shifting spanner

I've not seen its equal.

2012-01-27T11:30:00.001+11:00

The most impressive pair-of-shoes-over-power-lines I've ever seen.

Anthony Albanese and The American President

2012-01-26T07:52:00.000+11:00

So Anthony Albanese lifted a soundbite from The American President at the National Press Club yesterday. That is something so unwise, so self-evidently impolitic, that it needs no commentary from me. Still, I think the assessment of Tony Abbott stands. Fear and blame is Abbott in a nutshell. Unfortunately, fear and blame is a kind of leadership (I realise I skirt perilously close to Godwin's law, here).
There is another quote (of course there's another quote - it's an Aaron Sorkin movie) from The American President which has stuck with me since the first time I watched it. It relates just as much to a nation's people as to its leaders, so it is somewhat appropriate to bring up on Australia Day, given the anaemic state of our political leadership:

People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.

It's Australia. We have a lot of sand.

Is it a good thing or a bad thing

2012-01-25T08:58:00.000+11:00

Is it a good thing or a bad thing that my to-do list item "see if i can undo cable ties while cuffed" is work-related?

I assure you that other items such as "interrobang wheel" and "Street-Fighting Jesus" have nothing to do with work.

Downsizing. Upscaling.

2012-01-19T07:37:00.001+11:00

There is something about moving all your possessions out of one apartment, and in to one room. I think it's made my personality high definition. Higher pixel count. Optical zoom. Looking back, I think having a whole place can generate a sort of entropy of personality. Corporeal reminders of aspects of self, but without the information density to remind you how the pieces fit together.

Because I'm not sure if this is actually witty.

2012-01-16T16:34:00.001+11:00

First they came for the communists, and I said nothing because I didn't think a bunch of Justin Beiber fans would get that carried away.

Unexplained Surveillance

2011-12-27T00:05:00.000+11:00

Why use one camera when three can do the job just as well?

I'm not a fan of surveillance at the best of times: if people where anywhere near as good at paying attention to what was happening as they think they are, card tricks wouldn't work. I tend to notice cameras, like the three in the photograph at left. I wonder why they are there; I wonder what they are looking at.
So I stopped walking home and took a few minutes to try and figure out what the cameras were looking at. As you can guess from the first photo, the three cameras are not trained on the same building that they have been placed on - instead, they look across the street. This means both buildings are owned by the same company (or government), or an arrangement has been reached between the two. I think the latter is unlikely.
I then placed myself in the line of sight of the cameras. Two of the three were pointed at ground level service/fire exits. It is not unusual to have cameras on all exits, just to be comprehensive. But the third camera, that was pointed at a window. Which was odd, but just because it is pointed at a window doesn't mean it is watching a window. Further, just because it's pointed at something doesn't mean it's on.

But there was one other door that could have had a camera on it, and didn't, and this is what struck me as passing strange: it was the one that I actually thought needed to be secure.

Once you put the sign on, it's perfectly secure.

My cooking show

2011-12-11T13:52:00.001+11:00

I just made a sandwich that, ordinarily, should not have been able to be made with the ingredients available in my home. This means my cooking show 'Adventures In "Has this gone off?"', has become the even more disturbing 'Adventures In "Why hasn't this gone off?"'.

Perusal: 6 minutes.

2011-12-01T16:59:00.001+11:00

Some legal letters just a fancy equivalent of: "I'm going to be swinging my arms like this, and if any part of you should happen to get in the way, that's YOUR problem!"

In which a poor turn of phrase starts a train of thought

2011-11-19T12:38:00.001+11:00

"surreally literal": I don't think the writer of the article understands the oddness of the phrase, but the more I think about it, the more it describes an interesting storytelling approach.

If I'm understanding correctly, 'surreally literal' refers to a straight portrayal of a story with a premise that would ordinarily demand suspension of disbelief, or be heard as a metaphor. The Tortoise and the Hare is probably a good example. The story anthropomorphises the animals, and the audience would probably do so even if the story didn't. Just think of how we relate to nature documentaries - or how we interpret animal behaviour.

So. Tortoise and the Hare. It would be a pretty different story if it was told straighter, wouldn't it? Indeed, the more literal it gets, the weirder it gets. Eight hours of my life taken up watching split screen handheld camera footage of a hare sleeping in a ditch and a tortoise walking slowly would be surreally literal. But it would get especially interesting once we started comparing the surreally literal version with the mainstream one.

Conventionally speaking, The Tortoise and the Hare boils down to 'slow and steady wins the race'. That's a perfectly acceptable interpretation, and paints the tortoise's qualities as admirable ones. But that's the moral when the story is told briefly, and in a way that needs no perseverance. Present audiences with the concept of spending eight hours watching animals so that they can learn a lesson about determination, and you'll get a reaction - a reaction that the audience will think is reasonable - that is the same as the Hare when he is challenged by the Tortoise:

'Fuck this shit - I've got nothing to prove to you.'

I think I'm a fan of this now.

Goethe, Mickey Mouse & OWS

2011-11-15T19:20:00.001+11:00

In particular, 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice'. Yes, the one in Fantasia where Mickey brings the brooms to life. Just because it's in a cartoon doesn't mean it lost the point it made in 1797.

In any case, the key is this: "Die ich rief, die Geister / Werd ich nun nicht loss". The spirits that I called / Ignore my commands. It is worth thinking about corporations in that context. On a daily basis, we accept that we cannot do anything about the actions of corporations. We have forgotten that we created them. They're not born. They have no inherent characteristics. They, and we, have forgotten that they exist at our sufferance. Surely we can get them to do the mopping up.

Thoughts arising from Anselm Kiefer's Sternenfall

2011-10-15T17:05:00.001+11:00

(please keep in mind I've been in an art gallery all afternoon and this shit would not sound nearly so pretentious inside those walls)
Starlight is a picture of the past, a place out of reach, and out of touch, with our present reality. Sternenfall is a map of the heavens that says "maybe these places aren't there anymore. Not in any way we'd recognise and maybe not at all." so maybe heaven was a place, and it's gone now. I wager that's a more disturbing concept than it never having been.

That new Person Of Interest show

2011-10-09T22:36:00.001+11:00

It seems a lot like someone remembered Quantum Leap, but decided that instead of optimism and the difference made by helping others one day at a time, what we need in 2011 is a good dose of paranoia, preemptive strikes and acceptable casualties.

Today's Song I Woke Up With Stuck In My Head (141 character edition)

2011-10-07T07:45:00.001+11:00

Today's Song I Woke Up With Stuck In My Head: 1 2 3 4, as by Feist. One of the more perfect songs of the past decade. Thanks, Sally Seltmann.

It's a good thing to make yourself laugh in surprise.

2011-10-05T19:01:00.001+11:00

I was looking through some old boxes of stuff, and separately came across two photos. I was in both of them; the other person was different, but I was doing exactly the same thing. Hence laughing in surprise. I am sure that I didn't remember that I'd done it before. I can only hope that I forget before I get the chance to do it again.

I also found what I reckon should be the photo for my funeral program. I leaned in to look more closely, and realised that I was currently holding my hands in the same, odd way that I was in the photo. Further laughter in surprise. It certainly captured something about me, though I've no idea what.

Today's Song I Woke Up With Stuck In My Head, Extended Edition

2011-10-02T08:45:00.001+11:00

Today's Song I Woke Up With Stuck In My Head: Starlight, by Muse. Which makes me hate myself a little bit, because a band that only has two songs is worse than a band that only has one. But Starlight was probably the best song on that album.

Also, it is currently being used in a tv ad for a new Steve Carrell movie. I should not be thinking of it as that. My brain should not be attuned to "Hey, Steve Carrell is all depressed and cuckolded and trying to put on a brave face. I might enjoy watching that." My brain should be thinking "This is an Emma Stone movie. Zombieland was an Emma Stone movie. Zombieland was awesome. But Crazy Stupid Love doesn't sound so good. Better let this one through to the keeper."

Positive Thinking

2011-09-27T12:45:00.001+10:00

Don't be negative, David. It's not that people who scuff their feet are incredibly, tachycardialy annoying; instead, they are generously making themselves easy prey for carnivores.

Mixed messages.

2011-09-24T10:40:00.001+10:00

I feel as though the sheer amount of street crime committed by Michael Jackson in the Black Or White dance sequence undermines the general message of tolerance in the song.

Speaking of Wookies...

2011-09-19T14:05:00.000+10:00

So I blathered about this last night, while waiting to go into a comedy gig. Even more newsworthy than that is that I remembered it today. Allow me to explain:

Chewbacca's name is Chewbacca.
Chewbacca cannot say the word 'Chewbacca'.
No Wookie can say the word 'Chewbacca'.
Hell, they probably can't even say 'Wookie'.
Don't think I'm getting down on them - I think Wookies are awesome. I didn't enslave them - the Empire did.
Anyway...
It seems like 'Chewbacca' is not his birth name.
More like it's his slave name. [if your brain also went 'Chewbacca'='Cassius Clay', you score points]
Han Solo calls his best friend by his slave name. That's not cool.
It also seems like 'Wookie' is a racial slur.
George Lucas has more to answer for now than ever before.

Worksite. Art installation. Alleged crime scene.

2011-09-03T21:40:00.001+10:00

The laneways of the Sydney CBD maintain a variety of uses.

Everything's Turning To White

2011-08-27T08:02:00.001+10:00

Am I seriously contemplating the cultural contribution of Project Runway?

2011-08-15T21:12:00.001+10:00

Fashion in Sydney has been particularly uniform this winter. I hate to say it, but a shrinking wardrobe is cut from the same cloth as a slimmer dictionary when it comes to narrowing the range of human expression.

Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before

2011-08-15T08:43:00.001+10:00

I wonder if anyone has sent out invitations on facebook for a 'party in their pants' just to see if it would be crashed by hundreds of drunken youths.

On Your Request To Have Slaughterhouse Five Banned From the Republic, Missouri School Curriculum

2011-08-07T18:46:00.000+10:00

I actually sent this to him. Yeah, I know.

Dear Dr. Scroggins,

I know that your editorial was nearly a year ago.

I know that it was the School Board, not you, that made the actual decision to remove Slaughterhouse Five from the library.

I know that this is all happening on the opposite side of the world to where I live.

But I remain deeply concerned that you read a novel as profoundly humane as Slaughterhouse Five and came away from it complaining about the swearing and sex.

It is a novel that can teach some invaluable lessons about the ways in which war and tragedy ruin lives. Either you offered a highly selective analysis of the novel, or you just didn't get it.

I'd rather children read some swear words and far-from-explicit sex scenes than remained utterly indifferent to an entire city of people burned alive.

I am sorry for my tone, but this is about as respectfully as I can manage to disagree with you.

Sincerely,

David

On reading William Gibson, circa May 2011

2011-07-30T13:19:00.000+10:00

It is a bizarre and heretofore unknown situation. A feeling that might easily be mistaken for entry into a more refined, more cultured, more worthy realm of existence.
It happens now, as I read chapter five. I read about the minutiae of weekend activities on the far side of the world, and I know exactly what William Gibson is talking about because I have seen it for myself. This makes me feel good, that I am connected to literature through personal experience. It causes me to think for a moment that I am some sort of cultural insider. But I'm not. It is only that I have done something with my life thus far, not that I have done anything special. Because browsing the markets at Camden Lock on a Saturday is nothing special, I assure you.

That said, William Gibson is one of the great authors and thinkers of our time and Pattern Recognition is bloody brilliant. Gibson is credited with articulating the concept and term 'cyberspace' in the 80s. Achievement enough for one lifetime, but not, I think, his true contribution. In my eyes, Gibson's major contribution is to consistently and convincingly show that even in worlds where technological change threatens to overtake and overwhelm us, a person is still a person and can still make choices. More people should read him.

Beastie Boys. Sesame Street. Together At Last.

2011-07-25T13:26:00.000+10:00

Courtesy of a large number of people with their ears significantly closer to the ground than I: