run amok

downstairs mix up 8 - sad trax

2011-06-11T20:34:00.008+10:00

click it:

http://goo.gl/nS9ic

http://tinyurl.com/3sb5sor

nicearms (sad trax - downstairs mix up)  1. Tim Hecker - Rainbow Blood [2006] 2. Amon Tobin - The Whole Nine [2002] 3. William Basinksi - Disintegration Loops 2.1 [2002] 4. Stars Of The Lid - Be Little With Me [1997] 5. Autechre - Piezo [1994] 6. Dufay as performed by Ambrose Field and John Potter - Je Me Complains [2009] 7. Boards Of Canada - A Moment Of Clarity [2005] 8. Autechre - paralel Suns [2008] 9. Christopher Bissonnette - Jour Et Nuit [2008] 10. The Cinematic Orchestra - To Build A Home [2007] 11. The Dead Texan - The 6 Million Dollar Sandwich [2004] 12. Hector Zazou feat. Bjork - Visur Vatnsenda-Rosu [1995] 13. Richard Skelton - Undertow [2009] 14. Jon Hassell - Paris II [1987] 15. Tim Hecker - Pond Life [2008] 16. Oneohtrix Point Never - Stress Waves [2010] 17. Fennesz + Sakamoto - Haru [2007] 18. Stars Of The Lid - The Daughters Of Quiet Minds [2007] 19. The Cinematic Orchestra - That Home [2007] 20. Tim Hecker - Blood Rainbow [2006] 21. Brian Eno - An Ending (Ascent) [1983]  One long mp3 at 256kbps - 65 mins, 45 secs Feedback: pomobohohobohomo@gmail.com

downstairs mix up # 7

2010-08-08T00:51:00.003+10:00

My latest mix up, done ages ago, with frequent interruptions from Merton [http://www.youtube.com/user/PianoChatImprov]

Rejoice: it's piano themed.

Available here.

1. Tomekko Bialka - Experiment Piece 1 - Glissando Audio [2009] (http://www.youtube.com/user/tomekkobialka)

2. DJ Spooky - Reactive Switching Strategies for the Control of Uninhabited Air [2002]

3. Spooky - Lowest Common Denominator [1996]

4. Steve Reich - Six Pianos [1974]

5. Cocteau Twins & Harold Budd - Sea, Swallow Me [1986]

6. Nine Inch Nails - The Frail [1999]

7. The X-Ecutioners - Solve For X [1997]

8. Adrian Klumpes - Exhale [2006]

9. John Cage - Tossed As It Is Untroubled [1943]

10. Ryuichi Sakamoto - Grasshoppers [1978]

11. Polygon Window - If It Really Is Me [1992]

12. Stereolab - Captain Easychord [2001]

13. Sly & Robbie - Softcore Surge [1999]

14. David Bowie - Time [1973]

15. Yo La Tengo - Saturday [2000]

16. Tom Ellard - Hair [1982] (http://www.sevcom.com/)

17. Skylab - Exotika [1994]

downstairs mix up 5 (un rare track)

2010-06-06T23:13:00.004+10:00

1. Stephen P McGreevy - Dawn Chorus Collage [1996 - 2009]  (http://www.spaceweathersounds.com/sndbites.htm) 2. Plaid - Stills [2002] 3. Autechre - Gaekwad [2000] 4. Dead Prez - Hip Hop [2000] 5. Tricky vs The Gravediggaz - Tonite Is A Special Nite [1995] 6. Von Südenfed - The Rhinohead [2007] 7. Sonic Youth - Youth Against Fascism [1992] 8. Richard Skelton - Green Withins Brook [2009] 9. My Bloody Valentine - Glider [1990] 10. Pop Will Eat Itself - Home (Orb remix) [1995] 11. Morton Subotnick - Silver Apples Of The Moon (part two) [1967] 12. SND - 08:21:61 [2009] 13. The Residents - Jambalaya [1986] 14. The Knife - We Share Our Mother's Health [2006] 15. 808 State - Flow Coma (AFX remix) [2001] 16. Cujo - Cat People [1996] 17. Ochre - Sosacharo [2006] 18. Brian Eno - Zawinul/Lava [1975] 19. Tim Hecker - Norberg [2007]   MP3 at 256 kbps Total Running Time: 70 mins, 29 secs

Available:

here,

or here

downstairs mix up 6 (rare-ish trax)

2010-04-24T18:38:00.002+10:00

Downstairs Mix Up (rare-ish trax 6)  [contains infrequent Blade Runner sound track and fx intermissions]  1. Vangelis - Blade Runner Opening Titles [1982] 2. Photek - Knitevision [1998] 3. Beaumont Hannant - Psi-Onix (autechre rmx) [1995] 4. Midnight Star - Midas Touch (hell interface rmx) [1999] 5. Roots Manuva - Boogie Bashment [2001] 6. Renaldo And The Loaf - The Shoe Salesman [1983] 7. Can - Turtles Have Short Legs [1971] 8. Gil Scott-Heron - Me And The Devil [2010] 9. Esem - Upward Instlr [2003] 10. Neu! - Seeland [1975] 11. Stars Of The Lid - The Mouthchew [2007] 12. Quasimoto - Astro Black [2000] 13. Scientist - Blood On His Lips [1981] 14. The Pixies - Velouria [1990] 15. The Glass Percussion Proect - Track 1 [?] 16. Steve Reich - Six Marimbas, Fifth Movement [1987] 17. Aphex Twin - Corn Mouth [1996] 18. Boredoms - Omega [2000] 19. Beach House - Walk In The Park [2010]   MP3 at 256kbps Total Duration: 72 mins 23 secs

It's here: http://tinyurl.com/2dtpvee
here: http://tinyurl.com/2b33mmy
and here: http://tinyurl.com/25wm82p

downstairs mix up 4 (medium rare trax)

2010-03-25T23:45:00.005+11:00

Downstairs Mix Up 4 (medium rare trax) a nicearms mix up - this one's king dubby

Available here, here and here.

1. Jon Hassell - Chor Moiré [1981] 2. Higher Intelligence Agency - Delta (live) [1993] 3. Meat Beat Manifesto - Retun To Bass [2008] 4. Autechre - d-sho qub [2010] 5. Burial and Fourtet - Moth [2009] 6. Deepchord - Abraxas [2007] 7. Deadbeat - Rock Of Ages [2005] 8. Howie B. - Allergy [1996] 9. Gescom - Peel Xyzdub [1997] 10. The Clash - Mustapha Dance [1982] 11. Ilkae - Pêche [2001] 12. Alec Empire - Pussy Heroin [1993] 13. The Knife - Heart Beats (live) [2006] 14. Hope Sandoval And The Warm Inventions - On The Low [2001] 15. Leo Anibaldi - Blue Noise [1995] 16. Leftfield - Dub Gussett [1998] 17. Hudson Mohawke - FUSE [2009] 18. Gescom - Go Sheep [1995] 19. Tim Hecker - Where Shadows Make Shadows [2009] 20. Moderat - Out Of Sight [2009]

Total Length: 74 mins and 42 secs

Torrent includes rare Gescom track called Peel Xyzdub as a separate mp3.

Please comment.

Photo is of Moondog and friend.

downstairs mixup (rare trax 3)

2010-02-26T12:09:00.003+11:00

Downstairs Mixup (rare trax 3)

A rare track in a compilation of nice music from nicearms.

Available via torrent here or here and by rapid share here.

1. DJ Vadim - Relax With Pep (part 6) [1996]
2. Gescom - Two Of [1997]
3. Air Liquide - Live In New York (part 3) [1995]
4. Alva Noto - Xerrox Monophaser 2 [2009]
5. Animal Collective - My Girls [2009]
6. Brian Eno - King's Lead Hat [1977]
7. Viktor Vaughn - Rae Dawn [2003]
8. Triosk - Vostok [2006]
9. Two Lone Swordsmen - Rico's Helly [1996]
10. Node - Olivine [1995]
11. DJs Wally and Swingsett - Centaurus Space Base (Cloak and Destroy mix) [1997]
12. David Byrne and Brian Eno - Help Me Somebody [1980]
13. V - Vliezwei (Vliegenbos Morning reproduced by Autechre) [1995]

Duration: 65 mins 54 secs
File: MP3 at 256kbps

Torrent includes Two Of by Gescom as a separate mp3.

Enjoy.
Feedback: pomobohohobohomo@gmail.com

downstairs mix up (rare trax 2)

2010-02-07T18:05:00.003+11:00

Downstairs Mixup (rare trax 2)  Another friendly mixup from nicearms.  This one's a bit more varied and wild, so hold tight!  Track Listing:   1.  Push Button Objects - Non Existant (keyed in by Gescom) [1998] 2.  Mr Nogatco - Bionic Fuse [2006] 3.  Acid Wolf - MMM [c. 1995] 4.  Yo! Majesty - Club Action [2008] 5.  Zeph and Azeem - Come On Come All [2007] 6.  AFX - Analogue Bubblebath 5 track [1995] 7.  Yoshio Machida - Setagaya Art Museum, Sep 28 2008 (Excerpt) [Wire Tapper 2009] 8.  Amon Tobin - Switch [1998] 9.  The Cult - Li'l Devil [1987] 10. Coil - Remote Viewing 4 [remastered with bonus remixes edition - 2006] 11. Thomas Fehlmann - Dusted With Powder [2007] 12. DJ QBert - Inner Space Dental Commander [1998] 13. Cypress Hill - Boom Biddy Bye Bye [1995] 14. Fennesz - The Colour Of Three [2008] 15. Plaid - Dett [Warp 20 Unheard - 2009] 16. Autechre - Bronchus One [from An Anthology Of Noise & Electronic Music / Second       A-Chronology 1936-2003 (2), track written in 1989] 17. The Shins - Turn On Me [2007]   Duration: 66 minutes and 3 seconds File: MP3 at 256kbps  Torrent includes Remote Viewing 4 and Bronchus One as individual mp3s.

the sound of cicadas

2010-01-23T18:27:00.005+11:00

In Launceston, Tasmania.

kulon progo video

2010-01-21T13:46:00.000+11:00

kulon progo protest

2010-01-12T03:56:00.005+11:00

The following is taken from slack bastard's blog:

Kulon Progo solidarity action report

report on january 11 rally
KP Solidarity
January 11, 2010

In response to a call for international support from the Association of Shoreline Farmers (Paguyuban Petani Lahan Pantai – PPLP), the Melbourne Anarchist Club (MAC) organised a protest outside the Indonesian Consulate in Melbourne this morning. Called at short notice and falling on a day when temperatures were forecast to exceed 45 degrees, the gathering was not surprisingly small (about ten in all), but made its point. A statement was read in English outside the front gate, and then in Indonesian at the back entrance – requests to be admitted to the building or to deliver a message directly to a member of the consulate were refused, but a member of the staff was busy with a camera, and an officer did agree to take a copy of the statement…

The following is the English version of the statement that was read out at the protest:
The Kulon Progo farmers in the Yogyakarta region, of Indonesia, have been hit by an enormous challenge to their decades of self-reliance and autonomous practice. The land is being threatened by the prospect of being turned into an iron mine. Not only will this take away the livelihood of the farmers, but this project will have a massive environmental impact upon the land.
For decades, the Kulon Progo farmers have overcome obstacles that would otherwise have put a halt to their practice of living, such as daily battering by the wind and the occasional storm, and a ban on farming by the government. But their insistence on being autonomous and independent has helped their survival. Through the custom of meeting, discussing and sharing, they gradually found new strategies to grow and survive together.
That is, until the news came that, under the belly of the sand on which they thrive, there is fresh water and iron. The fresh water has revitalized the lives of the inhabitants of the region. But the iron has brought the attention of investors from mining companies. In late 2005, PT Jogja Magasa Mining (Indonesia) in collaboration with Indo Mines Limited (Australia), made their way to the region and, with the help of the Indonesian government, imposed upon the farmers the project to mine out the region’s iron ore.
Since 2005, through a strong solidarity the Kulon Progo famers have consistently opposed any kind of intervention into their livelihood as farmers. They have rejected offers to be waged, to work for people they have never known, and to destroy the land they have cultivated for decades.
And here in Melbourne, we would like to call each and every one of you to come out and be with us in opposing the iron mine, to show our support, and our solidarity with, the Kulon Progo farmers.
WE ARE VOCALLY SUPPORTING THE FARMERS AND PPLP*
(Paguyuban Petani Lahan Pantai = Association of Shoreline Farmers)
WE ARE IN SOLIDARITY WITH THEIR STRUGGLE

More photos at Melbourne Protests.

To keep up to date with developments with the Kulon Progo situation, make sure to regularly check out the kpsolidarity website.

downstairs mix up

2010-01-12T03:34:00.004+11:00

http://www.mediafire.com/?zkjogzkmcyz

Click on the link above for an electronic music compilation, mixed up for your listening pleasure.  Track Listing:  1.  Alan R. Splet - Space travel w/ changing choral textures (1983) 2.  Alec Empire - Lash the 90ties (1994) 3.  Autechre - Puch aka Yarra (1994)[this is a track Autechre made when last on tour       in Melbourne, Australia, as featured on a compilation called Elements] 4.  Coil and Bill Laswell - Kala (1997) 5.  Chairlift - Chameleon Closet (2008) 6.  DJ Krush - Time To Melt (2006) [www.stop-rokkasho.org] 7.  Disjecta - Dormin (1995) 8.  Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto with Ensemble Modern - Broken Line 2 (2009) 9.  FFWD [The Orb with Robert Fripp] - Colossus (1994) 10. Gas [Wolfgang Voigt] - Eins (2008 Kompakt Reissue) 11. Julee Cruise - I Float Alone (1989) [music and lyrics by Angelo Badalamenti and      David Lynch] 12. Leo Anibaldi - Untitled (1995) 13. Neu! - Weissensee (1972) 14. Loscil - Kursk (2002) 15. Autechre - Lanx 3 [appeared on Volume 8 magazine compilation]  Duration: 72 minutes 17 seconds File: MP3 at 256kbps  Enjoy.

kulon progo solidarity action

2010-01-10T23:00:00.004+11:00

There will be an action at 10am tomorrow at the Indonesian Consulate in Melbourne to protest against state supported corporate greed at the expense of the lives and livelihood of locals in Kulon Progo, Indonesia.

More information below:

http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/9964

big brother

2009-11-02T23:23:00.004+11:00

Interesting article published by The Guarding and written by comedian Mark Thomas about police surveillance of protesters. I've noticed a similar thing happening here in Melbourne...

royal mail strike

2009-10-27T23:49:00.003+11:00

Interesting blog post on the reasons why postal workers are striking in England.

Devils at Tasmania Zoo

2009-10-08T23:07:00.002+11:00

At last, I'm posting this short video of Tasmanian Devils at the Tasmania Zoo feeding on roo. Apologies for the shaky footage - it was taken on my mobile phone.

My nephew throws the first chunk of dead meat in and you can hear my sister Rachel asking questions and my niece telling me she wants to tickle me.

I love Tasmanian Devils. Funny fact: immature Tassie Devils are called Imps. Devils are carnivorous scavengers, so they don't kill their food, they find it. They're highly aggressive, have incredibly strong jaws and, unfortunately, are endangered due to a facial tumour epidemic sweeping throughout their population. For some reason I feel more strongly about Tasmanian creatures in danger of extinction.

My other favourite animals at the zoo were the macaw, the rooster, the wombat and the wedge-tailed eagles. I never thought of myself as a bird kind of person, but there you have it.

The freakiest creatures there were the macaques. I could see one reaching for a weed just beyond its grasp so I thought I'd help it by picking the weed and throwing it it. The macaque grabbed the stem and then climbed up the fence and made a funny face at me rather agitatedly. I'm not an animal psychologist but I didn't think it was a grimace of gratitude.

if only these grew in nature

2009-06-18T21:58:00.001+10:00

Again, courtesy of The Wire.

amazing!

2009-06-18T21:55:00.002+10:00

There's heaps more to this "Powers of Ten" trip than the awesome music the stunned viewer is rewarded with at the end.

Thanks to thewire.co.uk website.

the BNP are twats

2009-06-06T12:55:00.003+10:00

I haven't blogged in ages but the ominous advent of the British National Party's increasing popularity and this amusing youtube clip by bloggerheads has led me to post this.
Don't support racism.

kunanyi met wellington

2008-09-17T22:12:00.005+10:00

I love going up that mountain.

No, I can't be fucked writing about it.

now playing: panda bear - i'm not

fuck me...

2008-07-15T22:07:00.002+10:00

...another stupid photo.
now playing: acidwolf - moonrider

fish on steps

2008-07-13T18:34:00.001+10:00

Scene on Little Collins Street.
now playing: xtc - love at first sight

the one tree project

2008-07-10T20:42:00.003+10:00

The following was lifted from engagemedia.org.
Check 'em out. They report the news that's unfit to print in corporate media.

The One Tree Project
by Shivanii Cameron — last modified 2008-07-07 11:57

A documentary outlining some of the issues about Tasmanian forestry. One tree that was to be woodchipped for export is given to over 30 artists and craftspeople. The exhibition of the art works and furniture toured Australia for over three years. An on-line auction of the pieces after the exhibition raised over $10,000. As woodchips, the tree was valued at $350-$450 if that. What is the value of one tree ?

now playing: flying lotus - testament

historical artifact

2008-07-06T22:30:00.005+10:00

Last year the APEC Summit came to Sydney and a mate of mine who went to (observe?) the protest picked this up.
It's evidence of how much of a police state Australia has become in the early 21st Century and how much in thrall of capital our so-called liberal democracies are.
I look forward to the day when we look back on artifacts such as these and marvel at the oppressiveness of the times.
Having said that, at least we're not in Zimbabwe...
If you want to and you don't know what I mean by the above, send me a comment and I'll reply as I can't be fucked writing more tonight.

i want a second opinion

2008-07-06T22:25:00.004+10:00

scene from the train tracks

2008-07-01T23:05:00.002+10:00

Ghost Patrol
now playing: meat beat manifesto - psyche out

scene from the street

2008-05-20T22:51:00.003+10:00

now playing: christopher bissonette - collonade

@ndy's back!

2008-05-01T00:14:00.001+10:00

Thus proving you can't keep an anarchist down.
Here's my current hero, Super Barrio.
More on him shortly.
now playing: the fall - victoria

2008-04-17T23:52:00.001+10:00

when the fash attack

2008-04-14T22:29:00.003+10:00

Poor @ndy.
His blog proper has temporarily been shut down because it was hosted by anarchobase and the fash have issued some kind of a phony libel legal threat against them due to a post of Andy's in which he discussed the madness of mathaba.net and co.
Fascists stifling freedom of speech? Never!
More on the story at @ndy's interim blog here and here.
Fuck the fash! They can't keep a good blog down.
now playing: ministry - you know what you are

some like it not

2008-04-02T19:42:00.003+11:00

Save Shoreditch!
Matt Johnson narrates the above clip.
It's concerned with corporate interest's proposal to literally cast parts of Shoreditch, an inner suburb of London, into permanent shadow through the construction of high-rise business buildings.
The proposal involves building many high-rises along several roads thus producing a wall along much of the suburb as well as knocking down many buildings of historical and cultural significance.
Further, this particular situation has involved utterly undemocratic processes in which deals have been struck behind closed doors and the residents of Shoreditch have been left entirely in the dark (pun intended) as the companies involved, Hammerson and Ballymore, have been supported by London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, despite widespread opposition to the proposal.
This kind of thing happens everywhere all the time so it's good to see some resistance and publicity.
More power to the people of Shoreditch.
now playing: the the - heartland

time lapses

2008-03-02T15:07:00.002+11:00

Yes it does.

The above clip, Unsquare Toronto, was created by Lone Primate on a Rebel XT camera. Fabulous! You can check out his blog, City in the trees, here (it's also linked to the right).
The below clip is a fan made filmclip for the first Autechre song I ever heard (and one of my all time favourite autechre tunes), Eutow. It's been love ever since.
Enjoy them both.

now playing: tom waits - sixteen shells from a thirty ought six

run wrake - rabbit

2008-02-15T13:22:00.000+11:00

the visuals suit the music

2008-02-07T20:30:00.001+11:00

peanut butter - it's what their brains are made of

2008-02-02T00:22:00.000+11:00

Some people are willfully stupid.
And here's the evidence.
now playing: autechre - chenc9

cute

2008-01-14T12:47:00.000+11:00

quaristice

2008-01-08T22:57:00.000+11:00

yes

extra yes

vote for lame

2007-11-25T20:24:00.000+11:00

The above clip is an ad for one of this year's federal unnatural selection candidates for the seat of Wills (in Melbourne). Namely, it's an ad for Zane Alcorn from Socialist Alliance (SA). If you can stomach watching it, you'll see a failed attempt at winning the youth vote. Somebody has clearly neglected to tell SA that it takes a bit more than a terribly unfunky aesthetic to win a seat. And who the hell thought it would be possible to win a seat by appealing to just one cohort within it? Especially with that terrible attempt at humour? Strangely enough, I couldn't bring myself to vote Zane second, despite the Greens 'how to' card asking me to do so. It was very difficult bringing myself to vote at all.
SA are allied with the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP), so that explains why Zane's been posing as a woeful Emcee posing as a politician: feeding votes, more or less, to the DSP.
There is an argument that content is more important than aesthetics. But sometimes there can be a lot of content in aesthetics. In Zane's case, there's a very clear agenda of attempting to win the youth vote by presenting himself as an alternative to the other politicians.
So I'm not criticising Zane on the basis of his content (not of this clip but of his policies [the usual SA/DSP suspects: environmental sustainability/global warming, worker's rights and youth rights, etc.]) because no doubt there's plenty of merit to the ideas he's put forward, in principle. My assertion is that, if Zane's intention is to effect change in regard to these issues, participating in Government isn't going to help. Representative Democracy is a sham. It won't solve issues, it creates them. Zane's aesthetic belies a disingenuous attempt to paper over this fatal flaw in the logic of our so-called democracy: the illusion of choice.
Having said all that, I did vote. It was a guilty pleasure helping vote out Howard. But I'm certainly not labouring under the misapprehension that there is a substantial difference between Howard and Rudd and his lackeys. Or if I were Zane I suppose I'd say, "Rudd and his homies."
now playing: battles - rainbow

retro gamer

2007-11-21T13:39:00.000+11:00

I'm home from work today, sick, so I've decided the best way to help me recover from my mystery illness is to download a couple of Commodore 64 ROMs of games I played in my youth. I thought I'd blog about it, to keep the nostalgia theme of the last couple of posts running.

Although, I can't remember where from, I recently downloaded a game called Shogun, where the objective is to win friends and otherwise influence people into becoming your subordinates. You can do this a number of ways depending on the character you choose to be. You can be a thug, a priestess or priest, a samurai, a lady, or a lord, or a servant and then some, amongst the twenty or so characters available. What really stands out about this game is the whole aesthetic: it's wonderfully atmospheric. The gameplay is simple and a little bit odd because you can sort of run up into the sky; there's no gravity. Regardless, the game involves picking up objects and money and giving them to selected people after talking to them to win their favour. If you're not very strong, trying to attack people is a quick ticket to death. Presumably you can make or break alliances by sending your disciples to kill, protect or give gifts to others. Presumably. I used to play it for hours even though I wasn't really sure what I was doing. I remember the C64 version having this really nice white noise that increased and decreased in volume as your character crossed the landscape towards the sea but the version I've downloaded doesn't have that. It's a pity.
I've downloaded three games today:

1) Impossible Mission. Who knows how many hours of my life I spent playing this game. It's such memorable fun and I love the speech in it, which was quite an accomplishment for c. 1983: "Another visitor; stay a while, stay forever!" and "Kill him, my robots!" And who could forget the blood curdling scream when you fall down a pit to your death? I saw my sister complete Impossible Mission, which is impressive because it's not an easy game at all and there's a surprising amount of problem solving in all the platform jumping. If you watch the Youtube end sequence to Impossible Mission 2 (the game of which I unfortunately can't find to download) I hope you're as disappointed as I am. Such an anti-climax after all that effort.

2) Wizball. I downloaded the Sensible Software original but I couldn't get the cat to work and as Graham Goring, Trevor Storey and Infamous over at Retrospec had gone to all the effort to remake it, I've been playing that version instead. It retains all the playability, addictiveness, quirkiness, difficulty and fun of the original. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to support a joystick or control pad but that doesn't matter because it's still fun. The Youtube embed is the original theme music to the game. I'm beginning to see where my love of synths and electronic music comes from.

3) Attack of the Mutant Camels 2: Yak Attack. If memory serves, the fun and funny thing about Jeff Minter's original game is that it abounded in llamas and this one seems to follow suit - minus the fun.
Okay, enough geekiness.
I'm now going to watch an anime film.
playing in just a moment: tekkon kinkreet

jack and the witch

2007-11-18T17:11:00.000+11:00

It doesn't get much better than this:
Above is a freaky little scene from a wonderful anime film that I watched when I was four or so called Jack and the witch (1967).
I distinctly remember bits of this show, including this clip, it's left an indelible mark on my memory and I'd dearly love to see it again in full but such a desire will need to go unfulfilled for the time being, alas.
The film is about a young man who finds himself transported to another land, which is dominated by witch. There's a bad windmill in there somewhere too. When the windmill turns, something really bad happens. Cant' remember what.
The film is quite dark and wonderfully inventive but I'll probably never get the opportunity to relive the experience because the film on DVD is only available in Japanese which I don't speak.
I remember accidentally taping over a bit of it with about thirty seconds of Astroboy on our Betamax VCR and then hiding under my bed because I thought I'd be belted. Those precious memories. As it was, I didn't get in trouble at all, although I was terribly upset to delete some of the movie.
I blame Sony.
now playing: broadcast - microtronics 02 (?)

'he is ze perfekt replikant'

2007-11-17T22:34:00.000+11:00

I went to The Astor's Friday screening of Blade Runner, the Final Cut.
This version of the film is Ridley Scott's completion of his earlier Director's Cut, for most of which he was absent due to shooting Thelma and Louise, and hence the messiness of that cut of the film. Thus, the Final Cut is his definitive version.
The advantage of seeing Blade Runner - the Final Cut at the cinema, digitally restored and screened with a digital projector was precisely that - seeing the film big, with some of the most amazing visuals of any film ever shot really brought to life. The film still looks amazing! It is such a lavish vision and partly because it was shot in 1982. Films with a similar level of visual detail, complexity and sophistication are quite common these days but this is a film from the early eighties. It's twenty-five years old and it hasn't dated a bit.
As for the aspects of the film that Scott changed or added, there's not a lot to commend here in my opinion. I've watched the Director's Cut a good fifteen times and was able to spot most of the differences although some of them were so subtle I didn't spot them. The extra violence wasn't particularly necessary and changing Roy's, " I want more life, Fucker," to "I want more life, Father," needlessly labours the metaphor.
But all of this is beside the point: for a film that was already an incredibly immersive aesthetic experience, the digital vision and sound refinement has really enhanced both the spectacle and the messages at the depth. At last night's screening, for the first time, I really picked up on the subtle differences and commonalities between all of the replicants contained in the film for the first time.
And as for the question regarding the ambiguity or otherwise of Deckard's replicant status, I am prepared to agree with the notion that this has been left somewhat ambiguous but I think it's ambiguous not because Scott wanted to leave doubt in the viewers' minds so much as because of his deft directorial touch - he really knows how to show and not state. That is, the ambiguity is a corollary of his direction and not a moot narrative point, per se.
In addition, a friend once said to me that Deckard's being a replicant added nothing to the narrative and was thus superfluous. I can think of several rebuffs to this, but the most poignant for me regards Deckard being a Replicant as a thematic rather than narrative concern. Believing Deckard to have been a human throughout the entirety of the film until the very end really underscores the post-humanity of the film incredibly powerfully. I reckon. And no, I don't think this is tautologous.
Anyway, a wonderful film experience made sublime.
now playing: alec empire - lash the 90ties

slides

2007-11-13T00:46:00.000+11:00

Here are some of the photos that have been sitting in my Dad's old Pentax SLR for almost a year, waiting to be processed.
They look as great as they do, not just because of my photography skills, but also because they're slide film that's been cross- processed onto paper.
Very happy.
Now playing: stars of the lid - the daughters of quiet minds

avast!

2007-11-12T23:57:00.000+11:00

A friend of mine directed me to a really good blog which lets you download good music.
It's at nodatta. blogspot.com and everyday there's a downloadable album or a single or two posted of the kinds of genres of music I really get in to.
It's got me thinking about piracy a bit and how much fun it is. But more than fun, sharing culture is also fair and reasonable. As we all know, information and culture want to be free. I don't know how Metallica or Dr Dre can sleep at night, shutting down Napster. Or Sony justify their intensive insistence on digital rights management (going so far as to devise anti-copyright infringement media that will fuck up your stereo).
Yep, I'm definitely down with the anti-copyright guys.
If you don't like breaking the law but like the sound of free 8 and 16-bit music, then check out Cicada. Fucking awesome! Total computer love.
Thanks to Chris Lego for the pic.
now playing: cicada - earth's assault on the central ai

national 'anarchists'

2007-10-27T21:13:00.000+10:00

Below is a statement penned by that Slack Bastard, @ndy, regarding the presence of so-called national anarchists in Australia.
To date, it's been signed by:
Barricade
Anarchist Direct Action
Wild Cat
Melbourne Anarchist Club

(The symbol directly below is, apparently, the national anarchist logo. I obtained it from a site called Folk and Faith, which, whilst denouncing racism, simultaneously screams blue bloody murder about the existence and imputed practices of 'judeo types' and eschews miscegenation. It also claims to be neither right nor left. Which may be fair. Theirs is an entirely whole new order of insanity.)

Introduction

On Saturday, September 8, 2007, a small group of between 15-30 individuals assembled in Sydney under the banner of the New Right. They were there to attend the anti-APEC summit rally and protest, and did so while assembled in the manner of a black bloc (dressed in black uniforms and wearing masks to disguise their faces). Their propaganda proclaimed the group to be composed of 'national anarchists'. This statement is being issued by a number of anarchist groups in Australia [and Aotearoa] in order to unmask these impostors, to expose 'national anarchism' as being the fascist nonsense that it is, and to give notice, both to the 'national anarchists' and to the general public, that anarchists in Australia [and Aotearoa] will not tolerate fascist elements attempting to use anarchist rhetoric and imagery in order to pursue their goals. We do so on the basis of our support for the equality and freedom of all individuals, regardless of race or ethnicity, and in recognition of the role of fascists ideas, parties and movements in destroying the libertarian working class cultures and movements which anarchists promote and which we depend upon for our survival. But what, exactly, is the 'New Right', and what is a 'national anarchist'?

The New Right

In Australia, the New Right is a tiny grouping on the far right, established in late 2005, largely via the efforts of a German-born, Sydney-based businessman named Welf Herfurth. Herfurth has a long history of involvement in the German neo-Nazi movement, including the NPD, and more recently the Australian far right, including organisations and projects such as the Australia First Party, Blood & Honour, One Nation and the Inverell and Sydney Forums. According to Herfurth and the New Right, “National-Anarchism represents the political embodiment of the... New Right — it is the political wing”. In other words, while the New Right provides the 'theory', 'national anarchism' is the 'practice'.

National anarchism

'National anarchism' has its origins in the UK, and is largely the brainchild of Troy Southgate, another individual with a long history of involvement in the British neo-Nazi movement, including organisations such as the National Front, the International Third Position, the English Nationalist Movement and the National Revolutionary Faction. Critic Graham D. Macklin notes that "When put into its wider context… ‘national-anarchism’ appears as one of many groupuscular responses to globalization, popular antipathy towards which Southgate sought to harness by aligning [his activities]... with the resurgence of anarchism whose heroes and slogans it arrogated, and whose sophisticated critiques of global capitalist institutions and state power it absorbed…". In essence, 'national anarchism' is an attempt to use anarchist rhetoric and imagery in order to better advance the cause of reactionary, racist and fascist politics.

Our response

As anarchists, we categorically reject this. We also categorically reject any and all attempts by the New Right (and any other group with politics similar to it) to align themselves in any way, shape or form with the contemporary anarchist movement in Australia [and Aotearoa]. The use of such tactics by the far right, including the formation of 'black blocs' such as the one in Sydney, has been witnessed in Europe for a number of years, and it now appears that an attempt, however minor, to do so in Australia is now being made. (In Germany, for example, some right-wing radicals even use the “Antifaschistische Aktion” logo (a circle with a red and black flag) but adorn it with the slogan “Nationale Sozialisten” (national socialists)!) We consider the use of such tactics to be deliberately aimed at causing confusion among the broader public with regards the aims and methods of elements of the far right, and to confuse anarchism with the pursuit of 'white, nationalist' politics. Such tactics are also based upon a recognition by elements of the far right of the attractive nature of anarchist rhetoric and imagery to many young people, and a desire to win some of these individuals away from genuine attempts to create true anarchy; a society without rulers -- of whatever colour, and of whatever supposed nationality.

The Sab Cat.
As such, we, as anarchists: wish to make our opposition to the New Right and 'national anarchism' known; denounce their attempts to appropriate 'anarchist' rehetoric, imagery and symbology for their own racist and fascist purposes; commit ourselves to to ensuring, each in our own way, that any and all confusion be eliminated in the minds of both the 'national anarchists' and the broader public regarding the opposition between anarchism and the antics of groups such as the New Right.

For more information, read @ndy's blog.

gunns = evil

2007-10-11T20:37:00.001+10:00

I've just finished reading an excellent article written by Richard Flanagan in the May 2007 issue of The Monthly and now I'm real angry.
I was angry before, but reading about how Gunns and the Labor Party, headed by Paul Lennon (Tasmania's Premier), are destroying Tasmania has rekindled the flames of hate, sadness, anger and disgust throughout me that were once burning brightly when I was living in Tassie.
I'm utterly incensed at the petty-minded betrayal of Tasmania by a small bunch of men who see fit to rampantly increase their own and their friends' wealth at the wholesale expense of Tasmania's wilderness as well as the health and wellbeing of many Tasmanian people and businesses. And the fucking shit-stream of lies and rhetoric that Paul Lennon and his cronies have heaped upon the public in order to get away with it.
Geez, I'm too angry to write.
Another time. Another time. I'll edit this later when I have some more clarity.
If I write about it now, I'll just use vigour instead of rigour. And that never works. I need both.
now playing: tim hecker - aerial light-pollution orange

cold war unicorns and bono

2007-10-06T16:09:00.001+10:00

Ali, a good friend of mine, was overseas for four months because the Department of Immigration and Citzenship (DIC) dicked her around for a good two months or so, which is surprisingly fast by their standards.
Ali has only just returned to our dubious shores and much to my extreme pleasure she came back with some great gifts for me and my boyfriend.
Firstly, as you can see she returned with these awesome cold war unicorns. Brilliant!
But more significantly, to my boyfriend's and my utter amazement, she bought us an Apple iPod Shuffle each. And not only that but, because they are the same colour, she had our names printed on the back of them so we don't get them confused.
Perhaps more interestingly, Apple claims they donate some money to 'the Global Fund,' to fight AIDS in Africa.' They don't say how much they donate and the (PRODUCT)^RED™ campaign is dodgy for several reasons.
And here they are:
1) It's a corporate initiative. That is, it's for profit. Product Red is a kind of symbiotic company that, in a sense, commissions other businesses to make items with their brand on it. Surely it would be a lot easier for businesses such as American Express, Armani and Apple, who all participate in this scheme, to just donate money to 'The Global Fund' to raise money for AIDS survivors in Africa? Ah, but then they wouldn't be making money off of it, would they?
2) According to this article, orignially published by the Independent Online (who is also a partner of Product Red), as of January 2006, less than 1% of the Global Fund's revenue was received by big businesses (although the initiative was launched at the same time as that article was published). Having said that, none of the businesses affiliated with Product Red have divulged to their loyal consumers the percentage of profits they donate to the Global Fund. Why not? Surely they would want to show off. Well, it turns out, Product Red has spent more moolah on advertising than they have generated raising revenue and thus fighting AIDS. They managed to raise a measly $18million as of March 2007. Oops. So who's benefited here? Big business. Who would've thunk it?
3) Bono's involved in Product Red. This is a bad thing and no mistake. Listen to what Bono has to say about ethical consumerism:

"Philanthropy is like hippy music, holding hands. Red is more like punk rock, hip-hop; this should feel like hard commerce." He added: "People see a world out of whack. They see the greatest health crisis in 600 years and they want to do the right thing, but they're not sure what that is. Red is about doing what you enjoy and doing good at the same time."

What? So moral actions these days come down to commerce alone, which he also adds is sexy. Right-o, Sir Bono. Maybe for you.
A backlash to Product Red is the Buy Less Crap site, which encourages punters to actively donate to the Global Fund rather than more or less passively consume.
Fuck I hate Bono!
But having said all of that, if it's the difference between having an iPod that I didn't have to shell out a single cent for and not having one, I'll take the Product Red iPod any day. Does this make me a hypocrite? No, no it doesn't.
Thanks a heap, Ali!
now playing (in my iPod): the fall - powderkex

link

2007-09-27T23:23:00.001+10:00

now playing: nightmares on wax - damn

skillz

2007-09-27T23:14:00.000+10:00

now playing: autechre - chatter

the residents

2007-09-21T00:03:00.001+10:00

I'm a little troubled by this film clip.
Which is not necessarily a bad thing.
Here's my experience of watching the film clip for The Third Reich and Roll by The Residents.
Perhaps you could watch it first before reading my post. Could compare our experiences.
Anyway, my first reaction was one of amusement. This is great! Funny drill-like go karts and strange warped-trumpet-wailing-voice over an absurd fanfare.
Then my humour went through the roof with the absurdity of the paper-clad KKK guys tapping their percussion out of time to the pseudo tribal beats wrung through a delay, dancing maniacally like a poorly animated Bananas in Pajamas stop motion nightmare. All over the top of a poorly rendered land of a thousand dances tune.
Classic! But disturbing. And this powerful symbol of racism being both ridiculed but also paraded for my entertainment was also troubling. The KKK are real and have murder thousands and thousands of African Americans. Not necessarily something to make light of. But such funny presentation.
And when the storm trooper broke onto the seeming pagan ritual at the end, I hoped it would kill the Klansmen and then itself. But it only zapped one and then the clip changed scene so I felt a little bit frustrated.
The frustration continued as the symbol of the nazi swastika was revealed beneath the arch and then reappeared on the TV after it was destroyed by the giant steaks. I wanted to see it completely destroyed. And what of the further subjugation of another Klansman by a guitar weilding avatar, riding him off the stage? Why? But then Hitler was seen to preside over it all, unchallenged, just after a TV bearing a swastika and a guitar moved to the forefront of the stage, underpinned by detuned 50s surf rock.
What are they saying? That rock and roll is racist? That it's completely subverted its black heritage? Why is Hitler the last thing we see? Are they saying that modern popular music is totalitarian? That it's trying to destroy all other genres? I wanted to see more obvious denigration of the racist elements depicted even as I was enjoying seeing them portrayed so humorously. Presented as entertaining symbols. Perhaps there can be no greater indictment than to ridicule them in this way?
That's what I'd like to think but it's easy to make light of things that haven't directly assaulted me.
Fuck it. I like it anyway!
Does that make me a bad man?

Makhno Cat

2007-09-20T23:59:00.000+10:00

Makhno!

dead eyes opened

2007-09-19T22:18:00.001+10:00

Er, yes. This is another youtube post.
But an interesting one.
Below are three film clips from Severed Heads.
The first one is the original Dead Eyes Opened from 1983. It's really lo-fi and great. I like the dancers.

The second one is the original film clip from the 1994 reopened version of dead eyes opened. Apparently the ABC didn't approve of this version because it featured nudity and stroboscopic effects. How things change. But my sieve-like memory prefers the version I saw early one morning on Rage thirteen years ago.

The final clip below came out two years ago and was screened at an Australian sound-arts festival called Liquid Architecture. The track is called December 13. Gosh, it's all round pretty.

Eleven years separate each of the film clips successively. A lot can happen in eleven years.
Tom Ellard, who is Severed Heads, makes his own film clips too.
Pretty talented.
It gets better because he's updated his website with free new stuff to download (Op3) and clips ranging from the amazing (lives of the saints) to the funny ha ha (turd polish suite) live glitch clips.
Really pretty talented.

chomsky and foucault - power and justice

2007-09-15T22:43:00.000+10:00

Below are two youtube clips of a discussion between Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault aired on Dutch television in 1971.
I find this event amazing for three reasons:
1) I like a lot of what Chomsky and Foucault have to say for varying reasons and I don't see the two great thinkers (and doers) as diametrically opposed. But moreso, the fact that they tete-a-tete'd suggests that presumably they held some level of respect or regard for each other. Who would've thunk it?;
2) It was 1971 and post-structuralism was fairly new on the political/philosophical scene so it must have been fairly well-respected to have warranted such a meeting of minds. I'm kind of surprised;
3) I don't believe that a debate of similar calibre would be aired on TV in Australia today (or ever). It was called Human Nature: Power and Justice! Not very Australian... Whatever that means. I'm thinking those Euros really like their philosophy. Kudos, Europe.
Anyway, I don't agree with Foucault's political cynicism. I'm something more of a Delueze and Guattari (D+G) fan and although they roughly accorded with Foucault's understanding of the historical contingency of ideas and actions (ie. non-essentialism) they were able to do so without Foucault's political pessimism. Perhaps the use of the word pessimism is a bit harsh here but D+G understood the importance of acting politically on all levels of existence (ref A Thousand Plateux), so they don't inherently see political action as being about reforming power relations (and discourse) alone. For them, the tendency for fascism to overwhelm political engagement is a consequence of existence itself, so it becomes important to beware the micro-fascist proclivities within oneself that threaten otherwise de/re-territorialising (revolutionary) praxis. Foucault was an activist, having said that.
Regardless, clearly Foucault thought that micro-fascisms inevitably undermine such praxis as they would serve to re-institute similar discourses (ways of thinking and doing) in the name of the new. I can understand this kind of thinking. Just look at Communist Russia et al or Howard's response to possible paedophilia in Indigenous communities. But that's not the point. The point for D+G is that difference ultimately disrupts everything and inevitably creates new forms out of existing forms, so that society, politics, everything, is constantly undergoing change. And radical political praxis is a possible and occasional part of this. The potential for it in Western societies may not be particularly strong right now, but it remains a possibility nonetheless. All that's required are the right prevailing conditions. I want to be a part of that tradition. And from an anarchist perspective in particular. With post-structural pretensions...
On the flipside, I can't agree with Chomsky's optimism about human nature and the pursuit of human excellence. I think this kind of Modernist thinking is a bit fanciful and potentially opens itself to fascism far too readily - with all the best intentions in Chomsky's instance, of course. And of course, it relies on the notion of some kind of essential human being, which doesn't seem to exist.
So, I sit somewhere between Foucault and Chomsky and I reckon D+G occupy that space quite comfortably.
For what it's worth.
And I haven't even mentioned power and justice at all...
Finally, I've included a clip of Ali G interviewing Chomsky about linguistics.
Hilarious!
I wonder what kind of pain Ali G could have caused Foucault if he were still around and had dropped enough pretentiousness in his old age to speak English.

nwplyng: ryuichi sakamoto - reversing

won't somebody please wake him up out of his delusions of grandeur?

2007-09-08T17:27:00.001+10:00

Thanks be to Sean who showed this to me.
Love the wipes.
now playing: pole - schoner land

welcome to oz...

2007-08-26T22:45:00.000+10:00

...Enjoy your stay...

witness the shitness (again)

2007-08-26T00:34:00.000+10:00

Below is an article written by Adam Morton found on The Age website, published yesterday.
Long story short, it's an account of how RMIT University's Business Portfolio failed its international students again.
I suppose the rot starts at the top and that RMIT Business isn't entirely to blame because it's been given the licence to fuck its students over by the institution as a whole.
Read on:

RMIT admits student 'stuff-up'
August 25, 2007

RMIT University accepted fees of up to $8000 each from overseas students for the first semester this year before telling them on the eve of exams their enrolment had been cancelled.

The case — to be debated in a series of appeals hearings at RMIT next week — has re-ignited calls for Australian universities to accept a greater duty of care towards young foreigners who each pay tens of thousands of dollars in fees to keep universities in the black.

Seven RMIT students, six foreigners and one Australian, were allowed to attend class, hand in assignments and use university email and intranet sites for three months this year before being told they could not sit their June exams.

Due to what the university acknowledges was an "administrative stuff-up", termination letters sat in the students' files marked "return to sender".

Following an appeal, the seven were allowed to sit their exams.

Two had their enrolments reinstated but five — from China and Bahrain — are now in limbo: out of pocket for subjects the university decided they were not qualified to take, and facing the possibility their visas could be cancelled if their appeal fails.

Whatever the decision, the university says it has no plans to refund the students' fees.

Migration lawyer Tony Hinz, who is representing three of the students, said RMIT had handled the situation badly.

"If they tried to do this with Australian students there probably would be a national outcry, but they know with overseas students … there won't be the same repercussions."

Mr Hinz said the bungle was a symptom of a bigger problem. International students were often not given the support they deserved — and were legally entitled to.

With federal grants dwindling from 57 to 41 per cent of total revenue since 1996, universities rely on foreign student fees for a strong bottom line.

"The unfairness with the system is that these students keep the system afloat but they get second-class treatment compared to local students," Mr Hinz said.

RMIT academic registrar Maddy McMaster acknowledged the university had breached a federal code of practice by not having a documented intervention strategy for identifying and helping struggling students.

"We're very much aware that this was a problem and we've taken steps to address it so that it won't happen again. It was an awful thing to happen to these students," Ms McMaster said.

Under RMIT policy, students are warned if they fail 40 per cent of subjects in one semester, and can have their enrolment cancelled if the poor performance is repeated.

Ms McMaster said she had sympathy for the students but doubted they would be reimbursed.

"As I understand it, the decision to exclude shouldn't have been a surprise — they had poor performance in two consecutive semesters."

What RMIT probably can't admit to itself is that there are big problems with how it treats its international students and that its reputation as a leading university in Australia isn't entirely deserved so that word is reaching prospective international students back home (mostly China) about this. That is, RMIT's standing and reputation is beginning to fade amongst international students.
And RMIT only has itself to blame.
Yes, I'm aware I'm reifying an institution.
now playing: steve reich - phase patterns

happy birthday, baby!

2007-08-15T01:07:00.001+10:00

Here's a cake I 'built' my boyfriend for his birthday.
(note the aqua teen hunger force reference)
Love you, Leigh. X
now playing: mc chris - i want candy

let my pictures do the talking

2007-08-06T19:13:00.001+10:00

No need for a narrative with these pix of my recent trip to Tas.
Wish I had a better camera.

brenda dickson - welcome to my home

2007-07-28T22:40:00.001+10:00

"...and with dieting it's like life: as long as I don't bleed or cry I'll do it!"
Ha ha ha!

boycott i+q

2007-07-28T22:19:00.000+10:00

For what it's worth, I recommend not going to (Queer and Alternative) Q+A's lowly successor, I+Q (Independent and Queer), also held at A Bar Called Barry every Thursday night.
It bears absolutely no resemblance to Q+A: the music is shit and the clientele are even more southside.
But it gets worse:
I saw the aftermath of a young lesbian punk having her head split open whilst forcefully being evicted from the venue by reckless bouncers for the seeming slight of bearing her breasts, just two nights ago. Hardly deserving of the pain and a face full of blood.
Seems like if you're having too much fun at the venue and not consuming enough alcohol to anaesthetise yourself from the pain of being assaulted by top forty dance music (so 'independent') and soulless homogeneity then you're going to get the royal treatment.
That and if you're a working class and/or punk lesbian.
So there are increasingly fewer venues for queer women to feel free to express their sexuality, what with The Peel being able to discriminate against women and I+Q treating lesbian punks like they do.
It's time to make a new night in a new venue that really is queer and really is an alternative to this shit.
Says I...
I got respect for all kinds of queers and a laptop with plenty of good tunes. Anyone got a venue for me?
now playing: severed heads - dead eyes opened (original)

farcebook and another more important fuck up

2007-07-22T11:41:00.000+10:00

So last night I went out to St Kilda with a friend and my boyf and we had delicious crispy duck tortellini in walnut sauce with a hint of chili. It's really tasty but never enough (to misquote a line from Hellraiser).
After dinner we went to the Marquis of Lorne in Fitzroy and caught up with a friend who this week was granted a Permanent Residency. Nice one! That's no mean feat here in Australia as the Government doesn't like brown people very much. Or black. White with a tan is pushing it too, so don't get any ideas.
Anyway, we found ourselves in the small basement of this four storey pub and it was dark, dank and stinky with an eightball table (or pool table, depending on where you're from) in the cramped conditions. "Smells damp," I said, this time correctly quoting the aforementioned horror movie masterpiece.
But apart from some good conversation, everyone was interrupted for a moment by someone shouting that they had one hundred and thirty-seven friends on facebook. For those of you who don't know, all two of you, facebook is a self-proclaimed 'social utility that connects you with the people around you.'
I have a few problems with farcebook and also this claim because I'm a pompous git. And because of my pomposity I'm going to expound those problems right now.
Why do I need to be connected with people around me virtually if they're already around me? That doesn't make sense. I joined up because a friend of mine was returning to her home in New York and I thought it would be a fun, quick and easy way to keep in touch with her. Speaking of which, I should drop her a line right now. brb
.
.
.
Where was I?
Why is it that people convert what should be a networking thing into a popularity contest? My boyfriend went through my list of friends and requested to be friends with friends of mine he's only met once. Farce! At the latest count he has over eighty 'friends'. Well done.
Hang on, just thought of another friend I haven't poked (not like that) recently. brb
.
.
.
Long overdue, that was.
I just sent a couple of friends a drink on a new application that you can add to your page that lets you shout your friends virtual drinks. Long island ice tea. Of course. So fun. I was given a milk.
But seriously, why would you want to have over a hundred friends? Anyone who has over a hundred friends can't be a very good or attentive friend, surely. How could you fit in the time to be a friend to that many people? Virtually or otherwise? Group emails? Group farcebook vampire and ninja bites? How friendly is that?
Someone I know boasted to have over two hundred farcebook friends. I challenged her and said, "But how many of them are real friends IRL?"
"IRL?" She queried.
"In real life."
"Oh. All of them."
I'm dubious.
Next, a friend of mine has set up a fakebook: he's set up a facebook profile et al for a friend of his and is sending out messages, writing on walls and generally participating in the online 'community' that is farcebook as her proxy, unbeknownst to her. Identity fraud! Of the friendliest sort. How real is that?
Now I have to go and update my cat's farcebook (called catbook) profile.
Slave to the system! brb
.
.
.
Finally, the paranoid in me is a little bit suss about who's getting this information and how and why. Is it possible for boneheads or the state to be able to find out who knows who? Of course. I suppose a more pertinent question is, what can they do with this information? Well in these days of the Anti-Terrorism Act, when a man with a Middle Eastern name can be arrested for simply knowing his terrorist cousin, anything is possible.
Goodbye civil liberties... brb?
now playing: the clash - i fought the law

more graff

2007-07-16T12:11:00.000+10:00

more generative 'art' and mistaken identities

2007-07-15T17:46:00.001+10:00

...but not generic!
Follow this link for similar unfolding art coolness.
I was directed to the above website by boingboing.com - 'a directory of wonderful things' for this little gem.
The idea of generative pastiches of famous artists' oeuvres is quite a good one, even if the execution is a little bit naf. I suppose that's the point to a lot of art these days: the concept. It's nice when a concept and aesthetics coincide in that happy place called quality.
I'm with Deleuze and Guattari when they say that the point of art is to evoke feelings ('affects' - although affects are more than just feelings) in people that then foster changed and changing perceptions/understandings. And so on...
Geez, you can tell I have very little to say right now.
I'm listening to what may be Richard D James' (aka Aphex Twin and AFX) latest offering.
There's some mystery surrounding it, however. The Rephlex published ep I bought is by The Tuss and it's called Rushup Edge (Rephlex is a label that was part-established by Richard James back in 1991, btw).
The scant ep info also states that it was produced by Karen Tregaskin, which is weird because Brian Tregaskin is credited as being The Tuss and has a myspace page of his own. All of the playable tracks on The Tuss' and Brian Tregaskin's myspace pages only sound like AFX's latest Analord releases except worse and not enough to sound like they really are written by Richard James himself. Which is also strange because Rushup Edge sounds a lot like more those aforementioned recent AFX releases - only better.
But it gets weirder because a recent article from The Guardian that speculates on the identity of Brian/Karen Tregaskin, states that one of the synths used in the ep is a Yamaha GX-1, which is a massive, extremely expensive, old and rare synth of which only seven were made back in 1973. And Richard James owns one. Although on his myspace questions and answers page, Brian Tregaskin refutes that he uses a GX-1.
He also claims that the track titles of the 'leaked' Rushup Edge ep that were downloadable from SLSK before the ep's official release (and how does that happen? I'm suspicious...) are false. Certainly, my copy of the ep doesn't contain any track titles. Further, the Rephlex homepage states that the release is an album and not an ep. But my copy only contains six tracks and runs a total of 32mins48secs. What's going on?
By the sound of the music, its pretty obvious that Rushup Edge is a Richard James written album, so all of this must be some kind of marketing ploy or game that Richard James is playing with his adoring.
If it turns out that The Tuss really isn't Aphex Twin, I'd have said that Richard James has a usurper on his hands if it weren't for the fact that, despite the blandness of the Analord releases, he's been a brilliant composer and producer for the last twenty plus years. But that's testament to the quality of The Tuss. It's pretty good! I like tunes in music. Tunes are good. Not enough tunes these days...
now playing: the tuss - shiz ko e

foggy atmospheres, foggy head

2007-07-12T23:33:00.000+10:00

I really love fog.
Launceston is quite a foggy city as it's located in a valley and the landscape seems to capture the low lying cloud and not let go until midday during autumn.
So, it was great to experience a couple of nights and mornings in Melbourne where the same conditions seemed to prevail for a little while.
There's something about the insulating, masking, nature of fog that really excites me. Perceptions are reeled in, light takes on a completely different quality and everything takes on a slightly spooky edge that's simply delicious. I wish we had more fog in Melbourne.
Whereas these photos aren't the best, they indicate the extent of recent foginess round these parts that is quite aesthetically pleasing, even on the bike ride to work.

There are a couple of photos included with some eerie mist effects and an orb, too.
Also, as you can see, there is a not-so time lapse series of photos of Melbourne Central tower at different stages of foggy dishabille. C'est tres jolie, n'est-ce pas?
Next postis going to include some pictures of recent street art on the way to work along the Upfield bikepath. It's a constantly evolving landscape that reminds me pretty much every day how fortunate I am to live in a city where so many people take the risk of improving the mental environment with their own visions and creativity in direct defiance to the mind numbing banality of advertising.
The streets are their canvas.
I've written this entry whilst a little bit sloshed on tasty red wine.
That's my excuse, what's yours?
just viewed - the bunker (a WWII thriller/slasher about guilty nazi consciences)

cradle of sadness

2007-07-08T21:21:00.000+10:00

My mate, Jock, sent me some photos from a Bangkok Metal festival, including the one on the left and in so doing he reminded me of a series of photos from a website called ruthless reviews.
There have now been two Top 10 lists published on that website of the all time worst black metal band pics and the last picture in this post is number nine in the latest compilation. Number nine. It gets worse. Much worse. It's frighteningly funny.
As Jock put it, these guys look like angry pandas. That's how hardcore they are. Angry pandas with faux mediaeval props. How evil can you be?
Look at this guy. He thinks he's a swash-buckling black metal freak. In fact, he looks like a cross between Siouxsie Sioux, Kylie Minogue and Genghis Khan.
Seriously, what manner of childhood horrors must a person experience to later decide that wearing too much white and black makeup and putting nails through their leatherette clothing, knee high boots and wrist guards whilst sporting fake ceremonial swords and striking dramatic poses, pouting and/or wailing over the top of whiddly-whiddly wow-wow guitar music is a wise career move?
Although, come to think of it, these guys no doubt earn more money than I do.
But at least I still have my dignity intact.
I, after all, volunteered to model as a dick for a fag rag. How special am I?
now playing: the the - lonely planet

flood the police

2007-07-07T18:35:00.000+10:00

Not being the biggest fan of things cop, I found this clip, hyped by b3ta, to be quite amusing.
Surprisingly, it looks as though the police knew what they were doing here and were prepared to be arrested by water, but that's not what interests me.
Regardless of whether or not the onlookers were accurate in their assessment of the cops as being incontrovertibly moronic, it's the universal contempt and scorn they heap on them that really made me smile.
now playing: mara carlyle - pianni (i'm in a minimal, satie-esque piano mood)

how the mighty fall

2007-07-07T00:34:00.000+10:00

I was having a little self care/flash back session tonight as I lay on my couch and cranked the volume up to Leo Anibaldi's Void.
Void was one of those albums back in the 90's ("back in the 90's"?) that really captured my attention every time I played it, taking me on a trip. I had that mild synaesthesia people get when listening to wonderfully evocative music. In other words, I really felt the music. The emotion and the movement of the music moved me physically. It kind of invaded my consciousness and blocked out everything else. I was completely there with the music. Inside it. I love that.
Anyway, so I was listening to Void and reflecting on the fact that I have no idea who this Anibaldi guy is, so I resolved to wikipedia and google him. What I discovered disappointed me. He plays breaks and house in Rome. Breaks and house in Rome! Who fucking cares!?
Compare the stark and chilling blue noise that has eerie pan pipes and low frequency oscillating bass lines set to the rhythmic rumbling of train carriages sweeping past your ears, the sparse jangling gamelan of evocation and the insistent pulsing and tense techno from somewhere random with epos 52 to the shit sounding shit on his myspace page.
Terrible.
Oh well.
The picture above is of a comedian called Marty Feldman, who apparently died in a hotel room in Mexico City of a heart attack caused by poisoned shellfish. He worked with Monty Python on occasion. The picture is taken from his role as Igor in Mel Brook's classic Young Frankenstein. No doubt an utter masterpiece compared to Young Einstein. I was going to use Marty as my profile photo but I thought it's not nice to make fun of the dead so I decided against it.
Yes, I agree; this is kind of a nothing post.
To improve it's quality I'll add this last bit: Beat Butcha (whose myspace page is linked to this page above and to the right) makes good techno-y stuff and has recently added a new tune to his page. Check it out. It's mighty fine.
now playing: fennesz and sakamoto - abyss

blade runner - final cut

2007-07-02T22:27:00.000+10:00

I want to see this film real bad.
Real Bad.
But I can't find out when it's being released. The info seems vague.
now playing: dr dooom - leave me alone

a smoke and a pancake

2007-07-01T16:26:00.000+10:00

Well, it's July 1st 2007 and therefore, it is now illegal to smoke in Victorian public venues (ie. bars, clubs, pubs, etc).
I'm thoroughly ambivalent about this.
We live in a nanny state that does its best to tell us what's good for us and uses law in an attempt to enforce consequent ways of doing (and thinking). This is bad. Very bad. Government is bad. So no surprises there.
But I must say that I am looking forward to going to pubs and being able to breathe, as well as not reek of filthy cigarette smoke, when I get home. That will be wonderful.
But then, am I going to have to sit outside in the Winter cold with my friends who do smoke whenever I go out with them?
As a reformed smoker (I quit on October 16th 2004, after about eight years of chain smoking and have never looked back), I understand the priority, the demand for indulgence, that smoking makes. So, I wouldn't want to insist addicted friends refrain from smoking when we're out. I remember, I would tolerate the worst kind of conditions to satisfy my smoking needs: rain, hail, sleet, gale force winds. I can foresee sitting outside in the freezing cold for hours, talking to smoking friends, when we could be sitting inside in smoke-free warmth. In fact, that already happens and I'd rather it didn't
Guess I'll have to make some demands.
a) If I were still a smoker, in all probability I would be blogging right now about how fucked the state is and how we live in tyrannical times and how awful it is that my smoking rights are being curtailed.
b) The best I can do as a non-smoker is to complain about how we live in tyrannical times and how the state is just as much a health hazard as cigarette smoke.
Conclusion: we should ban both.
now playing: shellac - boycott

spam! spam! spam!

2007-06-26T21:45:00.000+10:00

Spam. We all get it and we all delete it with extreme prejudice whenever it makes an unwelcome appearance in our spam folders. But just now I decided to read one of those strange messages and what follows is a small sample:

"SIR,

"How dared they, how DARED they drain write that hateful anonymous letter station informing me that line oil Aglaya is in c Evgenie Pavlovitch's friend shade asked the prince some question, please but frame the latter did not reply, crept or if he d He pulled the note touch out and kissed cake it; then thought paused and reflected. fiction "How strange it all is! how strange "She fair sprang forward sign taste and stood still in front of the reptile as if she sugar had been turned to stone. The

"What? At your house?" she interfere steel asked, but without much surprise. science "He upon was alive yesterday evening, wasn't "Well, what then? Supposing I healthy should like saw to know?" fold sting cried Lizabetha Prokofievna, blushing. "I'm sure guilty easy Though this incident prose will probably appear of little consequence to many of at our readers; yet, triflin

I suddenly realised that this spam was generated by the cut-up technique. This means that Brion Gysin and Williams S Burroughs are turning in their graves. Or are they?
Burroughs' last three novels, including Cities of the Red Night, explore his concept of language as virus. Throughout these novels, the narratives and traditional novel structures disintegrate under the weight of the cut up technique to create new forms of language use and meaning. Like a virus, language destroys its hosts but these destructions are always the creation of new forms that go on to create further new forms and so on. Spreading the virus that's constantly mutating.
What could be more like a language/virus than email spam that attempts to use cut-ups to slip past Bayesian Spam Filtering?
All of which is Gysin's and Burroughs' fault.
Thematically linking to my post on Eno, literary cut-ups are a particular style of generative art, I reckon. Just because the materials involved are under the control of the organising system, doesn't mean the artist somehow recedes into the background. The creator of a generative piece of art still has the capacity to manipulate the organising systems in ways that capture the effects they are trying to create. Or they want the system to create.
The text above is a cut up of passages from Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, by the way. Literary pharmacologists selling cheap viagra? Dostoyevsky gets randy.

now playing: !!! - must be the moon (the only good tune on their new album mythtakes)

private dick

2007-06-24T19:12:00.000+10:00

Pictured is this week's cover of MCV, Melbourne Community Voice, a local fag rag due out Thursday.
My boyfriend did the design stuff. His friend Queenie, took the photo. Our friend Tom, provided the clothes. And who's that model, so hot right now? That'd be me. Uh, yeah, um, posing and looking pretty has to be the easiest activity on the planet.
I don't really look like a PI/gumshoe detective... Who cares! I'm on the cover of a magazine that has a fairly wide distro and that, thanks to it's new editor Richard Watts, is finally shaping up to be a quality free street press mag with important and worthwhile articles that are not just about young, middle class gay men's concerns and interests.
Slowly...
now playing on high rotation: nine inch nails - god given / the greater good
(finally, in year zero, trent's come out with a really good album. think he's been listening to autechre. and satie.)

theo jansen

2007-06-21T23:48:00.000+10:00

Theo Jansen is a Dutch artist and engineer who makes beach animals like the one above that are powered by the wind. According to his website, he once built a flying saucer that caused something of a commotion as it flew above Delft (Vermeer's home town).
He wants to let loose herds of these creatures onto the beaches of Holland.
A little bit freaky, but well swell.
Thanks to Tom for this.
Now Playing: Takemitsu - Spirit Garden

dramatic chipmunk

2007-06-21T23:03:00.000+10:00

And now, a taste of the absurd.
now playing: the shins - turn on me

welcome to the heidelberg hotel

2007-06-21T00:24:00.000+10:00

Some of what follows is unsubstantiated (which simply means that its veracity has not been tested by legal processes and not that it is untrue), but most of what you are about to read is completely true and happened to a friend of mine from Sydney (let’s call him Harry) and me from the ninth to the fourteenth of June this year. To whet your appetite, this is a tale of police brutality, state oppression and middling media machinations against an accomplished graff writer in particular and graff as a whole.
As you probably didn’t read in the Herald Sun or hear about on some of the corporate media news programs, shortly after midnight on June the ninth, five men broke into the Epping Railyards and commenced spray painting a couple of carriages of a Connex passenger train. They were disturbed by someone early into this foray and fled the scene. Later that morning at roughly five o’clock, they returned and recommenced graffing the same carriages. This time, they were apprehended by the police who arrested two of them but let the other three go (a fact never considered by prosecution, magistrate or media). Those two men were immediately arrested for property damage, refused bail because of the possibility they might abscond interstate and kept in remand at the Heidelberg Police Station (which is, according to the inmates there, the worst police gaol house in Melbourne - more on that in a moment) until their hearing at the Heidelberg Magistrates Court.
Unfortunately, this was the Queen’s Birthday long weekend so their court hearing was not scheduled until some time on Tuesday. I’m one of two people Harry knows in Melbourne and the only who could spare the time to support him. I visited the Heidelberg Police Station on Monday the eleventh at six pm. I was met with thinly veiled disdain by an officer on duty who buzzed me through to the interview area at which point I was met by a much more helpful and civil officer who directed me to sign a visitor’s book with my name and address, which I did.
After waiting for about five minutes, I entered the interview room, which was a cramped, fluoro lit cubicle with a chair, a narrow bench jutting out of a slightly blood smeared glass panel that stretched up to the ceiling and a densely meshed grille to permit the passage of sound. There would be no contact. The prisoner’s side of the divide had blood smears around the walls. Eventually, I heard some clanging and Harry entered his side of the cubicle. I spent the next forty or so minutes talking to Harry about his situation, asking questions about what had happened and how he was going.
He told me he’d been interrogated for ten hours on the first day. The ‘interviewing’ cops randomly and repeatedly over those ten hours smashed the back of his head - sometimes into the table, pinned Harry into the wall with the table forcefully rammed up into his ribs from beneath. This cop and his accomplice both verbally assaulted Harry shouting things such as, “A pudgy boy like you is going to be popular in prison,” and “You’re gonna get raped. You’ll know what it feels like to be a woman,” and “Fuck with me and I’ll fuck with you: welcome to the Heidelberg Hotel.” Twice when evoking his right to a phonecall during his no comment ‘interview’, the tape recorder was stopped and he was told that his right hand been revoked although no reason was given.
As for the ‘Heidelberg Hotel’, Harry and other inmates were treated with contempt by most of the police. Although there was the capacity to do otherwise, cell lights were kept on twenty-four hours a day, making sleep difficult. There was absolutely no natural light. The food was of poor nutritional value, consisting, in part, of microwaved spam, reheated toast and cordial. Prisoners were not allowed to smoke or leave their cells for exercise. Most requests to the police were met with shouts and doors slammed in inmates’ faces. Apparently, being in remand is worse than being in a prison proper because so many practical, physical and psychological needs are denied. Harry experienced extreme sensory deprivation as he was left without anything to promote mental stimulation – no books, no magazines, no paper, no pens. Most of the inmates were withdrawing from smack.
Once my chat with Harry was over, the helpful police officer told me he’d be released tomorrow morning and that his court hearing could be from anywhere between ten am and five pm, more likely to occur in the afternoon. Because I had no knowledge of legal process I believed her. So it was disconcerting returning to the police station the next morning to be denied the opportunity to see Harry and being grilled by an officer on duty. The cop asked to see and took note of my ID. Three of the other offenders had eluded apprehension and so it looked like I was being turned into one by my association with Harry. The cop was implying guilt, but I’m innocent so I wasn’t too bothered by this turn of events. I found his manner offensive, though.
After waiting all morning at the Magistrates Court for some news and after helping to arrange a good lawyer for him and after speaking at length to Harry’s distraught father, I returned to the police station to deliver a fresh set of clothes for Harry as he’d been wearing the same clothes since he’d been caught four days previously. I’d arranged with Harry the night before to buy some cigarette papers and filters and had brought some clothing and toiletries for him. I was grilled again by another officer who asked me how I knew Harry and whether or not I knew what he does ‘for a living’. He also asked for my name, which I gave him. That was the third time I’d offered my name to the cops.
I returned to the court and after several more hours of waiting, Harry’s lawyer finally arrived. Harry’s hearing was held simultaneously with the other two apprehended men, third one having given himself up, although the police and media claimed he’d returned to the railyards for his wallet. Harry looked extremely stressed sitting there in the stand, not seeing me in the packed gallery until I waved at him. Seeing me seemed to do little to lift his flagging spirits and fair enough given what he was about to experience. The Magistrate, John Hardy, was a grumpy and odd man with a wavy main of hair and flowing beard. Not at all the typical image of a Magistrate, but nonetheless fulfilling the seemingly essential characteristics of being a middle aged, middle class, white man. The solicitors had a difficult time compellingly presenting their clients’ cases who pleaded guilty to all their charges, which for Harry consisted of possession of (planted by the police) bolt cutters and property damage. The cost of the damages was estimated at a maximum of $1,000.
The Magistrate refrained from handing down his sentence until the following morning, meaning that the men were to be kept in remand one more night. As I was dejectedly leaving the court with the lawyer, I was tapped on the back by someone. I turned to be confronted by three police – two men and a woman. They demanded to see me ID and to inspect my bag. Although not arresting me, I could have given them reason to do so by not complying. Regardless, the lawyer informed me that I didn’t need to answer their questions and he was swiftly and aggressively told to get lost by two of the pigs. I kept my answers vague when I thought questions were unnecessary. Two of the police were incredibly intimidating, the remaining was not. It was a strange routine: bad cop, bad cop, good cop. I wasn’t buying any of it, but I was rattled by the experience of two hyper-aggressive pigs with authority flexing some muscle at my expense. They were quite incredibly moronic.
The bad guy cop questioned the veracity of my ID. He looked at my RMIT staff ID which, admittedly, looks dodgy. But he revealed his utter stupidity by asking to see my staff card. I angrily told him that he was looking at it and thrust it back in his face. He re-inspected it and replied with, “Oh. It said Smith,” meaning he’d been confused because the staff card contained my surname, which he confused with the word student somehow. Doesn’t make sense to me, either. See? Stupid. These are the people ‘keeping us safe’. From graffiti… Anyway, he then insisted on looking through my diary which I always carry with me but rarely use. He demanded that I be able to prove it as mine. I had some difficulty doing that. I told them a few of the dates it contained. The same cop once again demanded to inspect the front pockets of my bag, grabbing it off me and then pretending to be concerned about ‘sharps’. He looked at my whiteboard markers and asked if I always carry markers with me. I said, “I told you, I’m a tutor and they’re whiteboard markers. I use them to write on whiteboards.” I was met with no reply this time. I like to think that at this point he cottoned on to the fact he’s a mental lightweight.
The lawyer I was with started giving shit to the bad cops, which took the heat off me a little bit, while the good cop started inspecting the spare clothes and the toiletries I had not been permitted to hand to Harry. He asked a few questions and told me that I could relax. At the end of all of this harassment, the male bad cop told me, “We may or may not be in touch.” The lawyer openly smirked at them. A reporter from one of the corporate stations was taking note. Cameras rolled and flashed as we left the court house. All this for lawfully supporting a friend in trouble with the law.
The next morning, the sentence was handed down. Harry got thirty days sentence, wholly suspended. The five days he’d spent in custody were not to be subtracted from the sentence, effectively meaning that the time he’d spent inside served no retributive purpose. The Magistrate said that he found the whole affair ‘sinister’ and that the men needed to be made an example of to discourage future crimes of this nature. Yeah right, because punishment has always been an effective deterrent against crime.
Upon leaving court, I rang Harry’s girlfriend in Sydney to let her know the news and was accosted by a channel ten reporter (the one who was hanging around while I was harassed by the cops the previous night) who asked me, “Are you happy your friend got away with it?” I pushed her big fluffy boom mic out of my face and continued talking to Harry’s girlfriend. Let’s get something straight, Harry didn’t get away with anything. He spent five awful days in prison and now has a conviction and a suspended prison sentence of thirty days. Not something to brag about in most circles. And all this for graffing a Connex train carriage and – with four other guys, remember – causing a maximum of $1000 worth of damage. That’s exceptionally harsh. A previous case responsible for causing more damage was handed a sentence of one hundred-and-fifty or so hours community service, no criminal record.
I met Harry in the cop shop reception once he was finally released and prepped him with my black hoodie over his head and led him out to run the media gauntlet. Their response was an immediate jostling and taunting, cameras snapping, film rolling and both reporters and camera men asking absurd questions designed to provoke a response. Somebody tried to push a boom mic up under Harry’s hood. We were pushed around and had to ignore questions like, “You’ll paint our trains but you won’t show your face in public. Why is that?” and “Are you grateful you were let off so lightly?” Eventually after what seemed like fifty metres, they stopped chasing us, probably because the other offender had just left the police station (one was sentenced to sixty days imprisonment, thirty days suspended).
Harry and I hid and debriefed out the back of Heidelberg’s shopping mall, where Harry chain smoked about four cigarettes. We spent something like twenty minutes there talking about what had just happened. Harry’s relief was palpable but he was paranoid that people were watching us. We decided to catch a taxi but after waiting another twenty or so minutes, gave up on and walked off towards the train station. We were both in a good mood but in unison we looked up ahead and peering around a corner was a film camera filming our approach. “Fuck!” we both said and Harry put my hoodie back over his head but by now it was too late. As we rounded the corner the film guys had been hanging behind, still filming, I said, “Enough’s enough.”
And the camera‘man’ replied, “Yeah, enough is enough. I’ve had it up to here with you c*nts. You come down from Brisbane and fuck up our beautiful city. Ironic, isn’t it boys? You damage our trains but where you going to now? The train station!”
I felt like replying, “That’d only be ironic if you’re Alanis Morisette, you fuckwit,” but stopped and deathstared at the camera guy and his accomplice for a moment while I contemplated what we should do next. Harry still had his head under the hoodie, of course. I decided we should return back down the road, slip down another side street and try for another taxi. Once again we were left waiting for about fifteen minutes, but fortunately a bus came along and so we caught it to Box Hill, returning to the city on the train. Harry would have been fucked if he was on his own.
This whole experience left us both shell shocked. Of course, Harry had it worse than I did. Not only had the prison and legal experience been a total miscarriage of justice, and a traumatic one at that, but he had to deal with the public shaming of the media, eager for some sensationalist garbage to peddle on that night’s news. Laughably, Harry’s lawyer’s boss wanted him to speak to Today Tonight. Naturally Harry declined because, if he hadn’t already learnt, the day’s experience with corporate media taught Harry that it serves the interests of the ruling class and the state and could only misrepresent him and all writers. Although I’m putting words into Harry’s mouth here.
And although I’m an outsider (and a long term enthusiast) of graff, my reflections on this situation prompt me to write that Harry’s experience with the legal system clearly shows the law so often serves to protect the interests of business at the expense of little people like you, me and Harry. The hypocrisy of which couldn’t ring louder than when Harry showed me a glossy official Melbourne tourism guide whose front cover features graffiti (by Sydney writer Phibs). It seems that, in Victoria, we only tolerate graff if it contributes to the production of capital. As Harry said to me (although I don’t completely buy it), writing on trains is about creating mobile public art and you can’t sell that. But I reckon the illegality of Harry’s actions are an important component of why he graffed in the way he did (and can no longer afford to) because illegal graff is a form of resistance to the law, to the state and to capitalism itself. That is to say, illegal graffing is probably the most legit form of graff, understood in terms of the spirit and ethos of graffiti. At the very least, it's impossible to have legal graff without the illegal stuff.
Try using that as defence in court.
Now Playing: Kid Koala - Skanky Panky

francis bacon appreciation society

2007-06-20T01:12:00.000+10:00

Has anybody noticed how swell photobooths are?
I've taken to having pictures of myself taken at the old black and white photobooth located outside Flinders Street Station.
One time, late one night, I was joined by a young woman who shared my enthusiasm for black and white photobooth self portraiture. She mentioned that she and a few friends of hers had spent about fifty bucks on having their photos taken in one stint and that Andy Warhol routinely used photobooths. Francis Bacon did the same.
I'm always surprised at my appearance. That's one of the reasons why I like having my photo taken: get's me as much as possible outside of my own subjectivity and into another's.
I used to avoid putting my picture up on my blog because I was wary of boneheads being able to identify me. Now I don't care.
I look tired.
My next post will be a harrowing tale of police brutality and state oppression. True story.
now playing: sly and robbie produced by howie b - softcore surge

omg!

2007-06-09T22:20:00.001+10:00

This is not an example of what I'm talking about in the post below.
Although it is funny!

electronic music is the sound of science fiction

2007-06-09T20:47:00.000+10:00

And that's precisely why I love it so much.
From the theremin (which also obviously evokes horror [often hand-in-hand with sci fi]) to Vangelis' cheesy analogue synth extravaganzas to Autechre's explorations into the increasingly complex and generativ e, I fucking love it. And it's not just music that uses synths, but music that uses technology and maybe even old and acoustic instruments but in new and interesting ways.
What I think I love most about electronic music is that it combines an aesthetic of the not-yet (or projections thereof) with philosophical ramblings of the limits of experience - just like science fiction. And all of this in a nice, portable and realtime format that's one of the most emotive media available. Well, for me anyway music tends to be the most affective of all media.

Above is a clip by Boards of Canada called Dayvan Cowboy. If electronic music is the sound of science fiction, then BoC are its purveyors of retro. It's the sound of tomorrow today made as though it were yesterday.
And below is Autechre's mindblowing filmclip for Gantz Graf, directed by Alex Rutterford. It's the sound (and look) of tomorrow blowing up.

go!

2007-06-04T21:20:00.000+10:00

(no, this isn't a post about the abominable moby.)
I've written about the differences between chess and another boardgame called othello or reversi elsewhere, attempting to appropriate the thought of Deleuze and Guattari in the process. But I thought I'd lay out a little more accurately what they have to say about how chess compares to go, the 4,000 year old Chinese game of supreme complexity and subtlety, as I've recently begun to play and enjoy it. Don't worry, I'm not going to delve into the history, or rules, or quasi-mystical, universalising descriptions of the game (which are nonetheless intriguing). What follows is a summary of Deleuze and Guattari's discussion of this from A Thousand Plateaux (pp 389-90).
Let's start with chess. Chess is a game that involves a number of pieces that are coded with different abilities and therefore functions. These codes are invariable, that is, they do not change. Obviously, this has many profound consequences for the game and how it operates. The effect this has on the space of the chess board is that it becomes striated, it becomes coded according to the pieces that are spread across it and movement is generally in one direction, ie. towards one's opponent's king.
On the other hand, go pieces are utterly uncoded (aside from being black or white). They only have significance through their relationships with other pieces; a go piece has very little structured being. The space of a go board is smooth because the go pieces are in relationship with each other and so the space itself becomes almost entirely secondary to the action that occurs upon it (this is also because go pieces can be placed at almost any point on the board). (Incidentally, the sentence where D+G say that chess codes and decodes space, whereas go territorialises and deterritorialises is saying something really important about de/territorialisation.)
So chess is a statist game, whereas go is much more one for the anarchist (despite its popularity with ancient Chinese rulers).
Strikes me that this post would be dead boring for someone who has never played go or read Delueze and Guattari. Fuck it.
If you want excellent information about go, check out this link. If you want a brilliantly lucid brief intro to the rules of go, check out this link, which contains a chapter from a text called Way to Go, by Karl Baker from the American Go Association.
An interesting blog post? I'd buy that for a dollar!
Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari (2004) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia Part Two, Continuum: London.
now playing: monty python - the brian song

planet of the (sh)apes

2007-05-30T22:54:00.000+10:00

What is it that's so cool about 70's fashion wearing apes?
Dunno, but I took these snaps at the underpass beneath Royal Parade in Parkville.
Brunswick has some really great graff, particularly along the Upfield bike path. Really world standard some of it.
But this giant ape really works for me. And I like stencils.
So I don't always ranty rant rant. There are some good things out there.
Such as apes in clothing.
And Absolute Power, with Stephen Fry.
What a wonderful series about the corrupt world of Public Relations. And Mr Fry plays such a delightfully amoral bastard.
And now I'm going to go watch Terence Malick's Badlands. God! Been name dropping tonight.
And here's another to add to the list:
now playing: orbital - planet of the shapes

peel

2007-05-29T00:34:00.000+10:00

So I read today that The Peel, a fairly average gay bar in Collingwood that I occasionally frequent (can't somebody please bring back The Builders Arms?), has been granted the ability to discriminate against heterosexual men and women. That's a little bit naf but more or less understandable - a gaydar is a figure of speech and not a reality, so I'd like to see him flawlessly detect straights. But anyway, it gets much worse because, if the patchy online news report is anything to go by, The Peel is now also legally allowed to discriminate against lesbians. Not that, according to reports of friends of mine, it hasn't been unofficially discriminating against lesbians for a long time before now.
The news report quotes the owner-manager of the bar, Tom McFeely, as saying that, "Those heterosexuals have other places to go, my homosexuals do not ... the only place they can feel safe and comfortable is The Peel."
Uh, two problems Tom:
1) We're not your homosexuals.
2) I feel a lot more safe and comfortable at many more venues than your stinking little sexist fuck dive. I dare say I'm not the only queer who feels this way.
Tom's also quoted as saying, "We're the only one of 2,000 venues in Melbourne (for gay men) ... I want to protect that and recently the amount of heterosexuals and lesbians, some guys are saying to me over the last year of so ... we don't feel comfortable anymore."
Hey Tom, got some more problems with your logic for you to consider:
1) There are many queer bars and venues in Melbourne where gay men are obviously welcome and no doubt feel comfortable to express their sexuality so we don't really need yours to survive the long winter's nights... Sorry. Actually, no I'm not.
2) There are better methods of ensuring your clientele feel comfortable than a carte blanche ban on straighty-one-eighties and women - surely employing bouncers is one such? Oh no, I forget: you employ them to keep the lesbians out. Silly me.
3) The Laird is already allowed to legally discriminate against women, so what makes your venue so fucking special or unique? Why do homos need two sexist gay bars - in Collingwood?
So I have some questions for you, Tom:
1) Which high up person do you know who'll let your non sequiturs pass muster in law so that you may be allowed to perpetuate sexism, specifically against lesbians?
2) What are you going to do when bi, trans and intersex people come visit for a little hippy hippy shake? How does a bi man fit into your worldview? And I really hope you'll acknowledge men who are transitioning, whatever stage they're at. When's a man a man, Tom? When he's discriminating against women, maybe?
3) How the Hell are you going to differentiate between a straight man and a gay man? I've had a couple of very straight looking men try to pick me up at your joint before. Hell, I'm pretty straight looking, myself. But what a stupid statement to make. It's pretty clear you want a very particular clientele and now you have the legal support ensure it. Congratulations.
4) Do you really care about your clientele? Or is just that you're protecting your profits? I could think of better ways to ensure that the so-called disturbing behaviour that's been upsetting your dear valued customers ceased to be an issue. I can maybe see how having straight punters in attendance could be a problem for some because we live in such a heterocentric culture. But lesbians? Seriously! Why do you need the capacity to ban lesbians outright if you want? I'm still really not clear on this point. But that would be because your reasoning is a poor attempt to justify your real intention, which is to manage a bar that caters for a very narrow segment of the queer population - and it comes at the expense of a whole wide range of the diversity of queernesses that exist in Melbourne and the rest of the world for that matter.
Why don't you take a reality check, Tom? I've heard the argument (in relation to The Laird's sexism) that women have women's only spaces, so why can't men? And I can answer this quite readily: if you're a woman you live in a society that is made to privilege men at the expense of women, so mens' interests are put before womens': culturally, structurally, interpersonally and powerfully. We live in a society in which women are necessarily wary of the potential of violence from men, for example, in quite a similar way, I imagine, in which gay men fear the violence of straight men. It's called patriarchy. It's called sexism.
Tom! Show just a little empathy and stop contributing to the oppression of our lesbian and bi sisters! Where's the solidarity in the fight against sexism and heterosexism? You can't fight these by being sexist!
What we see here is the logical conclusion of The Peel's pre-existing, not-so-latent door policy: pretty boys preferred; men and lesbians and anybody on the queer spectrum who (obviously) don't fit this bill can be refused entry by law. I hope this little stunt backfires on you Tom and that you lose your customers. I'll surely never darken your doorstep ever again - not that you'd feel obliged to let me...
I feel like taking a reality check right now: there's a war on! Why is this shit happening and why do I see fit to engage with it when thousands of men, women and children in Iraq (to name just one conflict zone) are being slaughtered daily? Hell, we can't even get anything right in our own backyard: can't even accord our indigenous populations the respect they deserve, let alone discourage stupidity when it occurs in Collingwood - twice!
In the words of Kurt Vonnegut, 'So it goes, so it goes.'
Now Playing: Jello - Neph (Autechre Ultramatique 6 mix)

arch pretentiousness

2007-05-27T22:48:00.000+10:00

Well! An expat Tassie friend of mine invited me to a free Karlheinz Stockhausen concert, established through SIAL Sound Studios, that she'd promoted. Having heard plenty about but never any of (at least, not wittingly) Stockhausen's work, I decided I should go. Fortunately, a friend of mine was also in attendance, otherwise I would have had no one to vent to.
So I knew I was up for a thoroughly pretentious time from the get go when the first piece, Der Kleine Harlekin (Little Harlequin), was performed. This was a solo piece for clarinet and involved a young woman, dressed in pseudo harlequin attire, playing a pleasant enough tune on her clarinet, absurdly strutting around the performance space and teasingly playing with the audience. I enjoyed the piece. It was fun and funny (for example, the spot light occasionally 'lost' the harlequin and randomly roamed around the venue looking for her while she played and strutted on in the dark). And the music was lovely. Plus, the performative element to it really enhanced the experience, showing, as it did, some extra ability on the performer, Karen Heath's, behalf.
All the other pieces were boring and annoying, with the exception of Karen Heath's later performance. I found the music to be mostly unengaging and the performances a tedious conceit that did nothing to enhance the music. The performers were all very good at their instruments. In particular, the trumpeter had nice shoes.
But the point isn't necessarily how brilliant the pieces are but the extent to which the ideas push the limits of art and thought and performance and culture, explode our received notions of how art is and should be and leave us at the end of the performance thinking and feeling differently about the whole shit.
Why should I expect any less? After all, this is from a composer who has penned a performance for string quartet with helicopters!

my one-hundredth post

2007-05-24T19:43:00.000+10:00

I started writing this and then promptly forgot all about it.
This is my one-hundredth post and it's proudly brought to you by our good friend, Michael.
Yay! Thanks Michael.
"I'm not Michael, I'm Ronald McMichael."
Thanks to Jock for the rancid picture.
now playing: gescom - keynell (autechre remix 1)

visual music

2007-05-20T22:10:00.000+10:00

Ah, he's done it again. Brian Eno, the ambient music pioneer, is also a visual artist, if you didn't know. His latest project, entitled 77 Million Paintings, is a series of paintings he likes to think of as visual music.
This could be considered an example of synaesthetic art, in my humble. That is, art blurring its modes (in this case audio and visual) in much the same way that what are ordinarily considered discreet human perceptions are blurred, as when a person involuntarily attributes a colour to a word or a noise connotes movement for them.
So, Eno has furthered his 'generative' art model, whereby he creates a piece, or in this case a whole bunch of pieces, and feeds them into a randomising system that creates something wholly new out of the given elements. Meaning that the resulting work(s) of art are out of his control once set in motion. So in a sense, he is more the author of the system than the resultant work(s). By his own admission, Eno has always been as much interested in effecting structures and strategies and processes as defining the elements within each of his art works.
The seventy-seven-million paintings are a series of paintings and pictures that he's produced over the years, randomly superimposed over each other on a television screen or a monitor, set to some of his own randomly played music. The number of potential new works created out of these pre-existing ones equals seventy-seven-million, hence the title. So the tv screen becomes a canvas that can accommodate a near infinite (as far as human viewing experience and memory will permit) number of works.
I think he calls this visual music because there is a performative aspect to the resulting works of art, much like, for example, his pieces Ambient #1 - Music for Airports, Discreet Music or Neroli (all of which he described as holographic because, as a hologram shows all of its aspects to the viewer simultaneously, so too does a holographic piece of music disclose its entirety to the listener in a single instance). His Thursday Afternoon (also holographic), accompanied an exhibition of a video paintings Eno made in the 80's. A series of very slow motion films displayed on large television screens. 77-Million Paintings seems to be a contemporary extrapolation of that idea available for your loungeroom. Eno's released it as disc that allows you to turn your loungeroom into an art installation so you can screen his generative visual music/ video paintings on your giant plasma screen - assuming you have one (which I don't).
Evolving art in the comfort of your loungeroom. Nice.
Now Playing: Brian Eno - Ikebukuro

philomena ruth rush r.i.p.

2007-05-11T23:40:00.000+10:00

I attended my second cousin's (my mother's cousin) funeral yesterday.
It was a strange experience. I didn't like it much for many reasons.
Fortunately, my brother also attended with his partner.
For some reason my Mum didn't want to come up from Tasmania to commemorate Mena or send her wishes to her family in person. I don't understand Mum sometimes...
A close friend of mine told me about her experience of a funeral last year where she sat up the back of the chapel and was faced with numerous mourners' indifferent backs. She told me how alienating it was. I had a similar understanding of the process yesterday. I felt faintly excluded from the process and fair enough. I never knew Mena that well or spent much time with her, living in different states as we did. But I always enjoyed her company whenever I spent any time with her.
I never knew this but she had a clique with a name. They called themselves The Peasants and they used to have all kinds of low brow fun together, such as dressing in weirdo old lady drag. Sort of Queen Mother style. Dancing drunk from sherry on tables was another practice.
I found it hard keeping the others' grief out of my head. I suppose that's because it's a grief I shared with them. At least in part.
The low point of the proceedings would definitely have to have been the photo slideshow montage with a soundtrack from Hell: Celine Dion's cover of Power of Love.
I don't know how someone misconstrued Celine for affecting or appropriate. Perhaps there was a message in there for her husband, dear Jeff. He's devastated of course, after sixty years of marriage.
As her coffin was loaded into the hearse, four doves - one for each of their children - was released into the air. My brother and I looked at each other with a smile and the same unspoken question, "Are they homing doves?" It's much more cost effective to have homing doves. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Turns out they are homing doves. Mum's twin sister, Aunty Naomi, asked Jeff and he confirmed our thoughts. The doves are trained to circle twice before heading for home.
Aunty Naomi is a funny one. I had thought I might point out to her the fact that the ring I wear on my finger is her Dad's wedding ring (her Dad being a well-respected man in the family). But then I questioned my motives and realised I would only be drawing attention to that because I was feeling left out. Whatever you call that feeling. The feeling of leftoutness. Unacknowledged. Because Mum maried above her station (for station read class, a corollary of which is, somehow, against the odds, Dad married beneath his.) I felt quite different to the family and further out of place. I guess the Catholicism didn't help there.
Speaking of religion, I found a lovely little leaflet about how you can help any loved one in your life to overcome their SSA. Same-sex attraction, that is.
Oh yes! The pamplet (pictured) offers such pearls of wisdom as:
"Same-sex attraction is not the work of God ... There is no scientific proof that SSA is the result of genetic factors. SSA is an aspect of underdeveloped sexuality."
I wonder which scientific bases they used to make these assertions. Umm... Yes, let's empirically research the origins of queer sexualities... Yep, just as we suspected: definitely not the work of God. And as for not being genetic, well no shit.
And this one:
"The orientation of SSA, although disordered, is not in itself sinful. Homosexual acts, however, are sinful and do not lead a person to a deeper life in Jesus Christ."
You don't say? "I don't know about you, Hon, but I really am looking forward to a hetero marriage so our sex-life can lead us to a deeper life in Christ Jesus."
Oh now I get it! I'm underdeveloped and my heterosexual friends are fully developed. Yep, it's true. I probably hate my mother too. Nice one.
I've decided I hate it when people try to link sexuality to spirituality. In fact, I'm not spiritual these days. Sexuality and spirituality are about as compatible as me and Priests.
Anyway, that pamphlet sure brightened up my day, providing me, as it did, with comic relief.
Now Playing: Severed Heads - Guests

taslandia

2007-04-27T13:40:00.000+10:00

So I was down in Tassie recently and here are the photos to prove it.
I had a great time, managing to catch up with friends and family in Launceston and Hobart, taking heaps of photos on my new digital camera and op-shopping with Mum, inbetween buying her a pack of Horizon menthol light 2mg cigarettes, which she proceeded to surreptitiously suck the death out of in various nooks and crannies around Launceston, lest anyone from her church should catch her, smoke in hand.
That was funny.
There's a photo in this posting of her with her new boyfriend - don't tell Dad.
We had lunch at Fitzies' (S)C(hy)i(t)ty Caf, which is a venue that sells English-style food, roasted and mass produced like pig slops, frequented by flannelette-wearing rural folks and the blue rinse set (those in this cohort who still have hair left), whereupon I whinged at her for not talking to Dad about my being queer. There's still a massive not-so-invisible barrier between me and my parents and I'm eager to see it surmounted, despite running off to the big smoke directly after making it apparent. It's funny how my parents demanded honesty and inclusion from their children - but only up to a point! Well, I'm doing what I can, but with Dad's health not what it used to be, it'd be nice if they'd help each other come to some space where they can acknowledge it. Apparently, I'm asking too much from them and I should just be grateful that they haven't disowned me but that would be buying into a minoritarian position that I refuse to accept. I demand a relative equality from my parents! I should settle for no less, damnit! I'm not going to accept their oppressive conservative 'Christian' values. Unfortunately, the reality of the situation is that I will never even gain a passive acceptance from them on this count and so there will always be a tension between us. But I want them to know that that tension is their making. Or a product of their socialisation and in no way my fault.
This is another reason why friendships are so important. Gosh, I've got some great friends too! Dave and Phoebe happened to be in Launceston when I arrived and took me down to Hobart, putting me up for a night and feeding me. Thanks! I've known these guys for so long and have travelled along a sometimes difficult way with them, just a little. What a privilege.
Compare this to the slightly stilted conversations with people at our mutual friend's bucks party where the obligatory, "So, what have you been doing?" conversation yielded less than I'd hoped for. What I'd give to find out what people think of me. There's a culture of decline in much of Tasmania. Very passive.
Saria! Wow, what an amazing friendship we share. I miss her company so much. She, Dave, Phoebe, Chris, Jacob; nothing if not active. Saria and I have travelled a far along similiar trajectories. Ours is a frienship that will never quit. Why won't you guys move to Melbourne?
I took a photo of a Gunns holding lot or something in Launceston. It's disgusting. All that old growth forest coverted into stacks of drying, dead wood. It's worse in Burnie, where they woodchip the wood and ship it out to other countries, whereupon it's converted into something 'useful' (but probably unnecessary) and then sold back to us at a much great price. The woodchip piles are so huge that the massive bulldozers used to regulate them for whatever reasons look like toy tonka trucks. It's fucked. And of course, the Labor Party are in Gunns pockets helping them make profits at the environment (and tax payers' [whatever]) expense. Meanwhile the Upper Florentine is being raped and protesters arrested for trying to protect it. Sigh.
Anyway, it was a really good trip. Not least of all because it affirmed the life I lead in Melbourne. As much as I love Tasmania, I really love living in Melbourne.
I'll move back to Tassie to spend my later years I reckon in contemplative retirement. Either that or I'll be just another environmental refugee when the planet decides it wants to evict humanity for being such bad residents. I'll grow organic vegies on some small patch of turf on the East Coast, living in a solar powered tee-pee, living in harmony with the quolls and paddymelons, communicating via drum circles in a perpetual post-human twilight.

kurt vonnegut r.i.p.

2007-04-24T01:03:00.000+10:00

Kurt Vonnegut
1922 - 2007
Author of many wonderful novels of uncommon razzle dazzle.
Born in the Great Depression and probably died in one, too.
Bokonon bless you!

this post is brought to you by the word 'shit'

2007-03-18T23:59:00.000+11:00

No time to blog, my laptop shat itself.
Shit.
That link will take you to some uninformed luddite who thinks the internet is shit.
I like what and the way that person is saying what they're saying, even if they're wrong.
Sounds like they've lost another loved one to the beguiling bright lights of cyberspace.
But speeding down the information super highway has many benefits.
That author is right in saying that the noosphere is little more than the way it is used. But then, what isn't?
I have to work tomorrow.
Today.

ticket goons

2007-02-08T23:06:00.000+11:00

Let me tell you a little story about what happened to me today when I unintentionally insulted one of the lesser life forms that inhibits our planet.
It's just a little story.
I was walking up Bourke St with a friend when we had to avoid stepping in a large pack of Connex ticket goons (they're smelly and stick to the shoes). My friend commented on their perniciousness and I said, 'Yeah and they're allowed to make arrests on our streets, we're in their jurisdiction right now, which completely sux.' As I was finishing my fair and accurate statement, I looked up as an especially pustulent example of a ticket goon crossed my path and she said to me,
'You suck too.'
I thought that was particularly unfair. I was talking about an objective state of affairs in the world and she in return made a slur against me as a person.
I should have asked for her name and reported her. Not that that would have accomplished much.
Unlike this blog entry, which is going to change the world...
Now Playing: T-Power - G13

24 hour party peeps

2007-02-02T22:28:00.000+11:00

If you click on this link, you'll be taken to Tones' livejournal page in which he published the full account of his hourly comics day exercise (you can also click on the link on the right side of this page to get to Tone's blogspot blog).
Not only is Tones a talented comic illustrator/writer, but in this instance, as he had to draw a comic on the hour of every hour he was awake yesterday, his comic includes me and my boyfriend and our collective shenanigans with Tones and other friends replete with 'political' meets and drunken barroom debates on the virtues and otherwise of Peanuts and Michael Jackson.
Classic! Or maybe you had to be there...
Made me larf at any rate.
Here's a bit of a debaffler: the last few frames read as follows:
L: "Michael Jackson is better than Peanuts"
P: "No way"
-
L: "Smoking is bad"
P: "You're neurotic!"
-
All: "Taxi!"
On a related note, today was full on.
I didn't get to sleep until well after two last night because we went to the Marcromantics gig and kept drinking till late, as you can see from the narrative. Meaning that when I woke up this morning I was still a little drunk and spent the whole day hung over and with a headache. Still, I made it to work only a little late (not that that ever matters) but had to deal with the busiest day at work I've had in ages and not least of all because I really had to concentrate solidly for two hours as I had a challenging case to deal with. So of all the days I really needed all of my faculties to be ready to hand it was today. And unfortunately today was not mental acuity day for me. Still, I came through with the goods as always.
Anyway, thanks to Tones for making half of my day with his comic genius. I love how he's crystallised two lengthy debates into single cells and speech balloons. I also love how his drawing deteriorated into a scruffy kind of Peanuts style in direct proportion to the amount of alcohol consumed.

And thanks to Leigh for making the other half of my day with the following information. If you click on this link, you'll be taken to Mozilla's site. Specifically, you'll be given the opportunity to change the skin of your Firefox browser from the aesthetically pleasing one you currently have to the exciting world of uNintendo's Mario. Wahoo! Make your interwebbing a much more adventurous experience today: download your new Mario skin. Swell!
Now Playing: Deadbeat - Abu Ghraib

queer doings

2007-01-22T01:06:00.000+11:00

In a strange fit of passion, my boyfriend started doodling over and around my tattoo and these pictures show the results.
Tasty.
Seriously, I am going to recommence blogging about more interesting things really soon. I promise. Things that don't necessarily refer to my mundane existence. Not directly.
Such as the publication in the Herald Scum (hard copy 19/01/07) of the faces of people wanted for questioning about last November's Anti-G20 protests. In particular, the HS has pictures of twenty-eight people, each with the caption, 'Person of Interest', however the heading of the article is, 'Do you recognise them?'.
It's appalling that we live in a society in which people who exercised their right to protest are wholesale condemned and then some individually later displayed in the most popular rag in the state in the expectation that readers will report identifying information to the Herald Scum or to Crime Stoppers.
This news article comes very close to casting these people as villians, particularly given the extent to which the Herald Scum fatuously decried the protests late last year and is an attack on these peoples' right to privacy and the presumption of innocence.
But then it's not surprising that this commercial rag would do its best to vilify those who stand in opposition to it, which itself is something that goes against what were once guiding principles of mainstream journalism: open, honest, rigorous, dispassionate and democratic reporting of events.
Just as well I'm not in the journalism business...

a.w. & comix

2007-01-20T13:44:00.000+11:00

I went to a not very inspiring exhibition at the State Library about Australian comics.
Although Australia has a surprisingly substantial history of comics, the standard isn't that high. In my humble...
But that's not why I'm posting this entry.
What was interesting about the exhibition was this front cover for a comic whose name I unfortunately forget as shown on the left here.
The style of the artwork and the look of the guy running away from the truck is just a bit similar to that of a guy I know who does comics of his own. You can click to his blog from the link on the top right of this page. Not only does his work look like this but he looks like and draws himself like that character. A bit.
It's not just my imagination. It's not!

pay up now or the kid gets it

2007-01-18T23:20:00.000+11:00

Does anyone else find this advertisement more than a little disturbing?
What thoughts and feelings is this image supposed to inspire?

anamorphosis

2007-01-17T21:14:00.000+11:00

Went to the Eyes, Lies and Illusions exhibition at ACMI recently.
It's an exhibition that showcases contraptions from the renaissance through to today that (there's no other word for it) bedazzle the viewers' visual perceptions into seeing things appear in strange ways.
It's actually quite hard to describe or explain in general. But to give you an idea about what the exhibition contained, the picture here is an example of anamorphosis. Specifically, it's called Clover Anamorphosis with Conical Mirror. The conically shaped mirror in the middle sort of bends the line and colour field around it so that it appears as a clover leaf. Pretty clever.
Reminds me of some Coil cover art.
The exhibition is well worth checking out. It contains dancing stroboscopic zombies.
now playing: adrian klumpes - unrest

monkey drummer

2007-01-15T21:38:00.000+11:00

Why haven't I posted this sooner?
Here's a brilliant Chris Cunningham directed clip for an excerpt from an Aphex Twin track called Mt Saint Michel + St Michael's Mount.

best. new years. ever.

2007-01-02T23:27:00.000+11:00

...well, for now anyway.
I went on holiday with my boyfriend to Sydney over the Christmas / New Years period where we had a massively great time catching up with good friends, being the kind of turistas I once heaped all of my contempt upon.
It was a great trip and was made even greater by the calibre of our friends who variously put us up, put up with us and transported us around the city (most signicantly, thanks Peter).
Only one of the many highlights but most certainly the funniest event of the trip was our New Years celebration, which was held at a squat in Balmain, right on the harbour. As you can see from the pictures, we had the best view in all of Sydney and were able to enjoy all of the fireworks as they lit up the sky at 12.
The venue itself was great and the tenants were most hospitable hosts and hostesses.
Unfortunately, knowledge of the event had spread like wildfire thanks to myspace, with word getting back to the tenants that somone had been advocating guests trash the joint, so they had to be explicit about ensuring guests were aware of house rules and respect everyone's rights.
There were a couple of problems with the night, too. The toilets were broken and had to be flushed with buckets of water so, predictably, many trashed partygoers didn't comply. Sewerage started seeping along the ground and down the hill beneath the venue. It smelt. The dj's for the most part were nothing if not utterly uncaptivating. And finally, the tenants were nowhere to be seen late in the morning when their presence would have been handy.
But that's all okay because the party was great.
And another good thing about the party was that we attended it with some good mates who wanted to chemically enhance their experience with us. So we all ran around having little mini-(mis)adventures and getting along like houses on fire, accordingly.
There was a freaky moment in the morning with an upset man who was intimidating a 16 year old party goer. I intervened, the youth worker/negotiator in me taking over, which helped to defuse what could have been a nasty situation. I actually handled it pretty well I think. Not least of all because at 7am, having partied hardy all night, I was pretty stonkered.
Anyway, it was a wonderful night and the best New Years I've had to date.
And now it's back to work... Ho hum.
(If this entry is all but incomprehensible, that's because I just got back from Sydney and am dog-tired.)

and another thing...

2006-12-22T23:08:00.000+11:00

Here's a tidy little vid from the recent Uniting Australia Sausage Sizzle that was held in Brunswick (cf 'neo-nazi bikini party' below).
It shows, far better than my words, the success of the day.
Take that, bone heads!
(pity about the michael jackson music at the start, though...)
To be honest, I'm not religion's number one fan, but I believe everyone has the right to practice their religion if they're not harming anyone else in doing so and to exhibit the cultural traits and practices that are associated with a religion or faith with pride and not fear.
This is something that the 'Australian community' could be better at fostering and the sausage sizzle was an excellent example of just that.

ex-mass time

2006-12-22T20:23:00.000+11:00

Well, Christmas hasn't arrived yet and I've already been showered with a whole bunch of really good gifts.
And I'm such a greedy fucker to my family I haven't really spent much time or thought on the gifts I've given them. Oh well.
I've received a great set of Sennheiser headphones from me man and he's got another surprise in store for me yet. Nice.
And if you're marveling at the artwork that adorns this post, one of them is a gift from my good mate Dave and you can check out more his stylee at this link.
Thanks Dave.
On a different note, there seems to be an assumption that the festy season is a time of year when everyone's supposed to be doing the family thing. I love my family and all but that doesn't mean I feel an obligation to be with them. I spend a reasonable amount of time with them and go out of my way to be with them often enough so this Christmas is going to be a time for friends.
That's right, this year I'm going to hang out with my fellow expat Tasmanian friends who I don't spend nearly enough quality time with. Nice, nice.
There's a real pleasure in spending time in good company with great friends. I live for that. Friends are affirming in ways that family often struggles to be.
I think families are a given, there's little choice around whether or not you accept your family. I mean, I can try and divorce my family if I wanted (which I don't) but there'd always be a sense of lack or loss, I reckon. Whereas, I've lost friends and it's been fairly easy to move on from that. Likewise, family has a way of dragging a person back into its fold. Friends don't. Friendships have to be maintained a lot more I reckon. Family is always there. And it's possible to love someone because they're family as much as because of who they are. I choose to be a friend with my friends. I can't choose my family. That's special in its own way, too.
As is Squarepusher.
now playing with extreme pleasure: squarepusher - hello meow

'tis the season...

2006-12-17T23:31:00.000+11:00

Blimey, Guv'nor!
The number of child buskers on the streets of Melbourne at this time of year is somewhat disturbing! Quite Dickensian, really. Three times now, as I've been winding my way through the busy streets, dodging hassled shoppers, scenes have struck me as redolent of Oliver Twist or a latter day Hard Times. I'll describe the two that struck me most for you:
Two 5 or so year olds, a brother and sister, were standing side-by-side at the traffic lights, facing shoppers, frowning as they stared off into space, fiddling on miniature violins. The plaintive sound of the jigs they were playing on their battered instruments were only surpassed in poverty by the drab, ill-fitting Victorian rags they were draped in. Their little slip of black cloth strewn on the ground showing little silver or gold from an unappreciative public (myself included). They appeared profoundly weary and unhappy, a haunted look of innocence lost in their eyes, the dawning awareness of a bleak future. They looked like they would be happier if their parents had set them to the artful task of pick pocketing.
In stark contrast were two sisters, singing out the front of Myer at the milling, listless and sometimes wailing crowds of parents with their children, queuing in their thousands for a rushed glimpse of a Christmas front window diorama called Wombat Divine. The girls would have been no more than ten, one of them had a much stronger and sweeter sounding voice than the other, but even so she sounded shrill and desperate for attention and money, straining for her high register voice to be heard above her audience's much more compelling distemper and ennui. Naturally, their vocal talents as diminutive as they were, called for some ornamentation, which explained their tight, short cropped red shorts, black knee length stockings, pink tanktops, dangling Christmas decoration earrings and (coca cola [crunky]) red Santa pompom hats. Strangely I thought, they had a music stand with a page or two of sheet music to prompt them of the lyrics to the Christmas carols they were singing, but I suspect it was more of a prop to lend them an air of musical authenticity. I suspect that they would have rather been practicing their tennis serve after a stiff lesson in micro-economics and the virtues of Utilitarianism.
I have so many questions to beg:
What kind of a misguided parent puts their child up to busking in such ways during Christmas?
Did they tell their children that the only gifts Santa could afford them this year were those of self reliance and a lesson in market dynamics as they booted them out the door?
Will these children grow up to become failed entrepreneurs? Or Australian Idol rejects?
Did their parents take the money off them and spend it on the pokies?
Should I have called Child Protection?
Will they forever be under the yoke of parental control or will they throw off the shackles of oppression sooner than most?
Is it true that, as Nietzsche claimed, that which does not kill us can only make us stronger?
Do I really need to write this at 1am? Wouldn't I rather be in bed asleep?
I suppose these displays of various forms of poverty showed up Christmas for me in a newly absurd light, although they only reiterated the same old tired messages about Christmas, commodities, consumption and crunk.
Warnning: This entry may contain traces of unreasonable hyperbole.
Now Playing: Severed Heads - Come visit the big bigot

neo nazi bikini party

2006-12-10T11:50:00.000+11:00

Yesterday I went to an open day at a local Muslim prayer room.
It's unfortunate that Muslims in Brunswick need to take such measures to protect themselves from neo nazis.
The story is, if you're not from round these parts and/or hadn't heard, a 'bikini veteran' grandmother thought it would be appropriate to have a bikini march to show how proud she is of being a woman in Australia who can wear a bikini. This was meant to be in opposition to Muslims who apparently don't allow women to dress themselves. Hmmm... not sure what planet she lives on.
The event was 'postponed' possibly after she freaked out from the number of neo nazis expressing interest. But the bottom line is that there was going to be a march on the prayer room to commemorate the Cronulla riots. Obviously not a good thing.
Hence, the community open day / sausage sizzle, which was a friendly and successful and peaceful event, because the bone heads maybe realised that they are not welcome in Brunswick. Or anywhere else for that matter.
I look forward to a time when this kind of violent bullshit doesn't happpen:
Cronulla riots and neo nazi bikini parties... Not in my lifetime... Not ever...
But watch this space and @ndy's blog because I'm told the 'bikini veteran' grandmother is planning a march in Melbourne's CBD planned for Invasion Day (January 26th).
I'll leave you with the words she said to a friend of mine who rang her up as an indication of her state of mind:
"We're not against all Muslims ... Just those who want to rape our children, our women and blow us up."

kid koala and me

2006-12-09T18:50:00.000+11:00

Wow! What a night I had last night.
I'd been hanging out so bad for the last two months: Kid Koala and Amon Tobin were due to perform at the Prince of Wales Band Room!
I'm not going to go into detail about Amon Tobin's performance because for the half hour I saw, I almost suffered a mild depression at the poor standard of his set. Disappointing from such a great music maker.
But who cares? Because that maestro of the turntable: the indomitable, the irrepressible, the incomparable Kid Koala completely reigned supreme over the whole domain of music (that's right!) for the duration of his one hour+ set.
He had the packed out audience eating out of the palm of his hand with his crazy mix of slick deejaying and expert turntabling, all with extra helpings of good humour and friendly engagement with the audience. So swell.
His new album, 'Your Mom's Favourite Dj' is jolly good, by the way. You should do yourself a favour and buy it. You'll thank yourself. Seriously.
Anyway, I had a second highlight for the night, beside the supreme excellence of the music. I was really privileged to be able to talk to Kid Koala himself and thank him for his performance as I was leaving.
I started with an effusive, "Thanks for tonight! Your set was wonderful!" and the friendly guy put his hands together in front of him and bowed his head.
Then I said, "My mum sends you her regards." To which he chuckled. And then I remembered, "Oh and my friend Asha asked me to thank you for saving Buck 65's life!"
To which he laughed again and said, "Buck 65's my man, I couldn't let him drown!" And as I shuffled off I was rewarded with a handshake.
Kid Koala. What a swell guy.
now playing: kid koala - slewtest 1 / lunch with pavlov

scary mary

2006-12-08T00:27:00.000+11:00

I know blog entries that consist of nothing but an embedded YouTube clip are lame but this is just too inspired and funny to ignore.
Mary Poppins recut as a horror movie. So obvious I can't believe someone hasn't done it before now.

kickapoo joy juice

2006-12-08T00:00:00.000+11:00

I went into a 7 Eleven or some such on upper Swanston St today and lo! there in the fridge with the sundry colas and juices was the holy grail of softdrink weirdness: Kickapoo Joy Juice.
As you can't see from the nothing if not indistinct illustration on the can, sampling from this fount of delight will send you off this planet.
As for the drink itself, it tastes like yellow...