Gah!

The Pretendies, according to Paul Kelly (writing in the most recent Monthly Magazine) are those humbling moments when performers' become self-conscious, transparent to their audience, their entire project laid bare as a feeble ruse. The audience might notice a slight change in tempo or feeling, or perhaps (hopefully) remain oblivious. And the musicians ham on, avoiding eye contact with one another, muddling through in an attempt to transcend the silliness of the proposition altogether. They are playing out The Pretendies.

Which brings me to the internet.

Wednesday saw us abundant in internet, Thursday a little less so: sometimes pages trickled in, other times not at all, and by Friday, we were completely out. On Saturday the telephone left us as well, along with 200 others in the district. Initially we were high on the revelation that 200 of our nearest neighbours had the phone on. Dress Circle! Euphoria quickly gave way to frustration.

Cellphones blazing, we called Telstra. Most people hate those automated phone answering services, but personally I think there's a place for them. For instance, there's no need for a sophisticated menu of misinterpreted options. It could go like this;

[Half hour on hold].....and then...

"Welcome to Telstra. I thought you said: "When will my wheelbarrow be back on? Is this correct? Go fuck yourself! Ha!"

Eventually, they told us to contact our local provider.

Our 'service provider' is Southern Phone, who although very nice, are not the Oompah Loompahs standing behind their large white utes emblazoned "Telstra" parked all over the road on the way into town.

The provision of utilities in Australia is a ruse, it's The Pretendies.

You see, there's one asset (for instance, electricity lines) but governments, high on the foetid smell of privatisation, simply can't help but overlay a number of organisational cartels attempting to 'deliver' these services in a "competitive" model. The trouble is, as anyone who has competed in the Tour de Mosgiel will tell you, competition requires more than one participant.

You know when your politicians are suffering from the public utility Pretendies. It looks like this;

"How many telephone providers are there?"

"Several, in order to ensure competition in the marketplace so as to ensure the best service and value for money to clients!"

"And how many phone networks are there?"

[faintly embarrassed] "Ah well, there's one..."

Right. We're getting the hang of this. Let's press on shall we? How many electricity grids?

"...Well one, there's one...but..."

Murray Darling River basins...?"

"Well, one again, but the competitive model will always provide the best service and value for money!"

Having one network with numerous providers tends to limit the supply/demand curve somewhat, so competitors are forced to devise inverse money-making schemes, where they attempt to provide the worst service, instead of the best.

The challenge is to find the provider who will screw you the least. So although Telstra might charge you your annual salary to connect to all their services, they can't charge you when they don't provide them.

The logic of this topsy-turvy market is comfortingly invisible until someone from the Council drives an excavator through the phone line down the road.

Our phone line went back on yesterday, but we had no internet. It had been disconnected. We called our internet provider (not Telstra) and were told it would cost almost $200 in reconnection fees.

This is the only way providers can make money - not by charging you for using their service, but by charging you for not using their service. And the only way they can get customers is by not charging you for not providing you with a service. Genius!

This is not an Australian phenomenon.

Several years ago, customers of Transpower New Zealand, the electricity provider on the West Coast, were treated to a new trick. Overdue bills normally attract a warning letter telling them of their likely disconnection date. West Coasters have a love/hate relationship with electricity (the Devil's Lightening) at the best of times. They're also frequently skint. Many householders with overdue bills simply accept their fate and pay for groceries instead.

Transpower charged these customers the standard disconnection fee ($200), and then reconnected and disconnected the power two or three more times during the night, charging the customers $200 fee each time.

Some people say it's treachery but I like to think of it as an entrepenuerial options market.

On getting the media, M. Jackson and the Farrah Flick.

I can't write a thing. Bloggers often continue with the pretense that they can still contribute to the body literate in their late stages of pregnancy, but let's face it, so often all they get to are banal rants about gender equity/body politics/health economics in birthing, until the whole thing inevitably degenerates into a shit-slinging match between "natural birthers" and "unnatural birthers".

I've only made one observation worthy of ink so far; the politics of birth is like an Olympic sport. There's an element of fierce competition involved, a slightly dogmatic, nose-breathing, toothsome one upmanship, all dressed up in touchy-feely language and...is that patchouli? Consider this quote from a webpage about pain relief for labouring women:

One way to think this through ahead of time is to consider how you have reacted in other situations. What is the greatest physical challenge that you have faced? If meeting challenges makes you feel good, natural childbirth may be for you.

Nope that's not me. I like to face physical challenges by hiding under the bed and weeing all over myself. Until now I was a little confused as to whether this made me a pathetic loser or not. So, thanks natural birth lobby, for clearing that up!

Now, where was I? Oh yes. Can't write anything for shit....fortunately the rest of the world got around this problem this week by penning glowing encomiums to Micheal Jackson.....

What have we learned from this, Mr Glitter? If you want to perform indecencies on small boys you are going to have to produce MUCH better music!

The demise of Ms Fawcett to anal cancer last week also captured my attention. I didn't know her either, but here's two words to be going on with:

Anal. Bleaching.

Look it up.

(I should have warned you this post would not get above the belt at any point).

Aside from that, my time is mostly taken up with lying on my right side, and then my left side. Then the right again. And peeing.

Also, I've been baking Afgans. No, I'm not working for the Department of Immigration. I mean the biscuits. The etymology is not completely unrelated though: the first batch showed up on the radar, received a lot of attention and then completely disappeared without much of an explanation. Keep an eye out on SBS for grainy aerial shots of floating cornflakes....

News.

And now for the local news:

Police have uncovered human remains in a shallow grave at Nelligen, west of Batemans Bay

Here's the euphemism of the day:

Around 9.30am that day, police, using cadaver dogs, discovered a gravesite near McCardys Creek Road.

Cadaver dogs? Sounds very professional. I wonder where one would procure a hound so well trained he can sniff out the remains of dead things. It can't be easy.

Show me a dog that walks straight past a 'cadaver' without so much as a twitchy whisker and I'll show you a dog that is full-up and finished rolling.

Possums!

Most people name their children in utero. We have been calling ours possum. People ask me why and I tell them it's a diminutive of her full name; The Intergalactic Future Possum, because we live on the South Coast, and this is what people like to imagine south coasters call their children. In fact, most people down here call their babies Dave like everyone else.

We actually named her Possum because having a baby is more or less like having a possum. At about four months there's a sort of inconclusive light frittering going on and you look at one another and ask;

What was that?

What?....Probably just a possum.

Nah. S'never been a possum in there before.

Could be. S'getting colder...

True. Oooh! You got that though didn't you?!

At five months:

There it is again! There's definitely something in there!

You're hallucinating again. Stop eating the things in the back of the fridge.

Yep. No. Definitely something in there. Could be a bird or something stuck in there I spose.

Possum.

And so it goes on until it becomes abundantly clear that you should have taken more care with the flashings.

Also, being good hippies, we liked the idea of naming children after the native flora and fauna, even taking trips to the Botanic Gardens to search for local names. The mushroom section was particularly fruitful, something I am sure young Possum Stinkhorn will appreciate later in her school career.

It's also important to get your possums started early in the important aspects of life.

Right from the beginning I've made sure the possum gets a good grounding in the oceanic arts, taking her surfing and kiteboarding. Many people will tell you that six months is about the limit for these activities, especially kitesurfing, as the harness no longer fits. This isn't, however, the main reason for quitting at six months. Australia did not get where it is today by making wetsuits that won't accommodate enormous, protruding guts. No, the short answer for quitting at six months is that it's very difficult to kitesurf without getting your sandwich damp.

As this wonderful journey comes to a close (sounding like a reality TV show) I can only pass on one piece of advice to those contemplating making possums of their own:

It's never the same as people tell you it will be. Mostly, it's better. Also, do not look up anything on Dr. Google. Ever.

Climate change, pah!

The winter nights are long and dark in Canberra. The politicians are out of cheese and peanuts and getting fractious. Notes are being passed around and there's far too much giggling down the back.

We're all bored to tears of alcopops, global warming and Peter Costello and his endless attention-seeking squirming and mugging. What the Australian media needs is a Story. A good, solid story with popular appeal. Cos Kev's an Aussie battler. Yet clearly the Australian public need more convincing than watching Mr Rudd explaining in perfect Mandarin to baffled Chinese bureacrats in the need for a 'pale-coloured or just' suck of something called a Sav.

What the media needs is a story about a ute. And then, when we get one, the entire news cycle breaks down.

Call me old fashioned, but I don't give a shit about Kevin's ute. For me, the government should be concerned with global warming and the economy. But no, one dodgy ute story and the real news topples into a gaggle of giggling journos.

It turns out, in fact, that there is some real news. Steve Fielding, the "Family First" senator, is effectively holding up the vote on the CPRS. Last night, the ABC crossed live to Canberra to Mr Fielding, who said:

"I've met with the government's Chief Scientist, and I am simply not convinced of the link between carbon emissions and global warming"

Typical. The day that someone has ALL the sets of hand-puppets out of the parliamentary library will always be the day the Christian nutjobs need something explained to them.

The thing is, Mr Fielding is right, there is a lot of conjecture about the details of global warming, and it's hard to delineate the precise effect of each unit of carbon on global temperature. This is because....it's the world. The world is Big. And very confusing. Ergo; Christians.

Last year, I worked on a research station on the Great Barrier Reef. It was very peaceful, not least of which because of the conspicous shortage of Family First Senators, who, having never actually seen the Great Barrier Reef, thankfully do not believe it exists.

It was there that I met my first climate change denier:

Our island had one hill. It's the same hill that Captain Cook climbed in desperation, after being successively thwarted by the Great Barrier Reef. Cook climbed to the top, surveyed his options, climbed down again and promptly sailed straight into a reef.

It's a lovely view though.

There's a small clearing at the beginning of the track, where we came upon a large, leaking Melbournian, collapsed in a terse opera of bulbous nose and armpit. Like Cook, he'd arrived at the island via glorified yacht. Unlike Cook, he didn't make it to the top of the mountain. We stopped to ask if he needed an operation and chatty and seamanlike banter followed. He asked about the research station on the island. We informed him that much of the station's research examines climate change.

Mr Melbourne drew his porsine, flaccid self up to the full height of his elbows and proudly declared that he was a "sceptic".

Climate change scepticism is a conceit I arrogantly attribute to some older people, who grew up in a time before the internet, before the means to critique patently silly ideas was widely available.

You see, the upside of the internet is that all ideas get an airing.

The downside, of course, is that all ideas get an airing.

This means there is room for conspiracy on the small scale, for instance, that the home-birth movement was set in motion by carpet-layers. However, large scale conspiracies tend to fall over. Like, say, communism. In other words, silly ideas proliferate on the small scale, but fail to reach consensus writ large.

So when heaps and heaps and HEAPS of people find themselves party to a broad-based, diverse agreement about something, it's generally got merit. To wit; climate change.

I wondered, as I surveyed this sweating sceptic, that perhaps his doubt is a good thing. After all, once a discourse reaches a degree of veracity it immediately begins to attract a proliferation of cranks, convinced of a left-wing bias, and a deep mistrust of vegetarians. Global warming sceptics, for instance, claim that many scientists are simply acquiesing to the orthodoxy, to fatten up their research grants, as if they wouldn't be making more money designing smaller stents for obese Melbournians.

I did enquire as to Mr Melbournian's sources. The Sun-Herald, apparently. Who knew the Sun-Herald had articles about something other than one-armed, bearded ladies giving birth to pot-plants?

All that said, here's one of the best websites about climate change. It's written by scientists - you know them, they're the ones who are selfishly applying for research grants that look like an invoice for the Australian Olympic team but with all the zeros smudged off.

http://www.realclimate.org/

I'm adding it to the sidebar so it can be ignored by a wider audience than it is currently.

Teev

It's winter and I am marooned by girth (otherwise known as about to have a baby). I have, therefore, felt the need to watch some seriously crappy television. And top of this list would have to be "Find my Family" which seems to be chokka block with people who really could do with staying lost.

Typical storyline goes something like this:

Earnest narrator: "Marianne is your typical Gold Coast Mum. She lives for her kids".

Marianne; "I live for me kids" [camera surveys selection of feral looking kids ranging from pock-marked, smoking teens down to scabby little monsters who look like their ears would fall off with a course of antibiotics.]

Narrator: "Marianne was born in Adelaide, to her Mum Julie, and Dad, Tony"

[Shot widens somewhat extensively to show Julie, smoke held high, shrieking at the kids]

Narrator: "Marianne's not seen her Dad since he moved interstate after being convicted of assault and battery, burglary, assault with a deadly weapon and unnaturally interfering with a dead body. But now Marianne is getting married and she just wants her Dad to walk her down the aisle...."

Marianne: (sobbing and dabbing delicately at a copious slick of snot and eyeliner) "It would sniff..mean so much...I haven't seen him since I was fifteen. He showed up and asked to borrow some money, and Mum's car. And I helped him dig a hole. He just said he loved me, and.... (dissolves into sobbing and sniffing)....I just (wailing) want him to walk me down the oiiiii-eeeelllllll!"

Cut to Marianne trying on her wedding dress and talking about the ceremony;

"We wanted a sort of medievil wedding, cos I'm Wicca" drags bodice of purple velvet and lace dress up to cover a recalcitrant fat roll as it lurches sideways, "Might have to lace that up a bit tighter ha ha ha!"

Narrator: "Marianne's fiance Jason is just as eager to meet her long lost Dad";

Jason (looking as comfortable as a man whose body is turning inside out, bum-first) "Yeah. Yep. Ahh. Yep"

Back to Marianne talking about her Dad: "It's where I got me red hair from" (runs finger down greasy skein of regrowth like tree rings) "There. See! That's kind of red. Or looks red, sometimes. In the sun you know?"

Marianne: "Yeah, I dunno. I mean, I asked Mum where he went but she just said he'd gone to Perth or something and we never saw him again.

Narrator: "Marianne's Dad, Tony, had in fact moved to Perth"

Tony (sweating profusely in the bright sun); "Yep, I just wanted to start over you know. Start a new loife. Get meself together you know, get my loife back together and make something of meself" (camera pans out to show Tony's caravan, greasy net curtains flapping out the windows, bare dirt scattered with rubbish and broken resin chairs.

"Yep, she's all mine" he says, flicking at the fag end of his rollie. "I got everything I need here. There's good people. I brew me own, you know. Got heaps of mates. It's good" A dog pauses in front of the step to retch up a small puddle of saliva and grass.

"Find My Family"...it's on tonight!

Windows up, Nigel

Current forecast...

Lessons in sensationalism from Fairfax

Here's the headline:

One in three could have Swine Flu

Oh my God! One in three Australians? That's heaps! I must start panic buying immediately! Quick! Pass me that packet of frozen prawn rolls!

But hang on, what the expert actually said was:

"I would say about one-third of the population has some sort of upper respiratory infection right now, but I can't say how many of those have swine flu,"

Not the Australian population either. The Victorian population. And we never liked them anyway, because they are filthy disease monkeys. After all, their health statistics speak for themselves. Consider, for instance, that 99 out of one hundred Victorians have mouths, and therefore up to 99% Victorians are overweight, smoke and drink to excess. Don't get me started on their teeth.

So far, 1515 Victorians have been diagnosed with Swine Flu. That's a whopping 0.03% of the Victorian population! Given that Swine Flu has been on the loose in Victoria for several news cycles, and its vector, incubation period are not completely unknown, one might expect a slightly more nuanced estimation of the number of Victorians with Swine Flu. You can continue to indulge in panic buying if the spirit moves you.

If the rate of infection has, in fact, suddenly jumped from 0.03% of the population to one-in-three, (in the last day or so) then we are looking at an infection rate that trumps cholera, the bubonic plague and AFL spectatorship. It's pretty unlikely that so many Victorians would fall ill with the same thing at the same time, short of a round of "floaties" in the water supply. And everyone knows that's Sydney's department, not Melbourne's.

Has everyone got their Crocs and sunhats?

Last year I was distressed over the increasing 'taming' of Burning Man, following an email from the organising committee. It asked for applicants with 'team skills, computer skills and the ability to multi-task'. I lamented the naffing-down of the festival, because to me, multitasking at BM should surely be the ability to 'hold a conversation/smoke spliff and give ****, whilst balancing on a gay fire breather wearing a tutu and being sprayed with a fine layer of treacle". Spreadsheeting should mean just that.

I was also criticised for calling the festival a 'mass stranding of titilation hungry, culturally disappointed Post-Everything Californians, trying to wear themselves smooth on one another in the desert'.

I'm standing by my claims though, because this year, it seems to be getting worse.

As 2009's organisational efforts gain speed, it seems the festival is getting even naffer. Surely, the chatty college-speak email is the harbinger of the Starbuckisation of filthy fuck-fests everywhere:

Greetings everybody, and welcome to the impending heart of June, wherein we dance ever closer to the magical surreality that is Black Rock City.  Hey, that was pretty poetic, huh?  How about that.

OK so anyway, here we are poking you in the eye again with yet another edition of the Jack Rabbit Speaks, once more chock-a-block full of the usual mad variety of interesting and valuable information bubbling around the ever-expanding culture and community of Burning Man.

OK so, has everyone got, like, their sunscreen and permission slips? Super-cool!

(I think I am getting old).

Gore

We are all familiar with the old adage that sport is a proxy for war. But really, sometimes I think the language takes the whole thing a bit far;

Pure massacre

Seahawks pound Pambula to powder
The Batemans Bay Seahawks showed the form that has won them the last two SCAFL premierships when they annihilated the Pambula Panthers 39.28.262 to 2.0.12 at Hanging Rock on Saturday.

Where does it end?

Saturday's match between the Tigers and the Sharks was an all out blood feud, but at the end of the day it was the Sharks who tore the limbs off their opponents and beat them to death with the wet ends. The Sharks had claimed they would flense their opponents, literally stripping them of their hair, skin and dignity. The Tigers, on the other hand, responded with a promise to eat the hearts and eyes of their opponents.

All 'big talk' aside, both teams pledged to donate the remains of their opponents to the local organ bank, in keeping with the spirit of the 'friendly'.

Speciation

It's very quiet in here....

Genetics is cool. One of the coolest things, though, is how the discovery of genetics is changing taxonomy. Before genetic science was nailed down (I'm talking the DNA stuff, not the Mendelian stuff) in the 1950's, people divided up all living things into groups based largely on their morphology; i.e: if it looks like a lizard, and tastes like a lizard..and it's giving the glad-eye to the other lizards.....

Biologists simply ran a keen eye over New Things, documenting all their weird and wonderful characteristics and then categorised them into Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species

Yet, as more and more critters are genetically tested, biologists are realising that some of their previous taxonomic distinctions were wrong. Sharing morphological characteristics, such as large, rodent teeth, a rotund frame and a poor sense of direction doesn't make me a wombat.

Similarly, in a surprising twist for the good people of Mosgiel, being able to eat an apple through a tennis racquet doesn't automatically make you famliy.

Moreover, it used to be that you only got your own category if you had something significantly different to the other critters in your group, for instance, the Tuatara (pictured above). In this case, you can look like a Lizard as much as you like, but if you keep creeping the other lizards out with that pariatal third-eye thing then you'll quickly find yourself alone in a Genus all by yourself. Lessons learned.

Biologists are also refining their ideas about the rate of genetic change. Before widespread genetic testing, people thought that creatures changed genetically and morphologically at roughly the same rate. But it isn't like that. Critters' little genetic codes could be mutating all over the place and you might not even notice. It's very passive-aggressive. This is what happens, for instance, in the case of very small, often isolated populations of animals. Again, there's a lot to be gleaned from an afternoon in Mosgiel.

There's no punch to this story: I'm not going to wow you with the knowledge that the Lesser Spotted Inkman's Turtle is actually a rare type of dishcloth. It's just that I've been reading about the debates over taxonomy in light of genetic testing and I tell you, there's a remarkable amount of shunting around going on. For instance, keen birdwatchers will of course be aware that genetic testing revealed the Great Egret, previously thought to be a type of heron, is more closely related to a separate genus (Ardea) altogether!!! Reshuffling ensued. (Moving on, no Egrets) etc.

The really cool thing is that there has been so little genetic testing that no one can even estimate the margin of error in the classificatory model yet. The whole lot might be shit. We might all be related Joseph Smith after all! Or Santa Christ!

Tired of your old classification? Change it! Everyone's doing it!

Someone's Dad got a new camera...

And generously loaned it! This is what you miss out on if you have a post-burrito nap.....

Nothing to see here, move along....


Yum! Things!


Disco pelican!


Bull rays at ten o'clock


Last but not least: Monster broccoli!

Cool stuff

"Can someone put Jarred out? I'm trying to sleep"

I know science reporting is hard, but really, when one of your main stories (on ABC news last night) is a glow in the dark mouse, then you have to provide more information than simply "it could help with human diseases".

I need to know more about the mechanism; how will it assist in the treatment of human diseases? Is glowing in the dark the result of a successful transfer of a particular type of gene, or perhaps they key lies in the gene itself, capitalising on the well established link between chronic disease and rave attendance? Or that the terminally ill are immensely cheered up by really cool glowing mice?

And I see that the scientists didn't stop with mice. There are now glow in the dark kitties too, which could be handy for those midnight toilet stops when there's no paper.

I feel a bit sorry for these species, some of whom have spent many thousands of years whittling away at their pesky "eat-me" genes only to be magically transformed into nature's nightlights. Evolution is an enduring, irrevocable natural process, like fish growing feet, or league players and group sex (Senior League Official: "It's like the tides").

If anyone has a glow in the dark mouse, though, can I have it?

Granted, it's a bunch of arse.....

Writing books is a tricky business, mostly because you have to divide your time between writing and starving. Some authors ease this dilemma by applying for grants.

I've never applied for a grant, but I've written a few books. Like starving, it's not a vocation to be taken seriously. I've been published but only academically/professionally. My 'real writing' is the stuff I enjoy, and so far this has been purely for my own amusement.

I like to write in a variety of styles, about a variety of things. I've written a book about hunting, surfing and fishing boats, and another one about the Higgs Boson. I don't write poetry. For me, writing about things helps me organise my thinking about the world around me in ways that I might find at least comprehensible, and at best amusing.

I'm not precious about my writing either. I've had a number of weird and wonderful experiences in my life and I like to write about them so other people can be entertained by them too, or at least learn how not to end up in Accident and Emergency looking very, very embarrassed.

Recently, a friend suggested that I apply for an upcoming writer's grant, so I could look into starving on a more committed basis. I thought, why not?

Here's why:

As I read up on the Australia Council (an arts funding body) I learned that;

"An Australia Council report in 2003, Don't Give up Your Day Job, found the number of professional writers had tripled in 20 years and one in four earned below the poverty line. The average income was $35,000 a year, but less than $5000 of that came from writing. It can be argued that writers should write books that sell, or change careers."

Worthy sentiments indeed. People should write books that others want to read. This doesn't mean they have to make lots of money. I've got no problem with subsidising literature as an art form - for me, it's simply worth it. Art is Good. Here's the thing though; the Australia Council appear to be complaining about the sort of writers applying for grants, that basically, they reflect the increasing institutionalisation of creative writing. It seems universities are producing a surfeit of academically trained authors.

"The board's 2004 report noted that "a number of writers were couching their project descriptions in bureaucratic or intellectual jargon rather than using (it) to demonstrate their conceptual and creative flair". That probably reflects the growing numbers from academic training."

You can spot these authors because they write books which are described as "explorations". Common explorations include grief, and/or femininity, and/or self-discovery. To my mind, if your 'exploration' doesn't involve mud/seasickness/formaldyhyde and/or the discovery of something with feet, then keep it to yourself.

On another note, I'm fascinated that people describe themselves as professional writers when they derive less than $5000 of their income from writing. Fundamentally positive thinking like this should be encouraged, and this unabashed boosterism is certainly something I will keep in mind in my new career as a professional surfer.

Anyway, back to the grant application...

I liked this grant because it seemed to fly in the face of the esoteric in-club of contemporary literature. It's specifically aimed at writers in regional Australia, and intended to help people write about life in Australia, the Australia that extends beyond the fourth floor of the English department at La Trobe university.

There's room, I think, for Australian literary fiction that appeals to a slightly wider audience. We, as readers, shouldn't be forced to choose between "...The turbid dimensions of love and loss across contexts of tradition, shame and syphillis", and "John Grisham".

The grant then, seemed to have laudable goals, something I reflected on as I downloaded the application form. Clearly, I spoke too soon, because on page two I was greeted with this question;

"Describe, in the space below, your proposal in detail, indicating its importance to your work and development as a writer."

And they wonder why they are beset with applications to write precious queer-fuckery about the shifting parameters of grief in a post-colonial context. This question is an intellectual tariff control; a border that separates the wheat from the post-docs. You have to know how to answer this question correctly (academically), but importantly, how to disguise your answer so you come across as some kind of astute ingenue. Authenticity is the key.

Here are some of my authentic responses to the question;

"Describe, in the space below, your proposal in detail, indicating its importance to your work and development as a writer."

1. I'd like to buy rice and beer to go with the oysters I'm stealing out of the lease in the river.

2. I'm not being clever, I'm just showing off

3. I'd like to develop my skills as an alcoholic shut-in, but I'm running short of cooking sherry

4. I'd like to become a fatuous bore with 'funky' glasses and stylishly unkempt hair. I need money for more gauzy skirts.

5. (and perhaps the most radical so far) I'm on the bones of my arse and I'd like to finish writing my book. Please give me money.

Post script:

Here is an excellent article in the New Yorker about the possibilities and futilities of creative writing courses, or, what it means to be an author....

Batty batty goodness

Nothing up my left sleeve...nothing up my right sleeve....

It’s not just the Quolls pulling the nocturnal naughties. Lately we’ve had a power cut every night. The culprits? Fruit bats. Personally I suspect the bat and Quolls are acting in concert: the Quolls wait till the lights go off and then sneak into the henhouse while the Girls are tripping over each other looking for the candles….

A few weeks ago I wrote about the Fruit Bats going beserk over the Gum blossom across the road from our house. I didn’t realise, at the time, how unusual this was. There’s never been a bat colony this far south in the Eurobodalla Shire before. In the past, our gum trees have blossomed largely unmolested. And then a couple of months ago, our trees were visited upon by hundreds of thousands of bats.

For weeks we marvelled at their number - thousands - flying overhead at dusk on their way to munch the trees in the bush beside the river. We wondered where they had come from. And then, a couple of weeks ago, we went to a garage sale five minutes from here. The winding suburban street is skirted by a small wetland. And there, right beside the trampolines and Pajeros, was the biggest bat colony I’ve ever seen. And I’ve been to Queensland. Every branch was utterly festooned with them, the entire Casuarina grove looked like it had had bats applied to it with an enormous spraygun. It was ten in the morning and the noise was deafening.

The bats aren’t doing much in the line of community relations; bat shit is fairly corrosive and they’re not shy about spreading it around. And then there’s the power cuts; a few days we got a letter from CountryEnergy apologising for all the interruptions. It seems they’ve had one or two phone calls. And there’s nothing sadder than watching the man with the Long Hooky Pole prodding a dilapidated, three day old bat carcass out of the power lines. The wet-sounding thud when it hits the ground is Kafka-esque.

Fruit bats live in colonies. And once they’ve found a good spot for a colony they settle in, returning each year to the exact same location to drink themselves silly on nectar and hang out with their fruitbat mates. This is why they do so well in Southern Queensland.

Perhaps the thing I find most surprising though, is that, for all the pissing and moaning, no one has mentioned the only real concern with bats; they are famous for their ability to spread zoonotic viruses, (which can be transmitted between humans and other animals). In this age of hysteria over Swine flu, it’s worth considering that bats are routinely fingered as the vector for outbreaks of emerging, deadly diseases, albeit in places the western media doesn't care about – like villages in south east Asia. Normally these illnesses require an intermediary animal – such as the Hendra virus (horses), before they can spread to humans. It’s a very small risk but that never stopped a good story, and I guess I’m surprised the press hasn’t seized on the opportunity for some just-add-facemasks hysteria.

It seems though, that the bat-feasting is coming to an end. The flocks of bats that were making their nightly pilgramage over our roof have thinned significantly. Until next year.

Sydney real estate: warning EXTREMELY GRAPHIC CONTENT

Sydney people love their dogs and the thing I love about dogs is that dogs really know how to disgrace themselves in public. But the part I like best is the mock horror of their owners.

The game is up people, we all know dogs are utterly feral. One of the main reasons people get dogs is to make them feel superior because at least they're not drinking out of the toilet bowl.

I find it amusing then, when I see people intervening in their dog's important business with mock horror;

Owner; "Oh, Rexie! Oh! (shocked disapproval) Oh! What do you think you're doing?! [display 'my dog has clearly forgotten himself' look at onlookers]

Rexie: "What do you mean, woman? I'm rolling in this nappy, just like I did on the back lawn with that one I got from the neighbour's rubbish yesterday. You know, right after I ate that poo off the front step...you remember..."

This is why I love the Eastern suburbs of Sydney. There's no pretense. The people make the dogs look good.

When I lived in South Coogee the highlight was not just that our street had its own phantom crapper (back lawns, front steps etc) but that one day the front step featured a neatly coiled turd topped, sundae style, by a tampon.

That's the Eastern suburbs right there.

The flu

Diary of the flu;

Day one; Hmm, am I getting a cold? Sore throat. We'll see how it is in the morning.

Day two; Or maybe my throat is still sore from that dream where Dad was backing the trailer off a cliff and giggling like a schoolgirl whilst I screamed warnings at him so loud my voice-box fell out onto the lawn at my feet. Yes, that'll be it.

Day three; rapid decline. Trailer clean off the cliff.

Day four; almost certain have Bird Flu or Swine Flu or Wombat flu or whatever it is those slutty little cloven-hooved bastards have this week. Yes, definitely Swine Flu.

Day five - sworn off cuddling swine altogether.

Quoll-loving

"And the chicken goes in this part here....."

Our neighbours have chooks. Or they used to. A few weeks ago, the chooks began disappearing, one by one. We ruled out desertion; their little house is modest, and perhaps a little on the brutalist side, but fundamentally, those chooks have it sweet; A nice run, shelter and, in the Atrium, an old sink for gutting flathead. Sometimes this area gets a little stinky, making the whole area highly reminiscient of the Big Brother House on the Gold Coast, in fact. Which is why we weren’t too surprised when one by one, chickens began disappearing.

First, they would go into the henhouse and close the door. Then, ten minutes later they’d emerge and skulk around for the rest of the afternoon wearing the poultry version of a very guilty look (which is hard to pick; sort of non-descript, a bit like….chicken)

As their numbers dropped from 12 to 9, and then to 4, foxes were fingered as the culprits. Foxes were introduced into polite society by the English who believed they were crucial to establishing an upper class. That is, foxes would one day propagate a healthy population of Rangerovers and very tall gumboots. Sadly, they just ate all the cool animals instead. And then moved onto the chickens.

I’ve got a very straightforward approach to both wildlife pests and reality TV participants, and so, it seems, does our neighbour, only he has a smallbore rifle.

As any fan of Big Brother will tell you, all the action happens at night. Each night there’d be a commotion of flapping and clucking, and in the morning…one less chicken….

Our neighbour is not a silly man. Studying the evidence he concluded it was not a fox stealing his chooks. It was Something Else. The NSW Parks fella was called in, bones were located and extensive forensic testing revealed that The Girls were being eaten by a Quoll. Quolls, you see, strip their quarry of all its flesh, leaving neatly polished middens of bones.

Quolls are marsuipials about the size of a large domestic cat. They have spots. There are six flavours of Quoll, each identifiable by different markings and a stronger accent as you go north. Down here have the sexiest sounding one – the Tiger Quoll.

Quolls are nocturnal and like to eat meat. Finding a Quoll doesn’t necessarily require an army of nervous chickens. You can simply stake out a carcass in the bush and place a baby monitor beside it. You and your guests recline inside by the fire, quoffing your glasses of Reisling and delicately savouring the cheese platter, and then, when the monitor goes off, you shoot down the back to hunker down in the wet leaf litter and watch a small animal with very bad breath go Breville on three day old roadkill. Our dinner parties are getting smaller.

Quolls used to be very common in this area, but now they are as rare as (neatly polished) hen’s teeth.

Back in the day before Australians answered the chicken/egg ‘what came first?’ question with ‘Woolworths’, many households had a chook run out the back. It was too much for the Quolls to resist and the result was an all out war against the Quolls. Interest in Quolls extended as far as the best methods for killing them. Their number declined rapidly.

The other main threat to Quolls are cats and dogs. Mike Archer, the former director of the Australian Museum once famously suggested that Quolls should be kept as domestic pets instead. But while it remains perfectly legal to keep a 400 kilo, highly strung, salivating pit-bull on a piece of string in your front yard, it remains illegal to keep ‘wild’ animals as pets.

Most Australians under the age of 50 have never seen a Quoll in the wild. This is a sad, given that their parents were probably drowning in them. It's been a quick decline for the Quolls. Quolls are listed as "vulnerable" (unless you are a chicken).

Here's another pic of a Tiger Quoll. Note, in particular, the cuteness emanating from his every furry pore.

Meanwhile, over in FemLand...

I read precious few blogs but I do read one called The Handmirror because it's about Women's Stuff in New Zealand, and generally seems to be written by people with very good brains.

Here's a post about an article on the recent NRL rape claims. I've just repeated some of the choice quotes here, because they are just so incredibly stunning.

Sadly some in league think the problem lies with the victims:
[Former Kiwi Hugh] McGahan went on to say the problem was a societal issue.

"This obviously goes on week in, week out, in the bars in New Zealand.

"Sports stars, musicians, actors, they are targeted. Sports stars have all been through the education process. When will the education process start with the young girls?"

...Former Kiwis coach Frank Endacott believes women approached players about previous liaisons "because they smell some money at the end of the rainbow".

He said players were warned about the impact of public and media scrutiny on their lives.

"There's a lot of temptation out there and you've just got to be aware of them."

Put this way, rape isn't a crime at all. A crime needs an offender and a victim. It's alarmingly simple and yet, these statements seem to invert this logic. Maybe League players are more easily confused than the rest of us.

Does being a League player excuse you from figuring out the basics? Should these guys be allowed to drive a car, for instance?

"Um, I parked in the middle lane of the F3 your honour, cos I dropped my sandwich, and then this guy in a blue car crashed into me. But he was the one moving eh. So, that's like, his fault"

Is there any consolation in the knowledge that these guys will ultimately all end up sitting on a bed in A&E having the "Food, Not Food" talk with one of the nurses.

Love

ABC National radio this morning interviewed American psychologist and author Gordon Livingston, about one of his books on love. Livingston was refreshingly straightforward. His advice is divided into three main parts, two of which simply denote people to avoid. Namely; narcissists and fools.

To begin with he instantly and wholeheartedly wrote off the entire undergraduate population of almost every Arts faculty in the western world (or, as the interviewer put it, the population of the Eastern suburbs of Sydney) as hopelessly self-involved drama queens. In fact, I struggled to think of anyone who hadn’t fit his ‘narcissist’ description from time to time.

His definition of self obsessed did strike me as perhaps a little Calvinist; i.e, have a bath more than once a month and you're hopelessly Emo. (It's a slippery slope). But as we all know, the key to good self help literature is the same as a good horoscope; keep the terms of reference broad enough to exclude yourself, but include all the freaks and arseholes you are forced to deal with on a daily basis.

I was still dubious about Livingston’s approach when he got to Section Two of 'People To Avoid': Fools. Apparently, we should avoid people who are:

“…contemptuous of the scientific method, who believe in fantastical things…who have strange and exclusionary political beliefs…I mean these are people who I would call foolish…they are fools.”

I realised that it is rare to hear such a straightforward assessment of irrational thinking – it is often discussed in terms of polemic vitriol, but here was a man, an American no less, talking about fruitcakery with an honest brutality that has become very unfashionable in the current era. And on the ABC – so often the last bastion of poorly defended wooly thinking.

Of course, his book is rubbish just like all the others, but at least he's got the right end of the stick on nutjobs.

A few days ago, I posted a pic of gold tablets you eat, but sometimes other nuggets show up in your turds. For instance, this journalist for the SMH has penned a cracker;

THE comments of one senior NRL representative player indicate how difficult it could be to change the sexual behaviour and attitudes of elite league players.

Sometimes, it's hard to be an NRL player....giving all your love to just one man...

"We already have so many rules: we can't drink on these days, we can't go to these places, now we can't have group sex. About the only thing we can do these days is go to club functions, and just hang around other players. That's just isolating us more from the rest of the world, and it could lead to even more violent acts."

Yep, don't fuck with us, cos we'll just get worse. We can't help it!

And then there's this:

"I do see what they're saying about risk; you just never know how a girl's going to react afterwards. You're not supposed to say it publicly, but everyone knows that if you're polite afterwards and pay her cab fare home you usually don't have any problems."

You see, it's not far from this comment to; it's OK for you and your mates to do what you like to a woman as long as you buy her a taxi ride home. I'm wondering if there's a sliding scale here;

Bum grope = Bourbon and Coke

Non consensual group sex = taxi ride

Glass in the face = new car-seat covers

I guess it's fitting that Johns bought his wife a house.

Naughtyness

Compare and contrast;

Matthew Johns and Tony Veitch. (Hint, it's not the suits)

Both men admitted to alleged acts of violence against women.
Veitch admitted he was violent toward his ex-partner, and Johns admitted he participated in a group-sex incident in which at least one woman went to the police and complained that she did not give consent.

Naughty.

NB. Perhaps this is a good moment to point out to the Australian media the difference between 'alleged rape' and 'group-sex'. Group sex, with consent, is perfectly legal and possibly even fun if you didn't have to do it with League players. 'Alleged rape' is not magically transformed into 'group-sex' in the absence of enough evidence to gain a conviction.

Now, back to the story;

Johns and Veitch are both sports media personalities. Neither has been convicted of a crime as yet. Here's the difference; Channel Nine dropped Johns from one of its flagship television programs (The Footy Show)* only three days after an ABC program detailing his involvement with the "non consensual group-sex incident".

Not only that, the NRL suspended him from coaching as well, claiming that League needs to clean up its act. The Melbourne Storm are at the public library right now checking out "Running into People and Counting to Six: Rugby League for Dummies"

Veitch on the other hand, kept his job for bloody ages, while the New Zealand media prognosticated over whether he should be dumped or not. He was eventually dropped, but not before an outpouring of support, and a few protestations from other small noisy media-men, such as Paul Holmes and Brendan Telfer. And now Veitch is back on SkyTv, mugging the sport, just like before.

I'm shocked that the NRL and Channel Nine have decided to dump Johns, but I'm pleased. The NRL in particular has been crapping on for ages about how League needs to 'clean up its act'. Meanwhile its players have continued to pinball through nightclubs all over Australia in a hailstorm of broken glasses and poorly directed diddles.

The main difference of course, is that Veitch will most likely be convicted shorlty and sentenced to incarceration in one of New Zealand's classier prisons, with hot and cold running group-sex.



*It's not about feet! I watched!

Eat more pills!

PrEP drugs are drugs that reduce the risk of HIV transmission. They are used to prevent the risk of mother to child transmission, or in cases of accidental needle-sticks. You get the picture...But there’s more to the story, as a recent New Scientist story* has just informed me. PrEP drugs are entering a new realm; they're being used as a prophylactic against the sexual transmission of HIV. That is, you take the drugs to decrease your chances of ‘catching’ HIV through unprotected sex.

Normally, these sorts of interventions fall into the category of harm minimisation - that is, allowing people to continue their harmful behaviour but with less risk. Harm minimisation is always fraught; it’s often criticised as condoning illegal behaviour. Harm minimisation generally assumes little change in the behaviour of those at risk – for instance, needle exchanges are often seen as condoning injecting drug use, but not substantially increasing drug use itself. The risk of exposure to Seriously Nasty Shit isn’t seen as a big motivator/deterrent in users’ behaviour.

The New Scientist article suggests that the effect of these PrEP drugs may extend further than harm minimisation. That is, PrEp drugs may increase the numbers of people having unprotected sex and therefore create a ‘revenge effect’, where the numbers of PrEP prevented cases are negated or outweighed by an increase in the overall rate of HIV infections. It all depends on the behaviour of those taking the drugs.

This article is presented as an exploration of the PrEp drug’s social implications. But, it needn’t be. Given enough information, the parameters of an infection ‘curve’ are predictable. Yet, the article is tantalisingly obtuse; it provides the risk of infection (the drug will cut risk of HIV tranmission by 3/4s) at the population level, but not the risk of infection at the site: that is, the risk of transmission through various forms of sex with an infected person (for instance, from memory I believe this is about one in 200 for vaginal penetration).

I can only imagine the New Scientist has deliberately ommitted this information in an effort to spark debate about who should have access to these drugs, when in fact, the conclusions are boringly straightforward. That is, epidemiologists simply work out the implications of a preventative drug on a given population, including its tipping points (for instance, herd protection) and make general recommendations on this basis. This is what those nice people at the WHO are doing in between rounds of WarCraft.

The only social ‘issue’ here is well-trammelled – that is, governments take disease projections and fund their public health arrangements accordingly. On top of this, those who can afford access to drugs like PrEP will always get them.

For me, the New Scientist article pivots on issues of gay men having sex, and comes dangerously close to tapping into people’s feelings about homosexuality, when in fact, this is a public health issue, a numbers game, if you will. Gay sex is not illegal in the US (where the story’s case study is situated), and so any debate about resulting HIV transmission should simply account for this as any other risk to human health and run the numbers accordingly. They can leave the poorly-veiled moralising alone....

Shades of tabloid journalism…I don’t like it.



*Called ‘Safer Sex in a Pill’

Yes please

Is this the ultimate form of art? Gold, an arbitrarily valuable commodity.....or perhaps another reading....gold made valuable by nothing other than scarcity..and there's nothing less scarce than a knob of shit! And then, on top of it all, the penultimate comment on consumption... you eat them! And it's not even conspicuous consumption, unless you've got an X-Ray machine in your living room!

So much mixing of metaphors, it's easy to overlook the fact that these little jobbies could potentially give you sparkly turds. This is not to be sneezed at.

Local knowledge

Often, journalists, researchers and social anthropologists muse about ways of getting at "local knowledge". How to get at the guts of a place? How to find the insights located at the intersecting laylines in the local social geography? Perhaps they are overlooking one obvious source:

Half an hour sifting through the "rejects" section of any local Vinnies reveals the throbbing pulse of Rural and Regional Australia, from the recent proliferation of handbag snatchers in West Moruya, (junkies) to the shifting patterns in bat migration in the Eurobodalla, (south-wards) to Jayden's main reasons for not wearing a jumper (because he is a little mongrel).

There's more gems at your local Vinnies than re-strung fitted sheets!