Friday Night Special

Cruise home in the Road Monster to find Sister2 + nieces in place at the farm. Kids soaking up the Simpsons and S2 in the car mellowing out. Fortuitously, I had stopped off at "The Glades" to pick up a 6pack (undoubtely more to come on the salubrious *Glades* at another time) of Melbourne Bitter to wash away the worst sins of the week.
We moved onto the front porch and sat in the gloom shooting off our mouths about how crap things had been, and who's workmates are the bigger dickheads. Pa & I cracked a brew each, Ma arrived home - the kids washed in and out giving us updates on the TV dramas unfolding. Two beers in, Kirralee (the 6 year old) goes, "Can we play a game?" which is usually a prelude to an enforced round or two of Uno.
"Sure sweety, " I saw, feeling two-beers generous, "You go get it."
Off she scuttles, and just moments later prances back in holding aloft her mighty prize - my poker chips set.

Let's hope this one doesn't make it to show and tell.
So we set up, deal out and she's into it. There's 6 of us including the girls and we go quite a few hands, with the little one scooping the pot more than once. That's got to be the highlight of my week - coaching my tiny niece on the correct ettiquette for calling, raising, going "all in" and how to announce she whopped yer ass.
"Now you say, 'two pair, aces high.'.... good girl!!"
Yes sir, that's just brilliant.
Particularly when she beat out a full house with a straight.
Makes that shitty day in the office fade into the background.
Let's crack open that last stubbie and put the feet up.

Cheers.

Truth Blurt

So JennaBear and I are kneeling on the floor either side of a desk to move and stack a dozen boxes. She on the populated side of the desk, where the man chuckles and goes for his belt saying "While you're down there...."
as you do.
And little JB goes all red - she's a true innocent.
In the past this guy has told me that his partner's pillow talk with him is that he "has slutty eyes". Romantic!
So I say "You really are the Sluttiest guy I've ever met."
Not one to shrink he bounces back "I doubt that."
Without editing I say "Well, let me clarify - you're the sluttiest guy I've ever met that I haven't had a one night stand with."

Kapow.
I win another round - sort of, and JennaBear has to go to the bathroom and splash her face with water.
heheheheheheee.
Just don't care today, after being told that my jeans are *too* casual for casual friday. Frayed hems are not ok. Just not done.
Other people in this place are wearing see-though negligee tops and sandals today.
*sigh*
Go Figure.

OMG "Camo" wool in Big Dub

Having recently finished the Giant Nana Rug (see previous week) I was vulnerable to the idea that I was project-free. (You know this to be a lie - by the nature of craft-nerd, this is *always* a lie. But I digress).
A note in the lunchroom caught my eye - poor tiny AIDS babies in war-torn Africa need our help - they go home wrapped in newspapers for warmth - little teeny blankies are needed for them. Some good soul in the Trash City Sheltered Workshop has started up a knitting circle, and here's a one page sheet of instructions and please make one or donate wool or whatever charity you can spare.
"That sounds pretty feel-good", I thought to myself. "I can use the left-over wool from the rug."

Yeah. Right.

I would have sworn on my first editions that I was going to use left-overs - honestly!! Really & Truly!! But then I started thinking about the other wool I had, and that reminded me of how many things were still stuck on needles, and then how, you know - it's meant to be autumn now - there should be new wool in the stores, and I just *happened* to be walking past the craft store and so on and so on. You know the pitiful addict's mantra of circumstance all too well.

Suffice it to say that I have bought a new ball of wool.
But I HAD to.
No, Really, *had* to.

"Camouflage Wool" it promises on the label - yes you can now knit cams (stay tuned for a photo - this has to be seen to be believed). We've all seen varigated wool in olive and brown tones - but this is something else altogether! Where is this going? Craft while on active duty? "Make it yourself" creative outlet for troops on R&R!? Suddenly I have the irony equivalent of vertigo - I *want* this wool, but the official next project is a little bunny rug for an AIDS baby from war-torn Africa. It is, would be, and always will be just *wrong* to undertake this project using Camo wool. Surely the world does not need this product. Yet it is so post-modern that everyone wants it. All other balls of wool - funky purples and groovy blues were chockas - I snaffled one of the last 5 or 6!!

Looks like I'll be using left over wool anyway for the little babies - I gotta knit me a new beanie!!

Cat in a Vat

There’s been a couple of corkers on the farm lately.

Last weekend Warren (our Black Angus Bull) who had been behaving himself so well, got a devil inside him for the cows that moved into the neighbour’s paddock and decided to go head-to-head with Michael, the big red bull who's herd it was. Warren walked through a few fences to get there - sprang sprang went the barbed wire - "Oh Fuck" went our neighbour Peter who was between Warren and the cows.... For the next hour Ma & Peter chased Warren up and down the long paddock *in*their*utes* trying to herd him back into our property. A couple of times he charged the utes and things were a bit heated. In the end, Warren had a few hours to try his luck, until Michael sent him limping home battered and repentant. There was no love waiting for him here though, his little hijinks have eant him a one-way ticket to the sale yards as soon as he heals up.

Zac, who *loves* to find odd places to sleep in, was experimenting in the shed and had a near escape with the whole "curiosity killed the cat" meme when he fell into an open vat of olive oil. Nearly used up, the vat had been opened to equalise the pressure and assist in the removal of the last foot of oil. It's a vat almost as tall as I am and stainless steel. Actually, I've often thought that it looks a lot like the second stage of a propulsion system. Anyway, with attention diverted (perhaps due to Warren's frolicking around trying to mate with utes) the lid was left off, and just a covering sheet over the top.
Yes, CAT in a VAT. Zac didn't die, coz Ma heard an unearthly howling and scrabbling (Cat's Claws: Nil, Stainless Steel: One) but it was close. After we got over the shock, and the mess - try and imagine a large cat dunked into oil - those penguins from the ValDez have our sympathies all over again - the sheet pulled in after him, things knocked over, and then mopping and bathing the cat. It has now begun to enter into near-mythical status in the Family Story Parthenon.

In amongst all these happenings, my moment of spiritual clarity that happened on monday night has been (probably rightly) lost. It came about thusly - working late (conferring citizenship an another 68 keen new Ipswichians) then scooting down the freeway - reflecting on a crappy, long day. Then realising it was a new moon and that new energy should be due to cascade forth. Yes. Profound. In synchronicity with this thought, the Road Monster cut the lights. Everything but the dash readout telling me I was speeding went to black. For a moment my heart poised, debating if it should beat again or not, then reason kicked in.
"It's ok" I calmly told myself, "the headlights of that oncoming semi-trailer are sufficiently lighting my path" and indeed they were, and it did, and then reason reached for the Hazard Lights button, and in a very slow orange strobe we were able to slow safely down to the verge. Whereupon all the lights blinked back into life.
Genius.
So yes, after the adrenaline and multiple possible near death moments, there is a sense of fresh energy in my life this week. Life, if not great, is always endearingly chaotic.

Moderately Self-Referential

Looking to lighten up, I turn, as so very many of us do, to some favourite bloggers out there and lo, I discover this *hil-ar-ious* listing of reasons people have given for not blogging:
http://www.jennshreve.com/thefblog/2006/10/sorry-i-havent-posted-in-awhile.html

This is a huge page by the way.
I can't believe how much this has cheered me up.

Along the way I also found this link to a petition page to get this character his own action figure:

http://www.geocities.com/ocb75/

Bwahahahahahaaa! Ah, that's better!!

Craft Triumph

Sunday saw me finish my largest ever craft project. I started a crocheted Nana blanket at the beginning of the year as a gift for the spare room. Ma & Pa's spare room is all done in lavender and white so naturally the bedspread blanket was in red, yellow and orange. Immediate Visual Headache. So I started a simple alternating lavendar/white one to replace it.

After countless balls of wool and the purchse of a rubber thimble for my thumb, it's done. It even looks good too! The IVH has been consigned to the back of the couch and if only all my crap wasn't bundled up everywhere, the spare room would look *beautiful* in a very *cottage* kindof way.

The only tricky bit turned out to be levering the dog and the cat up for long enough to do the big switcheroo.

Other craft on the weekend was focused around the kitchen - I made a carrot cake which seemed to evapoate off the plate, hash browns from scratch, pizzas and an amazing beans dish. Very satisfying in the tummy and a pleasure to create.

This week I'll test out a corn-fritters recipe and maybe continue with the other blanket I've started (it's based on those pink galahs - they seem to be everywhere here).
Roll on winter!

St Pat's

The Wearing of the Green is a political, religious and cultural statement in Ireland.
Here it is fun - a theme-day for bored cubicle inmates.

I wore it anyway. Green is my new black.
I got thinking about flags, and how many things they mean, and how all these people who know to wear green for this day never hear about William of Orange (even I didn't know for a long time that my family is/was Protestant - how secular is that!!?!) or think about what that white inbetween the two colours on the Irish flag really represents. For so long the best could be a cease-fire. Should one day peace and reconciliation be reached, do you think they might be able to let go of that divided flag and all the blood that's washed through it and take a new one?

Could we?
I think in the Australia I know, that would never happen. In the Australia I can image it would be embraced with a spirit of hope, courage, optimism and growth. The middle path - we''d make another box in another corner, as with the Union Jack. That's what we end up doing when all the ignorance and fear gets to whittle down good ideas, we box things up.

On another track entirely, I was in the greens (spring tones thank you, not the Robin of Sherwood look) with Pa at the hardware store, trying to make conversation with the man behind the counter who has a nice smile.
"Happy St Patrick's Day" I venture.
"Oh, is it?" He says.
"Yeah. If you want any snakes dealt with, today's your day." Trying to get some momentum.
"You like green anyway, don't you." Oh. I realise I always wear the same shirt on the weekend.
"Ha ha. Yeah. Don't really need an excuse to wear green huh." Crash and Burn. again.

Ah Well

We were meant to be getting broadband via satellight or something cool like that installed at the farm today. Our appointment for Wednesday got bumped to Friday, and then we didn't hear and didn't hear for what time to expect the technicians.
This was happening under a subsidy from the government, one of these *clever country* type initiatives. Mum has been jigging around the house for weeks looking forward to this. KA got it a few weeks ago, although she had to pay for the full installation as she was within 5klm (ish) of the exchange. It's rocked her world, I can tell you that. So many of us live parts of our intellectual, social, cultural and entertainment lives through this technology that the speed and ease we can access it (or not) is so effecting. Instant access to Google and Wikipedia even just for a few hours a day is so very addictive. On the farm all this happens between real world activities. Mum mustered the cattle by 9.30 this morning so she could work with them around dealing with installers. She did the shopping yesterday (instead of today) and was muttering to herself last night while on Ebay "not like this tomorrow, I can tell you that" as each tiny stamp-sized picture took nearly a full minute to appear.

Can you feel where this is going? She rang to see if there was an appointment time yet: they aren't coming. The subsidy has run out. Apparently we don't need to be too clever.

We heard this week that the subsidy for rainwater tanks may have run out too (I'll leave the obvious puns to the papers).

It's not just the elements we battle here.
Ma is pretty pissed, I can tell you. I feel a lot more cynical about the world, so I don't feel as personally let down as she does. Neither of us is showing that bouncy can-do spirit that salt-of-the-earth types are meant to exude. I think I'm more pepper than salt in this regard - a lot less useful and can go stale. On the other hand, it is an election period, they'll find money somewhere probably. Things will work out ok.

Fundraisers

So a guy at work brings in his fundraiser for his kids' school. They're going to buy some more playground equipment - do some awareness raising about health and fitness activities. You know, the whole child obesity thing. Fair enough.
There's a lot of fundraising goes on in offices like this. There's the chocolate bars in the fridge for a dollar that goes towards the Christmas feast, there's the books in the staff room that go to a playgroup, there's the guy going to shave off his quiff (Elvis impersonator) for leukemia, there's the teddy bears, pens and bracelets for every special day you can think of, and a pie and lamington drive for Mission Australia.
So here we are buying stuff to raise money to get kids active, and what are we buying? DVDs. Yep, don't sell the couch off just yet! Of the 3-page-long list, one and a half pages are kids films. There's no exercise ones either (in case you think I'm being a smart arse), not even Pumping Iron, let alone, you know, "Bollywood Pilates" or something like that.

Love it.

Oh yeah, I'll be putting my order in ....

Got a Few Roos Loose

This morning, pulling out of the driveway, I disturbed three roos who had been feeding the long paddock.
How rude of me.
They took off, parallel to the road, so we all cruised towards the corner at about 40klms an hour. For what seemed like ages I was in my own little mini documentary as I could look just out my window and see their amazing legs and tails and heads and paws bounding along right *there*. They tired of the game fairly quickly and cut across through the fence and off towards the water hole.

The whole thing lasted for only a minute or two, but it's been with me all day. This is exactly what is brilliant about being in the country.

DVDs are Different to VHS

Der!!!

But think about *why* really* when they have the same story on them.
The same movie, dialogue, shots, plot, score, actors and scenery.
It's not just that we tend to be watching them on *much* larger tellies these days, with surround sound - there's something that dvd can add to the story - I can *feel* it.

Let me give you an example of how my own consumption has changed. In 1986, a film came out called "Highlander" and it was neat. It had a rockin' score, a huge scary bad guy, and swords!! (Yeah, pretty sword-starved in those days) or, if that is too groan-worthy for you, another favourite film of the time was Dirty Dancing (no link needed). So we watched these films on VHS over and over and over. I was 15 then - I didn't have a car, I didn't have any study  load, I had part-time jobs that my folks had to drive me to, so they were local labouring things, and tv, if you can believe it, was even more barren than it is now (we can debate that another time if anyone feels the need). So each of my sisters and I had at least 15 to 20 tapes that we would tape stuff onto so we could watch things.
Now, I'm not talking about the ability of a DVD to jump to chapters - we had a time code on the VHS and we knew how to use it. I'm not talking about the "making of" stuff (which I *love and watch loads of) even though that always seems to include the directer 
wanking on about how critical the story was to the core of the vision of the 
crew and the love-in and blah blah blah, coz, that was available too. 
(Check the making of "Goldfinger" for an amazing analogue version of the
 'making of' featurette).

No, I think that there's two things that particularly suggests the future will be very different.

One is language. DVDs are much easier to add subtitles too. We don't notice this so much because we're English speakers consuming films made in English. But go through your favourite films, and look at the wealth of languages you could experience them in. This is one thing that hollywood does much more than the English film industry. Why would a region 4 disc have Hungarian rather than Mandarin or Malay? I'm not sure, and I've distracted myself from my point. They have subtitles out the wa-hoo, and about 50% of the time, a whole 'nother dubbed language too!
You can watch the "Fifth Element" in French. "V for Vendetta", "Starship Troopers" and "Batman Begins" in German. Yes way.
Also in German: "Unforgiven", "Black Rain" and Blade Runner. 
Look at the stories we're sharing with other people!! 
Name a German film you've seen with English subtitles.
No, "Nightwatch" was Russian.
"Der Himmel Uber Berlin" is the only one I can think of - sure I've been out of the loop for a while, but I'd love to be corrected.
There's a huge number of people who are hungry for inspiration and entertainment, and they aren't waiting for free-to-air to provide it anymore. SBS is onto a good thing - there's a lot more stories out there about to come to English speakers - if we're lucky.

Secondly, is the sheer portability of the format and the breadth of machines it's loaded into. DVD players are tiny, they are light, they plug into nearly anything, and they masquerade as anything from laptops to Xboxes.
Yesterday, Lee loaded an episode of Battle Star Gallactica into his *phone*.
His phone!!

Our stories, the universes we love to escape to or emulate can be with us wherever we can re-charge our phone. My old VHS could never do that - I had to deal with reality all through the 80s, and most of the 90s....

Actually, there's been a slight historical inaccuracy for part of this blog, we had a Beta, not a VHS for the first few years.

Bankrupt

Trash city is bankrupt.
No - there's plenty of cash floating round - despite the appearance of poverty. That's the secret to this place - it's *trashy*, not poor.

I mean that it is ethically and intellectually (and therefore artistically and aesthetically) bankrupt. To look around and see people living in squalor, in filthy clothes with their skin nearly peeling off their necks and arms from malnutrition and grime, loading bulging trollies of plastic food in shiny foil packages into the boots of their giant new sedans with the optional metallic paint and spoilers is to see the human condition in a cold light.

This city is a place where every discount store chain (and many independent ones) has a shop - a large one. You know the ones I mean - "Everything $2!" - container loads of crap from China: plastic ponchos, toiletry sets in presentation bags, tourist shirts, tat, tat, and more tat. It's all here, and it's doing a roaring trade. These stores make up the majority of shopping in Trash City. Apart from what passes as *food* here of course. This is heartbreaking. There is a huge amount of wealth here. Natural resources (mining!), clean air and space, industry (jobs), military bases (more jobs), a river, fertile soils ... and yet these people choose to make themselves into trash. Seemingly all for the want of the idea that it could be any other way.

I remember one day standing on a worn carpet on a hand-made balcony looking down and out over a vista of stinking pits. I had never seen anything like it in my life and it shocked me at every level. These pits were utterly gorgeous to look at, and in pictures they're very pretty. But each adobe pit was filled with stinking, sulpherous chemicals made from dung and urine, and in every single pit, was a child. Those children were doing the legwork (literally) of the famous leather of Fez which is all hand-cured, hand dyed and hand sewn, or was. Now they have a lot of sewing machines (so they can whip you up a knock-off Prada bag by lunch). So this was *obviously* a hard life.
In Morocco for example, nothing would go unsalvaged. Everything would be put to use - over and over again until it decomposed in service. Even a scrap of paper, that one might wrap a sandwich in, was a resource with other uses to be fufilled. Yet, this place felt rich. Rich in culture, rich in care, rich in purpose. On that trip I saw a lot of poverty, and I felt like an ignorant and foolish person, becuase at nearly every interaction I was at a loss to match the dignity and self-possession of the people I met.
To see the denizens of Trash City deliberately squandering themselves and their wealth to create a plastic bubble of failure and miserable consumption denigrates the honour of all those people in the world, and in our history who truely do suffer and strive to live and to thrive. My pain at seeing it must be as a mere droplet in the greater spirit's pain of this travesty.

This is what lies behind so much of my anger at this place - is the pain of the waste and the ignorance that if remedied could so easily form these exact same people and resources into a vibrant, soulful, healthy place.
Instead, I see their own leaders gull them at every turn and bank upon their ignorance and plight. I am disgusted to my core and sick with the stench of failure.
I have been unable to wake even my closest co- workers up - to even the suggestion of change. I've always belived that the personal *is* political, that living one's beliefs is the first, best
contribution to make. In this place, all of my beliefs are under siege.
Do I have the strength to stay on, or do I beat a strategic retreat?

The Treason of the Artist

 "The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it.

"But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold, we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy."

-Ursula Le Guin, "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,"
in*The Wind's Twelve Quarters*

The Long Summer Days Drag By

One of my work colleagues yesterday was struggling to describe a particular piece of magnificence that she saw mounted on the bonnet of the Governor’s car. Hands flailing around, she was starting to get quite flustered – apparently it was very cool – whatever it was.
“What did it look like?”
“Kinda round – you know, the Queen’s hat!”

the *Queen’s*hat*


“That would be called The Crown.”
“Whatever – it was really cool.”

Today, she asked, and remember we are the events team here, today she asked if anyone knew when ANZAC Day was going to be.

We all have our challenges.