Stilgherrian » 2007 » April

Anzac Break

Stilgherrian — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 02:36:49 +0000

I’ve been away for a few days having… a break! Which is why things have been quiet here this week. More soon.

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John Howard ringtone: “Who do you trust?”

Stilgherrian — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 07:46:42 +0000

To go with the previously-released Paul Keating ringtone, Red Symons has now created a John Howard ringtone.

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Even better use of the medium: ’Pong!

Stilgherrian — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 10:00:35 +0000

How embarrassing. The image we posted yesterday wasn’t actually the photo which won ’Pong the prize. This one is.

’Pong has also updated his blog entry to include links to the other winners — though he’s too modest to mention that he also scored an honourable mention in the “Most collectible” category, which was won by that Billy Law bloke I’ve written about before and before that.

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End of the “War on Terror”?

Stilgherrian — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 09:54:57 +0000

British ministers and civil servants have decided to stop using the phrase “War on Terror.” Apparently it gives terrorists a “shared identity”, according to Hilary Benn, Britain’s Development Secretary, and strengthens disaffected groups by making them feel part of something “bigger.” How long will it take GWB and JWH to follow suit?

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Cho Seung Hui conspiracy loopiness

Stilgherrian — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 09:29:32 +0000

It’s a shame to waste this one down in the comments. Apparently Cho Seung Hui didn’t do it. It was all a cover-up by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, who hired mercenaries to do the killing and did a set-up to blame the Korean lad. Uhuh.

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Best use of the medium: ’Pong!

Stilgherrian — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 03:30:56 +0000

What a night! ’Pong wins a prize with implications far beyond its monetary value, we experience a fantastic seafood restaurant we’d previously ignored, and… well… I’ll tell you about The Rowdy Boys Incident in another post.

One of ’Pong’s images from Mardi Gras: The Slide Show (above) was judged “Best use of the medium” by Robert McFarlane, photography critic for the Sydney Morning Herald — a prize given for the work which best represented that which can only be conveyed through photography. [Update: Actually, it was another, very similar photo.]

McFarlane is a distinguished photographer in his own right, so while the field of contestants was small, this is a great honour. The prize pack was kinda nice too, including subscriptions to art & design magazine Lino and an iPod Nano.

But the highlight was ’Pong’s conversation with Dr Dick Quan (pictured at right) who, apart from being a decent GP, is a passionate collector of contemporary Australian and Asian art and, according to the art life, a tireless proselytizer of new talent and new forms and one of Sydney’s most influential visual arts people.

Dick — I’ll use his first name because I’ve known him as a GP for years — said ’Pong’s work is “sensational”, and he’d only chosen another photographer’s work as “most collectable” because he knew ’Pong would win something else. They’ll be talking further soon. The word “exhibition” was mentioned. Given Dick’s connections this can only be A Good Thing.

Expect to hear more about this over the coming weeks.

Not everyone was a fan, though. As ’Pong received his prize, the photo was projected on the big screen. A girl standing nearby blurted out in bogan tones, “Gawd what did that picture win for?”

I think she’s what you’d call a pictorial literalist.

[Update 23 April 2007: ’Pong's write-up of the night is online now too. What's really scary is that without comparing notes we both manage to start with the words "What a night!"]

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Lure Fish Cafe & Oyster Bar

Stilgherrian — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 03:30:15 +0000

I’d previously written off Lure Fish Cafe & Oyster Bar on Taylor Square as an over-priced fish’n'chip shop. Actually, they do fantastic things with seafood — I had the best swordfish steak ever, their marinade was magical — and their upstairs room is perfect for private functions. And they’re licensed.

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The Rowdy Boys Incident

Stilgherrian — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 03:30:03 +0000

’Pong and I are standing on the balcony at Sydney nightclub Arq, looking down at the continuing awards ceremony. Nearby someone asks whether the women currently on stage are “the lesbian singers” he’s seen before.

“What’s a lesbian singer?” I ponder aloud in a stage whisper. “Is that like a horse whisperer?”

’Pong glares, unimpressed. His energy levels are low, he’s not in the mood. My friend Nate, not exactly what you’d call the shy retiring type, has encouraged my heckling of the drag queens hosting the event, and ’Pong and Nate’s boyfriend Chris have both been uncomfortable.

Then another loud stage whisper emerges from a leather-clad bear standing on the other side. “No,” he says, “That would be a fish whisperer.”

The bear’s boyfriend’s eyes catch ’Pong and Chris, “Oh no, here we go again,” they seem to say. Strangers bond, wishing they could disown their partners.

Later, ’Pong takes me aside to explain that he’s exhausted, that he’s having trouble focussing on what he needs to do tonight. He’s trying to make a good impression on important people, and my rowdy mood isn’t appreciated.

And just as he finishes that speech, Nate bounces up my side, eyes wide with child-like excitement, proudly brandishing a bunch of green tickets. “Look! More free drink vouchers!”

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Access Card survey

Stilgherrian — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 01:26:40 +0000

Democrat Senator Natasha Stott-Despoja is conducting a survey on the proposed Access Card.

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Fundamentalism’s Pot and Kettle

Stilgherrian — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 01:22:51 +0000

Why does the US see the rise of fundamentalism in Pakistan as “dangerous”, while the rise of fundamentalism in America is a good thing? Pot. Kettle. Black.

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Escort agency for virgins

Stilgherrian — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 04:44:37 +0000

The Dutch have launched an escort service especially for virgins. Sociology student Zoe Vialet, who set it up, says most of them work in IT. “They are very sweet… but very scared… You better practice before having a girlfriend. Woman expect men older than 30 having had some experience.”

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Burnt out sofa, burnt out life

Stilgherrian — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 20:37:20 +0000

“Want to buy a sofa, going cheap?” Mike, the bloke sitting on the veranda, laughs — amused that the discarded furniture was torched. He’s annoyed they started the fire too close to the fence, though, scorching the paw paw plant that’s just starting to come into fruit.

Somehow the conversation turns to the weather-beaten old homeless guy who was camped out nearby most of this week, but who’s now been moved on. “Keith? Nah, he’s not into money,” Mike tells me. “He’s a millionaire though.” Come again?

Ten or fifteen years ago, Mike was in the queue behind Keith at the bank. “He had a bank book,” says Mike. “That’s old, I thought, so I had a bit of a sticky-beak over his shoulder — and the balance was $1.2 million!” Keith withdrew a thousand dollars in $50 notes that day, carefully folded them into tight little squares in the palm of his hand, and shuffled out into the street.

“I’ve seen him sitting there, on the nod,” says Mike, “and his hand has dropped open and there’s four or five hundred dollars in cash scattered on the ground. Anyone could just take it and he doesn’t care. Once I asked him if I could borrow two bucks ’cos I was short for a packet of smokes, and he opens his hand and shows me a bunch of notes and says take what you want. I can’t do that!”

Keith’s lived on the streets a very long time. His skin is brown and leathery. His hair and beard are a deeply knotted tangle. He sits motionless and silent for hours at a time, staring at nothing in particular. I don’t think Keith understands that he’s a millionaire.

[Names have been changed.]

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Web 2.0 design

Stilgherrian — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 20:37:06 +0000

What is “Web 2.0 design”? Is there such a thing? Before he explains how to do Web 2.0 design, Ben Hunt points out: “In sociological terms, movements impact people on many levels: economic, cultural, political, etc. Is skate-punk about entertainment and sport, music and the music industry, fashion, or the breakdown of society?”

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Good old unreliable Telstra

Stilgherrian — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 20:36:36 +0000

Last Wednesday 11 April, a Telstra chap called to discuss my telephone account. I happened to be at a client’s office so couldn’t talk, but told him Friday would be good to call because I’d be at my desk all day. That was last Friday. He hasn’t called. Which is a shame. Because I was wanting to tell him that Telstra’s crappy service and support was why I’d already moved my mobile phone to Vodafone and I’ll be moving my landlines away from Telstra as soon as I’d figured out how to do that and retain my phone numbers.

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The Ghost of Cho Seung-hui

Stilgherrian — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 07:12:29 +0000

Watch out. That weird foreign student in trenchcoat and shades. Does he ever talk to anyone? That’s suspicious. What’s he writing? A play about murder and rape? Arrest him. Now! Quick! Check everyone else! Get their psychology profiled! Watch them. Watch them closely!

Cho Seung-hui took a beautiful photo of his bullets and posed with his guns before he blew away 32 fellow humans — roughly a quarter of the number killed in Iraq by suicide bombs yesterday — and was presumably one seriously sick individual. But in that obese, self-centred tangle of hypocrisy that is America the reaction is, as usual, wrong…

At this point it’s compulsory to say that one is genuinely saddened by the deaths of 32 young people at the hands of a madman. You have to say that, otherwise people won’t allow you to analyse it any further. And yes, I am genuinely saddened. I’ve only ever dealt with one corpse in my life, unless you count cows and koi, and it wasn’t shredded by hollow-point ammunition. So I can’t imagine what it was like to experience that carnage.

But let’s look at what happens next… and here Guy Rundle’s piece in Crikey says it so well:

The ”question-mark kid” who spoke to virtually no one and walked around in wrap-around shades is… scarcely unknown in arts faculties, especially in creative writing courses. Yet, one presumes that from now on every underground weirdo in trenchcoat and dark glasses is going to feel the eye of suspicion upon them.

Which is a pity because I can think of at least two academics, one editor of a national newspaper opinion page, and a bloke who now owns three pizza shops who would fit that bill from my own gun-spree-free student days…

Is every teacher now going to be perpetually on the look-out for the next mass murderer in classes where students are encouraged to explore their imagination in whatever direction it goes?

Seung-hui’s violent play led to his tutor wondering whether she should call the police — yet as Rundle points out, the plot is essentially Hamlet:

The violent plot concerns a sexually overcharged family in which the family friend has killed the father in order to possess the mother, and the son is fuming with the thwarted desire to murder him…

The violent discourse echoes an earlier, funnier Shakespeare work Titus Andronicus in which the heroine has to write her murderer’s name in the sand with a stick held between her arms because the hero has cut out her tongue, eyes and hands.

Rundle makes obvious comparisons to the works of Quentin Tarantino and Woody Harrelson and a zillion chainsaw movies.

In Virginia, you don’t need a license to own or buy a guy, you don’t need safety training, and you’re limited to buying “just” one gun per month. This won’t change, because George W says we can’t restrict freedom.

As Rundle wraps up:

The means of the crime — over-the-counter pistols — will remain free while the fantasy — the free-play of the imagination — will become increasingly criminalised. This, as the second amendment notes, is to preserve freedom.

Ah, what a strange society! The freedom to build an arsenal capable of massacring an entire neighbourhood is enshrined in the Constitution. It’s fine to show a hundred gruesome deaths by gunfire on TV nightly — with slow-motion effects to turn the speeding bullet into a fetish. But the brief sight of a single healthy woman’s breast provokes national outrage.

God Bless America.

This morning the Sydney Morning Herald showed the faces of every casualty on the front page — and they weren’t even Australians, let alone from Sydney. Where are the faces of the 140 killed in Iraq yesterday? The 16,000 children who died of hunger-related causes today and every day this week, and every other week?