Age is a State of... Enrolment

It’s a funny thing: often the reality of a situation is very different to how you imagine it to be before you get there. This situation I’m referring to today is university.

Before I started I’d imagined it to be a very serious pursuit. Very adult. Contrast that impression with my day on campus today: I spent the morning in a lecture discussing internet abbreviations, online chat, and then the lecturer projected her computer screen onto the wall and we put a few of those "I feel lucky" gags through Google. This counts towards my attendance and participation mark.

Then, into the library to finish up my essay on Blade Runner (of all things). Keeping in the spirit of childishness, I gave a silent “yippee!” when I managed to squeeze the word “androcentric” in to the text. Given the topic, it wasn’t too hard.

Over lunch, with two other students, I finished writing the little play we have to perform for our French assessment tomorrow, in which we play make believe at an imaginary birthday party. It is for Benoît. He is a travel agent. He is very nice. The conversation covers pressing topics as the size of the host’s cat, and the weather. “Il fait froid ici!” “Oui, il fait mauvais aujourd’hui!” And all this time I'd thought that academia was for grown ups. No wonder I'm getting good marks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Speaking of the weather, we came within 0.9°C of hitting the lowest ever recorded temperature for May last night. 1.5°C. –3°C at Ipswich. You Canadians will scoff, but I challenge you to do 1.5 in a draughty house with windows that won’t close, no heating, and clothes that don’t tuck in properly. “Il fait froid” indeed! The non-closing window is right next to the PC, so I’m having to relearn the art of typing with gloves on, a trick I developed in Canberra. And it’s not even officially winter yet.

We're Out of Tissues

And my brain keeps on humming,
And my nose keeps on running,
And my body keeps on aching,
And my voice keeps on breaking,
And my throat keeps on itching,
And yes I will keep on bitching...

...when I can draw a decent breath.

You know this could end in my death!

Yes, I know it's just a cold
but it's really taken hold!

Why, yes, I'd love a cup of tea!

(How did you know?)

My Nanna's Turkish Neighbours

I just read a lovely story by Paul Chandler on Father Bob's site. I hope you enjoy it, too.

Expanding the Nucular Family

Prime Minister John Howard says he expects an intense debate about nuclear energy in the next 12 months.

Mr Howard is in Canada, where he says he will discuss issues such as uranium mining and nuclear energy with Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Mr Howard has repeated his assertion that a domestic nuclear power industry is inevitable, but that it must be economically viable to proceed.

He has also told Southern Cross Radio that high oil prices are changing the way people and governments think about the issue of nuclear power.

"It could be closer than some people would've thought a short while ago," he said.

"I hope we have an intense debate on the subject over the months ahead."

- story from ABC News Online

Yes, I think "a domestic nuclear power industry is inevitable" too, but only because if Johnno has decided it's going to happen, then the opinions of any of the people he "represents" count for sweet fuck all.

Quite what high oil prices have to do with anything I'm not sure. Australia's electricity production is coal-based. Perhaps Johnno is talking about nuclear powered cars.




*sigh* I find this very depressing. The "closer ties" with the US that the PM is banging on about at the moment likely mean that we'll be obliged to start calling it "nucular*" as part of some kind of treaty.

I was discussing John Howard's North American brown-nosing trip with a friend on the phone last night and he said, "That bastard is chaining us to a sinking ship". I agree. I think history will judge the man very poorly, but that's little compensation to those of us resident in the Australia of the present.

*Thanks to Little Sister for conveying the happy and frankly eyebrow-raising news that "nucular" warrants an entry in Wikipedia.

If It's Not Cyclones or Tsunamis....

...it's volcanoes! Merapi is doing her thing.


Gunung Merapi on Java has the distinction of being one of the more dangerous volcanoes in the world. And it's located at a convenient distance of only 30km away for any Yogyakartans who fancy a bit of sight seeing.

The alert status for Indonesia's most active volcano is now at its highest.

Vulcanology experts say 30 blazing lava flows have been streaming towards rivers 1.5 kilometres from the volcano's peak along the south-western slopes of the mountain.

Thousands of villagers have fled as officials raise Merapi's alert warning to the highest - red - as the "mountain of fire" shoots thick white smoke 400 metres into the air.

A lava dome atop Mount Merapi has grown 75 metres in the past two weeks.

Scientists say its collapse will release lava as well as deadly nuees ardentes, a geological term for clouds of volcanic gases, ash, and dust reaching temperatures up to 500 degrees Celsius.

-from ABC News Online

Merapi is one of sixteen Decade volcanoes, mountains with a history of particularly violent eruptions and close proximity to populated areas. Merapi is placed at number 6, which is―for the benefit of the Victoria BC readers―just two ahead of Mt Rainer in Washington (probably one of the peaks I liked to look at when I was in BC).

Report from Indonesia's National News Agency, Antara.

ABC News report.

Wiki on Merapi.

Wiki on Decade volcanoes.

Freedom from Choice

Freedom from choice is what I want when I purchase shampoo.

And cheese.

And toothbrushes.

I find these products difficult to choose; there are so many damn ones to pick from. There's the price, the packaging (i.e. excessive), quality of the product, suitability to my requirements, ethical considerations, and more. And I know that most of the products—"beauty" products, particularly—are a rip off, so that hinders my decision as well. I also find choosing clothes difficult, so as a consequence don't have many. Does this mean I'm a communist?

Bye Bye Grant

I recall a schoolboy coming home
through fields of cane
to a house of tin and timber
and in the sky
a rain of falling cinders*

- from Cattle and Cane

I remember when I first heard this song; I was at my home in the cane paddocks watching Countdown. It was 1983. In between the preening, mincing New Romantic acts Countdown was full of at the time, this video stood out; three uncool-looking people hunched in a tiny shed singing a beautiful melodic song about the things I could see out of my bedroom window. I wasn't sure what to make of it. It was my introduction to the Go-Betweens.

When you grow up in South East Queensland you understand, almost by instinct, that any song you hear on the radio will not refer to anywhere you know. The airwaves are peppered with plenty of place names like California, Berlin, London; Sudan, Japan, Milan and even Yucatan got a guernsey thanks to Ian Dury. Through pop music many of us know the streets and districts of cities we'll never visit. I know Rockaway Beach is in New York thanks to my Ramones records. That my part of the world was not important or interesting enough to inspire songwriters of any worth was for me always a given. This is one of the reasons The Go-Betweens captured my imagination. "Karen" in particular was a regular on the turntables of 4ZZZ when I first moved to the city, and aside from being clunky and quirky in a way I'd never even though music could be, it tells its very ordinary story within the familiar setting of... Brisbane. This might sound like a small thing; it was anything but. Recognising places and references in The Go-Betweens’ songs completely changed the way I saw my city, and therefore myself.

[...]

I just want some affection
I don't want no hoochie-coochie mama
No back door woman
No Queen Street sex thing

[...]

I know this girl
This very special girl
And she works in a library, yeah
Standing there behind the counter
Willing to help
With all the problems that I encounter

Helps me find Hemingway
Helps me find Genet
Helps me find Brecht
Helps me find Chandler
Helps me find James Joyce
She always makes the right choice

[...]

And she stands there in the library
Like a nun in a church does
Like a nun in a church does
She stands there all alone
'Cos she gets me something that I
Just can't get now anywhere else
[...]

- from Karen

The Go-Betweens made Brisbane seem romantic. Or sound romantic, at least. The summery sounds of "Streets of Your Town"... well, those streets are the hilly, tree-lined ones of Bardon or Paddington to me. Streets of verandahed, decorative Queenslanders with tin window hoods, and mango trees in the backyards. Maybe a bright bougainvillea out of control down the side path. Those songs make me sentimental for a Brisbane that only exists occasionally.

For me, the early music of The Go-Betweens will always remind me of my late teens. When I first started to discover a musical world Out There, they sounded different to everything else and refreshingly so. Australian music came in two flavours in the Eighties—rock (cock) or rock (indie)— but the Go-Betweens bravely made gorgeous, sweet songs and were basically run out of the country for it. But they paid no attention to the rest of the world, they just kept doing their lovely thing and their music is still standing today because of it.

Grant McLennan and Robert Forster formed the Go-Betweens in 1977 after meeting as Arts students at the University of Queensland. Grant McLennan died this weekend just gone, aged just 48. Writing this in the Humanities library at UQ―quite possibly where the desirable Karen worked―has a particular poignancy.


* The "rain of falling cinders" refers to the small twists of black gunk that drift about in the sky when sugar cane is burnt prior to harvesting. Also known as Bundaberg snow. It leaves marks on the laundry hanging on the line. It's a very, very evocative image for anyone who grew up around sugar cane.

Squealing Fangirl

I *heart* Steve Cannane.




If you really need to ask, this and this should be explanation enough.


I also *heart* John Clarke, but that's another story.

Caution: Roadworks

I'll apologise in advance for the upcoming ugliness on Suburban Safari. I'm a little tired of this template, so I'm going to be fiddling around with a new one. To say that I'm not much of an expert at HTML is putting it very gently indeed, so I'll ask for your patience while I tinker with it over the next few weeks. Feedback more than welcome.

Theft and Criminal Damage

I almost forgot to follow up on this post.

I -- and Little Sister -- did indeed go along to see Peter Carey introduce his latest book to the literary folk of The Vegas, but it was not, as I reported, in the big auditorium with the diverting dome. That's the Main Auditorium. Forgive me.

The evening's proceedings gave me a good deal to reflect on. It's not enough to just write. The term 'writer' is a tad misleading in this way. In contrast to the solitary, bookish pursuit I consider writing to be, a published author must be able to get up on stage and entertain an audience as well. Not the theoretical audience, the potential audience you're vaguely aware of as you sit late at night scratching your pen across the paper, but a vast, fidgeting carpet of expectant and responsive faces. An actual audience. The likelihood of their wallets opening at the end of the show is dependant on the pizzazz with which you sell them the idea. It's not enough to have excellent prose; your pose has to have sparkle as well.

If this busking routine seems less than appealing to the writers out there -- and I know there's a few of you -- the dilemma is one that none of us here are likely to confront. While listening to first-time author, Nicholas Kyriacos, speak on Radio National last night, I learned that publishers only print one out of every thousand manuscripts of fiction they receive. For those who didn't quite catch that: one out of every thousand. So statistically, you only have a 0.1% of having the opportunity to gag with stage fright, trip over the microphone cable or have a joke fall flat at a reading of your own book. Quite comforting, in a way.

But let's return from that frankly disheartening digression to the reading of Theft - A Love Story. Peter Carey is hilarious. His reading of excerpts was so entertaining that it made me wonder why he's never recorded the audio versions himself. He seems to be that engaging mix of intelligent, well read, and down-to-earth. But of course he is. You can see it in his writing. Everyone else there could see it too -- the queue to purchase books snaked right down the aisle.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On to other matters. I've missed a few worthwhile photo opportunities of late, one of the more gripping ones yesterday. The image might have given valuable service as a caution to the fertile and libidinous among us. You see, I've always imagined that when someone starts to think that parenthood might be a good thing; this is the type of image that drifts, in soft focus, in their mind. The picture that I was too shocked/enraged/filled with dread to capture for eternity and beyond was that of two children frolicking merrily in the contents of an entire beanbag. In my lounge room. They'd ripped the bag open and had poured it all out, then set about kicking it into every cranny of the house. I defy anyone to come in after a day's work to find that and still think that a batch of cherry-cheeked cherubs could be in anyway a good thing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Edited to add: thanks to my financial advisor for exemplary numerical guidance.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Edited again to add: thanks to my financial adviser for exemplary orthographical guidance.