcoholism. Because then we can look down on them.'

But still, a law made by a government justifying an anglo occupation over an indigenous community, restricting porn, alcohol, drugs and other such things, (ironically, a law made from Australia's Capital Territory which has the most flexible laws regarding porn, alcohol and other fun things) makes my skin itch. It just sounds a little too...well, apartheid for my liking. But it's not like we should of expected this. After all, it's not like the Prime Minister involved in the Intervention was an advocate for the White Australian Policy that dominated Australia's immigration for much of the 20th century. ...oh. Oh wait. Oh yeah that's right. In the 70's and 80's he WAS an advocate for Australia's White Australian Policy!

But the point is, that although we have and had such a terrible record with our indigenous population, our relationship with our cultural minorities outside of this example, amongst the anglo waste-lands is (comparitively speaking) pretty happy. I say this as a white-anglo male having lived in Western Sydney for a large period of my life. I've seen multiculturalism flourish and be successful. I've watched Cabramatta's Moon festival in full swing while London declared multiculturalism was a failed experiment, I've seen whole suburbs relishing the end of Ramadan whilst country after country encountered difficulties in dealing with the integration of various 'ethnic minorities'.

Multiculturalism is alive and well in urban Australia. And it's successful. Yes we have blips on the map. Yes, we get some truly astonishing moments of intolerance and nastiness (such as the Cronulla Riots where some people were beat up from both anglo and arabic ethnicities). But then, sometimes, we have riots because the cops are here and we're so GOD DAMNED BORED WITH OUR PATHETIC SUBURBAN EXISTENCE that we'll take any excuse to make a scene. (Don't believe me? This is exactly the 'flash-point' behind the Macquarie Fields Riots!)

But the important point is that none of these major black marks against Australia's name in regards to race relations could possible match up with the sheer day to day business of racism that occurs in Europe and America. A few guys getting beaten up made headlines in Australian news. Think about that. They weren't murdered, nor tortured, nor experiencing wide-scale institutionalised racism that we saw in America in the 1950's.

Why then, do we see Australia as being such a terrible place in regards to racism?

It's simple. Indigenous Australian affairs only became an issue in most people's minds post 1988 when they began to become political and 'sound-byte worthy'. Before that, most people thought of Aboriginals as exotic people with exotic culture and probably left their thinking process at that. And as Aboriginal Australians only make up less than 5% of the population, their suffering really was overshadowed by such issues as overcoming the White Australian Policy, equal rights for women and other such sound-byte whoring topics.

In regards to other cultures, such as the Blackface affair with Hey Hey It's Saturday, it's really very obvious:

Australians are naive.

We are removed from the majority of the world. Sit an Australian down and tell them about the injustice you feel because you're a Palestinian in Israel, or an African-American in the South of USA or a Kurd in Iraq and I can guarantee that most Australians would look on with disbelief and possibly horror, (but that would depend on how much alcohol they had).

Similarly, sit an Australian down and tell them about the injustices you felt as an Aboriginal at the hands of the government, tell them about your story of suffering as a member of the stolen generation and again, due to our racial ignorance you will experience disbelief and maybe horror.

Australian's are, as a rule, clueless when it comes to dealing with people of other ethnicities and cultures. Well-meaning, but clueless. Expect a great time, but also expect total gaffs in behaviour due to inexperience.

I watched in horror at Hey Hey It's Saturday as they showed a comedy routine that once won a Comedy competition twenty years ago sporting 'blackface' in all its ugly charicaturised glory. And I wanted to hand in my passport at the point when I realised that such old tired TV formats were making a comeback.

But what was really interesting was that both Daryl Somers and Australia's Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, claimed that the act was '[not] meant to be offensive' and was 'only in the spirit of fun'. Well no. The act drew from an offensive cultural source and caricatured the physical characteristics of a different race for comedic effect. That's a racist form of entertainment. But they were unconscious of having done something offensive, so while the motive might be harmless the result was, in fact, not.

But then, I'd hazard to guess, neither Julia Gillard nor Daryl Somers have ever heard of Minstrelsy. And that is both a good, and at times, a bad thing.

Righteous Indignation

2009-09-27T09:02:00.005+10:00

Wherein Religious Institutions are examined in regards to our laws.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/mp/6104482/church-can-reject-gays-single-mums/

This link will take you, oh adventurous web-viewing person, to a news story detailing how, in a Western world, a law is being passed to allow religious institutions the right to discriminate against those who 'undermine' their belief systems.

If however you can't be bothered to view it, (and lets face it, it's a pretty banal example of journalism) the brief gist of the tale is that in the state of Victoria in the South East of Terra Australis some religious groups have recently gotten their luxurious robes into somewhat of a knot due to the fact that they are enforced by law to consider employing homosexuals or indeed mothers out of wed-lock even though they are seen as being contrary to their belief system.

So, in a display of righteous indignation they took their holy crusade to the state government and petitioned for their right to discriminate according to the tenants of their belief system. The Government, and this is the part that truly astounds me, the GOVERNMENT then bartered with the religious lobby groups and came up with a fabulous compromise:

In the State of Victoria, it will be perfectly lawful for religious institutions to discriminate against people due to their sexual orientation or practices if they are considered to be in contradiction to the values and morals of their religion. BUT they can not discriminate according to Race, gender, age, religion or disability.

Well, isn't that nice?

I'm so glad that the State Government managed to roll up their sleeves and demonstrate to all and sundry the sheer awesome might of their power-brokering skills!

My question is, surely, an institution, religious or otherwise, that is discriminatory in any way, is in contravention to our 'fair go' policy that is now written into the Australian Constitution. Doesn't that make, ANY institution that says 'you can be employed, and you can be employed, but YOU can not be employed because you're gay/lesbian/unmarried and sexually active' unconstitutional?

Why is the government brokering to draw a fine line in the sand as to what is acceptable discrimination and what is not? And why are we not asking these religious institutions to explain their discriminatory and unconstitutional tenants of belief?

When we discuss multiculturalism and immigration, there is an understanding that anyone who comes to our great empty land of dust and poorly performed teen soap operas must temper their beliefs from their previous place of residence in order to live in accordance with Australia's values of mateship, a fair go, and other flag-waving generic terms which basically imply a non-discriminatory culture etc.

Indeed, Islam seems to regularly come under fire in our fabulously moralistic media for not falling in line with our Australian liberalism and gender equality. Is such tongue-clucking and finger pointing only reserved for those Australian's who aren't white then?

Religious institutions regularly need to liberalise and temper their extremities when coming to Australia in order to fit in with our laws. We see it, in our Imperialistically arrogant way as being in the name of progress. ("Oh yes, I understand that this is considered sinful in your back-water nation, but you also wipe your bottom with your hand. See, here in a civilised country, things have become much more evolved, so you'll need to change a few things if you intend to live here. Do try and get with the programme...") For instance, the extremities of Islam are tempered here as being about personal choice regarding burqa's etc. The caste system of India is tempered to fit in according to our anti-discrimination laws. It is unlawful in Australia for an Israeli jew to deny a job to a palestinian due to the tensions back in their respective homelands.

But apparently, our own religious institutions are above needing to 'get with the programme'. They are above needing to 'evolve with the times'.

ALL religious institutions need to be held to account for their beliefs. And if they are discriminatory, in the ways described by the federal anti-discrimination laws, then they should be considered an unlawful institution.

End of Story.

Christian Bigotry, anti-gay, pro-gay, multiculturalism, anti-christian, anti-religious, protest,

Rule Puritanica: The Art of Mass Indignant Outrage

2009-06-10T10:44:00.004+10:00

Wherein a worrying new trend in our society is examined and widely condemned.

Dear Libertines and sex-fiends!

I simply must find myself commenting on a worrying trend that is slowly but steadily boiling my blood.

Generally speaking our society swings from conservative puritanism to radical sensuousness in great catastrophic arcs of amnesiac madness. And each seems totally unaware that this has happened before.

Don't believe me? Check it out people! There was the Puritan era of Cromwell where Christmas was illegal and thousands were hanged for suspicion of antics to do with devils, demons and other wondrously fun things. And that was followed by the Restoration of Charles II where the Earl of Rochester wrote fabulous pieces of work entitled Signor Dildo.

In a reverse exchange the extravagance of Marie Antoinette and entourage was turned on its head (pardon the pun) in the Terror which involved the destruction and bloody murder of anything deemed an unseemly display of wealth.

The Victorian Era of staidness and the sheer utter despair of World War One culminated in the most fantastically outrageous Roaring Twenties involving Flappers and hooch-parlors. And then descended again into a Great Depression and the industrial grade horror of World War II.

The Generic homogeneity of the 1950's erupted into the moratoriums of the 1960's and then sold themselves out into the anthem of Greed is Good in the 80's. (Although I must admit, if there is one word I can use to describe the 80's it wouldn't be 'puritanical')

And at no point in history does the community at large wake up and realise 'oh wait, we've done this all before.' And usually we just take things too far and people get hurt or hanged or shot.'

Our lack of understanding regarding cultural swings from sensuous extravagance through to flesh-hating puritanism, is our greatest downfall as a species. George Satayana once said: 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.' Well guess what people, we don't seem to be remembering. Earlier in my blog, I discussed the correct terminology for us as a species, as 'clever-man' didn't really suit. I think we looked at the 'violent-man'. And other such nasty terms. I think perhaps now the term 'unconscious-man' may be appropriate or possibly 'deluded-human' due to the fact that we believe we are more in control of ourselves as a species than in fact, we are.

I am annoyed as I am beginning to see a huge shift in culture toward puritanism and I blame Tracy Grimshaw. It's for many reasons, but primarily because she is evil and she smells, and indeed she resembles Miss Piggy when she's angry. But having completed my ad hominem attack I shall now address the real issues.

Deep in Terra Australis, we have a culture of (and I love the use of dialectical accentuation here) "Shee'yal be roiyt Mayt!" Meaning: Don't worry about it. -It is our unintelligible way of saying 'Hakuna Matata'.

Well of late, we as a country are becoming worried about it. We're not sure what 'it' is exactly, but as we're in a war on terror and the terrorists aren't living up to their end of the bargain we feel we need to be concerned and frightened about something. So, in short, we are concerned. Enter the cultural programming institution which is Channel 9 prime time news.

Knowing their audience demographic are over 40 and are therefore credulous and accepting of anything they present through their boxes of light and wonders, as long as its presented with the appropriate somber faces and emotive language, Channel 9 has done some truly extraordinary feats of orchestrating mass hysteria in the name of ratings grabbing.

To be fair, of course, Channel 9 is not the only voice of orchestrating mass hysteria. But then, that's to be expected as our media is the most concentrated in all of the Western world, having the majority of it owned by Murdoch, Packer or Fairfax.

But still, as Channel 9's horrendously titled A Current Affair is the loudest voice and the most watched example of cultural programming to date, we will focus primarily on it.

It begins with a chef. His name is Gordon Ramsay. He has made a stunningly lucrative career out of being rude and swearing on public television. It's sensationalist and as a result he's a celebrity. Well, guess what, chefs are people in high pressure jobs. They swear a lot. They also have tempers. It's really nothing that sensational. What is sensational is the fact that somewhere in Australia, a television company loosened its opinions regarding language on television enough to air Gordon Ramsay. At no point did they go, 'jeez, this guy seems to swear more than a Quentin Tarrentino film, we may need to NOT have him on our public television station.' No, instead they aired his shows and then in a stunning feat of cross-promotion had their own news-shows cluck their tongues about how sensational it was to have a man on air that would swear like that.

And so a media celebrity is born. And of course, very soon, more people come to watch him swear and be rude and other such crowd-pleasing shock tactics rather than to see him cook. And it works, so good for him!

Or at least it worked for him until he accidentally fired a verbal volley at the wrong social programmer.

You see, A Current Affair, hasn't bothered to cover any real news story in a very long time. Most of their stories entail some glorified infomercials dressed up as 'exposés about diet pills thigh creams and shonky car mechanics etc.

And that's not even counting the ridiculous amount of cross-promoting that they air in the name of 'news.'

Well last week, rather than cover the economic crisis and the Australian budget's success, rather than cover the acid attacks on Indian students, instead of covering the truck bombing in Peshawar or how the Federal policies regarding the indigenous population in Northern Territory are fairing, instead of all of these vital and important stories that effect real people's lives, channel 9 instead chose to use up their valuable 20 minutes of prime air time to cover an interview with a famous chef, who just so happens to have a television show on their station.

The interview was tawdry and tedious as most of their tabloid ratings grabs dressed up as 'journalism' are, -it's what happened next that makes this story worthy of any note.

During a cooking show, where Gordon Ramsay performed and did tricks before an admiring audience, Gordon did what he did best and of course let off a series of insults and rude remarks aimed at people in general. He probably picked Tracy Grimshaw as a target because he knew we would know who she is. Anyway, there were some insults hurled in her general direction. Something about how she looked like Miss Piggy, something about her being wide and cold inside like a refrigerator. What is interesting is that his audience chuckles along appreciatively, it is, after all, the very stuff that they paid to see, and the very stuff that Channel 9 exploits to grab ratings by airing his shows and by having Tracy Grimshaw interview him in the first place. Here is what he actually said:

And then, what truly stunned me, was that Tracy Grimshaw, battle hardened, 'serious journalist' Tracy Grimshaw, dared to take up our valuable prime air time that should be devoted to covering serious events in order to respond to his hurtful statements as she was told that you should always 'stand up to bullies.'

This is not the playground Tracy, and you are not 5 years old. He is not a 'bully' he is a guy that's paid by your bosses to be rude, and he does his job well. You on the other had are paid by your bosses to be a journalist. That means you should be presenting the truth objectively and in a professional manner. Neither of which you've demonstrated particularly well.

In short, Gordon Ramsay is very good at what he does. Tracy Grimshaw is not. She violated professional agreements with Gordon Ramsay's staff and, worst of all, used her position as journalist to coerce an emotive response from her viewing public against him.

But then again, this sort of behavior is to be expected by Tracy and her institution of orchestrating public outrage. I call to the witness stand Chasers War on Everything.

'The Chasers War on Everything' is a shock tactics comedy show. They mock everything. Including rules of acceptability. And the other week they made a sketch that parodied the conventions of the sincere charity commercials that tug at the heart-strings. It was an example of black humour in a shock tactics, 'oh my god they went there' kind of way. And here it is:

Enter Make A Wish Foundation, not to be confused with the Starlight Foundation whose logo they ripped off. Make a Wish Foundation were full of righteous indignation that sick little children would be up at 9:30pm and be offended by the skit that could appear to be at their expense. Of course, it wasn't aimed at their expense, any fool could see that, however, a seven year old child in a weakened state due to their illness, and that they should of been put to bed over an hour ago, may not have the social skill to detect such a nuance. And of course, the Chaser's crew apologized for any misunderstandings due to the lack of intelligence of possible viewers. And that may have been the end of it.

But in strides Tracy Grimshaw and the A Current Affairs team, flamng swords blaming with righteous intent, full of emotive phrasing, and tabloid's grabbing outrage. Because nothing sells like sensational condemnation. Suddenly the Chasers War on Everything 'Have Gone too Far'! And that they ought not have made a skit that was insulting to sick children. (which it wasn't aimed at, but lets not let nuance get in the way of a good hate-mongering)

What's interesting then, is that the skit was pulled from any re-runs of the show. AND that the Chaser's War on Everything was suspended for two weeks. Excuse me? A Comedy show was taken off the air? Since when did Australia have the same censorship laws as North Korea?

Now, if they remove the Make a Realistic Wish Foundation skit due to the (perceived) insult to sick children surely they ought to have removed the 'In-breedy Bunch' sketch that was insulting to any victims of incestuous sexual assault, and the Footprints sketch that was insulting to Christians and the one that was insulting to the Cronulla Sharks etc.

Get it? Comedy is, by its very nature either absurd, or based around other people's suffering. That's it. So while we're all about not offending anyone, we might as well outlaw all humor, like Cromwell did when he banned Christmas. And why then is Funniest Home Video's not considered to be the most evil thing on television?

At the end of the day, A Current Affair has lost their direction in regards to journalism and are hoping that the public wont notice by keeping them indignant and outraged at someone, anyone, who may be popular and ratings winning at the time. It could be Germaine Greer, Clare Weberloff, Corey Worthington, The Chaser Boys or Matthew Johns, but basically A Current Affair thrives of orchestrating public outrage and condemnation, for transgressing their 1950's up-tight, humourless, puritanical moral crusade.

We just voted out our conservative government. Lets not be infected by it in our homes through the public indictments of a clearly maniacal Tracy Grimshaw. Lets face it, this is no longer a news show. This is entertainment, kind of like Big Brother because its reporting on 'reality'. So maybe, just maybe the powers that be will consider Tracy to be too old and moralising for her position and she'll be unceremoniously ousted and replaced by Kyle Sandilands and Jacki-O in a short lived new format of A Current Affair.

Circus (N.)

2009-06-06T00:35:00.004+10:00

Wherein an excerpt from a creative enterprise is laid out for public perusal,

Greetings and salutations carnies and ballyhooers!

I, considering that my first post was a promise that my blog would contain myself, at least in part, thought, that it was high time to produce a piece of my own creative endeavours. And really, I'm hoping that this may inspire me to write some more.

It is an excerpt from a novel (half-complete) entitled The Carnivalesque, I picked this chapter because it almost stands alone. It is entitled Circus (N.) . Enjoy:

There is a circus inside Mr Abraham Brackets’ mind. It winds its way down the winding road of his cerebellum as he reads the enigmatic poster on the wall. It winds its way from the moor-lands of memory in brightly painted wagons. It parades through his childhood nostalgia with a barrel organ singing crudely like the screech of psirens ready to snare any unsuspecting memories and draw them up into the red canvassed lair.

Mr Abraham Brackets remembers his childhood and the circuses that lay quietly at the edges of the everyday with promises of vivid awe. They lay like festive beach houses. They lay like lions couched amongst the sepia savannah of youth, lapping their paws in the summer heat. There was something ephemeral about them. Something transient, like stumbling upon the fairies dancing. The big top rose and billowed and flourished in scarlet. It was a crazy dance of tent pegs and ropes, it sat squatting on the hillside above Weymouth like a gargantuan spider, -some scarlet hooded tarantula laying in wait amongst the insane web of hemp ropes, dripping the opium venom of childhood delirium.

And the tents were full to the top with carnies who stood invitingly with pied-piper smiles and sailor tattoos. There was something seedy that permeated the air. It was a vibrancy that comes with danger. It was the sense that all natural laws were frozen and here was a land of no consequences, a land where recriminations were the outlaw. They were like fairy-mounds, made of canvas and mist, and when you entered, a magical realm awaited where people flew through the air and animals walked about dressed as humans.

He attended once with his grandfather who seemed to possess more knees and elbows and swollen joints than all the sideshows put together.

“The circus was a place of bloodshed and sacrifice.” His grandfather grumbled darkly in the face of brightly coloured joy as Abraham Brackets, then a young boy, ran giddily to the menagerie.

“It’s a camel grandpa, look. Can I ride it?" His grandfather visibly paled then and walked bitterly away.

“In days of old we’d have slaughtered the animals at the circus, not played with them and ridden them.” The camel grunted and spat at his feet. Abraham Brackets found out by his mother years later that his grandfather embarrassed himself publicly by claiming a dead camel was in fact a dinosaur. -He never recovered from the ridicule. There was something fragile about his grandfather’s just-so well placed wisdoms. It’s funny how one little camel could rob a man of the capacity to enjoy such wild chaotic mirth that occurred in the fairy kingdom of a circus.

And then they were gone. Like fairy palaces that pass into the fog and gypsy caravans, the circus would leap on the caribou of Abraham Brackets’ days and splash it scarlet with fear and euphoria before padding silently away from sight where it licked its coat and slumbered in the African heat. The mountain realm of childhood nirvana had closed, and Abraham Brackets always felt like a frail crippled boy, too young and infirm to join the carnies in their ceaseless festival of wandering.

He always ran up to the hillside to watch the ponderous display of the circus setting up. He always saw the erection of the central pole that rose with wisps of spider silken hemp ropes trailing lazily from its peak like so many ribbons from a maypole. He heard in the fairy dawn-light the coarse gypsy singing of the carnies who worked bare-chested in the sun and dreamed of the loose women they could ensnare. And there was the methodical whistle of pulley wheels and the tapping of tent-pegs like a hail Mary, and lo! Oberon had set up court and visions and fancy was his trade.

But his childhood eagerness failed to alert him of the circus’ conclusion. Was it denial, he wondered, -an unwillingness to let the circus travel like the seasons travel onwards. All he knew was where he had once seen the industriousness of the big top’s set up, where he had been to enjoy the poppy fields within, he was often too late to witness the circus packing up for the road. There was nothing for his boyhood memory to watch, only the dead dusty grass and absence where once there had been a fairy palace and animals in suits served him fairy-wine.

There was something furtive about the way a circus packed up for the road. Something guilty. Something shameful. Setting up was stock and trade for the traveling shows. It was the promise of delight and ephemeral glory and transient joy. It was the budding of magic and free to be viewed by the eager and the young. But the packing up was a dirty behind-the-scenes affair, -a setting up for the village down the road. It was like seeing how a magic trick was performed with little to offer but disappointment. Perhaps that’s why they left so mysteriously, their preparations to leave made in the early-morning darkness, like an illicit affair. The town would awake to find its lusty Babylon lover long gone. They were little more than a guilty memory.

Once, when Mr Abraham Brackets was young and he and his grandfather went to see the circus that had flourished beside the town like a brightly colored infestation of glee, his grandfather, still aching over the demise of his reasoning, mumbled hollowly as they retreated from the menagerie.

“Circus, (ser’kas), (n.): A travelling show of acrobats, clowns horses, riders and wild animals. From the latin word ciculus, for circle. Properly the circular oval or oblong space or structure itself, in which such performances are staged. Contests amongst gladiators, chariot races and other such public spectacles took place in circuses in ancient Rome. The games were held in connection with fixed religious festivals or ludi such as Equirria or the Consualia among others. In remote antiquity the ludi circenses were without close rival as the favorite spectacle of the people: Such were the bloody circus’ genial laws (Byron).”

His grandfather could speak in italics and parenthesis and vocalize an abbreviation as though it were a word in itself. But Abraham Brackets was lost in the fairy glamor already. The barrel organ was singing and anyway it was difficult to hear his grandfather over the clicking of his knees that bent and recoiled in an ungainly dance that reminded him of a camel.

His grandfather sat grim and bitter by the world about him. The spell was powerless against the crushing bruises from the implosion of his ego. Where Abraham Brackets saw joy, his grandfather saw a gladiatorial ring. Where Abraham Brackets saw frivolity, his grandfather viewed carnage. He resided within his own leather clad hell which consisted of sword points and slaughtered animals and ave Caesars and a shrieking mob.

“Let’s see Anne Boleyn, the mermaid of Sardinia.” Said Abraham Brackets.

“There is no such thing.”

“How do you know, grandfather?”

“Because life would be wonderful if there was, son.”

How to argue in the face of such all encompassing depression? But they entered the sideshow anyway. -And there, in a tank full of water, floated a flame haired beauty with milk white skin and jade for eyes and the the most obviously fake mermaid tale ever to grace a den of hucksters.

“Told you son. She’s a fake.”

“I beg your pardon sir, but I am real.” Countered Anne Boleyn.

“Your tail’s a fake.”

“It is. But I am real.”

She stood up in the gaily colored tank.

She removed her tail.

And grandfather’s eyes glistened with the wonder of it all. For a minute the sounds outside the tents, the chattering, the giggles, the ballyhooing of the clowns outside, the hollow grinding of the fairground organ, all the sounds bled white and silent. And all Abraham Brackets could hear was the lapping of the water in Anne Boleyn’s tank and the short pained breaths of his transfixed grandfather, ensnared by a glamor.

“Do you sing?” He asked.

“Very well.” She countered, as open and honest as still water is honest.

“Do you swim?” Asked Anne Boleyn.

“Passably.” Answered his grandfather.

“Swim with me. Tonight. Not here. By the beach. I’ll show you where the mermaids are.”

“Will you sing for me?”

She sang for him then with a voice like brandy butter. And his grandfather, his bitter, camel hating grandfather wept. Tears streamed from his academic dusty old eyes and glistened in tracks on the side of his face. Something happened to him then as the salt water passed over his lips to his tongue. There was a softening to him, a soothing of all the angles in him. His shoulders dropped with the ease of it all, he lost the extra joints in his limbs, his skin seemed translucent and the ruler straight line that was his mouth curved enticingly into a smile.

Anne Boleyn was a Lady of the Lake in a carnival sideshow and to Abraham Brackets’ boyhood eyes she presided over the fountain of youth. The song ceased with its rich amber tones but continued to curl away at the edges of Abraham Brackets’ memory.

“Will you swim with me?”

“Yes.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll show you where the mermaids swim.”

They left the tent in a daze with his grandfather grinning with a spring in his step.

“What was that song that she sang”

“It was French. From Carmen:

‘Toréador, en garde

Et song en combattant

Qu’un oeil noir te regarde

Et que l’amour t’attend.’”

“What did she sing?”

“It means:

‘Toreador, ‘e’er watchful be

Do not forget the brightest of eyes

Are fondly thee waiting,

And love is the prize.’”

“Can we go back and ride the camels?”

“We can do whatever you like.”

The next day the circus disappeared and with it disappeared Mr Abraham Bracket’s grandfather. The police were called to look for him, but no one believed an eight year old’s claim that his grandfather had fallen in love with a mermaid and had run off with the circus.

There was dust by the road and the half heard memories of pleasures partaken. The air was pregnant with the ache of morning-after joys. The traveling show had long gone. Oberon and entourage had moved back to India, perhaps to steal other young boys or old brittle men who are overcome with the epiphany of a mermaid’s song.

But Mr Abraham Brackets recalls fiercely the curve of his grandfather’s smile and still to this day travels to the hillside to watch the circus setup, and races at dawn to try and catch its departure. He is yet to be successful though and is left to peer short-sightedly at the diminished half-imagined grainy specks of wagons and fairy dust. And he wonders what if he were carried away to that fairy realm forever, would he see his grandfather, would he return sixty years later as though only a week had passed? Mr Abraham Brackets plays the heartening game of what-if. -And for this little beach-house coloured mystery in his everyday life, he is glad.

Mormons Vampires and Suicides: Public Hooting and An Absinthe Toast in One Post!

2009-06-03T23:09:00.004+10:00

Wherein quality control regarding the Gothic Horror genre is maintained and one man's anger at another man's special feeling of unique pain is celebrated.

Greetings and salutations oh partakers of fine things.

I would like to begin my post with a bout of public hooting. I have long been in love with the Gothic horror genre and indeed most people's attempts at revivifying it. Indeed, I've read everything from The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, through to How to get a Head in New York by Poppy Z Brite and The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice. I have seen cats murdered with Edgar Allen Poe, turned the screw with Henry James, refrained from drinking wine with Bram Stoker, hidden in box 5 with Gaston Leroux, drunk strange potions with Robert Louis Stevenson, and flirted with an abomination in the eyes of the lord with Mary Shelley.

So please believe me as somewhat of a connoisseur, when I say that the recent offering by Stephanie Meyers is the worst case of fetid arse-water ever to hit the book stands. I think this recent example of cultural hysteria surrounding Ms Meyer's literary effluent and consequent movies is a new low in Western Culture and is possibly worse than the similar hysteria surrounding Dan Brown's god-awful The Da Vinci Code.

This recent eruption of bile and scorn has come as a result of watching one of the fastest rising YouTube clips which shows the recent Twilight movie trailer. Normally I would show said YouTube clip, but in this case, I'd rather not sully my page. So here instead is another YouTube clip advising why people should avoid such offal.

Here's a tip Stephanie, Gothic Horror, is meant to be horrible. Something in the book actually has to be monstrous, and so far, all I've seen that's monstrous is the god awful writing. There are holes in the plot so large and gaping, I could push a small displaced Chinese village through them. -There must be, in a horror novel, something which feels unwholesome in the story, whether it be the monstrous quality of the vampire, the hubris and consequences unravelling in Frankenstein or the bricking up of a live man into a wall in Poe, there has to be something that would cause people a sense of dread and alarm.

Instead Stephanie Meyers has taken all the tropes of the Gothic horror genre and sucked out all of the marrow and guts and presented the world with a bland middle-class teen-romance with impotent monsters and an unfeasible story line. Now this would be fine if this was a simple marketing exercise aimed at fourteen year old tweenies who are yet to discover things of true worth and value. But adults, REAL adults are actually just as enthralled by this pile of disney-esque pretend-frights as their pubescent counterparts. Don't believe me? Not only is the Twilight: New Moon trailer fast rising on Youtube, but so are the fan response videos, which are, I kid you not, videos of sad lonely people, alas, primarily female, sitting down in front of the television squealing like groupies at a Beatle's concert as MTV shows the trailer.

And then it occurred to me as to why Stephanie Meyers has managed to write such dreadful, unimaginably mediocre and lifeless tosh. And it's because Stephanie Meyers is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints. Oh the gods have mercy! That means that whenever someone buys any of her fecal matter dressed up as a novel, whenever anyone buys a ticket to see the tween porn movies they are funding Stephanie Meyer who, as a Mormon must give 10% of her earnings to the Mormon church. But of course, it stood to reason, all this time it was obvious. Who else but a Mormon could make something as sexy as vampires into the fucking Brady Bunch?

Standard issue Mormon Underwear

Please, people there are so many reasons why everyone should scoff and laugh at anyone who claims to like Twilight. It's Mills and Boon dressed up as horror. And its aimed at teenagers, who don't know any better. Mock these people! Let them know of their transgressions and then hoot them for their inability to discern between a good book and a bad one! Or better yet, hunt down Stephanie Meyer and hoot her, wave a fan at her and hoot her loudly.

In the meantime if you want to watch something with real vampires: Try Dusk Till Dawn, The Lost Boys, The Hunger, A French Vampire in New York, Interview with the Vampire, and of course, Bram Stokers Dracula, not to mention the countless Hammer Horror films, and the classic Nosferatu silent film. Of course, if you like your vampires on the small screen then please instead divert your eyes towards the True Blood series or possibly Being Human on the BBC.

On the positive side, I would like to raise an absinthe glass to this man.

His name is Lai Jiansheng and he is a retired soldier living in Guangzhou, China. And he is being toasted today for pushing a man to his possible doom. And look at the contented smile on his face!

Chen Fuchao was feeling somewhat down on his luck being in the equivalent of $293,ooo.oo US in debt. And so decided to voice his woes buy committing suicide. No sorry, not 'committing', because that's what effective people do, but attempting to commit suicide. Chen Fuchao climbed the Haizhu Bridge and threatened to jump off in a spectacularly annoying cry for help that lasted for over four hours, causing complete traffic chaos. Apparently this sort of thing happens quite a lot in Guangzhou with twelve cases of of suicide threats on the Haizhu bridge in only two months. Well our hero of the moment Lai Jiansheng was mad as hell, and he wasn't going to take it any more.

The news reports claim that Chen Fuchao was given a 'helping hand' by Lai Jiansheng. But that simply doesn't cover the effort and determination this wonderful man possessed in making his statement.

Lai Jiansheng, having offered already to assist the police but having been rejected, then broke through the police barricade before climbing the bridge himself! Having climbed the bridge with no safety harness or net, Lai then proceeded to edge towards the distraught Chen and pretended to comfort him before grappling with him on a tiny metal scaffold high in the air! Chen simply was no match for Lai's ex-military training. Lai effectively showed the distraught young failed business man how to carry through with something once its begun. Chen, having attempted to grab Lai and take him down with him, then toppled many metres before collapsing into a partially blown up mattress suffering spinal injuries and injuries to his elbow.

Lai, having saluted the crowd then made this phenomenal statement:

"I pushed him off because jumpers... are very selfish. Their action violates a lot of public interests."

Lai, I don't know if you're in prison or receiving a medal for your actions, but I can say, that for your determination and fearlessness in dispatching with an undesirable menace to society, and for your complete lack of remorse at having almost killed someone because they were an annoyance, for your community spirit and dedication to 'public interests' we salute you with an absinthe toast!

The Mediocrity of Media

2009-05-27T11:08:00.005+10:00

Wherein a Mis-headlined News story is put to rights revealing once and for all the impotent nature of our 'journalism' and the vehemently potent if transient nature of Andy Warhol's ungodly spawn.

Greetings oh fellow doyennes of all things unwholesome!

Anyone who knows me would also know that I am a Youtube consuming maniac. I love it. It is completely anarchic and totally group-minded. As a result the worn paths of entertainment that exist in other mediums like TV etc, tend to be regularly discarded here.

Imagine my horror then, dear reader, when I laid eyes upon a fast rising Youtube clip which originated not only from TV (which is excusable) but from TV from Terra Australis (Much less excusable) featuring news footage (oh the gods what an abomination!) from our most tabloid and vacuous pile of offal reporting to be a serious news program: 'A Current Affair'! (obviously some poor soul watched this show and felt the only way to survive the 'infection' was to make a copy and show it to as many people as was possible before Tracy Grimshaw clawed her way out of the TV set a week later and bludgeoned them over the head with diet journals and cellulite creams.)

Now, just so people are aware of the drama allow me to explain from the beginning. This whole sordid affair unfolded first on Australian TV, then Youtube, -followed by the international stage. It is an event which took place in Kings Cross. Now, Kings Cross is a somewhat gloriously seedy red-light district in Sydney. There are strip joints with public hawkers, and shooting galleries for junkies (I don't believe they have hawkers) there are the odd cross dressing chaps staggering about on too much Stolichnaya and a suspicious looking dude selling sausage on a bun to the drunk and disorderly at three in the morning. So it should be no surprise to anyone that as it so happened a man was shot. What may be unusual to people around the world is that, when a man was shot, it was considered so unusual that it got reported in the news. Because, at the end of the day, there's just not that much to report on in Australia.

Anyway, red light district, seediness, man gets shot, and reporters move in on the scene.

Enter the now infamous Clare Werbeloff, now forever known as 'The Bogan of Kings Cross' or 'Chk-chk-Boom!-Girl' who gave this fabulous statement to our 'investigative journalists'.

Of course, something that hopelessly clueless after a such a vicious assault was bound to become an instant internet meme. And of course, by three days later it sprang up on my Youtube account as the most popular Youtube clip short of that Rick-roll clip of 'Susan Boyle has Swine flu'. Now things would have very quickly become parodied and disappeared faster than you could say 'Cory Worthington' but then of course the truth was outed.

Clare Werberloff actually knew nothing of the shooting at all, but simply saw a video camera and started acting up for it. Everything stated, -from the accents to the story involving our fine ethnic population, to the fabulous use of onomatopoeia at the end was entirely fabricated for some shits and giggles. -Which of course allowed our stunning bastion of investigative Journalism 'A Current Affair' and other 'fine' newspapers and news shows to demonise her and declare her a mischief hunting drama seeking trouble maker.

Sydney Morning Herald even ran with this headline:

Bogus Bogan Exposed

And of course accusations of Clare misleading our fabulous 'journalists' rose to a stunning crescendo with this inquisitive piece by the terrier that is Ben Fordham.

Notice here how he tries to make her feel bad, how he attempts to make the media into a martyred victim and how effortlessly she shrugs all his efforts off.

Which led me to consider that the whole story has been grossly misrepresented. So please enjoy as I present to you now the Kings Cross Shooting Incident as I would report it.

Hopeless Attention Seeker Brushes Aside all Decency to get Horse Face on TV And Dupes Australia's News Industry in the Process

Earlier today a man was shot. But forget about him as apparently he doesn't matter and indeed we wont hear anything about him, the motives behind the attack on him, or his attacker ever again.

In the aftermath of the attack in Kings Cross however, Channel Nine 'investigative reporters' unwittingly revealed themselves to be incompetent sound-byte munching beasts who were incapable of any actual investigating.

The person behind such a dramatic unveiling was one hopelessly brainless attention-starved 19 year old who was a little under the influence of alcohol and obviously feeling a little duped by Big Brother's unexpected axing. Obviously the Channel Nine investigative journalists were no match to her superior abilities of persuasion and reason and were led totally astray by her eloquent manner and smooth approach.

Clare Werbeloff, (19 year old attention seeker) having spotted a camera proceeded to run for it and give a completely fabricated account that was both provocative and compelling to the channel nine reporters who felt that it was an appropriate statement to air on prime time TV after the possibly lethal shooting of a man on a street. Having given her statement, the reporters then spent the rest of their evening completely failing to confirm said drunken 19 year old brainless attention seeker's tale, as they had, after all, just been given a fabulous account of the event and, well, do we really need two versions of the same story?

Ben Fordham, (right, looking like someone having a colonoscopy, here with Andrew Byrne) tabloid hack and serial obstructer of justice, very quickly leaped to the defense of his pay-packet fillers by showing his complete inability to outwit or outclass a bogan ten years younger than himself on national television.

Clare Werbeloff has since become an international icon and internet meme at the Channel Nine's expense. Clare has also apologised for unwittingly managing to make an entire news industry look totally gullible and credulous.

Channel Nine however are yet to be forthcoming with an apology for their poor journalism and recent efforts in bringing down the reputation of Australian News to an even greater low than its current laughable level.

Clare, like all sad and degraded C grade minor celebrities is considering stretching her fifteen minutes of fame a little longer by getting her tits out for Ralph magazine.

Meanwhile the shooting victim remains somewhere doing something (we hope) and is otherwise no longer considered news-worthy. It is unknown as to whether or not he has agreed to get his tits out for Ralph magazine.

Get Yurted!

2009-04-26T12:02:00.016+10:00

Wherein a lengthy rant bemoaning our consumerist hedonism as a culture is unleashed.

Salutations Conservationists and Activists!

I feel compelled to rant today.

You see, I am considering my options in life at the moment. I have half a year until my landlord comes back from Europe and will once again require his residence. That means I must find a suitable abode. And so I search for a pleasant house in which to live.

(Caption reads: "Natural Hues:
Colour was selected to
complement the surrounds" WTF?
Apparently the 'surrounds' was
Tweety Birds pent-house. )

But as I am in teaching as a profession, that puts me in the lowest wage bracket of any professional industry, other than nursing. (Apparently, equipping the future generations with the faculties to survive some of the disastrous consequences they will inherent in the world from their parents rates a little bit lower than shooting bushpigs, and a little higher than alleviating the sick and wounded's pain.)

Now, it turns out that paying a mortgage on a land is actually cheaper than renting in our current housing crisis location. But if I were to go to a bank and ask for a loan in order to buy a house, the bank, looking at my current wage, would give me just enough to be able to buy... nothing in all of Sydney.

That's right, on a professional wage I would not be able to afford a weatherboard shitbox out in the wastelands of Western Sydney. But that's o.k. I'm not a greedy person, renting a flat would be enough. But oh, renting a flat is an extremely trendy affair in Sydney. Flats, apartments and town housing takes place very rarely in the cheaper outskirts of the city which means that to rent a flat one must look in the centre of the city in the more fashionable suburbs, making it even more expensive than renting an entire house.

In short, renting a house or a flat would cost me not 30% of my impoverished teacher's income in Sydney, but a whopping 60%. And people wonder why all the Sydney-siders are evacuating. Because living there is financially impossible on a modest wage!

But luckily for me, I (having evacuated said city for above mentioned reasons) have found myself in a state where buying land is cheaper than renting. But how can I possibly afford to pay for land and a house?

May I introduce to you the concept of the like-minded collective. The concept of intentional communities and the concept of eco-villages. We'll get to the yurts later...

Basically, the idea of the nuclear family is a completely detrimental to our entire way of life. It is an energy and resource bandit, is detrimental to our social networks, is completely isolating and causes nothing but suburban planning nightmares in the outskirts of cities. And did I mention the enormous hole it scorches in your back pocket? Seriously, why do we as a culture persist with such a ridiculously unhealthy and unsustainable model of living? We've only had whole millenia experiencing life in communities! Surely that has to count for something as opposed to this post 1950's phenomenon.

So I intend to buy some land. I intend to buy some land with other people because when it comes to buying stuff two wallets are better than one. I also intend to buy some land with the intention of building a house that is environmentally friendly and requires very little in terms of the initial resources. And then, once again, I have encountered another stumbling block.

May I pause briefly to introduce you to some of the most stunning little eco-friendly cottages I've ever laid eyes on. They are houses built by the Lammas project. Basically eco-community builders for hire. And oh, aren't they pretty! This picture is of Simon Dale's low impact woodland house, and I think everyone should want to live in it! His directions for making this house involves this very complex description (and remember, Simon Dale is not a builder, he is just someone who passionately wanted to build a low impact low resource house and so did it himself in the UK):

Lift logs, prop up, nail together and continue until no longer wobbly.

Yep, that's a structure I think even I could do. And, AND it's fantastic to behold! So it's all systems go on looking into building my own low-impact housing.

However! (enter rant mode)

Local councils in this god forsaken colony have some of the most stringent housing laws in the western world. I think perhaps its a historical thing. It's difficult for councils in the UK to uphold strict housing laws when there are houses built over a thousand years ago using methods clearly in contradiction to such laws that insist on being safe and sturdy. They stand there being somewhat of a silent finger against any move to police how one can and cannot build a house! So there is a fabulous legal loophole in Britain which is: If your house can safely house people for four years without falling down, even if it was built without any permits, it can stay! The same leniency goes for America (of course their buildings are less than a thousand years old) and I believe, Europe.

But not so Australia, the majority of our buildings are post or contemporaneous with the Industrial era, and as a result our housing laws reflect an industrial and inherently consumerist culture. Basically, approaching said council with a plan to find some logs that are floating around and nail them together until they're no longer 'wobbly' while a perfectly acceptable practice in most cultures for hundreds of years, is unacceptable here. A plan must be created, which means all materials must be collected prior to the occasion, which goes completely against the whole organic nature of the enterprise in the first place. And if the councils laws are not followed, then the council can insist that you tear your house down, even if you have been living in it with great safety for the last ten years or more.

So what is an environmentally minded personage with a deep sense of righteous anger meant to do?

Enter, -the Yurt.

A Yurt (or if you're in Mongolia: a Ger) is a temporary shelter which is roughly the size of a small house. It can be packed down onto the back of a ute and costs anywhere between 1000 dollars to 30,000! They have been used in the Alps, and the Himalayas and of course the frozen tundra of Siberia for hundreds of years. They are large, comfortable and warm. This one here is quite small in comparison, but it illustrates the general rounded glory and comparitive warmth and cosiness considering the large snow drift outside!

But yurts are not always such modest affairs. Take for instance barefootboy and his yurt project.:

This is basically a panoramic view inside of a yurt consisting of several stitched together photos to give you almost the entire 360 degree view. (but not complete, as there is a door somewhere and a kitchen as well.) So we can see that they are cheap, that they are low on resources and they can be as luxurious (and trust me they can become very luxurious see right) or as ascetic as one wishes.

BUT!

The most important thing. The most wonderfully joyful thing for my anarchistically minded little heart is that, as a temporary structure, I don't have to tell the council anything! It is exactly the same as if your children were to pitch a tent in their backyard. Tents, don't require permits. They are temporary! No fees, no bureaucracy, no having to pay builders with half my education and twice my salary (jealous much?) I can buy land. And in four hours, I have a house that is able to withstand a Siberian climate.

And if I have some like minded friends who have helped buy land we can construct a veritable yurt village without having to consult anyone! This is of course exactly what they have done here in Switzerland.

And why shouldn't we be allowed to do this?

I am, after all paying a large amount of money to live on this land, I should be allowed to build a structure any way I wish to, like I have the right to in both America, and the UK and I would suspect a large tract of Europe as well.

My next question is: Why isn't everyone doing this???

Which brings me to my next point. Having discovered such glorious ideas I then marched off, full of enthusiasm to the 'Sustainability Expo.' Ready to have my inspiration flooded with new scientific advances and creative ways to use less resources.

Alas, this was not the case.

While there was a large amount of very admirable causes and products all designed to help reduce carbon emissions etc. The general intention behind the expo was to convince people to buy products. Special paint to reduce gas emissions, special solar hot water systems, special brands of eco-friendly beer, special blinds, double glazed windows and etc and etc.

There was one, ONE exhibit that was all about providing information that would empower an Eco-conscious person in re-using their own materials, or creatively finding ways to live that would have less impact on the environment.

There was indeed a Mongolian Ger at the expo. It was wonderful to go inside and experience such a fabulous structure first hand, but what was really concerning about our culture, was that the Ger, -this housing wonder from Mongolia, was not being sold as a solution to our current housing crisis or financial recession, no no, this Ger, was being rented out as a pavilion for weddings and functions and parties. Apparently our fat middle-class, over-indulged, over-privileged arses will not deign use this centuries old perfectly suitable form of housing. As a novelty form of hosting exorbitant parties, that's fine, but to actually live in, no, I'm afraid our great white civilised egos simply will not consent to the indignity of living in a glorified tent.

For a sustainability expo, there was a large emphasis on things one could buy, and very little in regards to how to live more simply. But then, there's less money in living simply, isn't there? The ultimate example for me was the copy of 'The Green Pages' I received. Now, the Green Pages, for the uninitiated is very much like a phone directory of eco-friendly businesses. And I was excited when I received it, because it was twice as large as the edition I received two years ago.

However on flicking through the production I began to feel, more than a little bitter. There was something extraordinarily designer and elitist about the whole affair, something that completely went against the entire environmentally friendly philosophy at all.

For instance, the actual directory was the same size, but the magazine was now twice it's size (using more paper, ironically) in order to write such devastatingly important and crucial articles as: Who is the Brightest Green Stars? (Just so you know, it's Brad Pit, and Natalie Portman, urgh, how tawdry!) and Designer Homeware featuring such important items as a "Recycled Cardboard Magazine Rack". (Because all budding environmentalists need a place to stash their copious amounts of tabloid paper wasting items of gossip mongering) . But my ultimate favourite was the eco-friendly 'Marri Gold Dress' looking like something worn by Kiera Knightly on a desert island in Pirates of the Caribbean (tattered hems and all) worth a paltry $890!

Just to repeat for effect. This dress in the magazine, probably costs almost as much as what I'm considering spending on a house. WTF???!!!

And so, with that rant over I will sign off, thinking once again, that for a movement to become successful, companies must learn to exploit it to consumerist interests. Me on the other hand, I intend to live happily in a yurt giving as little money to outside interests as is humanly possible. -Just like barefootboy. And doesn't he look happy?

yurt, ger, mongolia, siberia, environmnet, eco-friendly, consumerism, eco-chic, alternative housing, living simply, green pages, the sustainability expo, the Lammas Project, Earthships, anarchism, local council, beauracracy

Mis-titled Newsheadline!

2009-04-20T20:50:00.003+10:00

Wherein Public Hooting is Finally Exercised! (Yes!)

Hi-5 Slammed Over Sexy Photos!

This is the headline I was greeted with this morning in the colonies.

Greetings Fetishists and Bibliophiles!

I own a Yahoo email address, and yes, as I am from 'the colonies' that means I have Rupert Murdoch spewing forth his personal opinions regarding what tabloid journalism passes for 'the news' these days.

But every so often a new report passes my observation where I feel that the reporter was so completely off the mark that it needs to be rewritten. For example. This above mentioned article, that is all about how shameful Kellie Crawford's photos, featuring in a soft-core porn mag (can it even truly be called porn?) are. Because, according to Melinda Tankard Reist (who is left and is looking like someone has placed something unpleasant up her bottom and can I just say possesses the most perfect name for a bondage-mistress) who is a Women's Forum Australia spokesperson, Kellie Crawford's photos are inappropriate due to her previous position as a member of the famously tawdry Hi-5 childrens show. Apparently, Kellie's god given right to pose for a somewhat blue magazine is offensive due to the "... abuse of her position with tens of thousands of little girls looking up to her." The photo shoot is also, according to Julia Gale of the Kids Free 2B Kids (right looking particularly compromised in her views), psychologically damaging with older girls. "They are damaged and harmed by messages that they need to sexualise yourself."

So that is how the story runs on Yahoo 7. But I feel this is an inaccurate portrayal of the actual events. I feel that the story should have run something along these lines:

Talentless Bint Uses Boobs To Cash In on Fast Fading Fame Whilst Accidentally Pointing Out How Hi-5 is Soft-Core Porn for Adults!

Kellie Crawford sent shock waves through the entertainment industry by posing for some sexually positive photographs a whole year after she had left her job as presenter, dancer and secret wet-dream to fathers in the Hi-5 children's show.

Dried up sexless husks of women, Melinda (Sherman) Tankard Reist and Julia (I cry when I'm alone because my life has no meaning) Gale, weighed in on the topic despite the fact that it had absolutely nothing to do with them. -Thus going to show that nothing can keep a nosy post-menopausal woman out of other people's business, especially if it involves people having fun in a healthy body-positive way.

But the real point of contention is not with women's groups (who are humourless and therefore ought to be ignored at all costs), but with the TV executives who were completely at a loss with these recent developments.

"Our shows, cater to the needs of the under ten market by providing singing and dancing and sock puppets. Meanwhile, we have always endeavoured to provide the parents of the children with soft-core porn to divert their minds from the mind-numbing tedium of our shows. Seriously, did you think we hired these talentless hacks because of their skills? No! We want mummy and daddy to zone out and have a little cerebral 'me-time' while the buxom blonde and toy-boy jock prance around on stage keeping juniour entertained. What I object to is how Kellie has gone and ratted us out. What was implied sexuality has just become overt. How will we sneak in a bit of erotic eye-candy for the parents with those lemon-sucking praying mantis types reviewing everything? Thanks a lot Kellie! You just let the cat out of the bag!"

"Au Contraire" said a spokesperson for Ralph magazine, "but next month however..."

Don't you wish I wrote for the papers?

And now, if everyone could join with me to give Ms Reist and Gale a public hooting.

HOOT!

The actual report can be viewed at: http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/entertainment/5509148/hi5-star-slammed-sexy-photos

Hi-5, Kellie Crawford, Ralph Magazine, Children's Entertainment, Sex, Sexuality, Kids Free 2B Kids, Women's Forum, Suxulaity in Childrens TV, Ralph Magazine, Pornography, Porn, Lingerie, TV, Media Watch,

Centraal Station Antwerpen gaat uit zijn dak!...

2009-04-16T21:47:00.011+10:00

Wherein accounts of various mass outbreaks of random creativity are given.

...Is what I found whilst trawling my way through Youtube memes.

Greetings Dissidents and Anarchists!

I will admit right now that my adventures began with Susan Boyle who is rapidly conquering Rick Astley in the Number one spot on Youtube with her wonderful rendition of I Dreamed a Dream. I really enjoyed the Susan Boyle clip but as she's EVERYWHERE now, (I mean, Perez Hilton has done a post on her for the gods' sake!) I shan't go over the same material again.

Besides, I found something much more intriguing in an endearingly creative anarchic way. And it had this title: Centraal Station Antwerpen gaat uit zijn dak! Which, to my mono-linguistic eyes meant either this was a European language, and judging by Antwerp was possibly Belgium, or that it had something to do with aliens with congestion attacking central Europe. (My apologies Belgium, But I am from the colonies, so do forgive my ignorance.)

The clip is shown above and is, wonderfully chaotic and totally (I think I really must use this word here, although I mean it in its correct context) random.

What isn't there to love about four hundred strangers who are totally indistinguishable from the rest of the commuters beginning a fully choreographed routine to 'The Sound of Music'! And how that must of lightened up the peoples' day.

So I started looking around. And then I found a similar occurrence in Liverpool U.K. of mass choreographed dancing. And then I found New York Grand Central Station had, not a spontaneous attack of dancing, but instead was confronted with no less than 207 regular commuters suddenly freezing in position simultaneously for five minutes! People stared in mute bewilderment as commuters around them suddenly froze on the train platform mid tying up their shoelace or talking on the phone. Observe:

But this isn't all! Improv Everywhere (responsible for the Grand Central freeze stunt) who are basically a performance art group, have held annual 'No Pants on the Subway Day' which involved 2500 commuters all claiming to have forgotten their pants when they left for work, while riding the subway. Along with numerous other wonderfully irreverent occurrences of mass mayhem. And they aren't alone.

It's a phenomenon called Flashmobbing, smartmobbing or even glamour-bombing! Using our new Social Networking media, we funny little naked apes can collect an enormous amount of people together via, relatively anonymous and hidden means and then get together and do something totally unusual in a public arena leaving the wider community reeling and totally perplexed as to what just happened.

And it is World Wide.

For example: This smartmob occurred in Paris.

Whereas this flash mob involving hundreds of people blowing bubbles occurred in Budapest.

Then there is the 100 strong 'Silent Disco' that occurred in Brighton Train Station that involved a crowd of people simultaneously dancing to silence.

Not to mention the spontaneous Pillow Fight Day That occurred in such cities as Monterrey, Beirut, Shanghai, Sydney, Philadelphia, Basel, Dublin and Copenhagen!

This is a phenomenal expression of humanity here, people! It's brilliant in its collaborative yet anarchic whimsy. But what is it an expression of?

Sociodynamics (according to Wikipedia, and how can they be wrong!) often refers to a point in a culture where it can influence outside influences amongst a crowd. For instance, one person looking up at the sky generally has no effect on other pedestrians on a busy street. Similarly two or three people staring at the sky, but five people staring at the sky has what is called 'Critical Mass' and it is a powerful force. Look again at the youtube clip in Antwerp, and check out the people who are not part of the performance joining in.

The Internet is providing us with the means to make critical masses wherever our whims desire. Globally if we need to. And, although this all appears extremely silly in comparison to the great moratoriums of previous decades, look again at the display in light of the term 'culture-jamming.'

Culture-jamming is a practise (but not apparently a movement) whereby large groups of people gather together using guerrilla communication (-Thanks again Wikipedia) to do everything from reawakening a sense of wonder and awe in other people's everyday surroundings, or pointing fun and mocking the herd like mentality of everyday life, to ridiculing consumerist ventures, or simply getting people to connect with others in random but fun and intense ways.

So although it sounds like a lot of fun with a great deal of whimsy and entertainment, at it's heart we are seeing a series of sophisticated and extremely well-orchestrated demonstrations against...well, against Western culture.

And there is a phenomenal occurrence here. Because these events are growing.

Anyone who may have looked at fractals may recall how when a sequence repeats itself while building upon itself, the structure becomes more complex leading to an inevitable weakness or series of weaknesses throughout the sequence.

I would argue that we are looking at the weaknesses in the structure of Western civilisation here.

And it is building in its critical mass. Take for instance the 'Anonymous' Web group. They are nameless, faceless, and basically run around the virtual world causing a bit of harmless fun.

But then some of them got it into their heads to protest Scientology.

Suddenly, in 93 cities around the world thousands of people turned up, many of them dressed in Guy Fawkes masks (alla V for Vendetta) blaring Rick Astley songs from their stereos outside of Scientology churches in protest!

This, from bored hackers having fun! We are looking at a new anarchic and artistic form of modern protest here. These people aren't protesting war, or capitalism or cruelty against animals. This is a new form of protest that is leveled at the heart of our modern society as we know it. Because its a war against the mind-numbing boredom of a nine to five life.

And they're growing in popularity. How fabulous. Do keep it up!

V for Vendetta, Flash mob, smart mob, glamour bomb, pillow fight, culture jamming, culture jam, protest, moratorium, anarchy, social criticism, public performance, performance art, group mentality, herd mentality, critical mass, Chaos theory, social dynamics, memes, youtube, Rick Astley, Guy Fawkes, Anonymous, Scientology, bubbles, dancing, mob mentality, Susan Boyle,

The New Face of Easter

2009-04-14T14:49:00.010+10:00

Wherein a tale of pagan revelry and the triumph of meaning amidst a sea of pointless consumption is recounted.

The new face of Easter

Greetings all hedonists, decadents, and anarchists all!

During a previous post regarding the true meaning of Ea ster I regaled you all with irritations with our current Christian/popularist consumer culture and how it pains me as a pagan living in Terra Australis.

I was, as you may recall, dear reader, greatly frustrated due to the fact that I was given the option of either a) practising a Christian festival, b) practising a consumerist festival with pagan roots that was, alas, totally misaligned with our seasonal reality, or c) do nothing at all.

Well my previous policy on such occasions has been to sit very still and hope the behemoth fails to notice my presence before lumbering on and catching some other helpless prey in its cash guzzling fangs. In short, my wife and I usually pick option c).

Alas, while this is a fine strategy for a young, hip, twenty-something couple of the new millennium, for a couple with two children under the age of five, it is becoming increasingly obvious that such old strategies no longer will work. Why? Because of social pressures. Pressures at school, pressures with family. -PRESSURES!

I mentioned in a previous post how Easter and Christmas has invaded our home now. And indeed this is the case this year. Presents of eggs arrived in the post for the children. Cards came home in the shape of Easter eggs, and it became obvious to me how right Edmund Burke was when he [sort of] said: The only thing necessary for the triumph of default Christian /consumerist culture is for good pagans to do nothing.

It was becoming obvious that by not celebrating anything, our children would feel like they were missing out on something, and that they could in later years come to hate paganism for marginalising them so much. -Not that they didn't have more festivals than most children, but they're not the same festivals that the other children would observe, and let us not under-estimate the drive in children to be "normal".

So we made up a festival.

Don't get me wrong, we didn't just pull a fake festival out of our heathen-arses. But neither were the methods of celebrating related word for word in the ancient almanacs and tomes of folk-lore.

There is a lot of concern and pressure in the pagan world in regards to being traditional. Much is made in regards to how legitimately one practises their religious observances etc. I think its all a bit of cultural cringe response to some of the less than salubrious origins of paganism in the 20th century. But it has resulted in a sense of cultural puritanism in later years. And as a result, people can become a bogged down in their ways. And trust me, there is nothing more silly than celebrating Midsummer in the middle of winter. Watching a bunch of people rugged up to the eye-balls while consuming ice-cold lemonades and ice-creams is enough to make anyone realise that for an earth-worshipping religion to survive it must adapt to meet new challenges.

A lot has been said on other blogs about balancing a sense of traditionalism with organic evolution to meet new environmental needs especially in regards to immigrating to a new land. Hinhan's Lodge is one recent example. But I would add to that, in order to be successful, a religion not only needs to adapt in order to be cohesive with the environment of it's practitioners, but the needs of the practitioners as well.

And we practitioners had a need. And that need was a public holiday where hundreds of children were stuffing their faces with chocolate and having fun with a rabbit that doesn't exist while our children were not. And I don't know about you, but I could NOT stand there and allow my religion to be negatively compared to Christianity! We needed to have a pagan equivalent which was on par with what other children had, if not better.

Enter the Mabsant. A regional party or festivity practised in Wales for varying reasons, usually celebrating a village patron saint or something which became so licentious and bawdy that they were killed off by the church by the 1850's. Of course, as we practise a form of Welsh pagan-reconstruction this was perfect for our needs, especially considering that loads of 'saints' in the Brythonic nations are not true canonical saints and were simply Christian overlays to whatever local dwelling land-spirit/deity was revered there previously. It's like seeing Hercules wearing a Jesus disguise. So we had a name for what we were going to practise. Autumn Mabsant.

So my wife and I began with looking at what was important with Easter from our own childhoods. And this is what we came up with:

Chocolate
Egg hunt

Ummm.... nope that was it. That was all we could remember of being great about Easter in our childhoods, vast amounts of chocolate and finding it hidden around the yard.

So no matter what we found in the folklore books, we needed to include chocolate and a hunt. Thanks to the Internet we found acorn shaped chocolate molds. So there was our autumnal equivalent to Easter eggs.

But we couldn't have a party based around consuming chocolate. Because that would be totally gross and superficial. Wouldn't it?...

Well, I think it would be gross and superficial, so we kept hunting. And once again, the Internet came to our rescue.

I don't know if anyone else remembers what it was like being pagan twenty years ago, or even being pagan five years ago. But the Internet has been fabulous for paganism in regards to this one thing if nothing else:

The distribution and availability of knowledge and the public forum in order to critique or review critiques of said knowledge.

Does anyone else remember Douglas Monroe and his ubiquitous The 21 Lessons of Merlin? His ghastly re-interpretation of Iolo Morganwg material for a neo-pagan market could masquerade as 'legitimate Druidry' for years in the 1990's. But in today's cyber-networked world such a text would last for less than five minutes before a welsh speaker a folklorist and a farmer all proclaimed it as a load of American tosh that had no resemblance to Druidry in Britain, neo druidry or otherwise. And in less than ten minutes you would have a bevy of under-age boys making some very unflattering comments regarding the author's legal standing in regards to certain age of consent laws and the whole affair would be a debacle quicker than you could say 'New Mexico'.

Similarly, on the other side of the coin, one would have to travel for hours to get to an interstate library in order to find an out-of-date book of folklore that was pre-Gardner and pre-neo-paganism. And, because it is Welsh folklore that we're concerned with, it would be phenomenally difficult to find such books actually written in English. (alas we denizens of Terra Australis are revoltingly mono-lingual. I think it has to do with the tyranny of distance from, well....from the rest of the ENTIRE world!) And then once you had such a book, you would either be forced to write down as many notes as you could, or photocopy the whole book at much expense,as borrowing it and taking it over state lines only having to return it would be a logistical nightmare.

But in today's world, a hoax is defrauded in a blink of an eye, and an old genuine text of folklore and customs is translated and published into an e-text and distributed across the world in a similar time. How fabulous!

And so my wife and I did indeed turn to this fabulous new tool and consult the old sources regarding to Autumn festivals. And there we found Michaelmas. Now Michaelmas is basically a Christian feast day. But it appeared that the majority of the festival was less about the Saint and more about the celebration of Autumn. Great! So without further ado, we took their Christian festival, and in the spirit of the great millennium of Christian aggressive marketing tactics, we grafted our pagan festival over the top! In Wales it was the custom to eat roast Goose. Alas, no Geese for sale down here in Lamb Beef Pork or Fish land, but we did find a duck tucked in the back of a refrigerator in the supermarket.

And then we found it! What was to become the new face of Easter. -Sorry, Autumn Mabsant. It was an account of how an effigy was burnt of a pirate who terrorized the coast land for some years. Now, this effigy was burnt in Spring. And it's deeper meaning was unclear. But usually with such things as these, there tends to be a deeper pagan meaning. So we hunted around. Alas, nothing. But we did find another effigy burning festival held at Autumn a couple of counties over called the 'Burning of the Bartle'. Who is apparently another outlaw who's death is re-enacted with much frivolity.

But of course, who can forget our most famous burning outlaw effigy: Guy Fawkes, burnt on November the 5th.

"Remember, Remember the 5th of November, gunpowder, treason and plot. I see no reason, the gunpowder treason should be forgot."

What was interesting is that this effigy, that is called a Bartle in some parts is made up of the husks and finished scraps of the old harvest.

Which was perfect! For we had recently had a Harvest festival and now had many bushels of wheat and oat husks. So we made an effigy. He was filled with autumn leaves and pine needles and husks and rinds. And we called him Bartle and to us he was the spirit of the old year that was coming to an end. (Because All Hallows is the beginning of the New Year and in Terra Australis that happens in May) We had a feast of duck and Bartle sat at the table and received his own morsel. And then in an act of purification and libation to the spirits of the land we sent him back into the otherworlds with his food by setting him on fire whilst we drank cider and enjoyed the blaze.

Now, was it traditional? No. It was however stitched together from a variety of traditional sources. But we make no attempt to claim that it was an ancient rite of much antiquity.

Was it meaningful? Infinitely so, in fact I found it meshed very well with our current festivals very nicely and brought new complimentary elements to them.

Did it address a need? Absolutely the children had a blast! And they didn't even give Easter a second thought. And (when they are older) and the other children ask: "Did you get any Easter eggs?", they can say "No but we had a bonfire and chocolate acorns and we burnt a scarecrow who grew up from our harvest." Yes its unusual, but it's gotta be a lot more fun than what the others are doing!)

And most importantly: Was it enjoyable? Hell Yeah! In a day we had constructed and performed a fabulous little seasonal observance. And who doesn't like burning life-sized effigies!

So next Easter, if you're tired of the same old mis-matched practises, and you're from Terra Australis, try having an Autumn party and invite Bartle round to be your guest of honour! He may regret it, but you most certainly wont!
Bartle, Easter, paganism, pagan parenting, paganism in Australia, eclecticism, Reconstructionism, Celtic Reconstruction, Traditional paganism, Traditional craft, religion, effigies, outlaw, Guy Fawkes, November 5th, V for Vendetta, chocolate, alternative Easter practises, Autumn, autumn festivals, festivals, burning man, sacrificial deities, spirit of the harvest, John Barleycorn, wheat harvest, husks, Edmund Burke, "For evil to triumph, good men must do nothing", easter eggs, consumerism, social criticism, burning effigies, sacrificial deity, new years eve

An Absinthe Toast!

2009-04-12T13:25:00.009+10:00

Wherein the virtues of a dubiously engaging individual are discussed at length.

Greetings all connoisseurs of our richly decentralized new-millennium culture!

Those who may have viewed an earlier post of mine would have had the delight of experiencing 'The Gallery of Public Hooting', perhaps even for the first time. Congratulations to those of you! What a delight that must have been. I know that for me, viewing mass public displays of condemnation is an enjoyable, if not somewhat arousing experience, so I do hope that it inspired a similar sensation with you as well. But it led me to consider that perhaps one ought not introduce 'the stick' as it were, without a corresponding 'carrot.'

May I introduce to you all: THE CARROT!

And I call our friend, this carrot: 'The Gallery of Absinthe Toasts for the Dubiously Gifted Personages Who Inspire Awe for Whatever Reason.' Or in short: 'The Gallery of Absinthe Toasts.' ...Indeed, I think you will never hear the earlier moniker stated ever again.

And I even have a new personage who must be brought to everyone's attention and praised with a toast of Absinthe, for peculiarities in his personality. His name is John Safran.

John Safran would not be know to most of you, as he is a minor celebrity in the colonies, deep in Terra Australis. But I like to think of him as 'The Thinking Man's Jackass.' And by Jackass I refer to that American team of people who became famous by doing phenomenally stupid and painful things to themselves in the spirit of mindless good humour. And it worked. They are now internationally successful and rich. -Meanwhile, we good citizens who did not have the presence of mind to have frozen oranges lobbed into our orifices at 100km's per hour for the public's amusement are still slogging it out at the grindstone and aching out a pitiful existence. But I digress!

John Safran, who is a sometimes Television presenter for ABC and SBS and a sometimes radio personality for Triple J in Terra Australis also does ridiculously painful and horrific things to himself. But they are hardly mindless or stupid. Indeed, he is motivated by one of the most profound aspects of humanity in general, that being Religion. John Safran is obsessed with religion. All religion. In fact, his radio partner, Father Bob Maguire claims that "For him [John Safran], religion is the heart of the cosmos..."But his curiosity regarding religion is very much coloured by his Australian sense of irreverent humour. With some truly stunning results.

In 1997 John Safran first came to the Australian public's attention by appearing as a contestant in a documentary making world travelling game show thing called Race Around the World. And in it, he came last due to a disqualification from filming a movie which road-tested confession booths in Rio De Janeiro. -Which unfortunately is actually illegal to put to air on Australian TV. From that point on John Safran later filmed a fabulous series called John Safran vs God, which explores religions from all around the world, with both an irreverent but intently curious manner.

And he is awe-inspiring in his audacity.

In it he explores Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Freemasonry, Asatru, Judaism, and Catholicism. But it is his stunts that match Jackass for their 'oh my god' factor, but with a whole new element of social satire and commentary that Jackass is gloriously and gratuitously devoid of.

For example:

He attends a voodoo ritual where a goat is sacrificed in Haiti.
He gets a fatwa put on fellow TV presenter Rove McManus by extremist Muslim Clerics in London.
He lifts a curse on the Australian Socceroos with the help of a Malawian Witch-doctor.
He is beaten by a Zen Buddhist monk.
He goes Atheist door-knocking in Salt-Lake City Utah.

But the two stunts that are truly frightening are:

He is interviewed by the Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan and asks if he can join even though he's Jewish because, in his words, 'he's whiter than Hitler'.
He is exorcised by fundamentalist Christian and Evangelist Bob Larson.

It is fair to say that he is the world's expert in world religious experiences.

And on Good Friday this year, he indeed went to a new extreme in order to film a story and/or make a gag. He got himself crucified in the Philippines. Two nails were driven into his pale Melbournite Jewish palms in order to 'aid his mother who is dying of cancer.' (she actually died from a heart attack six years ago.)

So to John Safran, extremist religious dabbler, crucifixion survivor, Jewish aspirant of the Ku Klux Klan and all round shit-stirrer, we raise a flaming glass of Absinthe to your good-health and your dubious claim of infamy!

John Safran, Race Around the World, Road Testing Confessionals, Voodoo, KKK, Ku Klux Klan, Asatru, Buddhism, Christianity, Fundamentalists, Fundamental Christianity, Crucifixion, Hindu, Triple J, ABC, SBS, John Safran vs God, Race Relations, Absinthe, Absinthe toasts, provocateurs, Mormons, exorcism, Bob Larson, Fatwa, Islam, Extremists, Muslims, Witch-doctors, occultism, The Philipines, Good Friday, Easter, deception

One Mad March Hare!

2009-04-10T21:02:00.013+10:00

Wherein the origins of Easter are discussed and the schizoid mentality of Terra Australis is revealed.

I hate Easter.

I think I hate it more than I hate Christmas.

I'm not a fun hater. Really I am not. I enjoy festivals. But Easter and Christmas remind me too much of everything I hate about popular modern Australian culture.

Make no mistake, Terra Australis is a godless nation. It's true, read our Census statistics, one third of our nation are atheists! And only 64% are actually Christian. And of course, we have in our constitution no mention of a state religion. And yet, we have not one but two public holidays devoted to "Christian" holidays. Now, I would never advocate the loss of a public holiday, (that would be unaustralian) but indeed, why are we meting public holidays for two thirds of our nations religious personages but not looking at other religious days as well.

For instance, why are we not celebrating Eid al-Fitr, or likewise why not Hanukkah? We are a nation that, as much as our older generations don't like to admit it, resides in the Asian-pacific region, so why not celebrate Vesak or Ulambana like the Buddhists do, or Holi and Diwali like Hindu's do? Or, (god's forbid), how about we actually ask our indigenous people if they have any local special times and when they are and can we do something to help honour the land? But no, we have two holidays set aside for the birth and death of Christ, who is worshipped and believed in by only two thirds of the state.

So my question is, what exactly is the other third of Terra Australis doing at this time?

Now, displays of public drunkenness on a public holiday are a national pastime, but I see a lot more than two thirds of the nation buying into the whole 'Easter hype.' And let's not even begin to discuss how many people buy into the whole 'Christmas hype.' You see, I think celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is a fine way to spend a long weekend. Fabulous....if you're Christian.

But I am not Christian. I'm of the race that sings under torture. I am a heathen, a pagan, I worship the old gods if you will. And I am beginning to get a little bit narky at how difficult my life is because of it.

The first thing is the weird looks, like I must be a simpleton because of my religion. "Oh my, he actually believes in pagan gods." Well excuse me for believing that my ancestors happened to have the right idea for many thousands of years before some foreign dude in Jerusalem happens to die spectacularly. Similarly I am annoyed that no one says "Oh my god they actually believe that Christ was a real person who died and was resurrected."

The second thing is that every time you celebrate a Christian festival you adhere to pagan customs. -badly. Don't believe me? Then you might want to stop munching on eggs for Easter and expunge the rabbit from your cultural consciousness. Similarly you want to avoid using a Christmas tree or having a yule log for Christmas. But let's stick to Easter.

For you see Easter was, in essence a religious PAGAN festival devoted to celebrating Eostre, the Saxon mother goddess of fertility. And guess what, she is associated with Hares. But there are a whole host of European and Middle Eastern celebrations at this time of year devoted to varying fertility goddesses. And an egg is (surely you're seeing the pattern here already) a symbol of fertility. So as you can see Easter is a pagan festival. But why is Christ's death celebrated on this time? Well it's certainly not because he died on this date. After all, Easter changes depending on when the first full moon after the equinox is (nothing pagan with that!). Well, as some of you know, Christianity spent over a thousand years in a prolonged marketing campaign. And it was brutal.

If a pagan population had a popular holiday, chances are a Christian holiday would be grafted over the top. Christmas (Yule) for instance is now celebrated as the birth of Christ, despite the nativity story taking place at a time of the year when the shepherds are sleeping in the fields watching their flocks (so spring or summer). But Christ is (according to Christians) a light that illuminates the darkness, and what better time to celebrate the birth of such a figure than in the darkest time of year and look, see how it fits perfectly with all your pagan customs. Oh wow! What a coincidence, so you can stop leaving out your apples to Slepnir and Odin. Let me introduce you to Saint Nicholas...

But the Easter graft is a lot more aggressive. It doesn't coincide well at all with the pagan holiday at all. Fluffy hares, birds, bees, flowers, eggs, fertility, life, BLOODY DYING MAN ON A CROSS! -Sort of brings the tone of the holiday down a little doesn't it? And that's another reason I think I hate Easter more. Because that response is exactly what was hoped for by the first Christians. By celebrating something so sombre at a time of such frivolity, they hoped to a) bring the tone of the holiday down, and b) make the Christians feel superior in their sombre piety. It's shock tactics on a grand scale. And it's not pretty.

None the less, if I were Christian I would be very glad to be going to mass, and performing other Easter customs. But I wouldn't be doing the pagan customs, because I wouldn't be pagan...oh, dear. It seems that most Christians are a little oblivious to the inherent hypocrisy of their holiday. Oh dear. But then, who thought the Christians could be guilty of hypocrisy?

But luckily for me, I am not a Christian, I'm a pagan. So I'll just celebrate the fun pagan part of the festival. But I have one more problem. You see, as I mentioned above. I live in Terra Australis. That means I would need to travel several thousand miles to celebrate the spring festivals during spring. We are in the grip of Autumn. It's harvest time. ...And it's getting cold. Likewise, I gasp in unadulterated bewilderment when I see people with spray on snow adorning their windows and frosty the snow men hanging from fake evergreen pines in thirty-forty plus degree heat! (That's Celsius mark you).

And this brings me to my current frustrations. As a parent of two little boys, I find myself fighting an enormous tide of social pressure which is insidious. Christmas invades my home. Easter cards come home from school. We do what we can to rename Christmas 'Midsummer', but it is a constant and unending battle. And the day Christmas is over, I see the eggs getting displayed for Easter!

As a teacher I tried to explain the origins of Easter and Christmas to my class of thirteen year olds. And I was met with blank stares. Our conversation went something like this:

"So you don't celebrate Christmas?"
"No. No I don't."
"But wont your kids miss out?"
"No. No they wont."
"But they wont get presents from Santa Clause?"
"No. No they wont."
"So they'll miss out?"
"No, they will get special presents from Arawn and the Ancestors at Yule, in winter. And unlike Santa Clause, at no point will we need to explain that Arawn is not real."
"But they won't get presents from Santa?"
"That's right."
"So they'll miss out?"
"You know, my kids get four times the festivals and special days than you get."
"But they don't get Christmas?..."
(This conversation went on like this for an extremely long time.)

But what really concerns me is the one third of Terra Australis who do not prescribe to the Christian viewpoint, who nonetheless celebrate pagan customs for the wrong time of the year. There is just something inherently unearthy and unaccepting of the land beneath our feet about a culture that refuses to acknowledge the seasonal changes and conditions in its national holidays. We are constantly chest-slapping and declaring that we are a 'land of eternal Summer', and yet here we are pretending its Midwinter year in year out, roasting hams in forty degree heat. Well excuse me if I refuse to play make-believe, excuse me if I insist on a holiday that has meaning to me both spiritually and physically. And excuse me if I refuse to accept the role of marginalised nutter.

Because I'm not the one who is oblivious to the customs I perform.

Because I'm not the one who is in denial about our weather outside.

Easter, Christmas, Yule, Easter, Hares, Fertility, Rabbits, Easter Bunny, Bunnies, Easter Bunnies, Eggs, The origins of Easter, The Origins of Yule, The Pagan origins of Easter, Pagan holidays, Chocolate eggs, Midsummer, Midwinter, Summer Solstice, Vernal Equinox, Autumn Equinox, social criticism, pagan parenting, social pressure, anti-christian, christian, social ostracism, Australian holidays, Australian religion, Hanukkah, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Indigenous, festivals, March Hare

Public Hooting!

2009-04-09T20:23:00.012+10:00

Wherein the benefits of public condemnation will be elucidated.

I am of the opinion that our society is fragmenting somewhat. It is not really all that surprising. I mean we have a post-industrial 'would-you-like-fries-with-that' type of culture. Anyone who has ever had the misfortune to work in a factory will know that a factory churns out hundreds of thousands of a single item, but of course, machines break or people aren't quick enough to maintain them aggressively enough, and so as a result, products of a substandard nature begin to fall through the cracks.

Our Western society is a factory. And unlike a factory, our substandard products can breed and multiply. I put it down to the nuclear family model actually. By restricting a child's daily parental model for correct behaviour to the same two adult figures day in day out allows for aberrations in acceptable behaviour to be seen as normal in the vacuum sealed cul-de-sacs and pockets of white-bred suburbia.

I call to the witness stand Reality T.V.!

Don't laugh! I am about to discuss now the greatest cultural taboo of our nation. 'Big Brother'. It's name is enough to drive women to be barren and men to go insane. I live in the colonies, Terra Australis to be exact, and our version of Big Brother recently got axed. And I think that's a shame. Because it was fulfilling and profound entertainment? Hell no! Because it never lived up to it's original promise. Through Big Brother, we were to see ordinary Australian's talking about ordinary things and we as an audience were to be allowed to comment and pass judgement.

I love judgement. I think it's sexy. And Big Brother was proposing to be a gladiatorial ring for the new millennium.

Ave Caesar, we who are about to die salute you!

Alas, this is not what we received. We received tanned, waxed, primped, bleached and enhanced, Ken and Barbies flouncing about doing ridiculous tasks for the pre-teen viewing audience, while all actual real conversation was heavily censored and finally kept from the viewing public's gaze. In the end. There simply wasn't any reality in our reality T.V. But I digress!

The reason I bring up this abomination of our modern era is that Big Brother was a phenomenal place to gaze upon people who simply had fallen through the gaps of social normality. These people did and behaved in ways that they considered to be totally normal, and indeed, they were probably raised in a nuclear family with two consenting adults who let such behaviour seem to be acceptable. Reality T.V. is a smorgas board of social misdemeanours and unacceptable behaviour.

Which brings me to my campaign of public hooting!

Once upon a time, such failures to observe the correct mode of behaviour was an offence of greatest embarrassment. And worthy of public ridicule and collective condemnation.

Observe:

This luscious production is of course from the 1988 film Dangerous Liasons, featuring the phenomenally sexy Glen Close and John Malkovich as well as Uma Thurman and Keanu Reeves (not that Uma and Keanu aren't sexy, anyone who saw The Matrix or Kill Bill would know what I mean!). And it is the most fantastic display of public condemnation I have ever seen captured on film. It's inspirational, people! Feel the wrath of hundreds of people simultaneously hooting in unison!

I bring this up, because public condemnation is something of a foreign occurrence to us hip young modern people of the new millennium. We're a little surprised by all of this pressure exerted by total strangers. Why is this?

Because, in the past, our code of what was acceptable, our rule book for public hooting was the Bible. And it was an oppressive rule book which was body hating, anti-humanitarian, and a completely flawed framework upon which to base a society on from beginning to end (but perhaps that's a post for another day). In response to this we became more liberal, and our society became more of a non-critical society, but I wonder if we threw the baby out with the bath water. Perhaps we should have expunged the nasty oppressive schema for judgement from our hearts and minds, rather than our chance to act upon it.

I propose two things. The first is to live life according to a different set of principals rather than those written in the Bible, -it's boring, fun-hating and so last century, and quite frankly I'd like to think that people would act nicely to one another in the name of social cohesion rather than so they score enough coupons to get past Saint Peter when they bite the big one.

The second is to publicly Hoot, HOOT!, those who do not meet our standards of fair and appropriate behaviour in life. So when it is forty degrees and you are stuck in a queue and the person in front of you is causing a scene because they feel they are a special and unique snow-flake when they are obviously an imbecile, HOOT THEM! When your ex-boyfriend failed to pay your child support payments, HOOT HIM! When the person behind the desk is obviously incompetent and incapable of carrying out their job in a satisfactory nature, HOOT THEM! When you are on a reality T.V. show and find yourself victim to sexual assault HOOT THE PERPETRATORS! Exert public pressure and lets try and maintain some standards of behaviour! Tap your fan against the balustrade and hoot to your hear'ts content. Get some friends together and get them to hoot together. Trust me, there can be nothing more concerning for anyone than to be publicly and unexpectedly heckled through the medium of a well timed Hoot!

This Post is an invitation to join me in public hooting. It is also and introduction to 'The Gallery of Public Hooting' which will consist of people who need to be publicly hooted for various of transgressions against being a decent person.

AND LET THE HOOTING BEGIN!

Public Hooting, Big Brother, Dangerous Liasons, Peer Pressure, Social pressure, public condemnation, anti-christian sentiment, reality t.v., social criticism, John Malkovich, Glenn Close, Keanu Reeves, Uma Thurman, Kill Bill, The Matrix, society, eitheenth century, pagan, decency, betterment of society,

A Storm in 1 Cup

2009-04-05T20:57:00.002+10:00

Wherein our intrepid blogger will attempt to link coporaphilia, the human genome project, new theories of English linguistic origins, core shamanism and the failure of the Tertiary education system into a single cohesive treatise.

Connoisseurs, raconteurs, and provocateurs all!

The point of origin for this scintillating adventure into cyber extroversion was with my reviewing a fantastic site called funnyexamanswers.com . As a teacher, I could not help but weep as I read the array of stunningly clueless answers. I recommend all and sundry to go and view the site. But one essay answer seriously concerned me. And believe it or not, it was not due to the material related therein.

The essay in question is the one shown above with this blog. It is a film review, and at a guess, I would say is a film review essay from University. The film review is of the stunningly grotesque and abhorrent Internet meme '2 Girls 1 Cup' which spawned so much popularity from a plethora of people uploading their responses of shock and revulsion onto YouTube. The meme itself is difficult to find due to its extremely ...libertine nature. But then, coporophilia is likely to offend!

The gentleman involved seems to have decided to, as a film review essay, submit his deconstruction of the infamous '2 Girls 1 Cup'. And, I have to say, his use of language, his understanding of Freudian symbolism and his ability to 'mind wank' at a sophisticated level is pretty impressive. Impressive enough for a credit (if he was a first year student) , impressive enough for a pass at least.

For example, here is a brief transcript of said essay, observe:

In the masterful modern work 2girls1cup, the feminist genre is reexamined through a series of reversals of expectations. The prevalent ideologies of our culture are filtered through the lens of the pornographic genre - and, in true morder form - the work tends to raise more questions than it answers.

And:

The first image with the two primary characters (who, for the sake of this reading, I will consider to be the “2girls that are referred to in the title_ is seemingly innocuous - the cross-cultural, lesbian interaction defines the equal-rights(both feminine and racial) within the genre of pornography.

The gentle background music lulls the audience to sleep, and the timely but gradual change into the next shot at :11 goes by largely unnoticed by the audience. The eyes are immediately drawn to the “Cup” (also presumed to be that mentioned in the title) the inversion of the phallus and perhaps one of the most overarching symbols for feminine spirituality and sexuality in antiquity.

However, what is not impressive, in stark comparison to the colourful but erudite exam, is the unintelligible squawking of the marker. His/her comments are barely legible and tend to be reduced to monosyllabic grunts such as "Huh?" or even "????" The final comment is a frightening indictment upon our tertiary institutions:

"This material is Not apropriate [note the spelling of "appropriate"] for class! [class is struck through] Anyone!! See Me 0%"

Now, if I were to unpack this essay and marker's comments together as a micro-text, I would find something extremely alarming. For I see here an extremely smart person (I must admit to presuming it is a 'he' simply because it's about porn and lets face it handing in a film review essay on something like '2 Girls 1 Cup' has 19 year old male adolescent written all over it!) who is bored with their class, and feels confident in comparing his academic abilities with his lecturers and markers. His essay has all the hallmarks of someone who is simultaneously mocking the teaching staff, whilst bragging about his intellect and ability to give them exactly what they require for their essays, albeit on his terms.

In comparison, the lecturer simply can not keep up. He/she does not even seem to realise that they are the butt of this student's joke! They are humourless and (even worse) incapable of spelling. This essay is a text which highlights the irrelevance of the teacher, and the disillusioned nature of the student who is bored and unstimulated, and is consequently failing due to his inability to not tow the line.

Which got me to thinking about Stephen Oppenheimer's The Origins of the British. Stephen Oppenheimer is an expert in human genetics and has written plenty of books on the topic including The Origins of the British and Out of Eden, and The Real Eve. He has transgressed an academic commandment however, by blending two disciplines together. And it is a serious transgression too for he blends a science discipline with a humanities discipline causing much flapping of arms and outcries of consternation. You see, Stephen Oppenheimer is an expert in synthesising vast amounts of DNA and comparing them to our known theories about history, or in this case, language.

Enter Geoffrey Sampson, linguist and above mentioned arm flapper. It appears that Geoffrey is somewhat annoyed that Oppenheimer would dare step in on his turf so to speak. It would appear that Geoffrey is annoyed by Oppenheimer's audacity to, god forbid, have an original thought that might break the mould. Geoffrey Sampson assumes the now familiar patronising smug tone associated with all academic professionals who are scaring others away from their College Chair. Observe:

Part of the problem is that when Oppenheimer quotes research on linguistic analysis, instead of using the work of people knowledgeable about language he depends heavily on ill-informed studies of language by geneticists. Oppenheimer repeated cites as authoritative a 2003 paper by Peter Forster and Alfred Toth, which to a professional linguist reads as an embarrassment rather than a serious scientific contribution. Rather than justify this statement here, let me simply refer to an online critique by my late, much-missed colleague Larry Trask. (See also his follow-up.) Larry summarizes his view by saying that Forster and Toth “have committed every schoolboy howler I can think of”. Strong words, but justified in my view.

What is intriguing though, is that Oppenheimer's arguments do not rely upon these 'embarrassments', so why bother even mentioning them? But the answer is simple enough: To keep the status quo. To keep such up-starts like Forster and Toth and Oppenheimer in their place. Whilst at the same time displaying once again, an appalling lack of scholarship in the process. For example, Geoffrey Sampson claims at the end of his review that Oppenheimer's theory is simply 'not true'. I don't know about you, but bloody-minded assertion always convinces me! After quibbling over irrelevant points regarding Oppenheimer's supporting arguments, he demonstrates how he is totally incapable of actually addressing Oppenheimer's core theories as he is completely unable to understand anything which isn't linguistics. In fact Geoffrey Sampson seems to have difficulty understanding maps in their relation to genetics! He does seem to have time to reveal his true issue of contention, which is:

(he was a career paediatrician, and has turned to this stuff [which is Sampson's way of saying Genetic research and it's consequences on our understanding of prehistory and linguistics] on a hobby basis).

That's right, Oppenheimer is guilty. GUILTY! He is guilty of not having followed the correct protocols and toadying up to the right people. He is guilty of having become an expert in a field of interest outside of the universities' authority! He then compounds his sin by blending it with another field without asking the gurus of that discipline for their blessing. In short Oppenheimer is guilty of being a maverick.

There is a grand history of dusty academics putting down our maverick intelligentsia. For instance, Michael Harner, and Peter Kingsley have both fallen into disrepute amongst academic circles. Michael Harner was an outstanding anthropologist, and Peter Kingsley a scholar on ancient Greece. Were their theories and arguments seriously flawed, or indeed poorly expressed? Far from it, Peter Kingsley and Michael Harner merely seem to have transgressed the golden rule of not becoming 'eccentric', -of starting to actually believe in their own theories. It appears that certainty is a virtue in academic circles but not without an escape clause of detached irony. Peter Kingsley whose theories regarding the shamanic roots of Grecian logic via Parmenides, and Michael Harner who's anthropology led him to take up core shamanism (a synthesis of 'core' beliefs by a plethora of shamanic cultures, -hence the name) have led to an embarrassed expunging of their academic works as they are type-cast into the marginalised role of 'crazy-nutter'.

Geoffrey Sampson's response to Steven Oppenheimer's book, and the marker's response to the less than wholesome essay above, got me thinking about my own experience at University. And of things nearly EVERYONE I ever talked to said about their experiences of University.

It is a story that sort of follows these lines:

Once upon a time there was a young high school student who had heard nothing but fabulous things about University. He had heard that University was a melting pot of knowledge, that University was an institution where wisdom was explored and free thought was revered. And then the newly graduated school leaver entered this mythical realm, to discover that it wasn't the nirvana he first thought it was. Where he expected to meet lecturer's pondering the meaty topics of philosophy or literature, he found uninspiring teachers, whose grip on academic topics was superficial at best. Where he expected profound debate he saw bureaucratic squabbling and blatant currying for favour by undergraduates. Where were the discussions regarding literary theory and philosophical quandaries? As he slowly realised that his teachers were far from the demi-gods of wisdom that he hoped for, he noticed something else too. That all the smart students, all the students who had ideas about Universities and easily grasped the material were becoming disillusioned with this "nirvana" and were leaving it for greener pastures, somewhere where they're skills would be acknowledged and they could earn a wage. Meanwhile, the students who were plodding along and said all the right things to all the right people, the students who were not intimidating to the professors and doctors rose in the ranks of students and were, very soon, hired by the staff.

This may sound like the hard-done-by whingeing of a university student who dropped out and came to no good. But unfortunately such an assumption would be wrong. Having seen the writing on the wall very early on the piece, I capitulated to the system, declared that 2+2=5, completed what degree's I needed to get in order to have a career of my choosing, and then got the hell out of the system. I can now say that I am a well-read, extremely intelligent person with a formidable vocabulary, in spite of my education.

And I am not alone. In 2000, the Association for Institutional Research and Association for the Study of Higher Education commissioned a study which was published under the name Higher Education. In it is the following quote:

So often are students bored by uninspired teaching or disenchanted by badly taught material. While university lecturers are undoubtedly knowledgeable, they are totally untrained and unexamined in the art of communication.

The student of my story, feeling uninspired and disenchanted more than likely left University. Maybe he was failed for having a humourless lecturer who couldn't cope with a film review about pornography. Either way, the student probably left and that was the end of the story... until recently.

For we no longer live in an age where the University holds the monopoly on knowledge. We are living in a wondrous age where the Internet has risen like a many headed Scylla to the Universities' Charybdis. Once upon a time such maverick thinkers who were bored and brilliant and flouted the system would have left, disgraced, and branded a 'drop out', or a 'crazy-nutter.' But the Internet now is promising a new anarchic method for such people to make a living and influence our society with their ideas. Mavericks are learning to express their opinions in a new medium which has left the Universities reeling. And they are becoming a force to be reckoned with. While the lecturer's were guarding the gate to wisdom, these mavericks hacked a way in through a back door, and suddenly, the universities are having to consider these people's theories. Of course this results in a lot of embarrassed chuckling behind hands in an 'oh ...him' kind of way. But unlike before, the Internet makes such displays very VERY public.

And the public is on the mavericks' side. I truly believe, at least in the realm of the Humanities,) that Universities need to seriously reconsider their approach to knowledge, lest they be surpassed by the culture of knowledge and debate that is flourishing unrestrained on the Internet, threatening to make them redundant.

It is an extremely interesting period in time for many reasons, but I look forward to a day where the Universities will need to drastically alter their methods or find themselves usurped and surpassed, not by their students, but by the 'drop outs' who found a back door via the Internet!

2 Girls 1 Cup Film Review at: funnyexamanswers.com
S., Oppenheimer, The Origins of the British, A Genetic Detective Story, Constable and Robinson: 2006.
G., Samson, Stephen Oppenheimer and the Language Prehistory of Britain, http://www.grsampson.net/QOppenheimer.html
M., Harner, The Way of the Shaman, Harper SanFrancisco: 1990.
P., Kingsley, Reality, The Golden Sufi Centre Publishing: 2003.
J.C. Smart, W.G. Tierney, Higher Education, Association for Institutional Research and Association for the Study of Higher Education, Springer: 2000.

coporaphilia, 2 Girls 1 Cup, Core Shamanism, Michael Harner, Parmenides, The Golden Sufi Center, Social Critique, Tertiary Education, Stephen Oppenheimer, The Human Genome Project, Linguistics, Failure of the universities. Smart students dropping out, Higher Education, Prehistory, Britain

A (Formal) Introduction

2009-04-04T22:59:00.000+11:00

Wherein the purpose of the Blog is revealed.

ram⋅bling [ram-bling] –adjective

1. aimlessly wandering.

2. taking an irregular course; straggling: a rambling
brook.

3. spread out irregularly in various directions: a rambling mansion.

4. straying from one subject to another; desultory: a rambling novel.

-Dictionary.com

Greetings and salutations oh ye who have strayed upon this page!

I must admit right now, that, for reasons unknown, I had always wanted to write a blog. Two things have always stopped me from publishing any such thing. 1) The time, and 2) the inclination. Ideas of Blogs, like most ideas, are pleasing things, ephemeral and delighting to the mind. But once one sits down to the computer, once one gets down to the brass tacks of it, one is forced to ask:

"What the hell do I intend to write about anyway?"

What could possibly be SO important that others would actually wish to read it? It's not like millions of other people aren't doing the exact same thing! What could I possibly say that could add something new to the topic at hand? And (while I'm at it) what the hell, is my topic at hand?

Which got me to thinking, having recently looked at T.H. White's Once and Future King, I was recently struck by a rather interesting passage towards the end of the omnibus. In it, Merlyn (who lives backwards in time and so has distant memories of the future and vague premonitions about his past) discusses the state of humanity with a young King Arthur, and in particular, the inaccuracies of the title homo sapiens (wise human).

It became obvious that sapiens was inadequate as an adjective, but the trouble was to find another.... a good adjective for a species has to be appropriate to some peculiarity of it....The first suggestion was ferox [fierce], since man is the most ferocious of animals. ...[For] there is not a humble animal in England that does not flee from the shadow of man, as a burned soul in purgatory.

Other than homo ferox (fierce human), more suggestions are debated over such as: homo stultus (stupid human) , homo impoliticus (the apolitical human -due to our belief in fighting to solve a problem or arguing to solve a problem).

Now, I find these options to be astonishingly bleak, although they are perfectly understandable suggestions, especially when one considers that T.H. White had only recently returned from the horrors of World War Two before writing such a passage. I do however agree with White that homo sapiens (wise human) is a ridiculously overly optomistic title that we've conveniently dubbed ourselves. Afterall, it is meant to be an adjective that is curious to us as an entire species, and I'm not sure about you, but a simple walk along a crowded street or an hour watching prime time TV with an objective eye can fill anyone with enough doubt that 'wisdom' is our unique moniker.

Which got me to thinking, dear reader, as to what is our unique specialty on the globe? How do we really differ from animals as, on average, an entire species? And it occured to me that we are, in fact Homo Disertus (the expressive human) for there is not a human being alive on the planet that does not in some way shape or form want to express themselves in some way, whether it be through the medium of hair-style, clothing, art, manner of speech, dance, gesture, facial expression, taste in music, taste in anything, anything at all. Everything we do in life, is to some degree a statement to the world in general as to what sort of person we are, or wish to be perceived as.

In the 19th century, the domestic medium of self expression was the diary. As Oscar Wilde wrote: "I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train." In the 21st, the domestic manner of self-expression is revealing itself to be the humble 'blog'.

We are the expressive human. We express ourselves therefore we are human. -And perhaps blogging then is the most human activity to undertake. Indeed like all creatures who specialise in a particular activity, I feel it behooves us to be able to perform our unique activity with a sense of flair and ability. If self-expression, is after all, all that which makes us stand out from the 250,000 other species of animal in the world, then by the gods, I'd want to be good at it.

And so with that in mind, dear reader, I have resolved to undertake this blog, as an exercise in being human, and as an exercise in self-expression, but one, I hope that will provide some small entertainment to those who wander upon these pages. What do you expect to see here? Expect anything from erotica through to reviews on opera. Expect film reviews, and youtube clips and philosophical musings. Expect poetry and theology and art works and civil disobedience. Expect criticisms on the behaviour of the human ape, and the manner in which we live. Expect rants and ravings and many many ramblings. Expect to see my digressions and obsessions.

Expect to see me.

Regards.
Algernon Misanthrope.

T.H. White, The Once and Future King, Harper Collins, 1996.
O. Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest.
C. Lebrun, Expressions of the Spirit's Passions, c. 1663.

Charles Lebrun, diary, Expressions of the Spirits Passions, homo sapiens, Lebrun, once and future king, oscar wilde, T.H. White, the importance of being earnest, The Once and Future King, white, Terence Hanbury White, The Importance of Being Earnest, Introduction, self-expression, expression, homo ferox, homo stultus, homo impoliticus, Oscar Wilde, Wilde, diaries