Archive for March, 2007
March 31, 2007 at 8:15 pm · tag/s : blog, sex, strange, web
the ABC reports that a proposal to introduce a .xxx domain has been rejected by ICANN. curiously it was not the porn industry that was behind the plan, but a couple of conservative us senators who thought that it would make porn easier to control - they reckon if they ban sexually charged (sic) content from established website domain names such as .gov, .com, .org, .net, and .edu it would prevent hapless Internet users from inadvertently stumbling onto sexually-explicit websites that they would prefer not to see.
this particular hapless internet user inadvertently stumbles onto lots of websites i would prefer not to see! can all those be herded into their own special domains too? i have some suggestions for the new domain names. what about .toy for all websites that have games and which are about games, .fla for flashy flash websites which take ages to load, .noi for noisy websites, .pop for websites that make annoying pop up windows? … um what else is there? .ads for sites with visually distracting banner ads? .rol for sites that have big graphics appear over the text you’re trying to read when you inadvertently roll over an ad?
meanwhile it is all happening over at sex.com :
thank god for free enterprise and freedom of expression
March 24, 2007 at 10:01 am · tag/s : australia, death, people
more than one aussie has been ribbing me this week following the loss of the netherlandic team of cricket minnows by 229 runs in their world cup match against australia - since then the event has become completely overshadowed by the murder of the pakistan coach following their loss against ireland - and no one is in the slightest bit interested that the men in orange booked their second ever world cup victory, against scotland - in an inspired and heroic move, the depressed and under-performing captain luke van troost (whose name coincidentally means solace or consolation) dropped himself for their final match in the tournament, with his replacement almost single-handedly destroying the scots batting
meanwhile, despite the win, van troost remains depressed, as do most people who have ever liked cricket, including the entertaining and articulate (if at times alarmingly right wing) commentator peter roebuck who, in the age today lyrically laments the passing of the innocence of a game in which
A bloke armed with a hunk of leather tries to hit three sticks protected by another fellow bearing a lump of wood.
ah if only it was that simple
March 23, 2007 at 5:43 am · tag/s : death, image, people, strange
i am struck by the pictures of the memorial service for rinie mulder, who was shot dead by police in one of my old stamping grounds ondiep, (which means shallow, not deep) in utrecht, the netherlands last week - in what looks more like a celebration of a victory of oranje (the netherlandic football team), balloons abound, and the mourners wear t-shirts with an image of the dead man.
March 20, 2007 at 7:40 pm · tag/s : australia, film
possibly the worst film ever made in australia (and there have been some stinkers!) is surely somersault by cate shortland (2004) - it is a complete mystery to me how it won so many awards - so sam worthington is ok in a blokey sort of way, and the decoder ring soundtrack is pretty good but best actress? abbie cornish may well be perfect as the next bond girl but she is completely out of her depth as “a young girl learning the differences between sex and love” (oh please!) in somersault - ok if you need a wistful looking blonde who doesn’t mind wipping off her gear in front of the camera, then she is your man - but if you are after someone who can sound convincing when she says : [insert heidi’s sudden and unlikely moment of insightful eloquence about 4/5ths of the way through the film here] you are in trouble
homeless lite the grauniad calls this unlikely cliché ridden story featuring lots of unsympathetic characters with almost no discernible motive for how they behave, for what they say and what they do - this rubbish took seven years to write? cate shortland dares to mention fassbinder’s immortal fear eats the soul and tim hunter’s river’s edge in the same breath? larry clark’s kids? i don’t feel well … your average home and away writer could pull something superior out of their arse during any normal working day and i couldn’t help but be reminded of tash in the episodes i have endured out of solidarity with my son
mind you i hope the nipple tweaker on this film received an award for doing a grand job : in the many scenes which feature cornish’s mammary glands, the perky pertness of their areolan aspect are evidence of a tweaker with their finger on the pulse
March 11, 2007 at 6:23 am · tag/s : doubt, reading, thinking
the quest for global interpretations and grand narratives is always a mistaken one, assuming a shapeliness in human affairs and a simplicity in human motivation never encountered in muddy actuality. nowadays no one much hankers for the panoramic view of where we all were and where we are all going, once offered by marxism or whiggism, or the more obscure and even less testable stories and metaphors psychoanalysts offer to explain our darker private obsessions. large theories may generate good questions but they produce poor answers. the historian’s task is to discover what happened in some actual past situations-what conflicting or confused intention produced what outcomes-not to produce large truths. the most enlightening historical generalisations tend to be those that hover sufficiently close to the ground to illuminate the contours and dynamics of intention and action in circumscribed circumstances. (21-22)
for what it’s worth, the budding psychoanalyst in me thinks that a psycho-therapist/analyst’s task would be not unlike that of the historian, which clendinnen so eloquently outlines above.
March 8, 2007 at 8:51 am · tag/s : music
Hamilton Leithauser can’t sing. Not that that’s a problem in today’s modern world if you want to make and record music. Look at Britney Spears. And it certainly doesn’t stop Hamilton Leithauser.
Hamilton Leithauser doesn’t play guitar very well either. Fortunately for Hamilton Leithauser, Paul Maroon, who is the principal guitarist in The Walkmen is a very, very good guitarist.
Hamiton Leithauser is not good looking. He has awful mousy brown hair. Milkman’s dog hair my father used to call it. And he should know : He had mousy brown hair himself.
So what is it that makes The Walkmen such an interesting and exciting band? This is the question I keep asking myself as I listen for the first time to their almost unlistenable third album A Hundred Miles Off. A relentless wall of impenetrable sound. Hamilton Leithauser screaming at the top of his voice. A thick soup of sound and half songs with mostly unintelligible lyrics and halting, stop-and-start-again rhythms.
And yet. And yet.
When I saw them play live at the Corner Hotel a few weeks ago, I had a similar experience.
Hamiton Leithauser has no stage presence. He just stands there in his jeans and his daggy brown jacket. Occasionally he takes his hand out of his pocket, and then puts it back in. Sometimes he takes a swig from one of the many bottles of beer on the stage. Sometimes he straps on a battered old Fender and plays a few chords on it. He looks extremely uncomfortable. And he keeps screaming into the microphone. Sometimes his voice becomes less forceful and Hamilton Leithauser half-talks half-sings, albeit in quite an atonal way. But he still looks as if he is shouting. His voice still sounds strained. He approaches the microphone as if he is worried it’s going to bite him.
And yet.
There are melodies there. Almost completely buried in the wall of sound. But they are there. You have to work to hear them, and when you think you’ve grabbed one, it slips away again, and or the song ends.
Hamilton Leithauser is going to lose his voice. There is no way human vocal cords can keep taking the kind of punishment Hamilton Leithauser is meting out to them. But I hope they hang in there for a while yet because there is something that keeps me coming back to those records again and again. The music of The Walkmen is not for the feint of heart. It is risky, edgy music, at the edge that is, of what is possible in rock music.
March 4, 2007 at 6:06 am · tag/s : doubt, pain, people, reading
A country is considered the more civilised the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak and a powerful one too powerful - If This Is A Man (1947)
reading primo levi’s survival in auschwitz (originally pulished in 1947 as if this is a man) - the amazing thing about reading levi is that, despite the fact that he is describing the most unimaginable horrors, he is not depressing - this is because of the humiltity of the man : he expects nothing, he does not waste time complaining about his situation, and he is not surprised or dismayed by people’s selfishness and cruelty.
and eventually, he always finds himself in a situation where another human being is kind to him, or to someone else. he describes these superhuman acts of selflessness with wonderful acuity yet simplicity. thus you always put the book down with a feeling of hope and wonder for what human beings are capable of, even in the midst of terrible suffering.
nevertheless, survivial in auschwitz is not the sort of book that you can pick up and read at anytime of the night or day. you need to be in a certain frame of mind for it. moments of reprieve, on the other hand, is a book by levi where he collects the stories of some of the men that helped him in his darkest hours. recommended for those times of doubt when you have lost all hope for the human race.
