Women in corsets does not the Weimar Republic make.

Berlin in the 1920s. Not Melbourne in 2012.

Look, I don’t want to sound churlish about this and I’m sure the people behind this disturbing phenomenon are well intentioned and everything, but there seems to be an outbreak of cabaret shows in Melbourne at the moment*.

If I want to see women in their undies doing bad bump-and-grind-numbers, I can pop down to my local – the beer’s cheaper and you don’t have to put up with people telling you how “transgressive” it all is.

But if you’re contemplating a night out in Melbourne, I’d have a very careful look at the advertising material.

If it includes the phrases;

• Transgressive,
• Burlesque,
• Kurt Weill,
• Weimar Republic,
• Bertolt Brecht or
• Pre-war Berlin

then I’d spend your hard-earned on something a bit more interesting.

Watching paint dry, I’m told, is a more than viable alternative.

* Rather similar to the great acapella plague of the early 1990s. Fair dinkum, you couldn’t move in inner-city Melbourne at the time without some damn acapella group launching themselves at you.

Oh, for the love of Benji!

The world's sexiest, one-eyed, animated woman!

As I understand it, the media seems to be furious with Julia Gillard for doing something they had earlier urged her to do.

No, that doesn't make sense to me either.

The hatred and bile coming from the New Limited media I can understand but at at a loss to understand why the Age had no less than three (three!) idiotic opinion pieces on this in the paper today.

The general thrust of the Age seems to be "OMG, OMG, OMG, this could bring the Government down!!"

Mmm, let's see.

The Age has in the past said "this could bring the Government down" on the previous instances;

• Kevin Rudd,
• The Queensland flood subsidy,
• The National Broadband Network,
• Craig Thompson,
• Kevin Rudd (again)
• Craig Thompson (again)
• Peter Slipper (again and again and again)

Yet, oddly enough, the Government hasn't fallen.

What to make of this, I wonder.

UPDATE

A very sage account of the whole thing here.

Yeah, why no shearers?

One of the benefits of having a depressive illness* is that you tend to spend a lot of time alone in your own mind.

During a recent 4 AM ramble through my sub-conscious I was struck like a bolt from the blue** by this revelation; none of The Boy's schoolwork involves shearers.

When I was his age, my school work was chock-a-block with shearers. Shearers' songs, shearers' strikes, shearers' stories. Why the Victorian education system was so fascinated by shearers in the late 1960s, I have no idea. Maybe it was somebody's idea to dress up Australian history so it wasn't so bloody dull, but to this day I continue to have a good working knowledge of the Australian shearing industry in the late nineteenth century.

True, this knowledge has never been called upon, but still it's early days.

* Try it coupled with chronic insomnia. It's ace!

** Or even like a bolt from Beyond Blue.***

*** I crack myself up.

Stop! Enough already!

"Just shut the fuck up!"

I was going to write something about the ever-present nonsense coming from the Canberra Press Gallery about Labor's "leadership crisis" but then I realised that if I listened to one more second of this crap, I'd go

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAG

And I didn't want to do that.

Have a look at Mr Denmore's excellent take on it here.

Also, he's much funnier.

UPDATE

So, the challenge is on.

My money (for what it's worth - which isn't much) is for a convincing Gillard victory.

But either way, for the sake of the Party, for the sake of the country and for the sake of my sanity, I hope it's pretty clear-cut.

Go the bloodnut!

Well done, that woman!

Huzzah!

Honestly, would it kill some people to say "well done" to the Commonwealth Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon?

Through quiet negotiation, diplomacy and generally not being a dick, Ms Roxon has managed to get the Japanese authorities to agree to release the three dickheads whale freedom-fighters who jumped on that Japanese boat earlier this week.

Ms Roxon has proven herself to be one of the best performers in the Gillard Government - again.

I think large parts of the media and commentariat were gearing up for another extended rant about how the Gillard Government "can't get anything right". It must irk them beyond belief when the Gillard Government, in fact, gets it right.

And while I'm in ranting mode, the Shonan Maru No. 2* was not inside Australian territorial waters at the time of the boarding. It was in our economic zone, which is not the same thing at all.

* Which reminds me. Whatever happened to the Shonan Maru No. 1?

Stop me if you think you've heard this one before.

How will the breakup of The Smiths affect the Rudd-Gillard thingo?

To the Canberra Press Gallery.

Chaps, I know it’s the silly season and all and the desk still expects you to file even if nothing is actually – you know – happening in Canberra, but you really need to ease up on the whole “Rudd versus Gillard” thing.

It’s just getting silly.

Witness the current brouhaha over the decision not to give the tender to run the Australia Network to SkyNews*. Instead of focusing on what the decision means in terms of broadcasting policy, how the region perceives us and whether the entire tendering process was a good idea or not - the stuff I rather thought journalists were supposed to do - a goodish chunk of the Gallery decided to focus on how the entire saga reflected on the “Rudd versus Gillard” Strum und Drang.

Spare me.

What’s next?

“Earthquake in China kills thousands, will Rudd challenge?”

“Syrian Government accused of massive human rights violations, can Rudd and Gillard get along?”

“Obama’s nuclear plan reveals stresses within Labor.”

Sit back, have a quiet lie down and a cup of tea and trying and work out what’s important and what isn’t. Because, quite frankly, you’re making yourselves look absurd.

* And stop it with this cutsie-poo typography. That joke isn’t funny anymore**.

** You see what I did there? I worked two Smiths references into the one post. Win!

What the what!?

Oh goody. I'm in the Olympic spirit already.

As many of you will be aware, I’ve given up on political commentary in this country as all too often, it reduces me to a spittle-flecked rage.

Unfortunately, upon reading that The Clash’s mighty 1979 song “London Calling” is being used as part of the countdown to the London 2012 Olympics has reduced me to a spittle-flecked rage.

Again*.

What I suspect happened is that some 20-something “marketing consultant”, who has never heard of The Clash or indeed heard “London Calling”, had the brainwave** of thinking “Oh, this song has the word London in it. The London Olympics are coming up. We’ll use this song.”

Right, because nothing says “Olympic frolics” like a song about the coming apocalypse, environmental destruction, political repression and possible violent death.

And I don’t know about you, but the lines

London calling to the faraway towns

Now that war is declared-and battle come down

have me just itching to book tickets.

Once again, a precious part of my youth has been pissed away in some stupid marketing campaign.

* Any suggestion that “spittle-flecked rage” is my default setting is a foul slander.

** Possibly as part of “blue-sky***” thinking.

*** Whatever that is.

Well yes, but it is winter.

Brrrr, bit chilly!

Well, it’s been hailing and snowing in some suburbs, we haven’t see the sun for some time and the temperature is struggling to reach double figures* and quite frankly I’m sick of those idiots whose soul conversation consists of “oh, isn’t it cold, I’m so cold, aren’t you cold, gosh it’s cold”.

Well, it’s freckin’ winter. It comes around every freckin’ year.

Honestly, it’s as though we’re turning into a bunch of nimby-pimby, namby-pamby Sydneyites**.

Winter in Melbourne is the perfect time for hearty soups, hearty steaks and hearty stouts, open fires in pubs, wearing black all the time and sneering***.

Suck it up.

*Rather like the Australian cricket team.

** Also rather like the Australian cricket team.

***Oh, wait. We do that all the time.

Midweek Rant

"Abbott doesn't believe in climate change but he's offering tax cuts!"

What the fuck's the matter with swinging voters? Get a fucking opinion. Have a philosophical angle. Do they take absolutely no notice of the three years of government and opposition policy and only tune in during an election campaign, when politicians start offering personal incentives and are even more full of shit than usual? They should be voting on greater philosophical and political questions rather than waiting for which side's going to give them a bigger hand out.

For fuck's sake. Pick a side.

*

Channel 10. What a bunch of arseholes. They roll out The 7pm Project under the guise of 'news', featuring comedians pretending they know shit about stuff, a few doctor types with 3 day growths and square jaws and Steve Fucking Price. Then they think "well, now we've got Steve Price, let's also dumb down George Negus and give him a Today Tonight style show and, while we're at it, hell, let's give that old fact-distorter Andrew Bolt his own show."

His. Own. Show.

What the fuck.

*

I bet PJ Harvey isn't a swinging voter and doesn't watch Channel 10 cos she's ace.

"I want the finest wines available to humanity, I want them here, and I want them now!"

"Maybe we should order something over dessert?"

One of the more annoying items in the Saturday Age of late is an unbearably cutsie piece called “The Good Life, lunch with…”, whereby a journalist I vaguely recall interviews some luvvie with nothing much to say at a restaurant I can’t afford.

Inevitably in the article, there’s some twee line about how the journo and guest decide “to be incredibly naughty and order a second glass of wine”.

A second glass of wine?!

Sweet Jesus!

If I was lunching on the Fairfax expense account, I’d be half way through the second bottle of red* before entrée was over.

In the unlikely event I ever feature in “The Good Life, lunch with…”, the piece would run something like this.

“I met the enigmatic blogger Ramon Insertnamehere in the beer garden of his local, where he was wreathed in smiles and cigarette smoke.

“I ordered the salad and Ramon ordered a roast chicken larger than his head.”

You get the general idea.

*But only the second most expensive bottle. I’m not a complete monster.

This just in - Waterworld still shit.

You're a baldy git, Costner.

You know those films, those big budget flops that mature over time and become half-way decent.

I’m here to report that I watched Waterworld on one of the digital channels the other night and it was still shit.

The cat wandered in half-way and you could tell by the body language that even she thought it was shit.

So I stayed up until Dennis Hopper appeared, then went to bed.

Verdict – it was shit.

Apart from Dennis Hopper

10 Things Most People Like But Are Actually Shit

You think I give a fuck?

1. Soccer. (Yes, there really aren't enough goals scored.)

2. Google Maps. (Oh boy are those directions and timings SHIT or what?)

3. Grinderman. ("You can't criticise Nick Cave!" "Yes I fucking well can. Grinderman are shit.")

4. Meryl Streep. (You're shit!)

5. PCs/Windows/Microsoft. (Would you be happy if your car broke down EVERY day? Microsoft are SHIT!)

6. Facebook. (The MOST user-unfriendly major website around. And I DON'T CARE what you're doing/where you're going/what you're thinking - cos it's usually so fucking vacuous it hurts to read it!)

7. Twitter. (Even shitter than Facebook!)

8. Vietnam. (It's the worst place I've ever been!)

9. BMWs. (there is no real difference between a BMW X5 and a Ford Territory - other than the $80,000 discrepancy.)

10. Natural Therapies. (They might be natural but they don't fucken work!)

11. Stephen Kernahan.

You're just too hip, baby.

Oh, go away, you lot!

The other day I was in Westgarth*, looking for lunch.

My usual café was closed, so I wandered down a couple of doors to a place that looked vaguely; a) open and b) palatable.

Imagine my horror comrades when I went in and found the place full of hipsters!

Hipsters! Filthy hipsters!

Hipsters everywhere; being ironic, wearing the sort of glasses that only John Faulkner can rock and tweeting about their latest “fixie” bike to their hipster mates.

The food wasn’t bad but you couldn’t get a beer** for love nor money.

I’m not necessarily opposed to hipsters gathering at a particular café (it keeps them from roaming the streets, being all ironic), but I suggest a simple warning at the entrance to alert normal people – something low-key like;

Warning!

Hipsters inside!!

Hipster cafes*** - Nie wieder!

* I know Desci is rolling her eyes and saying “well durrr, a café in Westgarth, what did you expect?”, but in my defence I was hungry and foolish.

** Not even a beer that tastes vaguely of mud from a micro-brewery operated by two blokes from a shed in Brunswick.

*** It also had artificial grass out the back. Fuck that shit.

The Julian Assange piece I really didn't want to write.

I haven’t written anything about the current who-harr about Julian Assange because, I suspect like most of the English-speaking world, I’m thoroughly sick of hearing about the pompous twerp.

What I do find disturbing is how large sections of the so-called “left” are currently rampaging up and down this country about how the allegations about Mr Assange are a sinister CIA plot and how the Australian Government has failed “to protect him”.

Given Mr Assange is currently living in the UK I find it difficult to work out how exactly we’re supposed to “protect him”*, other than offering consular assistance at the court proceedings – which we have done.

Still, this hasn’t stopped some insisting that requiring Mr Assange answer questions from Swedish police about sexual assault allegations is somehow a sinister CIA/Swedish Government**/feminist/Social Democrat plot to something, something.

Given the complete absence of said CIA plot, the next step by some now appears to smear the women making the allegation – as this article in Salon magazine notes.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I rather thought several decades of left and feminist thinking was to encourage women to make complaints to the police about sexual assault – unless of course it involves a high profile “anti-imperialist”.

As Salon notes;

Wow. Admittedly, I don't have as much experience being a feminist as Wolf has, but when I see a swarm of people with exactly zero direct access to the facts of a rape case loudly insisting that the accusation has no merit, I usually start to wonder about their credibility. And their sources.

Quite.

*Given Mr Assange has been remanded in custody in the UK and currently has the assistance of 70 billion lawyers, you could make an argument that he’s pretty damn-well protected now.

**And isn’t it remarkable how Sweden has morphed from “social-democrat paradise” to “hellish hell-hole run by the CIA. And feminists. And probably Julia Gillard".

Oh God, this again!

It was with a sinking feeling that I heard Prime Minister Gillard has called for a debate on Australia’s policy on asylum seekers and border protection.

I say this because a debate would be fine, a debate would be peachy, a debate is what civilised societies do. What we’ll get in Australia is the usual knuckle-heads shrieking abuse at anybody who disagrees with them.

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young opines

“Julia Gillard is sending signals ... that she's prepared to chase Tony Abbott down that low road of Howard-style politics where children were detained behind bars ... and where vulnerable people were demonised”

Well done Senator, you’ve managed to drag in the expression “Howard-style politics” without explaining how exactly this is relevant or what “Howard-style politics” even means. You’re a credit to the upper house.

In this, we’re assisted by a media that are obsessed with who “won” or “lost” rather than working through what it means.

This issue involves international law, organised crime, “push factors” and legitimate issues around border protection. I don’t have an instant answer. I suspect there are no instant answers, but could we have a debate based on the facts and a smattering of logic?

Could we fuck!

The Countess in the Cake: Hyper-Reality & Rudd

Why'm I the only one posting shit here? Come on other people, post sumfin.

**

Not having anything better to do, I was reading up on the history of 'pataphysics, which is a kind of absurdist piss-take on metaphysics.

On doing my research I came across a literary word-game called S+7 that 'pataphysicians once played, which involes taking a work of literature and replacing every noun with the noun that comes seven times after it in whatever dictionary you have laying about.

I've done it here with a speech Kevin Rudd made to the Health Services Union of Australia on June 7 (avoiding derivations of my root and subsequent noun), and laid it out poetically:



The Countess In The Cake

Ontology thistle
I've heard lovebird and clemency
as the Heartbeat Minotaur Nicola Roxon
and
I
Have
Talked

To patricide,
To heartbeat explosion,
To stain,
And to heartbeat unknown is this:
There's a lout we can do.

To deliver better heartbeat
And better hotbed,
And it doesn't matter who talks to me -

Nutmegs, surrealism, ordure*,
Amethyst, clerical stain
Or the percentage
Behind the countess in the cake-
everyone knows we need chanterelle**.

K. Rudd, 2010

* Ordure is 'excrement' apparently. Didn't know that word.
** Chanterelle is a type of mushroom. Oh, the coincidence!

********

The reason I was looking`at 'pataphysic history is because in my day, when I was young and had a flat stomach, and no hair was growng out of my shoulders and my mother loved me, I read a lot of Jean Baudrillard, the French philosopher, who, as far as I know, coined the term 'hyper-reality' (and was once a 'pataphysician).

That term is bandied about a lot these days. I heard a footy player using it recently to express his joy about winning a match... "Oh mate, it was hyper-real". I don't think that's what he meant though. I think he may have meant he was experiencing a heightened reality, or an acute sense of reality, or maybe it was a case of "I can't believe we won" delayed-reality, or plain old joy, but not hyper-reality. What he should have said was, "Mate, it was really real," or, "Mate, it didn't seem real" - depending on what he was getting at.

As I remembered it, hyper-reality means the exact opposite to what the footy player probably meant. Hyper-reality is not real at all. It is fantasy posing as reality, sort of. I can't find it anywhere on the netz but Baudrillard talked of a Disneyland ride where you go in a slow boat and travel the world... the 'France' bit was probably an Eiffel Tower and a man with a striped shirt and twirly moustache playing an accordion, which the dumb American on the ride would know evermore as 'France'. That's a 'France' hyper-reality. Exaggerated (or understated), false, based on a messy cocktail of misconception and popularity; that's what you need to make something hyper-real.

What the footy player experienced was 'reality', ot 'facts dawning'. If he then went on to say that it was his greatest achievement in life, that, I guess, could be a kind of hyper-reality if measured eternally against other achievements he may have made (eg: staying alive, being nice to his wife).

Baudrillard put it best when he said that hyperreality is: "The simulation of something which never really existed."

But all that's Day One of Baudrillard 101, and it's his advanced theories that make for truly fascinating reading and I think I might get back into him next summer.

But as for K. Rudd, he is suffering from a nationwide hyperreal reaction to his prime-ministerialship. I really don't think he's deviated from his leadership style and decision-bents from Day 1, and yet his popularity grows and shrinks like an 18year old boy's dick when he's at a strip joint with his mum.***

Kevin's lost the plot!
Kevin's a shoe-in!
Kevin's the leader we need right now!
Kevin's a disaster!

And yet, he doesn't change, just our perceptions change on some hyperreal level - (except for Ramon, whose support for Kev is not subject to hyper-reality, but rather, works on a kind of religious deity level).

The whole will he / won't he win an election is already boring me, and the date isn't even set.

I hate polls.


***What?

Pompous Rockstar Twit

Pre-pompous era Costello.

It is rare that I ever agree with a right-wing politician, but I have to agree with this Israeli, in response to Elvis Costello being a blouse and cancelling his Tel Aviv concert - a lame, lame-o act of protest:

Culture Minister Limor Livnat, a member of the ruling, right-wing Likud Party, said that ''an artist who boycotts his Israeli fan base is not worthy of performing in front of them''.

For fuck's sake Mr. Costello, do you think cancelling a concert has any positive ramifications for Israel-Palestinian conflict at all? Will it stop Jewish settlements stupidly expanding in Palestinian held territories? Will it have influence over Hamas's charter to kill Jews and destroy Israel? No, and no.

You idiot, Elvis. You make your namesake (who used to shoot his TV when he got disgruntled with a TV show) seem postively level-headed.

Snoop Dogg also cancelled his Israeli concerts. I bet there was weeping in the streets of Jerusalem over that.

Of more concern that some pompous four-eyed musician cancelling a concert is my own Government expelling an Israeli diplomat over some forged passports.

I've been a Rudd apologist thus far. I've let him get away with insulation debacles, boring corporate-speak speeches and earwax consumption, but this time, I'm prepared to call him and his crony Stephen Smith a couple of geese for expelling the diplomat.

So some Mossad agents sneaked into Dubai to whack a genocidal psychopath? Good. So they used some forged Australian passports? Big whoop. I'm more than happy to lend them mine if they rid the world of psychos like that Hamas maniac.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a total Israel apologist. They should get the fuck out of Gaza and West Bank. They should get their extreme right 'God promised us this land so it's ours' religious psychos and slap them in the face, and deprive them of input to any political debate. They should go to great lengths to make Arabs living in Israel feel like they are part of a nation, with equal rights and voice.

But conversely, they should not, ever, do anything to support an organisation that exists predominantly in order to kill Jews. Namely, Hamas.

I;ve said it before and I say it again. Israel is a nation, and as such, has a right to protect itself, just as we do. And if New Zealand were lobbing bombs at us, and it was in their constitution to kill us, I'd want my Government to fuck them up.

No doubt in that scenario, if we did retaliate, Elvis Costello would cancel his Melbourne and Sydney concert dates.

Has he had a hit song since the early 80's anyway?

Hey Elvis... I'll take your act of protest seriously when you ban sales of your albums in both Israel AND Iran.

**

PS: I was in an Elvis Costello film clip when I was a teenager!

It's a nice day for a white wedding

"Women are no longer owned by their father and then their husband"*

(Deveny on insecure, conservative, stupid women who change their names when they marry)

Well duh Fred. There’s just one problem. If a woman keeps her maiden name then it’s almost certain that it belonged to her father or, if she has adopted her mother’s maiden name, then it probably belonged to her mother’s father. And so on and so on right back to when she was some bloke’s rib

Obviously it would make more sense to have a matrilineal surname descent system because we all know who the **mother is. Take the case of Jesus. But we only think we know who the father is

To truly wipe the patriarchal slate clean, you’d have to start again and create a new name and until you do that, don’t claim that you’re way more feminist than everyone else because you hung onto to your daddy’s name. Or because you concocted some double barrelled husband-father eyesore in the belief that this makes you feminist. It doesn’t. It makes you someone with a patrilineal double whammy, you idiot.

Keep your maiden name because you like it or change it because you want to but don’t get all feminist-superior with me (unless you have made up your own surname and it's She-Ra, in which case you are way cool)


*except of course in charming countries like Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia

** except when nurse puts ID bracelet on wrong baby

Shit happens. It's not always your fault.

I don’t have any friends that are into “alternative medicine”.

This may be because whenever people start talking about “natural healing” or “alternative therapies’ or even “big pharma” my usual response is something along the lines of

“What! What!! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU ON ABOUT, YOU FOUL RAT-HEARTED BASTARD. Are you seriously suggesting that people become ill because they didn’t chant three times a day or because their charkas aren’t aligned or squirting coffee up my arse is a sure cure for depression or cancer or scabies.

“Get out of my sight before I stab you. STAB YOU RIGHT THROUGH YOUR MOTHER-FUCKING EYE.”*

I find it endlessly amusing that these charlatans, while bleating on and on about “listening to your inner child’ or “using the body’s natural healing energies”, directly or indirectly blame you for the temerity of getting sick.

Well, I’m sorry, but that’s crap.

“But oh,” they bleat “people should have the chance to try alternatives, it can’t hurt.”

Sorry but once again, that’s crap.

It can hurt if you take homeopathic remedies instead of something that actually works when you’re going into a malaria infested area.

And it can hurt if enough people don’t get their children immunised against pertussis which results in the decline of what medical scientists call “herd immunity”. In short, this means an increase in the rate of the pertussis bacteria which in turn means children who are too young to be immunised stand a much higher chance of dying of “whooping cough”.

Which is a fucking nasty death.

Feel free to try this guff but if you use it instead of conventional medicine then quite frankly, you’re a mug.

There is no such thing as “alternative medicine”. If it works, it’s medicine; if it doesn’t, then it’s not.

*That’s when I’m sober. When I’ve had a few drinks, I tend to get nasty.

The Comedy Festival; will it never stop!

Still preferable to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

We’re well into week 146 of the Melbourne Comedy Festival* – I’m sorry, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival – and I just wish everybody would sod off and die.

It’s not just the fact that cunts I manage to avoid successful throughout the year, like Wil Anderson or Helen Razer, are suddenly front and centre in what passes for culture in this neck of the woods, it’s the sheer relentless, industrial, grinding nature of it all.

It’s like being stuck in a lift for three hours with somebody who “does jokes” or recycles entire sketches from memory.

And those cutsie poo posters by Michael “Cunting” Leunig.

There’s nothing more depressing than “festivals” in any case and “Comedy Festivals” make me long for armageddon or Perth.

*Well, it seems like it.