Überanalyst Antony Green’s guide to the 2007 federal election is now online. That is all. At ease.
Feeling flat? Blame Sydney!
Are you feeling as uninspired today as I am? Been like that all week? Perhaps it’s what I’m going to start calling “The Sydney Effect”.
OK, if you’re not in Sydney this won’t work for you. But today it’s not just me feeling flat. So is my office manager. So is The Other Andrew. So are most people I’ve spoken with on the phone — and email volume is definitely down today.
A few years back I was talking with a psychiatrist who’d practised all over the world, including Sydney, London, the US, Europe. He’d noticed that in every city, each day his clients would be in different moods depending on what’d been happening in their life. Every city, that is, except Sydney.
In Sydney, if his first client was depressed, then everyone else that day would be depressed too. If that first client was angry, so was everyone else.
He didn’t know why, he just knew that it happened.
Maybe I should run a test each morning. Phone someone at random, see what mood they’re in, and plan the rest of the day accordingly.
Neo-Con Dating Service
I guess if Julie Bishop won’t be my neo-con sex kitten, I’ll have to settle for Bill Maher’s Neo-Con Dating Service.
“Pirates?” Sheep, more like it!
Currently my Facebook status reads:
Stilgherrian is going to tell everyone who Talks Like A Pirate today that they’re a gullible unimaginative fuckwit of a sheep.
Mass-organised opportunities to “do something different”, like International Talk Like a Pirate Day, are just another way in which peer-pressure is deployed to make people conform to certain group behaviours. Yes, you can have fun in your life — but only this kind of fun. And only today.
And the rest of the time you can continue being a dutiful little cog in the machine.
Sorry, I’m capable of making my own fun. And I will decide what sort of fun I have in my life, and the circumstances in which I’ll have it.
And I certainly won’t put up with people exerting peer pressure, saying “X is wondering if Stilgherrian is a ‘Land Lubber’?” How dare you imply I’m behaving unacceptably just because I happen not to join your pathetic mob action.
Hyacinth’s Open Day
Not a bad view, eh? You can see why Janette Howard wouldn’t want to leave Kirribilli House!
Yesterday was the one day each spring when the doors are open to the punters. For $15 ($10 senior concession, with card) we can roam the gardens and take snapshots of each other admiring the views. And the fit men and women of the Australian Federal Police and the now-merged AFP Protective Service chat politely instead of shooting us.
Kirribilli House is a relatively modest twin-gabled residence in the Gothic picturesque style, dating from 1855. “It’s pretty crap,” complained one teenage lad. “The White House is better. But it’s the location I guess.”
In theory, the Prime Minister’s official residence is The Lodge in Canberra, not here. When, almost inevitably, Kevin Rudd is elected PM, will his family live here, or The Lodge?
[I also wrote about Kirribilli House for Crikey. It covers different material, and there’s a photo of the rude chap who dared wear a “Kevin 07” t-shirt.]
Contemporary art for sardines
“Just how many people can you pack into one tiny art gallery,” I wondered as I squeezed through At The Vanishing Point‘s winding displays to find a drink.
The launch of the inaugural Marrickville Contemporary Art Prize was an upbeat but slightly chaotic affair last night, with 61 works packed into a narrow gallery space and probably every contemporary artist in the village jammed into a narrow corridor trying to reach the dodgy chardonnay and too-few spring rolls being served in the back yard.