TAKE EVERY DAY AS IT COMES, BROTHERS AND SISTERS

Malcolm Turnbull

2012-01-24T08:25:00.001+11:00

Turnbull gets interesting, in a veiled sort of a way, in a speech at the 2012 Young Liberals Conference.
'It is important to remember that these economic principles will always be tempered by practicality, as great Liberal economic such as John Howard or Peter Costello demonstrated from time to time. Commitment to our economic principles is not justified by ideology but by a hard headed, practical analysis of what will deliver the greatest economic opportunities for our whole community.

The Monthly

2011-10-10T15:03:00.001+11:00

I wish the writers in the Monthly wouldn't so tirelessly quote and refer to one another. It really undercuts the publication's credibility.

As for the special October 'arts issue,' 1) how surprising that two of the three visual arts 'masterpieces' of the past decade were produced by artists represented by the publisher's wife; 2) they have managed to miscredit their own cover image (as mentioned in the writeup, the image shows Blanchett in Richard II, not War of the Roses); 3) despite this being the arts issue, all the arts stuff is still in the very back of the magazine.
That all said though, Ann Summers' piece on Andrew Bolt is worth the read.

Letter to the editor

2011-07-28T20:56:00.000+10:00

Regarding the Tasmanian economy...

To Whom it May Concern,

What has become clear to all parties with an interest in the Tasmanian forests debate is that there is no longer a viable industry to be derived from native forest (in environmental terms there never was, but it is now the case that nor is native forest harvesting economically viable). As evidenced in the recent situation around the sale of the Triabunna woodchip mill, the industry that regional Tasmania will be turning to as it transitions away from logging is tourism. This begs the question as to whether the federal government would wish upon the people of regional Tasmania the task of attempting to establish a broader tourism network in a state that is all but depleted of its natural resources, not least among them its majestic old-growth forests; wisdom dictates that what remain of Tasmania's natural wonders should be conserved at all costs, to ensure the health of the state's future economy as much as the environment.

Yours sincerely,
Helen Johnson

Regarding Christian Marclay's work at Venice

2011-06-11T00:53:00.000+10:00

It makes perfect sense that cinema, the time-based medium, should have been singing a secret hymn to time all along, and Marclay has registered and compiled it. Time is the god of cinema.

It's a sign of the age

2011-06-02T13:02:00.001+10:00

Once again the subbing at The Age shows itself to be a cut above the rest... Ahem...

2011-05-10T22:11:00.000+10:00

'To spread the opportunities of the boom,' ie. Some people can have jobs, and all the money from the raping of the landscape continues to be funnelled into the pockets of the stupidly rich despite our desperately struggling infrastructure and virtually non-existent sustainability strategy, continuing poor living conditions and opportunities for indigenous peoples, housing unaffordability, soaring cost of living, shortage of hospital beds, it goes on.

This government consists of weak, bigoted, myopic scum. This is not management.

Julia Gillard SUCKS

2011-05-10T22:05:00.001+10:00

'From there, Treasury's budget documents project two more years of meagre surpluses, even though Australia should be enjoying ''the largest mining investment boom in its history"; leading to one of the catch-phrases of this year's budget – Australia ''patchwork economy''.'

Wayne Swan SUCKS

2011-05-10T22:04:00.001+10:00

'Far from clearing quickly from the government's books, the GFC is continuing to savage revenue, so much so Treasury's estimate of its impact has grown a whopping $20 billion since its mid-year economic forecast just six months ago.'

You mean, when Gillard cut a deal with the mining corporations.

2011-05-05T07:16:00.001+10:00

So those greedy incompetents at Metro have come up with a new strategy of seasonal timetabling: 'our new autumn timetable can be collected from any premium station.'
This autumn, we are adopting a minimalist approach, trimming the fat and keeping services to a bare minimum...
Leave out the marketing and just run our transport system properly, you c*nts!

2011-05-03T14:14:00.004+10:00

Abbottabad, Gillardajustasbad.

Seriously though, if Hamid Karzai had given orders for, say, Cheney and his attendees to be stormed and annihilated (on account of the deaths of thousands of Afghani civilians), and Afghanis were seen partying in the streets, the West would be all over it, saying 'Animals! We must retaliate!'

What is wrong with this picture?

2011-04-20T21:15:00.000+10:00

2011-03-27T00:11:00.000+11:00

Grammar, Barry!
"We won tonight seats not only have we not won before, we won tonight seats we'd not dreamed of ever winning," he said to cheers.

2011-03-26T20:48:00.000+11:00

Note to self: visit Cincinnati before you die.

Oh Sydney, I will miss you!

2011-03-25T17:58:00.001+11:00

Oh Sydney, I will miss you!

2011-03-25T17:58:00.000+11:00

2011-03-22T21:17:00.001+11:00

Dave Duchovny as Hank:
'Baby, I didn't mean to force moisture from your face.'
Heheheh...

2011-03-22T10:49:00.000+11:00

When I was 6, Material Girl by Madonna was my favourite song. 'We are living in a material world' made me imagine this whole world made of different sorts of print fabrics, it was great.

2011-03-17T13:13:00.002+11:00

No mention in this article about the possibility of a connection between the Australian dollar going arse-up and the fact that Australia provides Japan with massive amounts of uranium.

2011-03-14T11:53:00.001+11:00

The best thing about Gossip Girl is the way it insistently, almost autistically reiterates the message that money and luxury are not in themselves conducive to happiness.

2011-03-14T11:09:00.000+11:00

Reports of masses of schooling fish turning up around Acapulco, and that it might be connected to the undersea quake, though no mention of the fact that before the earthquake occurred masses of dead sardines were turning up along the Californian coast, and at the time people were guessing it was due to a lack of oxygen in the water or some such... Maybe there were preliminary tremors releasing loads of gas from the sea floor? Would like to find out more about this...

2011-03-11T10:18:00.000+11:00

I wish the newspaper websites had a subtractive search filter. With the age, for instance, if I could make a standing search to exclude articles containing the words 'Fevola', 'Abbott' etc. ah, life would be a little better.

2011-03-09T19:36:00.000+11:00

Dear GAA,
One is still a number, duh.

2011-03-09T19:32:00.000+11:00

One particularly annoying problem with the iphone is that it reprograms the brain to think a double-space is going to produce a full stop.

2011-03-09T14:58:00.000+11:00

The pigeons in Sydney wear feather trousers.

The supermarkets in Sydney have unexpected levels and oblique corners which Melbourne does not, just like Sydney itself.

Networking

2011-03-04T10:01:00.000+11:00

2011-02-27T15:52:00.002+11:00

If you want to donate to the Christchurch earthquake appeal and know the money will actually get used to help Christchurch:
http://www.christchurchearthquakeappeal.govt.nz/

The abbreviated cat

2011-02-25T12:36:00.000+11:00

2011-02-23T22:22:00.000+11:00

The memory of Gillard as PM is going to be like tealeaves left too long in the pot - tepid, and bitter to the taste.

2011-02-22T21:43:00.000+11:00

2011-02-18T10:44:00.000+11:00

In the future when robots are integrated into society, perhaps it will be thought highly offensive for humans to do the 'robot dance'.

Universal Remote

2011-02-17T15:40:00.001+11:00

A text I wrote for an exhibition I held recently:

Painting today is scattered but the questions around it are tight, they can require some pulling apart, coaxing apart like pot-bound roots. Pleasantly circular thought-paths, though, not like crabbed little scribbles, but spacious arcs, have been moving in my mind as I have ruminated on it recently.

One, regarding answers – sometimes I find myself thinking about the recent history of painting in terms of answers, as in ‘the answer, for painting, lies neither in representation nor abstraction’. Which, yes, but then why does there have to be an answer – or, is the answer going to keep stepping outside the sphere of questioning, with a spry flourish – ha! The answer is that there is no answer. That you can’t think about this in terms of a problem to be solved now, if ever you could. That’s still an answer though. Painting seems particularly interesting and useful at this point because it refuses a solution, it is working beyond solution, which is to say, it is dispersed into a series of fragments, some operant, some not, and none particularly concerned with engaging on the same levels as the others, or considering the same things to be at stake anymore. Parameters, stigmas, can result in a sort of structural freedom, an ability to repurpose the problems.

You cannot, however, get to here without passing through there.

Two, regarding the making of meaning; imagining a heated crit session, maybe it is taking place during the mid-nineties, and the burning question at one point is around ‘getting it’: does a work of art have to embody a concept? Or can meaning also be made by engulfing what moves beyond it, the way institutional practices expand to encompass institutional critiques; so if an artwork is made not to be ‘gotten’, that too can be understood as an intention. Or is that just opening the floodgates for a whole lot of bunkum? I guess painting has been through this to some degree already, with ‘bad painting’, and again subject to the same ebb and flow whereby the next bad painting appears in the bad painters’ quest to flout the stumbling blocks of commodification, only to find it has soared to the elevated status of being valued as the best bad painting to date.

Then, though, there is the question of latent meaning, of absorbing information and constituting thoughts over time, and later on during a period of making material things, said things can feel as though they are ker-thunking out of one’s head, though on reflection they can be seen as ossifications of prior thought processes. Dialectical fossils, or a turning-about of Kant’s problem with attributing objective reality to the mind’s perception of external objects, so: a re-shuffle that gives the mind’s perceptions into reality as [now] external objects, projecting objects rather than ideas of objects, only to find that everyone else in the world simply encounters them as more objects to be projected upon . This accounts for something of the process of making this exhibition, that in its provenance is all about painting, though doesn’t incorporate much paint, few supports and little linen to speak of. And the figure-ground relationship dragged back out into space, a ground smelling reminiscent of gum-turpentine and constituted of pine-bark, filthy pine-bark mind you, but the material that originally served as carapace for the sort of wood that serves for the sort of support that normally we would be working with. The pine-bark, in addition, makes it a safe place, and/or a place for playing in.

It, the body of work, sits in my mind as a series of operators – the money market, here the large billowing silk acting as representative for the not-so-humble bank note, buoyed by globs of oil and harnessed with gold, idiots’ gold. The oil conversation extended to the ‘oil disaster’ that serves at once as a really ugly faux-oil painting of stretched chocolate-brown PVC pleather that approximates fairly faithfully the colour of the Deepwater Horizon oil plume which descended under the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, to sit about 35km long at a depth of 1100 metres.

There is then the painting of Tory HQ on the day of the riots, a smashed window discernable but become a compositional element, its frame of reference only made apparent by its having been compromised, and the whole thing harsh and dark, and sitting far too high.

The operators, then, have been reduced, albeit in very subjective ways, to bare aesthetics, which is to say, they don’t function as action but as thoughts, thought-models. It is too subjective to be thought of as reductivism, and in any case it is not set upon getting to the empirical truth of things, the concern is more with behaviours and relationships.

The cushions are some of the more painterly of the elements in their hammock-loft though they are, with the exception of the big one that’s sort of like a soft Stella, covered with digitally printed fabrics, and are all at any rate there for the practical purpose of providing comfortable sitting-places for the reading group participants. The soft sort-of Stella small and stout to the lithe, stretchy, body-encompassing sort-of Riley that you have to get through to enter the exhibition.

Saade told me this riddle when he came back from Damascus: there are four men buried up to their necks in sand, and a wall separates one from the other three, just to complicate things. They are all facing the same direction. There is a gunman who was responsible for their burial, and for the sake of sport he puts a hat on each man and says to them, two of you are wearing hats of white and purple, two are wearing hats of white and red. If any of you can correctly yell out the colour of your own hat, you are all free to go. Otherwise you will all be shot. Which man can deduce, with some sort of certainty, the colour of his own hat?

Helen Johnson

2011

2011-02-17T09:26:00.000+11:00

"BHP and Rio are world citizens, they're not particularly Australian" says Joe Hockey in the paper today: therefore they should not have to pay tax on the gargantuan profits they are lifting out of Australian ground. Next to this a story about a little boy who lost his parents being sent back to detention on Christmas Island, and opposition spokesman Chris Bowen 'concedes' that he overstepped the line bringing up refugee processing costs on the day of the funerals for those lost in the Christmas Island wreck.
Where is the evidence that these goons care anything for people? They are animals. And Gillard's Labor just as bad on both counts.

Egypt!

2011-02-12T09:18:00.000+11:00

http://aje.me/hXK0Wa

2011-02-10T20:22:00.000+11:00

Sometimes when I'm looking at my 'phone I find myself looking for my 'phone. This apparatus has too many functions.

2011-02-10T17:23:00.000+11:00

Bing.com
An alternative to google.

2011-02-10T09:09:00.000+11:00

Let me clear up this whole 'shit happens'/long silence debate for you, complex as it is: Tony Abbott is a bit of a turd. The end.

Ah, blessed productivity...

2011-02-09T21:27:00.001+11:00

2011-02-03T17:23:00.002+11:00

David Sanderson nicely sums up my feelings about the Australian coverage of what's happening in Egypt:
'The remarkable heroism being shown by ordinary Egyptians has been pretty damn humbling. And the myopia displayed by much of the Australian media, with its pathetic obsession with inconvenienced Aussie tourists and relative lack of interest in the suffering and struggles of the Egyptian people, has been pretty damn shaming.'

(Read more here.)

RGB

2011-01-31T13:50:00.000+11:00

Tahrir

2011-01-30T12:11:00.000+11:00

'Ugly, vicious and at times brutal, from a distance the battle also had the atmosphere of a once-in-a-lifetime show that the tourists locked down in the luxury hotels that line the Nile corniche weren't going to miss... At one, hotel management gave up trying to herd people into their rooms and welcomed them to the swimming pool deck, where they put on free drinks and nibbles.' (Jason Koutsoukis)

2011-01-30T09:06:00.000+11:00

'The Baillieu government yesterday vowed to explore the sort of state-of-the-art flood management system Labor had ignored.'

Yes, and if a Labor government had done the same (not that I am defending Brumby, the corrupt myope) the coalition would immediately start jumping up and down about sprndthriftery. Why is it that no one bats an eyelid when the coalition starts forking out cash?

Anonymous

2011-01-27T13:44:00.000+11:00

'It is also profoundly at odds in its ethos and methods with traditional NGOs and activist groups. This is not your traditional protest movement and elements of it would be deeply hostile to more traditional political activism. Anonymous is something that, because it grew organically in cyberspace rather than reflecting the cyber version of existing real world phenomena, looks and works differently to real-world organisations or movements we’re familiar with. Something important and new is happening here.'
(Bernard Keane)

2011-01-27T09:41:00.000+11:00

Michele Bachmann's response to Obama's State of the Union address: 'For two years, President Obama made promises, just like the ones we heard him make this evening, yet still we have high unemployment, devalued housing prices and the cost of gasoline is skyrocketing.'
This says nothing to me of Obama's abilities as president, but what it does show is the incapability of some Americans to understand the position of their country in a global context; Obama cannot generate more oil under the earth's surface. Neither is a 'small government' approach going to impact upon a deregulated housing market. Nor should universal health care be compromised for the sake of jobs; job growth sectors are always shifting and changing. If jobs in the private health sector decline, surely others will emerge elsewhere? It all seems very short-sighted. Perhaps the tea-party are unconsciously engaging in political eschaton for an infantile sense of comfort in the face of decline. It's hard to think why else they would insist on taking such an aggressively idiotic stance.

2011-01-25T15:44:00.000+11:00

Methinks it's time the Australian government stepped in to regulate house rental prices; maybe it would discourage moneygrubbers from buying up investment properties and charging extortionate rents for them whilst at the same time vacuuming up all the properties that might otherwise have been available at the lower end of the market to people who might want to buy them to actually live in.

Signs - they're working for me right now

2011-01-20T20:07:00.000+11:00

2011-01-20T13:48:00.000+11:00

Julia Gillard lacks the vision and self-assurance to realise that, presented correctly, the abandoning of the budget-back-to-surplus promise would be completely mitigated by the floods in the eyes of most Australians. She has no instinct for the management of a nation.

Yeah...

2011-01-18T11:18:00.000+11:00

The Two Classical Methods of Display of the Trigrams
Concern the Pre-heaven and Post-Heaven
Also known as the Fuxi and King Wen Diagrams

Also the World of Ideas and World of Senses
One in Time and One in Space.

But this is also the noumena and phenomena distinction
Of Immanual Kant
Who pinched it from Leibiniz
Who got it from the Neo-Confucians
Then being translated into Latin

(From http://mytaoworld.com/theiching.aspx)

2010-12-13T16:24:00.001+11:00

Was ist im Sinne der Kunstkritik falsch an klassischen journalistischen Formaten wie dem Atelierbesuch oder dem Interview?

Beckstette: Die journalistische Praxis des Interviews oder Studiobesuchs konzentriert sich naturgemäß eher auf die Person des Künstlers und sein Umfeld. Diese Perspektive interessiert uns nicht.

Bricolage

2010-11-30T11:38:00.001+11:00

So into the double-functioning 9/g...

LOL Age

2010-11-30T11:09:00.001+11:00

Can someone fire the sub at The Age? The typos and malapropisms are getting out of control!

Wish I was there! Damned distances...

2010-11-29T16:16:00.002+11:00

2010-11-29T12:15:00.002+11:00

A very good election roundup here, for those who are interested in sifting through the entrails of our new and altogether rather depressing state political landscape.

2010-11-10T18:55:00.000+11:00

So seldom do I look in the frozen food section, that when I do it almost feels like going to the supermarket in a new country.

Meat for vegetarians

2010-10-25T19:26:00.000+11:00

'Many mushrooms are carnivores with an underground, threadlike lasso that tracks and hogties nematodes (roundworms), dejuices and transforms them'
Whole Earth Catalogue, millennium edition

Dodgy facial

2010-10-03T13:13:00.000+11:00

I was trying to find something the other day that would soothe redness of skin. I was hoping for something with chamomile and calendula - but the two main things I found were things with 'phytoessence wakame' in them - people pay a fortune to put this stuff on their skin, when you can buy it at the Asian grocer for $2.50 and eat it to much greater benefit. The other thing I found was this 'redness solutions' cream from Clinique - that turned out to contain cortisone. Cortisone! In an over the counter cosmetic cream. So wrong. And .05mg, as much as is in the cream you might get from the doctor that they tell you to use very sparingly. Who in their right mind would want to slather that on their face? I can't believe they can even put it on the market.

Omnivore omnibus

2010-09-19T18:29:00.001+10:00

I love having an omnivorous cat. The benefits of taking in a stray... I have never known a cat that is willing to eat such a diversity as this one. He is at present eating a bowl of leftover steamed pumpkin with a bit of cucumber. He also likes to eat broccoli, tuscan cabbage, chicory, bran and wombok, along with his customary dinners of minced roo, cat cookies and occasional eggs. He is however decidedly unkeen on raw peas and, somewhat surprisingly, rice.

Toffee Cables

2010-08-25T12:49:00.000+10:00

My mind keeps returning to Nick Mangan's work. I have written more about his work than anyone else's, maybe it is partly because I enjoy the conversations I have with him and know how his mind works to some extent, but I think it is more to do with the way his practice shifts and changes, and the fire of working to piece things together and then letting them cool down before you can understand why it was so overwhelmingly compelling, because more and more with each consecutive project the processes he goes through leave, and/or reveal, such complex residues of meaning, the work might start at a point and the travails involved in bringing it to fruition could be overwhelming, but both the struggle and the persistence become part of the work, and I find now that my brain has shifted to picturing just the Nauru project at this point, and all these inherents are so appropriate to the work and its meaning. Dan Rule wrote a beautifully succinct and very well researched piece on the current show at Sutton that can be read here.
The exhibition had a different manifestation at the Adelaide Biennale earlier this year, stripped back and more abstract, but I like the present manifestation better, not least because it contains, or embraces more vulnerability. And that seems particularly pertinent when Tony Abbott is pledging to reopen the detention centres on Nauru immediately if re-elected, despite Nauru not being a signatory to the UN convention on the treatment of refugees. Nauru keen as mustard for this to go ahead. So Nauru's destructive cycle of gimme-gimme-gimmes is not yet complete.
The tables with the deepest holes in them, in terms of the idea of a table maybe are less perfect but in terms of the idea of an object are absolutely mesmerising, I am not keen on smoking weed but these tables made me feel like going and seeking some so I could get well baked and go and sit and stare at them for a few hours. The contemplation for me begins with the immediacy of these arrested coralline microcosms that not a foot away from one another can be one universe and then another, I crouch and I stare and I am here, I am in the amniotic ocean... here... ocean... so that experience creates a temporal arc in my perceptions that actually neatly overarches the varied and colourful disasters of Nauru's economic history, and also serves to remind that these tables are made from the island's skeleton, that these hard coral stumps were what was left after they had plundered all the phosphate, one of many pivots in this, the phosphate that was the heart of Nauru now ground down, diluted and sprayed in a thin layer over for the most part the peripheries of Australia and maybe a bit on New Zealand too. And that there was even this fantasy of slicing up the island's coral skeleton and selling it as coffee tables to rich fuckers in the West, one hare-brained scheme of the Nauruan President before detention centres arrived on their scene.
I see this show as a bringing together of these very material realities of Nauru that Australia has played a major part in the conditions of, and the moral and ideological implications that the physical shifting of these materials, and later of money, and later still of human beings from one place to another have given rise to. The phosphate mining on Nauru created a void in the island's heart that richer countries since have sought to fill with different types of their own unwanteds. What it is about certain places or situations that drag ugly truths out of everyone involved is unclear to me, but Nauru tells us something important about ourselves. The treatment of Nauru by Australia is one of the binding agents of Australia as a nation.

Hang on...

2010-08-24T09:09:00.000+10:00

One of the most fascinating and (I'm going to say it) exciting things about having a hung parliament is the way it is forcing the remapping of ideologies onto reality as everyone struggles to figure out what their position is and what the stakes are. Everything gets laid out much more clearly in terms of interest and intent.

Balance in Powerland

2010-08-22T22:25:00.001+10:00

DIY

2010-08-22T15:50:00.008+10:00

I liked how many people were compelled to create their own custom 'twibbon' (ugh! I hate that word) in response to the Greens one that must have been one of the cheapest, most resource-light and effective strategies of their campaign; even the negative ones served to remind people of the strength of the Greens presence.
I collected the ones I came across on Twitter, for posterity:

2010-08-22T15:30:00.002+10:00

"Who can afford recriminations?" a Labor staffer told The Sunday Age. "Everyone's in the tent, and they've all pissed on each other already."

2010-08-22T00:04:00.001+10:00

Tony Abbott's daughters gathered expressionless on the stage as he gave his closing speech - Picnic at Hanging Parliament...

2010-08-21T16:34:00.001+10:00

CATH BOWTELL: 'You can only do anything from government. You can only get legislation through with the majority support of a government. You can only get funding programs through if you control the Treasury.

So having one voice on its own in the Lower House achieves nothing, having someone in the government can achieve outcomes. Particularly for the very vulnerable people who live in the inner city.'

Yes, but having an opposition backbencher in the seat of Melbourne if Labor does not get returned to government is not going to achieve anything at all, eh?

2010-08-21T11:33:00.000+10:00

A nice shot from the ABC website:

2010-08-20T21:33:00.002+10:00

Bernard Keane, though I'm not always into what he has to say, has written the best account of this election that I have read in the press, by far. As someone commented it is the guts of what has been going on during this campaign. It is really worth reading the comments too.

The Age: Its a Sign of the Times

2010-08-18T15:34:00.002+10:00

I am feeling deeply fed up with the Australian press at the moment - even more so than usual. This porridge-bowl of an election has been made tenfold worse by the nature of the coverage. They're all as bad as each other, the Age, the Australian, the Herald Sun. They're all as peevishly self-interested as the pollies themselves. Crikey is better, but the stories are limited and tend to get caught up in the tedium of factionalism. Also it's just not so appealing to read online text over breakfast.
I really feel there should be a law in place that requires the papers, if not to provide the public with balanced reportage, then to issue a statement pertinent to their political affiliations. I am sick to death of their endless attempts to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, in the case of Tony Abbott.

2010-08-15T17:56:00.002+10:00

There is a pleasing show on at the Monash gallery on the Caulfield campus at the moment. Cate Consandine's sculpture that is like a needle with the eye snapped off enlarged to 3 or 4 metres in height, suspended so it is about a millimetre off the ground, I could stay and watch it all day. And Fiona Macdonald's white neon painting, it was switched off when I went to see it, which I think is a beautiful gesture, plugged in but switched off at the wall, how lightly it encapsulates a magnitude.

Frank Stella, „Madinat As-Salam I“, 1973

2010-08-15T16:48:00.000+10:00

Beautiful Soul

2010-08-13T19:06:00.006+10:00

In our reading group today, which is ostensibly for reading Kant's Critique of Judgement but tends to flit high and low between paragraphs, someone referred to Hegel's notion of the 'beautiful soul'. According to No Subject - Encyclopedia of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, the beautiful soul projects its own disorder onto the world and attempts to cure this disorder by imposing 'the law of the heart' on everyone else. For Lacan, the beautiful soul is a perfect metaphor for the ego; 'the ego of modern man . . . has taken on its form in the dialectical impasse of the belle ‚me who does not recognise his very own raison d'Ítre in the disorder that he denounces in the world'.

I like this idea. I think because it seems a springboard, if you do end up in that sort of troubled place in your understanding of things, for the possibility of knowing, feeling, realising that the world is better than you might have thought.

A short while later a helicopter pulsed overhead and the usual image came to my mind of some larrikin jewel thief making a run for it from the Cash Converters. Two hours later, whittling time as the laundromat drones my clothes clean I read that in fact two old men have been shot dead at a pokies place a couple of blocks away. They reckon it might be a revenge killing for the shooting of Chaouk, a ‘crime family patriarch’, this morning. Not so unusual for Carlton, I think, but I ponder it because the event brushed my senses, that moment of death, or its infrastructural ricochet at least.

(Update on this: Apparently the killings were carried out by some poor man who didn't take his medication and underwent a psychotic episode.)

Then I start thinking about the hospitals, St Vincent’s a stone’s throw to the South and the Royal Women’s to the West, and I think, people are dying all around Carlton all the time, and the cemetery just North of here too. Floors of people flatlining, being covered over, machines switched off, and then other floors of people squeezing out fresh lives, of lives being extracted and bum-smacked into a new version of being. You’re one of us, and it’s time to start learning the ropes.

It's all OK.

2010-08-04T18:36:00.000+10:00

"I find the speedos a particularly confronting form of attire and I would very much wish that fewer Australians would choose it," Mr Abbott told reporters when asked about his hypocrisy.

Policy Snapshots

2010-08-01T13:10:00.007+10:00

It seems surprisingly hard to find a simple policy snapshot of either Labor or Liberal parties; certainly none are apparent on their respective websites. And since they both seem incapable of conveying their policies for all the meaningless guff they are intent on spouting, I have undertaken to summarize their policies myself, based on the fairly lengthy (and for most people probably too tedious, rhetoric-riddles and time-consuming to bother reading) policy outlines each has on offer on their main policy sites.
Presumably (one hopes, anyway) each party has more policies than these, but these are the ones they lay out prominently. The ones, I suppose, that they are willing to let us know about. The coalition’s policies are harder to access, jammed away in .ashx format, and with ridiculous Blakes 7 ‘Federation’ style full-page headers at the top of each document. Each coalition document dedicates a substantial amount of space to outlining ‘how Labor has failed’, where the Labor policies, to their credit, do not defensively attack the Liberals. As though the Liberals under Howard didn’t fail Australia in hideous and damaging ways.

I note, additionally, that neither 'major party' has bothered to outline their arts policy on their policies page. How promising. No mention of work choices either. Though the Greens campaign is getting a bit of help from the unions that was previously directed towards Labor.

Update: I am adding a column for the Greens. The Greens have a vastly more detailed description of policy outlines on their website than Labor or Liberal, so I am going to abridge to a listing of their policies in relation to those outlined by the other two mobs.

This is a very abridged account; if you want all the detail/to read their policies from the horse's mouth (so to speak), follow these links:
Greens policies
Labor policies
Liberal policies

Comments with * in italics are mine.

So…

	Labor	Liberal	Greens
Economy		Free market. Pages of dogma on this, but not a figure in sight. Plenty of criticism of Labor’s spending.	Resource management is central to good economic management. Free market economy is environmentally disastrous. The GST is regressive and unfair. Full corporate and government accountability Equitable taxation system
Health	$7.3 billion over five years to improve hospital system. National funding for Health and Hospitals network. $96 million for more doctors and nurses in emergency departments.		Support Medicare as universal health insurance. Abolish private health insurance rebates and redirect funds to public health system Increase community healthcare centres in regional areas. Fund preventative health programs/healthy lifestyle education
Indigenous peoples			Close the health gap Compensate the Stolen Generation End the NT intervention
Tax	30% resources tax on coal and iron $6 billion regional infrastructure fund to help resource industry development (roads, ports etc.) Cut business taxes Instant write-off of assets under $5000 for small businesses	Cut company tax from 30% to 28.5% Abolish resources tax Reward calculated risk-taking in small business Establish Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Reduce small business compliance burdens Breaks for small business in general	Return company tax rate to 33% Progressive taxes like income tax are preferable to regressive taxes like the GST Grant tax concessions that align industry development with national goals. Reduce tax rebates for high income earners New top marginal tax rate of 50% for incomes $1 million or over Gradual implementation of carbon tax
Savings		The coalition has a document outlining their ‘savings’, ie. what they would cut from Labor’s spending. Among the ‘savings’ are the discontinuation of: -Australian Human Rights Framework -Africa Law and Justice Frameworks -UN Security Council Candidacy funding -Community cabinets -Centre for International Finance and Regulation -Green Building Fund -Retooling for Climate Change Initiative -digital education revolution -Improved teacher quality program -Carbon trust and climate change foundation program -Green start -Public service reform -Climate Change Adaptation Initiative -Abolish the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute Among many other cuts.
Superannuation	Increase super guarantee to 12%
Education	Implementation of national curriculum. (* The curriculum does not encourage creative thought or critical interpretation, in my view.) §The English curriculum has an emphasis on the basics. This includes critical skills like sounding out letters of the alphabet and grammar §Maths will focus on essential mathematical skills in number and algebra, measurement and geometry, probability and statistics. §The science curriculum will ensure students develop the skills they need to live in a technologically advanced age. § A key feature of the draft Curriculum for history is the treatment of Australian history within a regional and world history context. This allows students to better understand the richness of the Australian story.	Increase education tax rebate ($500 per primary student and $1000 per secondary student for education-related expenses)	More money to public schools Abolish league tables Two years of public preschool Free university education, abolish HECS Include the history, culture and contemporary experience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is included in the school curriculum, and in the training and professional development of all teachers.
Immigration	Note: Not listed on Labor’s policy page at all. ‘Small Australia’ (ie. cut down on immigration – though no specifics easily available on Labor’s website) The regional processing debacle. From 6 July: ‘The Government also announced today that the suspension on processing claims for Sri Lankan asylum seekers will be lifted immediately, in light of the continuing improved security and human rights situation in Sri Lanka.’ Um, should’t a poor security and human rights situation be the reason NOT to freeze processing?	‘Turn back the boats’ Presuming asylum seekers are not refugees if they are seen to have disposed of their identity documents (*WTF!!??) Stamp out ‘people smuggling’ All processing offshore Temporary protection visas (ie. no permanent immigration for asylum seekers) Establish ‘guard rails’ for population growth Reduce immigration levels from almost 300,000 in 2008-09 to no more than 170,000 Ensure 2/3 permanent migrants are ‘skilled’ for regional economic growth sectors.	No mandatory detention End offshore processing Increase refugee intake Support skilled migration programs Establish visas for climate refugees
Defence	Stay in Afghanistan, keep sucking up to the US. Try to strengthen ties with Asia. Increase foreign aid to 0.5% of gross national income. *I note that they do not detail the defence budget in this policy outline.	Increase border protection. No information on military engagement offered on policy page. *No defence budget outline here either.	Withdraw from Aghanistan Support global universal nuclear disarmament Real security rests on cooperation, fair economic and social development, and respect for human rights, rather than on military capability Vote before going to war
Regional	$200 million over three years for new homes to build up regional cities	Increase the regional healthcare workforce (100 new medical bonded rural scholarships, 100 rural nursing scholarships, $10,000 annual bonus for nurses committed to working in regional areas)
Emissions	All NEW coal-fired stations should operate at best practice emissions standards (pah), and be carbon-capture ready. *This is a lamentable environmental policy!	Reduce emissions by 5% by 2020 (based on 1990 levels). Useless! Incentives for oldest, worst power stations to reduce their emissions ‘in an orderly manner’ so as not to disturb the economy This is an even more lamentable environmental policy!	Equitable transition to a low-carbon economy 30% renewable energy by 2020 Direct compensation to coal-dependent communities rather than power station owners Oppose new coal power stations network
Tradies	New trade cadetship for years 9-12 for students who want to pursue trade as a career. $25 million to provide cadet work experience in Trades Training Centres.		Living allowance for full-time TAFE students
Sustainability	$1 billion over a decade (paltry!)* to connect homes to renewable energy sources. Commitment to 20% of Australia’s energy coming from renewable sources by 2020. One-off 50% tax break for buildings upgrading their green rating from less than 2 stars to more than 4 stars.	Invest $100 million each year for new solar homes Mid-scale and micro renewable energy projects (very little real impact) Plant more trees in public places Investigate algae bloom carbon absorption and bio fuels. Restructure Marine Protection areas to cater to fishing and tourism industries	Robust public transport system Recognition of human dependency on ecological systems Establish Ecological Sustainability Commission Protection and regeneration of natural habitats nationally
Cleaner cars	$394 million for $2000 rebates to buy greener, more fuel-efficient cars.		Support compulsory noise and emissions standards for petrol and diesel vehicles at least to EU levels. Mandatory fuel efficiency labels for new vehicles Increase tariff on imported 4WDs from 5% to 10% except for primary producers
Protecting workers’ entitlements	Protect redundancy pay, annual leave, long service leave. Legislated. Securing super to ensure employees receive their payments Strengthen tax penalties for companies shirking on employee benefits.		Require employers to notify employees that they may choose to join a union Legislatively protect the right to strike Reinstate the functions of the Industrial Relations Commission Job security for all
Disability	10-year strategy to improve the lives of people with disabilities (in draft stage). Better start for children with disabilities. More accommodation and respite for people with disabilities ($60 million for 150 new places)		Increase Disability Support Pension Provide meaningful employment and training opportunities Allow tax deductibility for equipment Increase funding for accommodation and support services
Mental health	$276.9 million over four years to provide services for those at risk of suicide, improve safety at suicide ‘hotspots’, provide more services and support to men. *I would refer anyone interested in this issue to this article by John Mendoza that outlines very clearly the state of mental health in Australia and the deplorable inadequacy of this policy.	$1.5 billion for 20 early psychosis intervention centres; 800 mental health beds; 60 additional youth headspace sites.	Increased funding for services and education for the prevention and early detection of mental illness. Establish properly resourced, strategically located 24 hour community mental health services, staffed by the full range of mental health professionals.
Childcare	18 weeks paid parental leave at minimum wage	Increase childcare rebate Improving access to occasional childcare 26 weeks paid parental leave at full salary (ref. ‘Savings’ to see some of the sacrifices that would pay for this if it ever actually happened)	Improve affordability of childcare Replace the Child Care Tax rebate with a Child Care Benefit Guarantee Increase benefits in relation to under-2-year-olds to reflect the real cost of caring for them Provide incentives to workplaces which offer not-for-profit childcare in house
Communication	National broadband network rollout (way faster broadband).		Ensure diversity of ownership and opinion in the media Subject the installation of communications infrastructure, including mobile phone towers, to existing state and territory local government planning provisions.
Crime		Installation of CCTV cameras in public places Establish a National Violent Gangs Database Implement a knife crime action plan Introduce nationally consistent drug laws $50 million for a community crime prevention program renewal	Implement alternatives to imprisonment, where appropriate, including restorative justice and diversionary programs. Increase funding to community legal centres as an adjunct to legal aid and private legal practitioners. Prohibit the use of electroshock weapons and Tasers.
Environmental ethics			Cease using GMOs A ban on patenting living organisms Sustainable management of natural resources industries (fisheries, forests, mining) with respect for traditional owners Prohibit the mining of uranium Implement sustainable agricultural practices

And there you have it. Well, some of it. More of a summary than the press has to offer at any rate.

Too much time in savers

2010-07-31T11:49:00.001+10:00

That's what this election feels like to me. Stale and unrewarding.

Gillard is going to continue to flounder as long as she runs a campaign on damage control rather than policy. This preoccupation with political chestnuts like 'disunity means death' is old hat; no one really cares that much about party fractures provided the policies are good and things are getting done, neither of which seems the case. Abbott, of course, is just as much of a navel-gazer and power-monger, but is also a loon.
My conscience would not permit me to vote for either of these two on account of their asylum seeker policies, even if they weren't both so out-of-touch, so distant from sense and humanity as political approaches. I'm going to stand there and wade through the individual numbering so neither of these fuckers get my preferences.

2010-07-24T20:06:00.001+10:00

What the government seems to think is the 'non-issue' of concern over climate action seems to me more like everyone quietly waiting for Gillard to actually say something meaningful on it. Though I suppose the Labor party could simply have decided that, in not actually denying climate change as Abbott does, they will have the upper hand in two-party terms no matter how shit their policies are.

2010-07-24T08:11:00.000+10:00

Catholic dogma in speedos with ridiculous, self-interested policies, or lipstick on a pacific solution with equally power-oriented, morally questionable policies.
Hunger is not the best sauce in this instance.

2010-07-22T19:02:00.000+10:00

The sky was. Pink
the sky
Was ink.

2010-07-21T15:56:00.001+10:00

Fucking hell, the Orwellian arts and culture apocalypse is afoot in the UK.

2010-07-20T18:32:00.003+10:00

You start to wonder though, even though Julia Gillard is as a friend of mine put it 'a pig for power', how much of the ire and sense of shockingness comes from the fact that she is a woman who has done this to a man. Was it like this when Keating ousted Hawke? I was too young to be very aware of it.

About Abbott

2010-07-20T18:28:00.005+10:00

It's remarkable how all-out the Age is going against Julia Gillard (hence I remark upon it). Pretty much every photo they publish of her has her bleating with laughter, while any comment about Abbott has him crossing hurdles etc. to what they seem to be presenting as his fait accompli role as PM.
And sure, Gillard is heinous, and the Labor party seems trapped in a groundhog day of factionalism, but let's not forget about Abbott's political origins in the revisionist Catholic ideology of Santamaria, his anti-abortion stance, his 'turn back the boats' policy, and so on - Australia is better than that, surely.
It would be good if the Age published an article simply stating 'we the owners of the Age don't want Gillard to win the election.' But then I suppose they wouldn't be able to present their rhetoric as 'news'. The whole political landscape of Australia is so fucking depressing at the moment.

2010-07-18T17:21:00.001+10:00

It feels difficult to take Art Since 1900 seriously when it does not include Martin Kippenberger.

Looking for a certain ratio...

2010-07-16T22:00:00.000+10:00

I wonder if the ratio between people and things to names remains essentially the same as populations grow and wane?

2010-07-11T14:45:00.000+10:00

Tintenfisch Paul to challenge Julia Gillard for Labor Leadership

2010-07-09T22:51:00.002+10:00

Gillard's blundering through the Asia-Pacific region with her Pauline Hanson-esque asylum seeker policies is infuriating and shameful. The fact that the asylum seeker 'issue' takes the shape it does in Australia generally is sickening. When refugees who have been 'processed' (like so much raw material) by the government are presently being welcomed heartily into otherwise dwindling post-mining towns, for instance - where is the problem? 3,500 'boat people' arriving to our shores so far this year - and? Think of a town with a population of 3,500 people. Think of the size of Ausralia. Why not increase the annual intake of refugees? I mean really - why not?
Gillard tells us we, the populace, are afraid of 'the sight of boats approaching our shores'. I am not afraid of the boats, Julia. Nobody I know is afraid of asylum seekers coming to Australia. Many, though, are gravely worried about the shape of government, and the dwindling contrast between the 'main parties'; far right wing, or further right wing? The boats and their passengers are not the frightening thing here. The Greens it seems are the only political party in Australia with a humane policy on asylum seekers. The Greens will certainly be the only party getting my vote at all levels of government.

Lesen ist wie Atmen

2010-07-08T17:40:00.004+10:00

For most of my reading life (and I read a reasonable amount), I have generally finished books, or on occasion they have sort of petered off, ended up gathering dust on the narrow strips that protrude beneath other books in the bedside pile, getting dog-eared corners and splashed with day-old water, until they are sent back to the bookshelf in a no-nonsense cleaning spate.
It occurred to me though that this year, I have thrice closed a book knowing that I will never finish it. In the case of Franzen's The Twenty-Seventh City I closed it and sent it to the op shop in virtually the same action, though in the case of Enright's The Gathering it was on the second attempt, and in the case of Known Unknowns I persevered through several shuttings-in-distaste until I finally gave up on it, because I wanted to like it.
Perhaps, in my 30th year, it is because I am getting older that I sense I have less time to spend on unsatisfactory reads. All three books are about the minutiae of dysfunctional social and familial situations, also. And approach said minutiae self-indulgently, to my mind. Hmm.
Your impatience with these themes says as much about you as it does about the authors, Helen.
I know. But that's not enough to make me read them.

2010-07-02T11:26:00.001+10:00

Well, so far our first female PM has ingratiated herself to Obama and sucked some heavy duty mining industry cock. Things are looking up already.

2010-06-29T23:10:00.000+10:00

Another idea for a pop song:
A chorus of
Si vous, si vous, si vous, si vous,
Plait, plait, plait, plait...

Missive

2010-06-29T09:16:00.001+10:00

I just got a copy of Texte zur Kunst in the post that I ordered about two months ago. The address was correct, except that instead of writing Australia the addressor wrote something like Uanadu. Henceforth it got sent from Germany to Uganda, to Canada, to Sydney, and finally got here. Any colony will do.

Her hair a floating sky is shimmering... glimmering... in... the sun...

2010-06-25T16:13:00.002+10:00

It is going to be a much more interesting competition between Gillard and Abbott than it would have been between Rudd and Abbott.
I feel compassion for Rudd though. I believe he had the best of intentions. Not the sort of personality that spreads out in a desirable way in that sort of position though, it would seem.
I have been thinking about my mother's response, that this occurrence flies in the face of the Westminster System, that this sort of instability says nothing for the integrity of our government.
That the Prime Minister can be deposed and the mining industry can blithely claim to be the instrument of that deposition in the national press is deeply disturbing. Though I guess we've known for a long time who's really running things. But how can there be any hope of these greedy billionaires being regulated when the government is so readily at their service? Perhaps we will have to rely in the end on other billionaires with an altruistic streak, like Geoffrey Cousins, to broker deals between their bloodless, beady-eyed counterparts and the needs of the general populace. And that is a disturbing prospect.
Hopefully Julia will vindicate herself before the election. It seems likely. Because gods help us all if Abbott takes the reins.
Meanwhile, Adam Bandt for Melbourne!

2010-06-25T14:05:00.000+10:00

One day i will stop and talk to one of those street canvassers. And see how long i can keep them talking for. Maybe they have a time limit on how long they can spend trying to parasite money from any given person. Or maybe i can keep them talking for hours. Find out a bit about who they are. Turn it into a meaningful exchange.

2010-06-23T14:11:00.001+10:00

Now I know that you can get the cabbage-moth caterpillars that are always through broccoli heads at certain times of year to detach by soaking the broccoli in salty water before you cook it.

2010-06-08T11:25:00.001+10:00

If there was money to be made in cleaning up an oil spill, I imagine it would have been done by now. You don't see John Travolta and the Clintons jetting heroically down to help sop up oil and establish shelters for poisoned and injured wildlife. But then a disaster like this doesn't cause the power structures to become spongy.

2010-06-04T18:49:00.001+10:00

The supermarket self-checkout: a moment of consumer mechanism become bodily. Every surface of the 'checkout area' is invested with sensory process - it senses your approach; it proclaims 'unexpected weight in the bagging area', etc. - but because it's a machine it becomes a competition to preempt it before it can commence the next platitudinous directive.

2010-06-02T19:27:00.002+10:00

I kept seeing this poster for 'Sex and the City 2' at train stations today. Maybe it's a result of not having a TV, but this just looks like pure evil to me. She looks like some ancient Greek mythological character, no? The vacant eyes, all that glittering intent, possessing all the conventional signifiers of beauty, and yet somehow seeming ugly and demonic. Striding across what look like mounds of gold dust, though apparently she weighs nothing, makes no imprint. I just can't tell anymore how self-reflexive Hollywood is about this sort of stuff. Are they deliberately painting her up as some sort of wicked queen? Or are they so deeply immersed in capitalism that they think this is universally appealing?
I should qualify that I dislike this show from the outset, the way the characters cheer themselves up by making expensive purchases and having hollow sex, ugh. I used to watch it sometimes when I got home from work if it was on, because I couldn't be fucked doing anything else, and my boyfriend at the time would come in and yank out the television cord. It irritated me at the time, but I'm glad he did it, now.

2010-06-02T19:11:00.001+10:00

I am sorry to hear that Louise Bourgeois has passed away. I can only imagine she would have gone in utmost style, though.

2010-05-18T13:15:00.001+10:00

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Don't get too comfortable

2010-05-17T20:22:00.001+10:00

When the thinktank arrived at an impasse, each member would go their separate way, and undertake a different task for two hours. One might do yoga, one might sing whilst washing the dishes, one might get drunk, one might have sex.
Then they would reconvene and retable their arguments, to see if anything had changed. Invariably some things had.
The measure did not necessarily ensure the best outcome, but it reminded them all of the agency of change.

2010-05-13T12:47:00.000+10:00

Guy Rundle on Crikey:

'Whatever New Labour was, and there will be time for that analysis soon, it has gone, gone utterly, leaving much and perhaps taking more.

When it began, in 1997, 911 was the US emergency number, terror was a bomb in Omagh, waterboarding was a beach sport and extraordinary rendition was Celine Dion’s take on ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’. '

2010-05-07T12:29:00.001+10:00

'The Lib Dems, aiming to secure as many as 70 seats, were still confident that the Nick Clegg surge would see many more northern Labour citadels fall than the exit poll indicated. The Lib Dems held Torbay, suggesting that they were holding off the Tory advance in the south-west.'
-The Guardian

General election as mediaeval war fantasy, hmm?

2010-04-14T17:22:00.001+10:00

Reading Daniel Buren sometimes feels a bit like watching someone pick a scab.

Eostre

2010-04-06T09:00:00.001+10:00

On the front of the Age this morning, this Christian group in Geelong doing a bloody reenactment of Christ's crucifixion outside a shopping centre, 'to remind people of what Easter is all about'. The paradox of course is that Easter (Eostre) is originally a Pagan fertility rite, actually, and was assimilated by the Christians. So, after all, there's no need to scare the living daylights out of the little ones to remind them of what Easter is really all about - the birth of Spring in the Northern Hemisphere.

David Maljkovic

2010-04-03T18:19:00.001+11:00