Kiwi back in Sydney!

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2010-06-09T09:33:00.002+10:00

This blog has moved to here:

Stinge part deux

2010-06-08T13:48:00.005+10:00

Hey, this isn't Dior!

Today is a Big Day in our household. It's not my daughter's birthday, first tooth or steps. No, today, I bought her a new item of clothing. A brand new, off the shelf, garment.

You see, as a rule, I don't buy new things. To my daughter, "new clothing" simply means 'previously unchartered skidmarks!' (Prada, are you listening?) In fact, I try not to buy second hand things that cost more than a dollar. I like to pretend I am some kind of principled middle class anti consumer, like these ten friends in San Francisco, who, in 2006, got famous by declaring they would not buy anything new for a whole year. You know, like almost the entire population of Sub Saharan Africa, Asia and large parts of South America. Alright,maybe I'm being too cynical. I mean, one of the women in the group stuck her rowing glasses back together with tape! Tape! (This isn't that new either, as Chinese boatmen have been taping their rowing glasses together since the dawn of time)

My stingyness has more in common with the second group mentioned above: skintness. But also, I've had a good long think about the value of things, and come to realise that the western world's 'Buy more shit or we're fucked' motto (there really is a tee shirt) of economic growth is just a bit lame. Add to that, I love scrounging and re-using things in weird ways. Alright, maybe I'm in the first camp as well as the second.

So more about scrounging....

Scrounging is an art more than a science. For instance, when faced with a mountain of second hand crap, you've got to get your eye in. Float like a seagull, sting like a bee, as they say. I look for interesting fabric, natural fibres, weird clothes, and antiquated, possibly medical devices that look like they require a strong stomach and a British enthusiasm for machine oil.

Apart from being an inveterate scrounger, there's another reason I've never had to buy clothes for my daughter. As any new parent will tell you, announcing a pregnancy sounds the avalanche horn to all those who have gone before you. Within a week you will be buried in football fields of clothing. It is truly brilliant.

Because, the reality is, babies don't need much more than a comfortable western adult already has; food, somewhere warm to sleep, and the odd preening toff to present ABC arts programs on the television.

Being on the scrounge has other advantages as well; You meet other scroungers. Our cot, for instance was the result of a phone call that went like this:

"Gidday, it's me. I'm up in Sydney, outside some hideous fucking mansion in Cronulla. They've chucked out a brand new, still-in-its-plastic cot. Probably had to assemble it. People are such retards. Shall I get it for you?"

These phone calls are the best because they assume that not only would we, A) like a new cot, but B) are the kind of people who can assemble one.

You can see then, that today's clothing purchase was a Big Deal.

In fact, it only came about because yesterday I took the endlessly patient Possum to the beach in the howling wind (see cute pic above) only to discover that not only was the zip on her salvaged jacket broken, it had fucking flowers on it. Thrown into a fit of Shakespearean rage I flung it back in the car and declared that I was going to buy her some new clothes.

And man is she cute in her new, slightly too large, Navy blue hoody, like a chubby little car thief. Awww.

women's business

2010-06-07T21:35:00.004+10:00

I know I shouldn't do this. I know it. But I can't help it. I read the Monthly. And this month's grim liturgy on the plummeting state of humanity deals with, wait for it, gendercide, brought to us by well respected author Anne Manne.

Gendercide refers to the selective sex abortion and infanticide that has resulted in "100 000 million missing women" according to Amartya Sen. In countries such as India and China (but not exclusively) boy babies are preferred for largely socio-economic reasons, an attitude entrenched in cultural norms and values. At the pointy end of poor village life, girl babies are at best undesirable, at worst, expendable, spelling catastrophic loss of status or future economic wellbeing.

Throughout her research, Monthly author Anne Manne is vexed by western silence over the issue,

"I was continually confronted by a mystery; how to explain the silence of the mainstream Western press in the face of the moral enormity of the story. In its own way, this was as shocking to me as the facts themselves"

Western media, ploise exploine.

Well. I'll give it a red hot go. The western media reflects western society: that is, a society squeamish about pointing the finger at countries who allow abortion. Although we in the west don't routinely gender test prior to abortions, we still perform hundreds of thousands of abortions each year. Last year 820,151 in the US alone. So we're equal opportunities aborters. You know, like the bumper sticker; "I fish, abort and vote"

But hey, at least we're not performing abortions for social reasons, like loss of status or future economic wellbeing.

Furthermore, feminists in the west have fought hard for access to safe, legal abortions. It seems trite for a feminist author such as Manne to to invoke anti-abortion sentiment in relation to poor Indian women, but advocate its acceptability for wealthy western women. It's no surprise to me the western media isn't touching that one with a pole.

I've got thoughts about the second issue in her article, infanticide, but it's late and I've already used up my daily quota of ABC style fuckspeak. Almost. I'm now going to explore what it means to be a curry in a post colonial pedagogy. A clue: it's more didactic with yoghurt.

Post Script.
This blog post reflects an inconsistency in the reporting of an issue; abortion. It does not reflect my personal opinions on abortion, which I keep to myself.

I say this for all who have left an Australian airport needing a shower.

2010-06-03T20:38:00.003+10:00

The planes!

It's not often i get surprised by the workings in parliament. But yesterday, the speeches included the reading of the Airports (On-Airport Activities Administration) Validation Bill 2010 Amendment. Swoon! Member for Makin, you had me at "Validation"!

The bill itself was aimed at rectifying an oversight in the legislation, invalidating over 100 000 parking fines at Australia's largest airports. It turns out that squeezing yourself into a shiny polyester pant-suit and Day-Glo vest is not enough to issue legal notices. Naturally, this strikes at the very foundation of Australian democracy, and so one might expect the resulting debate to be frothy. Because, as Mr Randall who followed the 'Member for Makin me Crazy' so delicately put it,

"The airports (On-Airport Activities Administration) Validation Bill 2010, while being technical in nature, gives me the opportunity to speak about the more substantial commercial nature of airports".

The members whipped through the details of the bill in about one sentence, and then went on to deliver a blistering assault on the monopolistic fleecing that awaits all comers to all Australia's airports. This is the kind of thing that makes question time worth the carpet.

Airports, of course, are a monopoly and the ACCC struggles to regulate their profit making regimes. When I say struggle, I mean it in the same way I struggle to keep on top of the washing. Pretty much waiting for it to do itself. I was, of course, intending to watch Channel Ten's exposing mini series about airport parking but it was banned in New South Wales, pending a court case. So, here's the juicy bits.

Airports make much out of parking, Melbourne especially. In fact,

In 2008-09 the five major airports generated around $278 million in combined revenue through airport car parking. This represents about 12 per cent of their total revenue. The highest car parking income generated was at Melbourne Airport, where$90 million or 20.5 per cent of total revenue raised was from car parking. It is estimated that Melbourne Airport makes about 75 per cent or $67 million of profit from its car parking operations. The 20.5 per cent compares with around eight per cent for Sydney, Perth and Adelaide airports.

So you're thinking: well, I guess the airport has to recover costs. I mean, maybe passenger numbers are up... or costs associated with running several hectares of bare tarmac are skyrocketing, not to mention the now infamous worldwide glut in cheek-hugging sweaty polyester pleat pants. Surely there's some explanation other than sheer, unadulterated greed.

According to a previous ACCC report, passenger numbers increased by 41 per cent since 2002, but parking revenues grew by 77 per cent, almost double.

Blatant, gleeful, scraping profiteering. Normally you have to tune into the State parliament for that.

I'll stop now. I've got trains that need spotting.

Winter

2010-06-02T15:52:00.003+10:00

It's winter. I keep meaning to write some poetic installment detailing the wonders of winter, but I can't. I just can't be arsed writing anything about anything at the moment. That's not true, actually. I've been writing short stories, and a thesis. And shopping lists to litter every available surface except my back pocket when I'm in town.

So, we've accepted that this post is about as poetic as Hansard*....here's a story about winter.

Things have changed in the last couple of weeks. We had some stormy weather, a lot of rain, and a general lack of enthusiasm about the outdoors. We've had the woodfired oven on every night, and most evenings I've baked a loaf of bread, and sometimes, just for good measure, the startings of an earth-ship as well.

I'm currently a little bit in love with rye flour. Rye flour is gluten free, which means you might have been treated to it in the form of delicious spicy pumpernickle or perhaps, less luckily, you've choked back a slice of gluten-free bread with ten cups of tea. Rye, you see, doesn't really develop, or rise, because it's the gluten in regular flour that gives bread its spring. The trick, therefore, is to mix rye flour with regular flour. Yum yum yum. I've been making loaves with plenty of caraway seeds and just enough neglect to allow the gloopy mixture to flourish. Bread, incidentally, is the ultimate recipe for winter. There's not an afternoon I haven't relished the idea of being allowed to rest in a warm place until I've doubled in size.

We've also been roasting fields-full of vegetables: pumpkin and potato out of the garden, parsnips from the local area, and plastic letters from off the door of the fridge. You know winter has really set in when you're slicing the thin rats-tail ends off the parsnips and affixing them to your temples for a jousting session. Just for the record.

The weather finally cleared yesterday, so the Possum and I spent the afternoon at the beach collecting all manner of exciting things that washed up in the high-water, like sticks and particularly tasty bits of seaweed - see, we're even hippies in our choice of choking hazards.

I think we all knew there was stormy weather on the way. Up until about a week ago the sea water was still beguilingly warm: normally it's turned cooler by now. Many afternoons saw big cumulus clouds roll in over the sea, as the land cooled off with the shortening afternoons. Tis the making of a good storm, that, I said, to no-one in particular. Two days after the rain had stopped the river was still as black as tea but I'm told these are good conditions for Brim. Unless you are a Brim.

The storms also brought a bit of wind, so the first fine day saw me out collecting a new batch of macadamia nuts and tying up the broad beans. And doing mountains of washing.

Today, a few days after the end of the stormy weather, the sea is still brown, only the second time I've seen it like this in the time I've lived here (a couple of years). The bush has dried out a bit, so you can go for a walk without being festooned in ticks, and it's clear, calm and cool, with that incredibly pungent scent of eucalyptus rising.

Makes me ache for a crippling mortgage, some air pollution and an angry confrontation in nose-to-tail traffic.

*Speaking of Hansard and the bedevilment of modern city living..... Today the House of Reps debated an exceedingly dull amendment to the administration of the something or other to do with airport parking tickets. And the member for mumble mumble seized the opportunity to launch a venomous attack on the wholesale cartel that is airport carparking. Who hasn't left Sydney airport needing a shower and a police report? Anyway, I am awaiting the details on Hansard, but here's the juice: Melbourne airport makes something like 78% of its profits from carparking. Perth and Sydney were in the range of 8-12% I seem to remember. 78%! Seldom do I hear an impassioned speech in parliament that leaves me so wholeheartedly fulfilled. Forget health reform, mining taxes and refugee policy, if you want to win votes, go for the crowd pleaser!

Weather

2010-06-01T18:32:00.002+10:00

The big news this week is the weather. It's been in the news. I know this, because my relatives have been calling from New Zealand to make sure we are still here. Storms, you see. Rain. Wind. That sort of thing.

Nothing highlights my existence as a foreigner like stormy weather. Because, venturing outaide at its height, I felt the vague urge to miss the number fucking 12 to Karori Park and wander over to the Rice Bowl burger bar for a greasy burger and some diarrhoea.

Two things;

2010-05-31T09:52:00.002+10:00

Darwin's parrots are staggering around like drunks, as this bemused ABC report illustrates. Oh, the puns!

Interestingly, the birds are assumed to be drunk, with seemingly no evidence to back this up. I am reminded of the last time a bunch of parrots started staggering around with neurological damage and falling out of trees.

Oh, the hilarity! Lead poisoning all round!

Fats

2010-05-29T08:08:00.005+10:00

The blancmange

Recently, a friend compiled a "what to expect when you are expecting" list, a sort of primer on having a baby, including what nappies to buy, and where it comes out. I note though, that reading her contribution on the intergiggle I am beset by targeted advertisements entreating me to 'get my body back after baby!'. I wonder how many women think; 'but it never went anywhere!'. Because if it had, say, biked to the shops, or popped off to the beach at a fast clip, then they might not be clicking on these advertisements.

Contrary to popular belief, the trick to a healthy body weight is, (shock) exactly the same as it was before you got pregnant. That is, match the calories in, to the calories out. And, I would add, follow Michael Pollan's advice: eat food, mostly plants, where food is 'something his grandparents would recognise as food' (I say 'his grandparents' because mine were Scottish, so if it didn't fall into the two main food groups of A) oats or, B) a handful of wet feathers, then it was probably a sin and best left to the Catholics.

To recap: Post baby, some exercise is a good thing if you want to use your body for something other than a large, fleshy lounge suite. For instance, I used to "do" running. (Doing running, by the way, is a middle class form of "actually running" where one is "actually being chased" by something) I am getting back into running slowly but surely, but I am getting there.

I think, therefore, my response to anyone tempted to click on the "Lose your baby belly in three easy steps!" how about, "lose your baby belly in about fifty eight million steps, some of them up a bit of a hill?"

Moral of the story: a bit of exercise might even be good for you.

Really?

2010-05-27T12:20:00.007+10:00

Does my chastity look fat in this?

Here's what I don't quite get. Many serious newspapers are publishing negative reviews of the new Sex and the City movie, filmed on location in Morocco. The film is being criticised for its insensitivity to Muslim women, Muslim men, feminism and carpet.

I for one, am shocked. Because I too was expecting some biting social commentary, perhaps a meaningful discourse on the Mid-East peace negotiations, the role of women in Iraqi politics, Hamas' mandate, or at the least, a discussion of arms trafficking out of Egypt. I mean, surely there's never been a more appropriate choice of protagonists: four vapid clothes horses with sex lives that put pollen in a strong breeze to shame. I mean, seriously, this pithy current affairs format is as old as journalism itself. I'll let George Negus take it from here:

'Tonight, on Dateline, we look into the gritty world of Islamic culture, one $1700 strappy sandal at a time'

Thank you, George, I'll be watching.

Bugger

2010-05-26T15:58:00.002+10:00

Who remembers those before-and-after mugshots of meth-heads that circulated around the intergiggle about a year ago? You know the ones, where mediocre people morphed into sallow cheeked ballistics gel models of their former selves. They stare bleakly into the middle distance, noses heading south, eyes more flatmates than friends.

Well, today I got a my drivers licence renewed. Imagine my surprise when the machine spat out my new card and I discovered that I too, had turned into a meth addict. Because every single time I get a new licence I think, well, the photo CAN'T be any worse than last time.

My last licence picture was so horrendous I only paid for one year, so I could have another crack at it when things improved. I'm blaming pregnancy. In the photo, my left eye is playing nicely but the right seems to have spotted something which may or may not be Cheezels. My hair, unbound from my huge sunglasses (forbidden in the picture) lunges out of the side of the picture like a grotesque fifth limb. I'm not making any bones about this, I'm as vain as fuck, and the idea that this picture could possibly accompany the by-line: "South Coast woman missing in supermarket carpark" was too much. After all, you want the search party to keep looking.

So this year, I thought things might improve. I sat still, looked where they wanted me to, and SNAP! there I am, third left from the bearded lady.

Music

2010-05-25T14:03:00.008+10:00

Living with a music person has had a volumable impact on my aural world, if not my spelling. It's made me realise how fickle music can be. Some music you love, and will continue to love, till death doth you in. You know the stuff, lose yourself, 'Mummy's busy, go play with the iron, darling' music.

And other music makes you want to shuck your own ears off in a hurry. FOr me, the late sixties is shakey ground, producing the kind of music you can only listen to if you imagine that every beat of that tamborine is connecting with the forehead of that wailing, doe-eyed white songstress with split-ends. The rise and rise of the macrame headband is no mystery to me.

And then there's the more quixotic love-hate stuff, where you start off thinking; 'Hey, this could have legs! And after a month you're thinking very dark thoughts indeed. Devendra Banhart, you smarmy hippy, I'm looking at you.

There's also music madness. I had no idea I was pregnant at all, until I heard the Dixie Chicks. Suddenly I was in some kind of low-slung, dirty, heart-rending rapture. Maybe it was simply nature's way of telling me I'd never get into my Daisy Dukes again. Thankfully, birth cured me.

This post is where I oppress you with my favourites which are standing the test of time. It's nowhere near an exhaustive list, just the tip-of-my-tongue favourites.

Top of the list is a compilation of Nyahbinghi* drumming referred to as the "Trojan Box Set". Sparse, melodic, beautiful. This is my fix-everything music. Next, there's Miles Davis, Kind of Blue. And oldy but proving to be a perennial goody. Then the Heliocentrics. And the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble.

You're unlikely to hear this stuff on the radio, so you'll at the end of each song you'll just have to imagine what a great interest-free deal on bedding and lounge suites you could be missing out on.

But they're worth it.

*Nyahbinghi, I am reliably informed, is a type of music, characteristic of the most something-or-other of rastafarianism. This information is best relayed from the afficionado to the neophyte with a sort of weary sigh.

teev

2010-05-23T08:04:00.004+10:00

Today's startling New Zealand news comes via Facebook. TVNZ has disgraced itself once again, for revealing the finalists in American Idol, during the ad break of the preceeding run-off.

"Who will it be, Tishauni'que-a, or Jake? Join us when we come back!"

[Cue music]

"Next time, on American Idol, Jake pisses in and tells Tishauni'que-a she's a fat talentless ho!"

TVNZ's trangression has caused something of an outcry amongst thrill-seeking New Zealanders, who claim that the station holds them, the viewers, in contempt. And I find my sympathies divided.

I too, have been known to hold American Idol viewers in contempt, with the zeal of the reformed. That's right, in between teeth-juddering earthquakes and bouts of meningicoccal disease, penurous winter nights in New Zealand can get a little dull. And it's more than once I've found myself bedazzled by those earnest young singers, teeth shining like rows of brand new applicances. So wholesome are they! Of course, the realist in me knows that backstage they're smoking bongs and wearing themselves smooth on one another, but, like little Annie, a misshappen ginga can dream.

So, this morning, I think I will take the big step, and 'like' the letter of protest to TVNZ.

Mmm parsnip

2010-05-19T17:44:00.004+10:00

And our special this evening is the 'Invercargill Delight'. Comes with a dirt garnish...

Nowadays, reading blogs is a dispensable luxury, right up there reading magazines, or wiping my bum. However, there is one blog I make an effort to check in on. Because it's DELICIOUS. And last week, One Hungry Chef gave us parsnip cake.

This recipe appeals to my repressed po-faced Presbytarian heritage (You're not getting any parsnip cake until you've finished all your sheep's eyes. Eat up! Or you'll get warts! In hell! etc."

Thing is, I love vegetable cakes, zucchini goes well with chocolate, as does chili, and carrot cake is brilliant.

Now, never let it be said I am a bad cook. I put in a lot of effort, and will often continue welding up a cake well after others have abandoned the effort. And growing up, my cooking benefited from two factors; a very competent foodie brother, and the gradual introduction of international cuisine into New Zealand's dubious culinary heritage, Italian especially. Kitchen conversations with my brother often went something like this:

Bro: "Is the pasta ready? Is it al dente?"

Me. "That depends. Al dente doesn't happen to be Italian for "burnt as fuck" is it?"

That said, things have improved. The oven isn't just for your car-keys. I am going to make this cake.

Art

2010-05-17T16:58:00.005+10:00

I've dismissed traditional boundaries of flicking and splattering as overly didactic.

Anyone who knows me knows I'm not given to artistic pursuits, unless you consider punk as artform, and even that got a bit tiring after I had a kid and realised that there's nothing clever or funny about wiping your bum on the curtains. Even if you've got blinds.

And anyway, punk is totally over-rated and derivative. Most punks have plastic dividers in their cutlery drawer like everyone else*

Recently though, I've had a bit of a rethink about art. I like making things, things that glow, shimmer, squish and hold warmth. I've decided to do more of it. I've decided I'm going to refer to myself as an artist. This means I can leave my car keys everywhere, and hopefully charge exhorbitant amounts for a smear of Vegemite and and a handful of sand.

Sadly though, I'm struggling with the language. ABC Arts informs me that I need to engage in a kind of verb/noun transmogrification. Because artists ask what it means to be Catholic/lesbian/a horse (unless you're a Catholic lesbian horse in which case, you can get a grant). Also, I have to ask questions about how we DO (pronounced DDOoooo with a breathy postern inflection) church. Or work. Or leisure. Or art. And when we've (it's the inclusive community grassroots round-up 'we') finished all this 'being' and 'doing' we can get busy queering everything that's left.

It's my own fault for watching ABC Arts.

*This, incidently, is the key determinant of punk. Why spend valuable minutes sorting cutlery into little piles? Well, as Claude Levi Strauss argued so elegantly, cutlery dividers separate more than just cutlery. They are homologous with the nature/nurture distinction, delineate the sacred from the profane, the nomothetic from the ideographic. Cutlery drawer dividers separate humans into two distinct groups: punks; and people who worry they'll open the drawer and be unable to identify a fork.

I've got an Etsy shop now....

2010-05-15T08:03:00.002+10:00

Because people were saying nice things about my weird stuff.

You can find me here

More crafty business

2010-05-14T13:43:00.002+10:00

And here's an old tee shirt, the cuffs of a pair of trackies, and bits of broken vintage zips, all in necklace form

And I also made these yesterday, from old jumpers

2010-05-14T09:54:00.001+10:00

I opened an Etsy account, so you can buy them if you want'em!

Parenthood

2010-05-11T18:05:00.004+10:00

One of the joys of parenthood is its unpredictability. Every day is a journey of discovery. For instance, today Edwina discovered that if she sits quietly while I am cooking dinner, I won't notice her tucking into the fresh pile of poo* sitting beside her.

Is this the end of our five star rating?

Incidentally, finding your child stripped to the waist and eating her own feces is a compelling recommendation for a complete Bear Grills ban.

*Her own. We poo on the lawn like adults.

Stinge

2010-05-10T15:02:00.005+10:00

Anyone who knows me knows I like to collect crap, ranging from cute, lovable vintage items of clothing, to a Toyota LiteAce.

Every now and then I like to harvest my crap for treasure. And make stuff out of it. Like, more crap. Here, I've made some jewelry out of vintage zippers. I turned the LiteAce into a slow motion coffin for two enthusiastic Canadian tourists.

UPDATE:

You can buy my earrings on Etsy if you want'em!

Psephology 101

2010-05-09T07:15:00.005+10:00

Democracies are brilliant, because they ensure that everyone's vote is equal. The British in fact, have run with this idea, and decided, in the spirit of egalitarianism, that all votes have been aggregated and the old left-right divisions gone. Because the lefties and righties are making a government.

It's like the campaigning said: the end of partisan politics! You should be happy!

Chardonnay socialist, chip-guzzling wide-boy or Pompous toff, your individual niche on the left-right spectrum, represented by your vote, has been cleverly slid towards the middle, as the Tories and Lib Dems fling away their silly political differences all in the name of naked power.

But at least no one voted for the centrist Labour party.

Containment

2010-05-09T06:59:00.005+10:00

"We need to say we're doing something"

"We are doing something. Biscuit?"

"No, no, something about the spill. People will expect it"

"We've got those booms"

"Yeah, but they look a bit scraggly, and wiggly and people are starting to notice that they don't work in a mild breeze. We want something solid, with straight lines, lots of metal, that kind of thing. Something more engineery"

"Hmm"

"Something really big and impressive. It's got to have a good name. Like a pipe-something, or tank-something. Let them know we're not fucking around with this thing"

"How about a massive pipe-tank..."

"Keep talking..."

"Yeah, and we're going to lower it onto the crack"

"It's a fissure. Or a rupture. Not a crack. Remember, this is dirty unreliable nature versus shiny clever, clean engineering, people. It's a leaking fissure. Biscuit anyone?"

"Thank you. These are good. I like the ones with the coconut. So we're going for a tank-pipe thing"

"A dome!"

"A dome! Pass that man a macaroon! I like it! A Dome!"

"OK a dome,"

"MASSIVE dome"

"Is it white?"

"Yes, and we are going to lower THE DOME to the sea floor and then place it over the leaking fissure"

"Can anyone do a good James Bond voice?"

Egocentrism

2010-05-06T18:26:00.003+10:00

According to the ABC, it's not the Lib Dems, the Tories, or some fringe Nationalist swingers holding the future of Britain in their hands, it's, wait for it, the Australians.

Yep, apparently the British election is shaping up to be so close that a handful of Australians could swing it. Because they're the only ones in the habit of voting.

You heard it here (in the car on the way to Woolies) first. It's not the postal voters, or the new immigrants, it's the Australians who will be pivotal to this turning point in British history.

It's like Gallipoli all over again.

Of course, I'm waiting for the three hour prime time BBC special to really feel out the ramifications of this HUGE development. Check back here regularly.

Eyewriter

2010-05-06T17:30:00.003+10:00

A couple of posts ago I mentioned eyewriter, the technology that helps paralysed people to create art. I said I had written about the technologies available to paralysed people. There's an excerpt here:

Skepticism

2010-05-04T17:43:00.005+10:00

Look behind you!

I don't get climate change skeptics. I met one the other night, and was reminded, once again, how being a skeptic is more than a political position, it's a facet of one's identity. You know you're in for an earful of insight when the discussion of climate change begins with,

'Well, I'm not a scientist....but'

Well, good, then let's begin with the basket-weaving aspects of climate change and work our way down from there.

Because climate change is a scientific theory. Denying it is tantamount to denying science. Now, don't get me wrong, I like a frank exchange of ideas as part of a robust debate. Climate change skeptics are part of the dinner party mix and I like to think of myself as a silver lining kind of person: I tried to sell my conversation partner an Abdominiser.

Unsuccessful, I retired to the wine. Because I've seen this movie before. There is nothing to be gained in engaging with it.

Nominating oneself as A Sceptic realises the desire to be thought of as a small group of particularly prescient people, people who know The Truth, while the rest of us shambling fools fall prey to the whims of those nefarious scientists. Moreover, this kind of paranoia feeds on a lack of comprehension about the progression of science.

Science is not linear. Discovery is led by observation, hypothesis, testing. It is far from an even, homogeneous process. Rather, it proceeds in fits and starts, with surges of consensus based on piecemeal research and contention, like the theories themselves; I'm thinking of punctuated equilibrium (biology), various network theories (engineering) and wolf-peaches and stupid-booties (quantum theory).

I'm always fascinated that science skeptics (for that is what I call them) don't demand the same level of homogeneity from the other sciences. A diagnosis of cancer, for instance, can being on a certain circumspection. And yet, the progression of medical science owes much to gleefully experimental clinicians with someone else to do their laundry.

Surgeons were getting busy with the hacksaws well before anyone witnessed the specific aetiology of gangrene at the molecular level. Of course, sometimes, they're just wrong. And sometimes there are unforeseen revenge effects: amputation is great for gangrene, but really throws off your balance in heavy traffic. But overall, the coincidence of the epidemiological and the aetiological leads to general consensus about the state of the art.

As the history of medicine tells us, start with the cutting, the drying comes later.

Yum

2010-05-03T14:05:00.003+10:00

There's nothing like a paddock full of capsicums to make you feel wealthy. These come from our friend Kirsty with The Farm. Once a week we go to The Farm and quietly harvest whatever the Diamond Python isn't curled up in.

Much respect to the python.

Now though, it's really the end of summer - which means the end of the capsicums.

My mother assures me that a deluge of vegetables on the turn is a special time for all women, a time when we attone for our sins by gathering together over boiling tubs of water for 'the sweat'. We plant ourselves amidships, backside-ballasted with a cup of tea and scone, ratbags clutching at our ankles and sing the traditional song:

"Don't do that, Mummy's busy, do you want a smack?"

All together now.

Faced with such a bounty I decided to make stuffed capsicums instead. And here they are.

These have rice, red onion, caraway seeds, mint, lemon zest, parsley, paprika, garlic, all topped with a good slosh of olive oil and profanity.

News roundup

2010-05-02T08:08:00.004+10:00

Is Malcolm Turnbull the hysterical glamour boy of Australian politics? One minute he's in, the next he's out. And how many times do we have to hear that his seat of Wentworth is the wealthiest in NSW (which frankly came as a surprise to me, as weve got a couch with a lot of coinage down the back of it, but I guess real wealth isn't measured in dust and hairclips).

And then there was the time Turnbull went all "I believe in Science" and found himself frozen out faster than if he'd chosen the wrong lip gloss. Finally, last night, on the ABC, there's thin-lipped Tony, squinting at the cameras and calling Mal "star power".

Is all forgiven?

Back to the news. Here's what gets our attention down here in the seventeenth poorest seat south of the Deua.

A few, nay many years ago, in the moderately tattered but still perfectly servicable seat of Wellington, I suffered a reversal that rendered me completely paralysed for months, which isn't as fun as it sounds. At some point I started writing a book about it (a hilarious romp through intensive care!). I researched communication techniques for the terminally fucked, such as letter recognition and looking sternly at things. I'll post the relevant chapter up on my other blog so you can read what I found out, but the point of this post is this new technology, called eyewriter.

It allows paralysed people to not only communicate, but to create art. It's not that the totally paralysed were previously restricted from producing art but it was the more kind of Tracey Emin style which only really appeals to British people. This new toy tracks their eye movements and makes various forms of art. It's an iterative improvement on existing communication technologies but it's still pretty cool.

And now, back to making Jedi Breakfast (Mmmm, Bananas and Mushed up Weetbix you shall have) and combing Kookaburra's hair.

Mommy-blogging

2010-04-27T11:56:00.004+10:00

Recently I started another blog on Wordpress and found myself on the Wordpress "selected blogs" homepage. I realise, once again, that the towering shame of the internets has to be 'Mommy blogging'.

Top of the list was the provocatively named 'Ten things the baby books wouldn't dare tell you'

Well! What could this seditious information possibly be? I mean, I have a baby, and I'm completely in the dark about it. I need a blog to tell me information! And here's one that is featured!

Top of this blog's list of what those nancy-pancy baby books won't tell you is that you'll pee off lots of fluid in the days following the birth, but that this DOES NOT MEAN you can fit back into your jeans. I scanned the text for hotlinks to Wikileaks.

I also learned that I wouldn't get any sleep, or be able to drink a cup of coffee in peace, and that I would begin to wear clothing that featured stains. I would also find myself talking about leaking breasts with complete strangers*.

It's like she's directly speaking into my soul. But in such an innocuously humourous way!

Sadly it seems childbirthing and babyhood is so fraught with conflicting opinions that many blogs are reduced to vapid zine-babble, lest Teh WIMMEN of the internets get offended.

For me, having a baby did involve many things the baby books didn't tell me, just like the list above, only most of my observations aren't solved' by learning how to work a washing machine. Mine are probably political, involving things like daycare, breastfeeding and the modern capitalist approach to childrearing.

Importantly though, I recognise that no-one gives a shit.

*Hot Tip! Avoid talking about your leaking breasts with strangers.

ANZAC day

2010-04-25T12:00:00.003+10:00

"On three, 'My old man's a dustman..."

It's ANZAC day and in celebrations around the country, we're being reminded, once again, that today is a time to reflect on abject misery, and its musical incarnation, the bagpipes. Nothing says; pause, reflect, and refrain from buying toilet paper, milk and frozen prawn rolls until 1pm like the sonorous wail of the bagpipes.

As a child, I lived in very, very windy Wellington, New Zealand. There are two housing options in Wellington: on the side of a steep hill or on the top of a steep hill. Option one involves peering angrily at mouldy weatherboards and wet washing.

My parents being the extravagant type, we went option two: atop the hill, a thrilling cross between suburban drudgery and a sky burial.

Further down the hill were shops, buses and people with a lot more hair. Also, the Botanic Gardens, which must be one of the jewels in Wellington's salt-encrusted crown.

The Bot Gardens features an amphitheatre, an art deco sound-shell fronted by a large lawn. On days deemed fine by the Scottish, the Royal Caledonian Tartan Ribboned Marching Dragoon would pull on their walk socks and hit the sound-shell for a blast on the pigskins.

Soon after, ghostly snatches of sound would drift up through the 40-knot mist, and my mother would suddenly bolt upright and cock her head to one side;

"Ah, the fitful complaining of the pipes!" she would gasp, stuffing us into our coats.

Bagpipes don't 'pipe' or 'harp' or 'sing'. They groan. Only the Scottish would preface a musical instrument with:

"I know! We'll fill a pig's bladder with air and then squeeze it out again!".

Of course, many instruments are made out of animal parts, but I struggle to think of any that would sound better if the donor was still alive.

It's no mystery to me why the bagpipes are the domain of the military and the police.

With that said, I'll let ANZAC day pass me by once again, commemorating the mythic event that galvanised Australia and New Zealand's 'nationhood' (no, Tony, sit down...), the First World War, when we realised that the Empire was feeling faintly embarrassed and had stopped returning our calls.

Norwest at the boat ramp tonight

2010-04-24T16:40:00.003+10:00

So then. You didn't go to Lake Eyre either?

Nahp.

Me neither. I don't reckon it's that good.

I know. Everyone went on and on about it.

There's a DVD.

Oh yeah, I saw that.

Yeah, didn't think I needed to see the flood that badly. And I've been once before. It's the kind of thing you've got to do once, you know

Yeah.

But, I dunno, I mean, it was good. But, it just seems like everyone thinks you just HAVE to go. And I've got a lot on, you know

I know.

Like, I've got tics. They don't just get nibbled by themselves. And if that makes me sound boring, the fuck it. I don't care.

Ooo! Fish guts!

Scatterbrained posts about random stuff

2010-04-24T10:56:00.004+10:00

Today's post begins with a famous experiment in social engineering and ends, fittingly, with vegetables.

In the late 1960's Jane Elliot, a school teacher in Idaho, set up an experiment in which one group of children with blue eyes were treated better than the other kids with brown eyes. Her intention was to make the children understand the experience of racism without having to get all black.

Separating people into groups with a view to manipulating them was a popular pastime in the 1960's. In a similar vein to Elliot, Yale Psychologist Stanley Milgram famously devised a series of tests to find out how one group of people could come to dominate and mistreat another, at the behest of an authority figure.

Turns out, people are shits.

Which brings me to this little device:

It's a drafting gate, to separate the stupid ugly sheep from the beautiful clever sheep. I've used a drafting gate and can confirm that the sheep in the first pen almost immediately begin staring malevolently at the sheep in the second, and can be found standing emphatically on the "eartag" button in the time it takes to go and make a sandwich.

It's not just sheep who benefit from a drafting gate. This is our greywater diverter.

It separates out vege water from sewer water, or grey water from blackwater. Most of the time our shower and handbasin water flows into absorption trenches built into the garden bed. We use normal soap, and garden friendly shampoo so the diverter stays switched to 'garden' most of the time. Except when visitors come to stay, whereupon we greet them at the door and question them closely about their personal hygiene habits. Oddly, we've not had a lot of call for the diverter.

Anyway, the upside is that the two sections of the garden atop the trenches are flourishing. We've planted Rainbow Chard, so called for its kaleidoscope of colours but also flavours, ranging from 'dead skin' to 'hair'.

And so ends today's random non sequiter blog post

News

2010-04-22T20:14:00.002+10:00

Tonight's prize has to go to Mr Abbott, the leader of the opposition, who got on the news and said:

"The insulation scandal is the single biggest mistake of a government in Australia's history"

Yep. Welcome to the group, Tony. Say hi everyone to Tony.

Seriously though, it's good that someone recognises the seriousness of the situation. A cynic might suggest that Mr Abbott is simply milking a government ballsup for his own political gain. This would be churlish. Should the Liberals win the election, I am assuming that their first point of business will be a fullsome and heartfelt apology, on the steps of parliament house, to those affected by one of the darkest chapters in Australia's history. I've already packed my picnic blanket.

Teev.

2010-04-20T08:23:00.003+10:00

I know I shouldn't watch Bear Grills but the teev is in the same room as the computer, and I have to keep up with my lively online social life.

Everytime I see Mr Grills I always think how great it would be to watch him come unstuck. And then he goes and ruins it.

Like last time he wolfed down a fistful of bugs I thought to myself: 'Wouldn't it be great if they gave him the shits, like they do with normal people". And then they did. It turns out that ideally you want the camera crew to eat them as well. Especially the sound guy.

Last night though, the extreme survivalist suffered another reversal: he was stung by a bee. But he valiantly fought on, even though; "...these kinds of allergic reactions can be really dangerous out here. Already my eyes are nearly swollen shut, making it almost impossible to make out the catering truck"

Give me Mr Grills for two hours. I'll think up something.

Le Bogois

2010-04-18T07:22:00.003+10:00

What's that? A face? I love faces! They're the best part!

Bogans are endlessly surprising, a riddle wrapped in an enigma, tightly wrapped in polar fleece. On Friday, I ventured out to the shops, and found myself pondering bogan imponderables once again. For instance, track-pants were invented for sport.

Parked outside the shop was a sagging white Commodore, festooned with nappies, bits of clothing, chip-bags and two shrink-wrapped, over-flowing young women, who were attempting to load their babies into pushchairs. I smiled at the little kids, who looked at me with a mixture of "Hey! You're funny!" and, "Wash me!"

I heard them enter the store. Bogans are identifiable by their distinctive cry; "If you don't shut up I'll smack the extra 'Y's out of your name!'

They shoved past an older woman, almost dislodging her walker. She stared after them.

Five minutes later and shopping torture complete, I walked out through the carpark and was admiring the fetching collection of stickers on the bogan commodore (Zero to diabetes in under 60 seconds!) when I noticed a pile of nappies scattered under it.

People are gross.

Junk

2010-04-16T07:07:00.005+10:00

"That's great, now just try to look comfortable...perhaps turn a little more away from the camera...further...fuuuurther...."

I live with a scavenger. Well actually, I live with two, but the second one is only interested in bits of hair and toast we've carelessly overlooked. The first one likes to collect records, and more than once I've found myself recruited to the job. My instructions are simple:

"Look for black people on the cover. Black people in headgear. Lots of feathers is best, but also tribal-space stuff".

It doesn't matter where you are: garage sale, op shop, church fete, the collection of discarded records is always remarkably homogenous.

More than just a collection of unlistenable music, though, the records represent a time-capsule, a social litmus paper of their time. It's hard to find black people in headgear, because the majority of of music produced was for a white audience.

This was the age of discrimination. Music was not a meritocracy, it was all about the Middle Aged White Man.

But despite this racist unfairness, there's also something refreshing about these records, produced before the music marketing juggernaut got out of control. Being named Gary, for instance, wasn't the stumbling block to stardom that it is today. On a related note, having the forearms of a gorilla didn't seem to hold you back either.

These were also the days before photo-shop. Back then, having your picture taken for the album cover seemed to involve getting your hair brushed a lot and then looking wistful (women), triumphant/horny (men). The art direction was non existent.

(Side One:
1. "Darling, It's me over here, smiling like a rapist.")

On a more serious note, the records teach us compelling lessons, lessons about tolerance and common humanity. For instance, there's the ubiquitous box of English and German drinking songs. The German records always feature a pointy-faced maniac in Lederhosen; the British records: an aging man dressed in a crotch-grazing nurse's smock, leering at the audience from atop a piano*.

How many wars have been fought because of we focused on the differences, and failed to see what we had in common? Too many.

The moral of the story is: Thank God the Jamaicans made their own record presses.

*NB: the Christmas albums are remarkably similar, only the costuming changes to "naughty elf". The piano-top, ball-kiss combo remains the same.

Autumn

2010-04-15T09:34:00.002+10:00

Has anyone seen my Llama? I had it here a minute ago...

It's autumn. I like it. I've been meaning to write more blog posts lately but things have been busy. So here's a random post about autumn. Thrill-seekers need not apply.

It's getting cooler, cooler at night especially. The mornings are more dewy than a politician's eyeball on Anzac day. The sea, however, is the warmest it will be all year. We've been swimming every day. Two days ago we even went 'surfing'. I'm not really sure that 'surfing' covers what we were doing, but it DID involve getting smacked in the face with a board. If we lived in Cronulla that'd be a proposal of marriage, so that's something.

Autumn brings on a fierce nesting impulse in me. I want to sew vegetables and pickle blankets. We've planted leeks, rainbow chard and brussel sprouts. I love Brussel sprouts. Apart from their sheer deliciousness, they also grow straight upwards on thick stalks, making them excellent for Morris dancing. Initially I was concerned I might be shunned but aging men wearing hankerchiefs on their heads are surprisingly open-minded.

We've got a new friend called Limpy The Magpie, who has discovered that houses with highchairs are a primo source of Good Stuff. Limpy, as his name suggests, got hit by a car. He has one thick leg, and one thin. Most of the time he keeps busy being a limerick.

I have more to add, including an experiment with Olives/Botulism, but I can hear someone grizzling my name.

On being a dedicated follower of fashion.

2010-04-08T14:22:00.005+10:00

Regular followers of this blog will know that I like to deal with the Big Issues. Like political wrangling and pre-election cycling stunts. However, just because it's not delivered town to town at the speed of Lycra on the FurtiveGonad-Express doesn't mean it's not news.

I got new shoes.

For me, this is really quite something. I haven't bought new shoes since 2006, I think. I try to buy all my clothes from op shops, but I can't bring myself to go near the shoes. Faced with a a looming mountain of foetid footwear I lose my moxy. Because this is Australia. It is hot in Australia, and I know that each and every pair of those babies has hosted a rosy pink foot slapping around in its own secret consomme. Just peering into the pile is enough. I know I am looking at a metric tennis court of tinea and Hoof-Slick*.

I'm told that shoes are the ultimate impulse buy, because women, no matter how fat, will always take the same size shoe. They just grind them into the ground faster. In this day and age, the shoe business has legs.

Shoes also tell us something about national averages.

Some women retain their glamour no matter what their age, something that is reflected in their shoes. Italian shoes, for instance, are lovely: delicate, shapely and improbably high, which hasn't described me since my early 20's. And while many people may struggle to even walk in these gloriously dainty little numbers, it's not uncommon to see Italian women wearing pinprick stilettos while smoking a cigarette and giving birth.

In contrast, the Scottish Flatlander is your more utilitarian foot. Pale, wide and prone to chilblains, my feet resemble two large plates of poorly cooked meat.

So when I find shoes that not only fit, but actually look kind of nice, I am stoked. It shouldn't come as a surprise that they are made out of wood.

You see, several years ago my Bestie Ursula urged me to buy some swedish clog-sandals, which she assured me would not only be the most comfortable shoes I had ever owned but would encourage me to wander around in places completely unsuited to wearing them. As usual, she was right.

And today, after three years of hard service, a new pair arrived, thanks to my visiting parents. And they are wonderful. I never, ever thought a pair of shoes would make my day. But lo.

*For readers of mainstream Australian journalism, this is enough sweat to fill forty gigVillion swimming pools, or Sydney Harbour four times over!!!.

Baffling

2010-04-04T20:49:00.004+10:00

I like reading the paper. Makes me feel grown up.. Sometimes though, it's a bit too grown up. Third-aged even. Perhaps a little senile. Perhaps, utterly fucking execrable. In between the semi-hysterical articles about Australia being overrun by boat people, there are opinion pieces. A challenge. Read the following excerpts and summarise their key messages in three sentences or less. Please.

The first comes from Susan Maushart, about maternity leave (as best I could gather):

And genuine ideological change is possible, especially when babies enter the picture. Before I had any children of my own, I saw child rearing as an idiosyncratic and somewhat unappetising "lifestyle choice" - like monogamy or, for that matter, menstruation. Pregnancy was a purely personal journey - a sort of Contiki Cruise to Catatonia - and from the point of view of mental health and wellbeing an outrageously risky one too. Paying people to come aboard made as much sense to me then as providing concession cards for a crapshoot.

Even 15 years ago, the idea that the choice to perpetuate the species served some larger purpose than the choice to, say, retain the leadership would have seemed as overblown to me as the image of the Opposition Leader in a pair of budgie smugglers. OK, it was Kim Beazley, so maybe that's not saying much.
But life, like a Jesuit education, can teach you some painful lessons. And I guess we've all learnt this year that a Tiger really can change his stripes, especially when a woman scorned is wielding the pitching wedge. I like to think that Abbott has finally turned his exquisitely wrought paternalism to a more productive end. Although personally, until I see the DNA tests, I'll remain a policy-change sceptic.

Here in the State of Excitement (and my dear, we are ridiculously dilated), the whole issue of maternity leave was given a new spin, or at any rate new punctuation - Maternity? Leave! - when Labor MP Rita Saffioti was recently barred from taking her eight-week-old daughter into the chamber. Archaic rules evidently classed baby Grace as an unwelcome parliamentary "stranger". I mean, really. With all the fuss, you'd think the kid was a grown woman already.

I'm not sure what's going on here. There's that's hilarious little pun about the SS Catatonia. And something about crapshoots? Long skirts and shuffleboard? Oh my sides. And then the one about Kim Beasley in budgie smugglers. And I'd only just recovered from the first ribald quip! Oh please! Stop. Really.

And then, just when we were reeling from that one-two, she hits us with the natural combo of Tiger Woods, a Jesuit education and the perfidious Mr Abbott all in one pithily mixed metaphor. The whole thing reads like a ladies school in-joke, guffaw guffaw, while they all slap one another on the back and rummage around in the bottom of each other's handbags.

But it turns out she's not the first journalist to attain life tenure at the Australian. The motoring section had another half-baked rambling monologue, in response to a "letter" from a "reader":

The second letter is from B. J. of Calder, Victoria. "I am interested in doing my bit for the environment. My friend has suggested a Toyota Prius, what do you recommend?"

Well B. J., there is only one choice. Mecum is auctioning a stretched 1934 Ford roadster with a highly modified 1932 Marmon V16 engine. Built over seven years, the Ford will exceed 400km/h. To ensure absolute fuel efficiency, owner Jack Bowser has installed three computer systems with all the technology being operated by a touchscreen monitor. Bowser is very conscious of fuel, being the grandson of the man who invented the petrol pump (or as it used to be called, the bowser).

There is a delicious symmetry here because Howard Marmon, who invented the engine and owned the car company of the same name, was the son of the man who helped invent white bread in the US. Marmon quite naturally thought engineering was more exciting than baking and by 1898 was creating V-shaped engines. While his cars were quite successful, when he decided to go up market with a big V16 the first global financial crisis struck and he and the family fortune went belly-up.

Anyway, when Bowser saw someone had crammed a Duesenberg straight-eight into a 1934 Ford, he decided to go two better and build one with a Marmon V16. He thinks the Ford is slightly faster than the Prius, but the fuel economy is probably not as good.

Well that's cleared things up. Seriously though, what are we to gain from this dribble? That the author has Google and he's not afraid to use it? That he knows the difference between a V16 and a scone?

The Australian: Worth the Woodchips.

On being a bit of a hippy

2010-04-01T07:55:00.003+11:00

Go little snowpeas, GO!

I didn't become a hippy overnight. It took at least three weeks.

In fact, I didn't even know I was a hippy until the heavily scented ladies at the checkout started staring at the merry thatch I liked to call hair, but which they might have described as worn-carpet-fondue. At the time I didn't think living in a van had particularly radical political connotations, but it seems that, to the average onlooker, it did. People made assumptions. Mostly they involved soap.

If you are under the age of 40 and can read, then living in a van smacks of alternate lifestyling. Perhaps you are a 'surfer'. Perhaps not. However, if your most prized possessions include a scratchy woolen poncho and a bulk bottle of 30/40, people will automatically conclude that you've renounced the trappings of a modern consumerist life. You're not a homeless dude. You have a Mac under the front seat. You are a type of hippy.

Like everything, the boundaries of hippydom are a bit blurry. But generally speaking, hippydom has become more mainstream. Poverty is still as unappealing as it's ever been. Environmental awareness, on the other hand, might just get you laid. As long as you don't renounce the soap.

For GenXer's, austerity is the new hypercolour. And with good reason. Between 1986 and 2007 house prices in Australia rose by 400%, while average incomes have risen just 120%. Living is expensive. An entire cohort of Australians is down to their last plasma screen TV.

In fact, austerity has become so entrenched it's becoming downright common to question the immanent wisdom of perpetual 'economic growth'. I, like many people my age, was brought up with the idea that increasing material affluence was the endless, inexhaustable panacea to all itchings of the soul. As grown ups, many of us began to see endless consumption as a hollow comfort. It's not that shopping and buying is bad, or painful (actually, it is painful: the music THE MUSIC), it's just that it's not as satisfying as, say, fame. Or notoriety. Or creativity. Think of all the people who edit free software. For free! FREE!

I've digressed. The point of all this rambling was to highlight some of the sexier thrills of semi-self sufficiency: Leeks.

I really like Leeks. Nothing puts me in a more romantic mood than planting out a row of seeds and then watching for signs of Smut, Downy Mildew, Pink Root and Neck Rot. And austerity has other kicks. There's a certain thrill to being on the scrounge, of sifting out weevils and collecting breadmakers off the side of the road. Of course, like anything, there are false economies: Homebrand cheese, carob and the DIY bikini wax (NB. duct-tape actually CANNOT be used for anything) are some of the pitfalls for early adopters. However, I think I can safely say that the realm of hippydom is looking fairly durable.

And with that, I'm off to go check on the veges.

Rape simulator

2010-03-31T14:29:00.004+11:00

A rape simulation computer game is being touted as an example of why we need to filter the internet. A representative from Rape Crisis asked the public to consider how rape victims would feel watching this game.

I guess it's a good point, but completely inconsistent with our daily lives.

For instance, the other night, I was watching MythBusters, which is publicly available on SBS, at a reasonable hour of the night. In this episode, the presenters were whooping it up as their ballistics-gel dummy was decapitated by a disintegrating truck tire. Ha ha! Let's see that again! He's really LOSING HIS HEAD! Ha ha ha!

A quick google search reveals numerous examples of drivers being killed by runaway or disintegrating truck tires. Sadly it's not that rare. And yet, we get to watch a completely uncensored, 'hilarious' re-enactment of this very event over and over on mainstream television.

In fact, this happens on Mythbusters all the time. If I had a dollar for every time I saw someone dismembered by a tub a cornstarch I'd be buying a new coffee machine right now.

If the government wants to sell me on censoring the internet, then they are going to have to do a better job.

Grr

2010-03-29T12:19:00.004+11:00

I'm rapidly losing patience with the New Scientist. I read it because I like to see exactly how the human species is irretrievably doomed. It's a bit depressing, and I can understand that this isn't the way to sell magazines. Recently, however, I've noticed a more popular editorial bent. To wit; numerous moonbat features about shit I couldn't care less about.

When I read the NS, I've got my moonbat filter set on 'fine'. For instance, normally I flick straight past articles featuring "God" or "obesity", both of which I am sure are cynically aimed at gaining a more significant readership.

For instance, a recent article provided two pages of semantic babble from an esteemed philosophy professor about miracles. The eye-catching, highlighted by-line said:

"Belief in miracles need not be inconsistent with an acceptance of science. Whether visions of Mary at Lourdes violate natural laws depends on how you define laws"

For instance, if by "laws", you mean: "bullshit", then Mary is a living, breathing human being, and a virgin to boot. I mean, really? Two pages and all the NS came up with was; It all depends on how you define it? Nice work there, people.

And as for obesity, well it won't come as a surprise to anyone that there's a significant readership to be gained in no-fault stories. Bored with faddish genetic explanations, it now turns out that obesity might be the result of a contagious virus.

Oh yes, scientific testing now suggests that you can catch obesity from touching inanimate objects, like a bowl of chili fries or every one of a six pack of Heineken. Stand by for the fractal explanation. Or an investigation into Tiger Woods' 'condition'*.

Yes. Our coffee machine is broken. If anyone out there has a high pressure coffee machine they want to get rid of then send me an email and I'll stop whinging. Actually, I probably won't stop whinging.

*NB If you are going to 'discover' a condition (such as, just for argument's sake, screwing pretty waitresses), for which you are seeking treatment, then it pays to keep it quiet in case someone else 'discovers' a treatment. Like your wife.

Science with a capital W

2010-03-26T08:22:00.005+11:00

Science programming has gradually been whittled down to two main themes: popular particle physics and popular anthropology. I know this because I watch SBS.

The definition of popular anthropology, is to assume that the whole mess is so confusing that the audience will have forgotten the previous eight television extravaganzas proving beyond all doubt that humans started off in Africa (hint; it's called the Out of Africa theory).

TV producers also assume that 'popular' anthropology is a by-word for 'never went to university'. It's not because you learn the unassailable truth about things at university (except NOT to eat souvlakis from the Union cafe).

No, what one learns at university is that generally accepted theories are generally accepted by more than just breathy English narrators on the Tele, innit. In fact, generally accepted theories must survive the scrutiny of a bunch of people who quite often have given up all sense of fashion, social interaction and polite hygiene in the search of 'the facts'.

Universities are often positioned in the media as containers of rambling lunatics who can't agree on a pair of sandals. Last night, I was informed that although the Out of Africa theory was generally accepted by 'academics', a group of Chinese researchers had another theory on human development.

In their theory, the Chinese were descended from a completely different line of humans. They even had wonky models of prehistoric humans, that demonstrated these unique people had branched off in the previously overlooked Plasticene era.

....45 minutes later, "The results are in. And they are not what were expected". In fact, it turns out, that despite random archeological tidbits, some fierce nationalism, the Chinese are in fact human. Well I'll be dipped in shit.

Popular physics shores up better. Because contemporary particle physics is only one step removed from the common man. Two of them, in fact, working the midnight till six shift at the local petrol station. Who hasn't sat worshipping a bong and come up with insights such as:

"Nah, it's like there's matter, right, but then there's the opposite of matter"

"Which is nothing."

"Yeah. but nah, it's like nothing, but it's still related to nothing. So it's like there's a hole where the nothing should be, but it isn't"

"Oh yeah"

"Uh huh. Sweet"

"I'm calling it dark matter"

Thank you SBS

From the Greymouth Evening Star

2010-03-26T08:17:00.002+11:00

Last night I was thinking about writing a blog post, but it turned out that my brain had atrophied and dropped out my ear, leaving nothing but some dust and a bit of hair. And then my brother sent me a link to a little article in our old local hometown paper:

Pool temperature dropped to stop 'Code Browns"

Thursday, 25 March 2010 By TUI BROMLEY

The Grey District Council has lowered the temperature in the Greymouth Aquatic Centre’s learners pool in the hope that it might reduce the number of “code brown” incidents. Support services manager Kevin Beams said the frequency of “little accidents” was posing problems for pool staff and patrons, and had to be reduced. It had been suggested that the learners pool was so warm and inviting that children were staying in much longer than they would at other facilities. The temperature had been lowered by half a degree as an experiment to see if it alleviated the problem. “In a way we are victims of our own success. “Because we have a coal fired boiler we are able to run the pools at higher temperatures than pools heated by electricity and that results in patrons spending more time in the water,” Mr Beams said. “The learners pool will still be over 30degC.” The learners pool has been closed on average for four hours each weekend at great inconvenience and annoyance to people who arrive at the complex expecting it to be open. “We can’t warn people before they leave home so we try to stop them when we see them unloading their buggies in the car park but staff also have to deal with angry mums at the counter,” Mr Beams said. “This is a management experiment that we hope might help.”

New York Times, eat your heart out.

Short and Curly

2010-03-22T12:49:00.001+11:00

I like to write short stories about random things. They aren't like my blog stories. I started a blog here and I will be putting up one short story every month or so. Maybe more. Maybe less. There's a link on the sidebar to my new blog.

Safety

2010-03-21T12:34:00.001+11:00

Children's Carseat, 2010 model, (NZ Standards Authority #749)

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that today's kids are a bunch of over-pampered whiners. When they're not avoiding melanomas they're enjoying organic cheeses or playing another round of BrainSurgery on their IPhone app.

Nostalgerising over days gone by seems a popular past time in parenting media. A recent letter to the SMH's Good Weekend magazine mourned children's loss of freedoms, such as peeling blisters off their noses or being thrown bodily out of car windows on sharp corners.

I can sympathise: In my day, travel was all about safety in numbers: The car stuffed so tightly with pink little bodies there was no-where to go in a smash - the whole block moved as one. My uncle's pale blue Belmont resembled a tin of spam with mags.

It's not that people didn't care about safety in cars. Some enterprising manufacturers even capitalised on child safety, taking their needs into consideration (Who could forget Holden's "Putting the "LOVE" in your "GLOVEbox" campaign of the mid 70's?).

Gradually, though, even late adopters (bogans) realised the safety benefits of strapping small children in, preventing the little tykes from tumbling around the footwell under the pedals, or worse, getting into your smokes. My mother tells a wonderful tale of my ballet teacher, who would drive to Taranaki breastfeeding with one hand and smoking with the other.

Yep, today's nervous Nellies really are over the top.

Nowadays children are restrained like a cross between formula One drivers and Hannibal Lector: a seventeen point harness and full body mold.

And I for one, have decided I approve. I like that people freak out about their kids. I like that they worry about what they eat, what they play, and how often they set one another on fire (more than once a week and it's a new daycare centre for little Johnny).

Shame we don't seem to give a shit about leaving them a planet worth living in.

Movies

2010-03-16T18:17:00.002+11:00

My dirty secret:

I didn't like Avatar. I didn't hate it, either. Hating it would have been better. I just thought it was naff. A bit boring, even.

True, I didn't follow the advice of the rapt enthusiasts and view it projected onto the ceiling of the La Silla observatory, whilst wearing specially honed opti-plates sheared from base-noble miscenium glass. I just watched it the good old fashioned honest way: stolen off the internet, then copied into a DVD, then scratched a bit.

I thought it was formulaic. For instance, when the natives start arguing at the beginning of the "take me to your leader" scene, it didn't seem to matter that the subtitles were in Cyrillic. I knew what they were saying. I've seen it before. Just not in Not-Russian.

You see, there's an American military operation on another planet where they are trying to mine for something-or-other. The main character is a boofhead. There's a straight-toothed, mouthy chick in a Stanford sweater. She's got a great solar-rad tan. But get this; the overconfident jock meets a native woman and begins to fall for her, eventually learning to respect her way of life as long as she's not a Mexican.

At least I think this is how it went, I went to bed.

On the other hand. Dr. Parnussus Imaginarium (another recent watch) was BRILLIANT. Note to aspiring directors: Getting Heath Ledger to die in the middle of your film really keeps things moving. (Batman was much better than anticipated, and Dr Pertussis was a real treat to the imaginationally challenged.)

This film is weird and kooky, but importantly, there's something about the bizarre-ness that spooks you. The malevolence is pitch-perfect: it's nightmare territory, but not nightmare in the Hollywood sense, where some badly made-up guy comes banging on your door with a chainsaw...

....it's real nightmare material: where you've got a deep sense of unease about the gondola you are on, but the butterflies are pretty, and then you go through another door and your pyjamas have turned into a car-load of Labradors, and they key to every event that takes place is the plastic knocker off the zylophone that you're sure you lost down the back of the couch, but all you can find is wet chips. And the further you jam your arm down the back of the couch, the less zylophone knocker there is...until.......

Anyway. That's my advice. That, and swimming in the sea. It's the warmest it will be all year. Like a bath but with dolphins. A big dolphiny bath.

Training

2010-03-08T16:06:00.006+11:00

Good morning everyone. Good morning. Thank you......I'm waiting. Yeeees. Thank you. Right, let's get to it.

Today's lesson is on being in opposition. Being in opposition means you oppose the other guy. Tony! Stop doing Kevin's hair for a moment and pay attention.

Here are two examples;

The Prime Minister finally announces a program that acknowledges and addresses the problems with public healthcare in Australia. Tony, what should you say?

"Um, 'Look, Kevin Rudd is just announcing a program that acknowledges and addresses the problems with public healthcare in Australia before the election'?"

Tony you might want to come and sit up the front.

Right, onto you, Kevin. Kevin! Look at me! Alright. Now, imagine your government has introduced a scheme to insulate all Australian houses, but some of the contractors are a bit dodgy. This one's mutli-choice, Kevin. I know you like multi-choice. Should you:

A) Explain that the contractors did not follow the appropriate codes of practice. Explain that your government will seek advice on the relevant codes of practice and alter them if and where necessary. Repeat 'codes of practice' in a monotone to anyone who will listen until they go away.

B) Claim that you and Peter have both been clambering around inside ceilings for the last six months and you're very, very sorry.

Kevin. You're looking a bit blank. Perhaps you'd like to come and sit up here with Tony?

OK, the last question is for Tony. It's about not ending up on Mediawatch.

Tony, when you are squatting in a humpy with an elderly Aboriginal man, and happened to find yourself being interviewed by the ABC, it's considered prudent to let your host speak for himself, rather than shouting; "So you say you live like this all the time" at the cameras.

'But, he was actually saying "Fuck off, you sunburnt wingnut, what did your government ever do for me?"

Alright. The two of you. Wait for me outside! And Tony, for the love of God, don't wander off, I don't want to have to take your badges off you.

Bread

2010-03-05T12:09:00.004+11:00

I've been watching Matthew Evan's Gourmet Farmer on SBS. I like watching people struggle about in mud. Reminds me of home.

Last night's show was about, amongst other things, making sourdough bread.

I had a crack at making my own sourdough last year. I grew a local starter and then sweated over numerous loaves with varying degrees of success. Then pregnancy set in and my enthusiasm for mouldering jars of gloop waned. But watching perfectly formed loaves emerge from a Tasmanian kiln last night was too much.

I've decided to give it another go.

Making a starter is as easy as leaving a jar of flour and water on the windowsill. I've had such good success with my cups-of-tea and apple-core starters that I reckon this one should work too.

I'll keep you up to date. It's edge of your seat stuff.

Autumn

2010-03-02T13:58:00.005+11:00

I like Autumn. The nights start to cool down and the garden starts to show something for the rain. The first little skerricks of blossom turn up on the gum trees and the days are noticably shorter. Coriander starts to poke through again, and the rocket, seared off by the summer heat, is once again a burgeoning forest.

All summer long the garden has charged away producing mountains of zucchinis, tomatoes, carrots, beans, chilis and everything in between. But it's time for the end of summer campaign!

Twice a year our garden gets a big overhaul. At the beginning of summer we fertilise the soil and plant out all the things we should have planted out three weeks previously. Then, in the autumn, we give the whole garden a Stalin-esque make-over.

I jumped the gun a few weeks ago and planted a couple of cohorts of snow peas, but yesterday was the big plant: broccoli, brussel sprouts (Belguim's sexiest export), Cos lettuce and, in honour of last week's Mardi Gras, rainbow chard.

Brussel Sprouts, oh yes you are!

Snow peas:

Here are our rows of neatly planted seeds. We decided to give the remaining seeds a Steiner education and scattered them randomly all over the rest of the garden. No doubt they'll grow up weirdly shaped but delicious, while the mono-crop veges leer at them and catch slugs off each other.

The peaches failed spectacularly this summer. Too much heat, followed by too much rain gives you PacMan's disease.

"Blip blip blip blip...."

The pumpkins are still kicking compost in the other vege's faces. Go Queensland Blues! (Is this a football team? Or whatever the game with the ovoid ball is...)

The apple tree got a serious prune when I was about 7 months pregnant. It hasn't helped its fruiting but it made me feel better at the time. Can't remember what it did, but it was something really annoying. Here it is redeeming itself with some pretty blossom.

Baby stuff.

2010-03-01T10:12:00.006+11:00

"There! Finished!"

Go to any baby equipment website and you'll be told how their product is made by parents, for parents. This might be true, but they are parents who are clearly wolfing down buckets of Zoloft on a daily basis. Because almost all baby equipment is impossible*. It's all designed to leave you drenched in sweat and blinking with rage.

Forget birth pain, you haven't had a baby until you've stood hunched over a car seat, breathing epithets and saying things like "It's OK darling, Mummy's just JESUS FUCKING...OK sweetheart, no no it's OK, Mummy is OK she just can't..quite...CHRIST!" etc etc.

At a garage sale last week we spotted a tangle of blue and white metal sitting on the grass verge, a little further away from all the other items. It looked like a portacot. People with portacots always tell you they are 'good for traveling', which is parent talk for an item that is permanently set up in your house as a soft-sided, movable jail.

The garage sale boss looked over at me with a haunted expression.

"You can have that. If you want. Just take it. Never been used. Never. We got given it. It's clean. Nothing wrong with it. Perfectly fine. Just take it away. Please."

So we took it home.

Portacot theory: Push down on sides to make cot rigid. Sounds simple doesn't it?

What the instructions should say: Place cot on anvil of sun. Strip to underpants and commence wrestling with cot. Locking one side will cause other side to collapse. Sides must be locked as per firing order of 1983 Saab. When cot resembles Gehry structure, and assembler is utterly spent and in tears, place cot in back of stationwagon. Cot will immediately spring into upright, locked position, ready for use. Fasten car boot in closed position with fraying bungy cord and long-sleeved shirt.

*Except two things: A BOB stroller which can be unfolded from the boot of the car WITH ONE HAND. And a baby bjorn. Essential.

Que cera

2010-02-28T16:24:00.005+11:00

When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother what will I be? Will I be pretty, will I be rich? Here's what she said to me.......Que cera cera.. (French for "Get a solid trade behind you dear")

Australians love to complain about their education system, most lately the myschools website which ranks schools. Complaining about their school system is possibly why they've got such a good education system.

For instance, here in Australia, I constantly meet people who "have maths". That is, people who learned maths at high school. People who know an integer from a reindeer.

In fact, having some maths is more or less a pre-requisite for entering an Australian University. In New Zealand, having maths also delineates those who go to University, but not because it is a pre-requisite.

In my opinion, if you popped out the end of a NZ high school knowing the big hand from the little hand, then chances are you were getting help. And by that I mean, your parents. They might not have helped you in significant ways, or even to pass the subject, but they will have instilled in you the idea that education is worth turning the television off for five minutes.

My only memory of maths was something called practical maths. Problems like:

"Sarah is at the check-out, and she has two litres of milk, two packs of Holiday and a lighter, but only $17.50. Which should she return?"

A) The milk
B) The milk
C) The milk

Let's be clear, education is not my strong suit. At school, I was THAT kid. You know the one: the ubiquitous ginga, with thick glasses and a face that can modestly be described as 'tectonic'. A natural target, one might say.

Fortunately, the burden of doing anything more than staying upright was alleviated by a lack of pressure to learn anything. I was assured by almost every adult I knew that I was manifestly stupid. Except my mother, of course, who said that I would have nice hair if I brushed it**.

At the time I believed* that smart kids learn, rather than are taught. Give them a textbook and they get it. Because they is being smart. I could still use a hairbrush.

None of this bothered me until I had a kid. Being a New Zealander, was genuinely wondering how I would teach my kid maths. But here, in this country, there's a fighting chance she might learn it at school. For all its faults, schools here obviously have something going for them.

*And broadly, I still do. Stupid is as stupid is.

**And my Dad and Marian who gave me pastels and cartridge paper for presents to foster my extreme passion for drawing Stuff. Like fieldmice.

Wiring fault

2010-02-27T11:18:00.001+11:00

In the evenings, with The possum quietly having her last long feed of the day, we've been watching The Wire*. Although technically in booby/sleep/heaven I am a little concerned that The Possum might be taking it in.

By morning, our highchair conversations are starting to sound like this.

"Yo bitch! Where my breakfast be at?"

"It's coming"

"I tole you, is got to be NOW! You wanme ta smoke yo ass?"

"No"

Wass dis shit? Where's the W.M.D?" (Water Melon, Diced)

"We ran out"

"Whatchu mean, we ran out?"

"Do you need to go poo? Does Mummy need to take you to the toilet?"

"You do what you feel. Shit's on you"

*Thanks Auntie Pindy and Uncle Casey.

Ow.

2010-02-26T08:57:00.007+11:00

"Weeee!"

Whale kills trainer during show (from BBC)

Seaworld roster/Tuesday:

Cuddly Whales = Julie
Playful Whales = Mike
Killer Whales = Andrea

Bugger.

Seriously though, is anyone surprised that jailing intelligent hunting mammals was always going to end well?

Places like zoos and SeaWorld are commonly defended as being a place where people have the opportunity to learn about animals. Through interaction, people gain the desire to protect them in the wild. That's right, by monumentalising cruelty and debasing wild animals as public spectacle, people will learn the right message. Makes perfect sense, really.

There is ample evidence to suggest that whales and dolphins retain enough intelligence to develop a fierce sense of reckoning. Many animal researchers believe that whales and dolphins in captivity are simply depressed. I am still amazed that places like SeaWorld are allowed to exist.

On a tangent: the only evidence we could find of a killer whale killing a human was in captivity.

Moral of the story: You can't teach a killer whale to dance on its tail and hi-five other whales, and expect them NOT to use it.

PS. If you want to read more about whales and the shitty deal they get, visit Surfers for Cetaceans, who are a very nice group of people.

Extinction and unsubstantiated rumours

2010-02-23T15:29:00.007+11:00

Dunedin (NZ) was settled by a bunch of Presbytarians who, fed up with the hurdy gurdy of 18th Century pastoral Scotland, wanted somewhere cold and wet to grow their Swedes in peace*. This is a town that takes piety and restraint seriously. Life is NOT about Getting Carried Away.

Despite this commitment to stiff-lipped sensibleness, the city does have one gleaming herald to hedonism: the multi-storied Cadbury's chocolate factory. It's positioned almost opposite the Gaol.

And now, rumour has it that the chocolate factory is Under Threat.

This is dire enough in itself - the factory employs many local ompah loompahs and the city would feel their loss, not just in direct wages, but also in the industries that service the workers and the factory itself, from supermarkets and shops to backwards-bib-front overall manufacturers.

Now certainly, chocolate will go on. But, the most shocking rumour has emerged; The closure of the Dunedin plant may be the end of the humble Jaffa. In terms of extinctions, this is big news.

Tim Flannery was quoted in the New Zealand Herald as saying: "The Jaffa is the last of its species, one of the few examples of a chocolate-orange species indigenous to New Zealand" (He was also quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald online edition as saying "Last three times longer! Your species will thank you for it! Chaka-KAAAAHN! Close window").

Anyway, while we're on extinctions. How about worrying about this guy instead? He's endangered. He's orange. And he'd probably roll down Baldwin Street if you gave him a head start.

"Faaaaaark!"

*It's just one peat bog after another, Katherine"

Pfft

2010-02-19T19:20:00.004+11:00

I keep meaning to look at the news. No really, I do. But it's all about that wingnut Abbott and I lose interest.

The Sydney Morning Herald online, ever the bastion of serious journalism, had a front page that featured him about ten times yesterday. There was Abbott almost getting hit by a truck, Abbott talking about sex (ewww) and an article about Ultimate Fighting with no doubt, a picture of Abbott stripped to his string and doling out Chinese Burns like communion wafers.

Here's the news story of the week that I DON'T understand. Why oh why is Garrett getting piloried over insulation? Here's a newsflash: Australians had insulation before Garrett came into office. And there were standards for installing it, one of which was don't fucking electrocute the entire neighbourhood. So why isn't the government saying what it should: That the contractors didn't follow codes of practice?

Why is Garrett being hung out to dry?

Adzuki! (Bless you)

2010-02-17T09:44:00.002+11:00

We've all done it, found ourselves at a lunch underwritten by words like "wholesome", shared" or "vegan" and wondered if you're about to exceed your dirt intake for the year. And then you find yourself halfway through a plate of mysterious beany garlicky lentilly stuff and you think; this is good.

Before you know it you're at a huge food wharehouse excitedly buying up enormous bags of dried peas and beans you've never heard of then stashing them for antiquity.

Our pantry has begun to resemble a UN food drop, so last week I decided to pick a random bag o' beans and go for it.

I started with adzuki beans. I hadn't heard of them either.

You know you're onto something dubious when the lionshare of search results attest to your ingredient's health-giving properties, rather than its taste. (Search for "truffle" and see how long it takes you to establish its soluble fat.)

Apparently my enormous bag of rock-hard, dun-coloured legumes contain the most protein of all the rock hard, dun-coloured legumes. They carry away cholesterol and political radicals in the form of easily expelled flatulence. What a relief.

A surfeit of websites containing the words "...cover the mixture in AT LEAST three inches of mashed potato and cheese" is never encouraging either.

I discovered that adzuki beans are widely used in Japanese cooking, especially for sweets. I realised I'd even tried some. The adzuki beans are boiled, then thickened with sugar and agar. The result is a kind of firm, meat coloured-gel, which is a bit like chewing on a sweetened prosthetic limb. Three guesses as to why the Iron Chef Cookbook never went past its first edition.

Anyway, I followed some simple cooking instructions and discovered that you can put adzuki beans in everything. They are delicious. You can put them in tortillas, fritters, chili and all down the front of a baby.

Thankfully we've still got a square meter of them.

Rain

2010-02-16T15:15:00.004+11:00

It's been raining. A lot. Well, a lot by Australian standards. Some washing got quite wet.

To me, there's still something peculiar about rain-glee, the frothing enthusiasm for hour after hour of drizzle. People stop doing things and hide inside, peering out the windows with barely contained grins. It's nice, actually.

Yesterday I decided to go and have a look at the creek so I donned a hat and some jandals and set out. Drivers slowed down, eying me as they would the main character of a Tarantino film, looking for signs of a breakdown, perhaps mechanical. Perhaps not.

Rain does not phase me. I'm from New Zealand, so I am completely aware that my skin is, in fact, waterproof. New Zealanders, you see, grow up with rain. We are like wonderfully formed vegetables, kept crisp and lovely in our own enormous, auto-misting chiller.

By this morning, our region was declared a natural disaster area. I'm so proud.

Ooop.

2010-02-09T11:37:00.003+11:00

There's a certain snobbery surrounding pumpkins in gardening circles. This is because pumpkins are easy to grow. To me though, they are the king of vegetables. Food blogs are often party to the snobbery too: I don't seem to see a lot of food-porn surrounding pumpkins.

I don't know why, it's so easy to say nice things about something that sneaks out of your compost heap, mates with anything vaguely round and is easier to grow than a yeast infection.

I tried to take nice photos.

Because pumpkins are sluts, it's hard to know exactly what you've propagated. We have two on the go at the moment, an unsullied, well behaved Queensland Blue, and a weirdly shaped ginga. My sympathies lie with the second.

I harvested a couple of them last week, and discovered the first problem; nature has laminated them. I ended up on the front step whacking through this baby with a small axe. I collected the bits and roasted them. Like I said, self-propagated pumpkins are a crapshoot. I was still expecting this one to be watery, flavourless, slightly bitter or just boring. It was lovely. Sweet and nutty, like a butternut's reject, buck-toothed cousin.

The remaining shells were interesting. When you live on the south coast, it's important to treat rock-hard, structural, vegetable matter with extreme caution, lest you find yourself on a raw food diet and up to your armpits in an earthship.

I scooped out the pumpkin pulp, fried some onions, chucked in a few of our jalapenos, a little box of coconut milk, some garlic and WWHHRRRRRR wit the stick blender. It was lovely.

Teeev.

2010-02-08T18:23:00.003+11:00

We got a new TV. I played no part in it. It's not that I am completely anti-television, it just seems so kind of brash to get a new one, like admitting something terrible to yourself.

It's the feeling of that day you buy that first whole packet of Styvies when you've actually given up except for every now and then when I'm at a party or something but that's hardly ever.

Where was I?

The old TV had its charms; for one, unless the action took place on a bright summer's day you weren't privvy to it. It had a cheery effect and pretty much ruled out all the fantasy rubbish like Torchwood, but also meant that many programs were a bit hazy on the murder or sex scenes. It was like having a Mormon inside the set-top box. The grainy mystery TV delivered the kind of content my Dad (who gets a bit eyebrowy about 'smut' on The Television) would approve of;

(Squinting into the television)

"Oh yes, I see, that's a bed. Oh, he's kind of leaning over the bed. He's making the bed! Yes, a fitted sheet, definately a fitted sheet....Hmmm, it's not going well though. Not well at all. Appears to be struggling. Must be a single fitted sheet, on a DOUBLE BED! Ah ha!"

The old TV also required smacking, and not just when Tony Abbott was mugging it. FOrsome reason, this felt really, really good. But no more. Now we can watch Midsomer murders without having to listen for heavy rain and the sound of galoshes, oilskins and a pedigree dog to figure out when someone has been walloped with a spade.

Random update

2010-02-07T11:34:00.006+11:00

This week I've been home alone with The Possum who is doing her best to grow some teeth. I have very little to say about anything, really, so this is a magazine post.

(Here is The Possum speed-reading a magazine)

Most days this week have gone something like this;

'Christ. It's 3 o clock already. Darling...., oh no darling, it's OK, where's your kookaburra? Kookaburra is in the basket, kookaburra is out of the basket, in the basket, out of the basket, in the...Only winos are still in their pyjamas at 3 o clock in the afternoon....Maybe I should have a wine?....'

I can't decide if The Possum's malaise was due to sore mouth, or her vaccinations on Tuesday morning or a combination of both. Basically, there's been a lot of not getting anything done which translates as listening to ABC National.

There comes a time in everyone's life when you put down your piercing gun and realise that you've strayed off into the ABC National demographic. Often it begins with an overheard radio story about something like structural adjustment in south america, or a review of book you have read. By time you realise that Triple J is earnestly dealing with "important issues", the death knell is reverberating around the leaking plumbing in your warehouse apartment.

Last week though, the ABC's resonance with my life was spooky. They interviewed three authors I have recently read; Barbara Ehrenreich and Rachel Cusk, both about being pissed off women.

Also, there was an interview with the aptly named Keith Windschuttle, whose book I was discussing a couple of weeks ago. He's the guy who writes books about how the Aborigines didn't really have it all that bad, because in those days, being dispossessed and murdered was a lot more popular than it is today. So, three books in one week. Where's my tin foil hat?

Also, this week I was eyed, once again, with suspicion for undertaking what is now known as 'Elimination Communication' with my baby (used to simply be called "Watching for signs of taking a shit" but then squirmy Alexander Downer came into office causing a rethink).

I've decided that the time has come to stop talking about my kid's poo with other people. It's always bemused me that people often treat children as if they have no privacy. Kids pick up on how adults treat one another, and compare it to how they themselves are treated. This is because they are sentient beings which is probably the same reason they don't like crapping in their pants.

Besides, we all know those mothers, the ones who interrupt a conversation to gaze lovingly at their child and say, "Do you need to do a poo darling? Is it poking out a little bit? Tell mummy...is it peanutty or corn husky, you tell me darling OK, etc. etc...

In other news this week: Gardening.

Our garden represents exactly how busy we were three months ago. I went and stood in the garden on Wednesday. There wasn't much worth saving. I pulled a mission that Stalin would be proud of, and harvested the first of some of our pumpkins. I love pumpkin, as I have stated before, and I fully intend to make the same thing again.

This week I also transplanted the strawberries. By this I mean, I dug up a square meter of topsoil and chucked it on the rockgarden (which looks like an excellent place for testing out the top speed of a land-yacht) and then dug up all the strawberries and chucked them on top. It then rained, solidly for a whole week, which is something of a miracle. The strawberries appear to have survived. The strawberry transplant was such an unlikely surprising success I have resolved to tick the strawberry box on my drivers licence.

How's that for a boring, self involved, tedious blog post, written in five minutes?!

Hot Rodding

2010-01-31T14:25:00.008+11:00

Saturday dawned bright and sunny in Melbourne, a perfect kind of day for a hot rod show, I always think. Luckily for us, the city surprised us with one it had prepared earlier.

Now, a few notes; hot rodding is not for purists. Hot rods are the fake-tittied, over-coiffed, plastic fingernailed tarts of the automobile world. Hot rods are about style over substance.

To wit;

Also, a warning. I've been made aware of the 'fact' that I can be a thundering bore when I get talking about cars.

But this is the internet.

Back to the story.

Most hot rods are based on American cars of the 40's through 60's. There weren't that many of these cars to begin with (compared to the amount of cars on the road today). Any of this small number that have not rusted into the dirt have been restored. However, demand outstrips supply and so most hot rods are replicas, either fibreglass or, more rarely, steel.

This allows fabricators a certain latitude. Check out the stretch Volkswagon;

The original 'hot rod' cars were hefty beasts. These days, a shiny V8 motor is both higher performance and generally powering something a lot less chunky than an ancient Oldsmobile. Most V8 cars on the market today have the power to weight ratio of a plastic lunchbox on nitrous.

Back in the day, it was a different story. The original hulking, inefficient V8s were barely enough to overcome the inertia of the paintwork. let alone a couple of ton or two of Detroit's finest. Cars today are so very much lighter, more streamlined and better suited to having cascades of ice cream dribbled down the seats.

Annnyway, where was I?

Oh yes, style over substance.

I like authentic things. I like the shiny hot rods, but as art, not cars. Let's be clear, there is nothing authentic about these machines; with engine belts almost thicker than the tyres, and superchargers peeking out of bonnet scoops like pissed-off meerkats.

For me, there's nothing particularly clever about dropping a 350 Chev into an engine bay so large that the drive train gets its own post code. One guy proudly told me he'd bored out his own engine (gentlemen, hold your puns, please), but again, machining out engines is not that hard, as long as you've got a micrometer/vernier calipers and a sense of humour.

There's also nothing complicated about four stroke, push-rod, normally aspirated engines, with TAC ignition and Japanese radiators. About the only vaguely inspiring thing are the people who build and machine their own carbs, because as anyone who has fiddled with one of these things knows, it's an infuriating art more than a science.

Like I said though, hot rods are art. And I was in greaser heaven, marveling at the sheer shinyness of the cars until I came across this Corvette:

This car has many of the original 'bits'. There is nothing more heartwarming than someone who will lovingly restore a three ton megalith and then expect the whole thing to keep moving on an antiquated 6 volt charging system (including a genuine generator*). It seemed fitting that the whole thing was painted purple.

Here is a typical picture from the day. The Possum waiting patiently for her mother.

*Cars nowadays have alternators, as did most of the hotrods I got a peek at.

Photo credits to Senior Possum.

Quinces

2010-01-30T13:42:00.007+11:00

Theft is an important part of any good road trip. And Melbourne, with its temperate/sub-tropical/Biblical climate is dotted with millions of fruit trees, all begging to be plundered.

On the way out of Melbourne we quietly filched a basket of quinces from some over-burdened trees in Northcote. Or maybe it was Fitzroy. Or perhaps it was Valpraisio.

Apples were also on the list, and when we got home from our Tour De Fleece I attempted to 'deal' with the quinces.

Quinces are an old fashioned fruit which means they actually prefer to be cooked the old fashioned way: boiling the bejeezus out of them for hours on end, while you smack your children a lot. I chose a gentle simmer, and sure enough, the flesh turned from white and floury to delightfully pink, and fragrant, as promised.

The best quinces I have ever eaten came from The Possum's Nana, who makes these gloriously piquant stewed slices. This is because Possum's Nana is privvy to an arcane wisdom available to wholesome garden-y, foody people, known as The Tricks (such as keeping the pips in, and only cooking them on a full moon when the compost is in ascendance).

My quinces did not measure up. Not even close. But, having a baby has taught me that the only thing standing between 'unappetising boiled mulch' and 'delicious treat' is a stick blender. And I've lived my life by the motto that if it can't be improved by a power tool then it probably wasn't much good to begin with.

Post-blending, I was left with this kind of pinkish paste that looked like it should have the words: 'Smoking Can Damage Your Health' written in big letters underneath it.

Hmm, still not good. But, with your eyes closed, it tasted incredible.

So today I whipped up a batch of buttery pastry (my favourite thing to do) and then smeared a layer of the pink gloop, followed by a layer of sliced apples, arranged a bit like the ones in the Woman's Weekly, but on the piss. With a spoonful of Greek yoghurt and a black coffee, this subtly flavoured, slightly perfumed, slightly spicey little tart was really rather nice.

Keeping it real with the Quinces.

Food

2010-01-28T14:16:00.004+11:00

You can't go to Melbourne and not talk about food. There were a couple of stand outs - Vietnamese restaurant in north Fitzroy (I don't know where. Opposite the chinese junk shop. That should narrow things down). We had pho, again, narrowing it down. It was so, so good.

The next treat was in Brunswick. We were about to spend Australia Day in the most patriotic way; driving for hours through crippling heat with a thundering hangover. Heading out of town, our eyes were peeled for somewhere to have coffee and maybe a quick round with the heart-paddles. Nothing was open, until we got to Brunswick, and found, like a gleaming oasis in the Melbournian desert, a Lebanese bakery. As any true Australian will tell you, there is nothing more Straya Day than breakfast in a Lebanese bakery.

And what a bakery! So so good! I don't even know what we had, but it was toasty, sesame-seedy (like us) and haloumi-ish (like us after a couple of hours in a hot car). And then there were wee pastry baclava pistachio like things, so sweet, so good!

After some seriously good food and coffee we pooled all our cash and handed it to the nice man at the counter, like alms, telling him we were travelers from far, far away. He set us up with a magical bag of just cooked goodies, silky fresh fetta pastries with spinach and and and....

I won't go on. Anyway, I kept the bag, so I could look upon it fondly in weaker moments. Maybe curl up next to it from time to time. And then, when writing this blog post, I looked them up. They have a website!

So, if you are in Melbourne. Go there. Eat. Fill your boots! It's wonderful!

Lakes Entrance

2010-01-28T13:07:00.002+11:00

Oooooo....What's the big yellow thing? I like it.

Hang on, we go in the big yellow thing? Yaaaay!!!

On the road...

2010-01-28T13:04:00.003+11:00

But does it have a pool?

Melbourne: CERES Garden

2010-01-27T17:00:00.003+11:00

I've been in Melbourne this week, engaging in a trip as diverse as the weather. I've only been to Melbourne once before, for a very brief stopover. This time, I got to have a bit of a poke around. And I found some rather nifty things. This is the first of a few blog posts about it.

On Sunday morning I left a noisy party for a walk in The Nature with the Possum, who was starting to look a little like she wanted a ciggy and a pair of spray-on jeans. Spying a footpath, we trotted along the bank of Merri Creek in Brunswick, admiring the exposed tree-roots festooned with drooping skeins of rubbish, overhanging a dark brown, almost stagnant smear of water. The charm of such an Edenic scene was not lost on the two young men locked in love's unforgiving, sweaty wrestle under a large Oak tree, and even the sleeping junkie had a placid smile to light his empty dreams.

It wasn't long before we came across a set of gates, a brightly painted sign, and a bike-path entranceway. I smelled hippies. Indeed, this was the entrance to CERES, a large, well established community garden. I had heard there was a garden here, but I was completely unprepared for what I found. It was staggering. Absolutely beautifully staggering.

Meandering pathways linking beds and beds of fruit and veges, shady enclaves, and the hallmark of a good community-based project based on democratised scientific principles: an enthusiastic water recycling project producing dubious looking water.

The more I walked, the more it kept going. I felt like I'd walked through the back of the wardrobe into a sun-dappled version of Narnia. Turn one corner, and there's a fig tree, flourishing with bulbous, fruity little haemmeroids, turn another, and there's a whole bed of pumpkins.

At one point I wandered into a suspiciously healthy grove of fruit trees, sporting some of the most freakishly large Quinces I have seen to date. I live on the South Coast of New South Wales. I've seen this sort of thing before. I followed the grove's perimeter and discovered the silent toilet block.

CERES is more than a garden, it's a kind of touchstone for all manner of wholesome business, both practical and, well, wholesome. Whether you want to learn how to prune an apricot, or fertilise your wolf-spirit, there will be a course.

I loved CERES, absolutely loved it. I returned to the party and rabbited on about it in something approaching rapture. The following day I insisted we all return for a proper go.

And it was just as wicked the second time round.

On another note, I have come to the conclusion that I'm on the cusp of hippydom. Places like CERES reiterate this for me. One the one hand, I love them. I love the natural, garden based wholesome-y goodness, the earthyness, the earnest satisfaction of the happy hairy people. I am a woman who appreciates a good dry-composting toilet*. On the other hand, there is something deep in my nature that struggles with the kind of hardcore hippyness that often accompanies such endeavours. I believe in science, for instance, and I've little time for postmodern, relativistic notions of science and nature. Science, for me, is in the whole world. It is not pronounced with quotation marks around it and it's probably not even 'feminist'.

Sitting in the shade of trees at the CERES cafe, a little breeze presented me with snippets of three distinct conversations...

From table one: "Yeah, but it's got to be grass-roots...."

From table two: "....but I'm more of a singer-songwriter..."

Finally, my reverie was interrupted by the dreadlocked waiter approaching table three, asking who was having the Soy-Dandy.

This is where I come adrift.

*Because there's really not much to appreciate in a bad one. Even slightly damp will render your enthusiasm tenuous.

Chortle

2010-01-18T16:38:00.004+11:00

Darwin was right. There is nothing funnier than a platypus. Nothing.

Flotsam

2010-01-15T14:36:00.003+11:00

Iphone apps are taking over our lives, according to a recent New Scientist article. iphone apps are the most revolutionary life-changing technology since the last revolutionary life-changing technology. Whatever that was.

I would argue that perhaps the most apposite generalisation that can be made about new lifestyle technologies, from Facebook to Twitter, is their irrelevance.

Almost all my Facebook updates are related to gardening, coffee or the bowel movements of a wriggling infant. Most of my friends' are similar. Which is why they are my friends.

Remember back when Facebook causes hit the headlines for having hundreds and thousands of followers?

Is this a good time to mention that my Facebook group, ("Thin My Carrots: I planted them too close together") has 4 trillion members?

Some people, however, dedicate their status updates to causes....

Wow, Elanor cares enough about the plight of the Eastern Sumatran Shoehorn to press a button! And she's sent me a link to it as well, along with a growing flower, a youtube video of a mournful Jeff Buckley song, and a 'wifebeater'.

I like!

I care about stuff, I'm just not going to pretend that I do on Facebook.

Here's something really important. A link to the World Carrot Museum. Protip: a link to 'ask a carrot question'.

New Years

2010-01-14T11:34:00.004+11:00

It occurs to me that I didn't write a post about New Year's Eve. It was pretty raucous, oh boy, yes. We decided to embrace our new parentness by meeting our equally knackered, recently baby-fied friends, Jamie and Claudia, in Mollymook for a knees-up. (All knees were restored to their proper positions for landing). 9pm found us sitting on couches staring at one another like museum exhibits.

"Is it midnight yet?"

"It's just gone 9"

"Christ"

That sort of thing.

Still, we were not to be beaten. We would make it to 12am. We would play Trivial Pursuit. Mostly what kept us awake was something approaching bewildering awe, as we watched one another while away New Year's Eve answering stupid fucking questions about 80's movies that NO-ONE should have watched in the first place. Tom Selleck is never, EVER the right answer to anything. Not on this planet, not ever.

I digress. The unutterable tragedy of the situation was not lost on us, and so, in light of the 19 year olds partying next-door, I proposed that all acquisitions of pie would henceforth be accompanied with a fulsome declaration, on the front lawn. All the way down near the letterbox.

To wit: "Yeaaaaah! Green Pie! That's science and motherfuckin' NATURE, fools!'

Just to show those sluts next door how to party.

We made it to midnight. Just. Parents New Year though, was actually sweet and I had a lot of fun, even though all newcomers were recruited to the opposing team which eventually ensured a draw. See; Tom Selleck, above.

In fact, when I think about it, it wasn't that different from many other New Year's Eves. Babies know how to keep it real; by 11 o'clock we'd all had our tits out more times than we could count, and I'd been comprehensively spewed on. The rest of the time it was hot and sunny, we barbequed, swam, drank, swam, chatted, ate and had a very, very nice time.

Books

2010-01-07T14:11:00.003+11:00

My most recent breastfeeding book (as a prophylactic to having one's brain sucked out through one's boobies) was Gladwell's The Tipping Point.

The book describes the patterns of social phenomena in terms of 'tipping points', the point at which the velocity of their processes begins to increase in a non linear way. Gladwell uses well known social experiments, such as the six degrees of separation test, or the Broken Windows theory to plot his own trajectory of everything from fashion fads to crime waves (Gladwell prefaces his theorum; "What I call etc.,...") .

Early on, Gladwell tells us that us humans like to think of things unfolding in a linear, gradual progression. Apparently, we humans are inherently bad at imagining progress of processes that unfold in a non-linear way. This came as a surprise to me.

Most people I know are as comfortable with non linear progressions as they are with other simple, logical data qualifications, such as standard deviation. Gladwell though, is adamant. Humans are bumbling buffoons in the face of numerical data.

Gladwell's book puts me in mind of another instance I recently read about pop-behaviourialism, a New Scientist article telling us about another 'inherent' human trait; the tendency to look for cohesion and narrative from disparate information. We humans are embarrassingly open to suggestion. We are especially amenable to popular narratives, like the one 'I call the trivia narrative'.

That is, we like to be surprised and titilated by non-important information in an amusing way. Think: the trivial pursuit question; what wasn't invented until 40 years after the invention of the tin can? Ummmm...

I began to wonder if the trivia narrative was the ghost in Gladwell's text? He begins by drawing together a variety of topics we are familiar with. Then he tells us that things aren't quite what they seem: (contrary to our intuitive understanding, most processes are non-linear). Then he tells us he has a new new explanation (tipping point) that makes sense of seemingly disconnected but familiar data (smoking is popular with teens, crime sucks and most importantly, humans are buffoons). This data is then presented as information that seamlessly fits his theorem.

In this way, we find ourselves following a narrative (Oh, it's not quite what I thought, but I can guess the process), fitting otherwise banal or irrelevant information into a matrix that inspires interest but comforts us at the same time. By the time we are familiar with the narrative, everything seems interesting and relevant to this new way of thinking.

For instance, at the end of Gladwell's chapter on the epidemic of smoking he tells us that teenagers smoke because it is cool, and disseminating health warnings only makes it more appealing.

Well, no shit.

There is a lot of interesting information in this book but I couldn't help thinking it had been over-edited, the Gladwell's "novel" tipping point not much more than a contrived thread linking together what is already interesting information for the sake of popular appeal.

Or something like that anyway.

Best Christmas card in ages

2010-01-03T11:22:00.000+11:00

From my nephew, Houston.

Paris Bogue

2010-01-02T20:06:00.003+11:00

It's summer holidays on the south coast. I ventured into town today; Gridlock sunburned bogans, slick with rain and sausage fat.

It wasn't all bogans of course, but there were enough to make an impression. A friend once made the astute observation that bogans only come in two sizes; extremely fat or extremely thin. But a lap through Woolies today made me wonder if the fatties had eaten the skinnies: it was wall to wall pink hocks and squished jandals.

I am no fashionista* but it seems to me that bogan pretenders should heed a couple of simple fashion tips:

- Dress yourself according to your size. Your real size, that is, the size that makes you fill your trolley with boxes of diet coke.

- "Me smokes" is not a food group

- Don't wear clothes designed by a car company if the only thing you have in common with 'Holden racing' are low-profile jandals.

- Your hairstyle shouldn't match your dog.

- Sausages begets sausages.

- And for all those bumper sticker wearers out there; I'm pretty sure the ANZACS didn't have you in mind.

*A friend recently reminded me that when I met him my entire wardrobe appeared to consist of a pair of faded shorts and a tee shirt masquerading as a leotard with the crotch out of it.

Feel-goodness

2009-12-29T11:11:00.002+11:00

Core competencies: Good at feeding dog.

Ah, summer programming. Today, a nice little interview with an anti-smoking advocate, advising smokers on how to make their New Year's resolution to give up smoking stick. The trick (and the cliche'd journalistic hook) is NOT to try giving up right now, whilst attending Christmas and New Years parties.

["Wait. He's telling me NOT to give up smoking? What an ironic twist! I had better listen closely to this interesting story!"]

Here's the real hook. Research tells us that it takes smokers on average 13 attempts to give up smoking. So the trick, according to the advocate, is not to think of each failed attempt as a failure. Because there are no 'failures', only learning experiences.

At the risk of coming over all Ayn Rand, isn't there some point to acknowledging something as a failure? It's not just about learning, it's about trying harder not to cock it up the next time.

Perhaps, instead of interviewing breathy, new-age, self-help wombles on the nature of failure, the ABC might instead get one of the Challenger engineers on the blower. Or a quick chat with the endlessly patient people at Three Mile Island.

Last week the ABC featured another 'feel-good' magazine story about a rural program that gives troubled young people experience with dog-trials. It's not about training them in dog-trialing specifically, mostly it's showing them how to look after and communicate with dogs.

Troubled young man; "Yeah, it's good. Shows us how to feed dogs and stuff"

Well, there's no crime in being challenged.

Seriously though, teaching 'troubled youth' that challenges are frightening and undesirable, and that failure doesn't exist is lame.

Now, I am running a community based course shortly called; Brushing for beginners (next week; Combing!). Takers??

Fadding

2009-12-28T15:44:00.005+11:00

I'm not prone to attacks of "mommy-blogging", but today I make an exception. Because in the last few days I've met a number of people who have asked if I breastfeed my baby 'on demand'.

I'd never heard the term used before, but apparently it's just one of several feeding options. Which makes me wonder about the others.

What are the other answers to that question? Perhaps when my baby demands a feed I hand her a copy of French Vogue and tell her that nothing tastes as good as skinny feels? That she's already looking bulky in that nappy? That she thinks she wants milk, but really she wants a long black and a Gitane?

I suddenly realised that in the overfed, wealthy west there are many hungry babies, babies who can demand all they like.

For all the endless 'educated' agonising over baby-care, there seems to be little recognition of the fact that babies are relatively simple animals as long as you meet their needs. When they are hungry, feed them. When they are tired, let them sleep.

These are the inconvenient truths of motherhood; Babies want their mothers. Babies want to be breastfed. Babies do not care if you are attaining fulfilment in your field of work. Babies demand.

You might be a feminist, but no-one's let your baby in on the joke.

Ho ho ho!

2009-12-25T18:31:00.003+11:00

Wrapping paper! Yess!

"What's that noise?"

"It's me, I'm singing 'Six White Boomers to the Possum. It's Rolf Harris"

"Well, he did work in an asbestos mine, I guess..."

"No no no! That's me on the imaginary wobble-board! Do try to keep up..."

Australia baffled the early British explorers, with its bizarre marsupials and opposite seasons. Christmas in the summer? Weird. The Brits got the hang of it, but the New Zealanders remain vexed. Because today in Australia, Christmas brought rain.

Christmas in Wellington involves an army of tiddly Aunties, negotiating their way around a collection of new bikes, forgotten toys and cheap tents, all pitched on a 45 degree angle into a roaring southerly. Imagine Everest base camp run by the CWA.

In Australia, it's a different story. This year, bushfires raging to the south of us were quenched by a galloping southerly deluge. According to the ABC this morning, your position in the Biblical axiom of fire or flood depended on your relationship to Cann River (which is widely acknowledged as pestilence).

By lunchtime today, Christmas celebrations stumbled to a halt as everyone stared out at the sheets of rain, sighing with blissful glee. Hushed utterances of "It's a Christmas miracle" and "Look at that, I mean LOOK at it!" floated around the living room. Someone got the weather radar up, and the greenish rain-lump was tracked by every eye in the house.

Wikipedia gamely describes New Zealand's climate as temperate, or "maritime", which is a euphemism for "underwater". And so, as I sit here in a jersey, so full I can barely make a fist, with rain dripping off the gutters, it feels a bit like a kiwi Christmas after all.

Comedy of the commons.

2009-12-19T08:44:00.007+11:00

Fluffly and lightweight, the danish pastry is the perfect accompaniment.

Thank you, thank you, if I could just have your attention....The future of the world's climate is very very important, which is why we have completely booked out this disused aircraft hanger for you. We've got it for the whole week. There's a tea urn up the front if anyone is feeling the cold. It's very important for us to reach an agreement on climate change, because if we don't make some kind of show in the face of the global capitalist juggernaut, people might fear the obsolescence of the nation state as we know it. ahhh....just quickly, I've just been told that Brian at the door now has a new felt-tip for those of you who missed out on your name badges...and if I could please ask you to write clearly, we don't want any more mix-ups.

Now, where was I?

Mr Rudd says we need to take decisive action, going forward, with a whole of government approach, in order to address and tackle the issues at hand. Mr Obama, feels we need to make climate change more science-y. He told us it's about America boldly going forward to deal with a common threat, in a way they haven't done before, and about America's sense of Enterprise as a new civilisation. Mr Wen couldn't be reached for comment but sources have confirmed that he has not been executed.

Poorer nations are watching their air-conditioned apartments and designer handbags slip through their grasp, really poor nations are facing the prospect of even more catastrophic warfare, the science is too damn science-y (there's no clear and definitive prediction on exactly what the climate will do) and the Americans still want to know what 3 degrees celsius is in hogsheads.

And it's important to keep in mind that we're not entirely certain that there will even be an agreement, because the world has never done this sort of thing before, except for all those times when we've done this sort of thing before.

Thanks to the ladies out the back for the spead.

Summer garden goodness....

2009-12-14T21:26:00.003+11:00

Yum...

As readers may be aware, I struggle with cooking. Mostly, it's due to lack of attention. I put something on to cook and then go off in search of something to eat NOW. Therefore, my cuisine normally ranges all the way from from "well done" to "de-natured".

I like food you can eat raw. Luckily we have a garden. One can dig things up, wash them under the tap, and eat them. I've had a shower or two in my life so this level of preparation doesn't phase me one bit.

This week we got strawberries. Strawberries have suffered most heinously under the yoke of commercial farming. Most of today's berries are bland, bloated freaks, the Kerry Packer of fruit. Incidentally, It's a sad state of affairs when naturally grown (organic or biodynamic) fruit and vegetables have become boutique. When did a vegetable that tastes like a vegetable become such an outrageously gourmet item?

I digress...

Good strawberries are small and pungent. Their fragrance should steep in the back of your nose and throat like fresh garlic or truffle oil.

I bought four plants at the beginning of last summer, planted them and then treated them with abject disdain for months. They did surprisingly well, producing a few tasty little nuggets, but within a few short weeks they'd lost their sense of direction, running off all over the garden. The fruit dried up, and my interests wandered.

But, the runners were spreading and before long we had about 20 plants. 20 plants showing every chance of doing nothing at all. Until about three weeks ago, when they started to flower. And now we have heaps of fruit just beginning to ripen. The picture at the top is this morning's pick. Mmmmnomnom nom...

Very cool things

2009-12-09T12:05:00.002+11:00

You might be thinking...what IS that? Well it's a bracelet, but more than that, it's a physical representation of one year of Canberra's weather data. The peaks and troughs come from highs and lows and the holes from rainfall. The technical explanation of this data representation is, at times, a little baffling for those of us who might represent one year of Canberra's weather as a seriously cracked dashboard and an eye-watering mound of very sweaty singlets.

Mitchell says; "3D print of a dataform based on 365 days of Canberra weather data (July 08 - June 09). Daily minimum and maximum temperature generate the profile of the outer edge; the holes show rainfall per week. Model generated with Processing, boolean operation in Blender, cleaned in Meshlab, printed by Shapeways."

This comes from Mitchell Whitelaw's blog; the teeming void.

Moko the not so friendly dolphin

2009-12-08T14:27:00.004+11:00

Here's Moko the dolphin who is becoming quite famous for menacing Gisborne (NZ) swimmers and surfers. Moko is especially interested in women, harrasing female swimmers and perhaps, according to media-friendly soundbites, lining up in an attempt to mate with them. A bemused television reporter repeated the Department of Conservation's expert; "You mean, he might try to have sex with a female swimmer?"

What I want to know is, where the fuck is John Safran when you really need him??

Seriously though, I've always been amused at people's complete confidence in well behaved dolphins. Somehow we assume that every single one of them will be 200 kilos of good-natured plaything, instead of a heirarchically attuned wild animal. Putting something on a velour bedspread does not render the entire species 'cuddly'.

Although, that pic of Moko with the boogie board is CLASSIC. Those people were laughing their arses off, right up until they got nosed to death...

Surfers for Cetaceans!

2009-12-07T13:46:00.007+11:00

I'm sitting on my board quietly avoiding likely-looking waves in the vain hope that i can avoid putting my not-so-insignificant teeth through my lip again. The striding morning sun is gathering heat, and the water is gloriously cool.

I took the thin-lipped Protestant approach to surfing; broke it down into tasks and worked on each in turn. An unusual approach in the relaxed, free-wheeling world of surfing, my paddling compatriots are often surprised as I easily duck-dive under menacing waves, only to be completely unseated at the meerest prospect of standing up on one. I did, however, live in a van and collect a fine set of dreadlocks in support of the project, so I've met at least a few of the KPI's.

For me though, surfing is more about being in the sea than justifying my Billabong sponsorship.

One of the most incredible things about surfing, kiting and generally being in the ocean in Australia is that you could well find yourself in the company of whales. I'm not even going to attempt to describe it; their sheer size is utterly unmooring, but it's not just their size that gives them such presence. In the water, their medium, they are aware of you, of your form and disposition, in a way that you might not be aware of yourself. It's rather grand.

At the beginning of spring we got an excited text message from a friend telling us to get down to the headland. A group of Orcas were hanging out just off the rocks, trying to look innocent as the Humpbacks surfaced and splashed in the background. Our little stretch of coastline boasts a humpback whale nursery. And where there's baby humpbacks, there are their unscrupulous daycare providers; Orcas.

It's common to see whales up and down this bit of coastline, making their way north to have babies in the warm tropical waters, or back south again for a massive feed. The thing is, it wasn't always like this. Australia didn't cease whaling until 1978 and locals around here will attest to the absence of whales until the last 15 years or so.

However, whales are still being hunted, tortured and killed all over the world. A couple of weeks ago we were visited upon by Howie Cooke, from Surfers for Cetaceans. He'd just finished a voyage with surfer Dave Rastovich, tracking down the eastern seaboard in trimarans, ending up in Sydney Harbour to deliver a stern message to the Australian government to better protect whales (please sign the petition here!).

Howie left us with an enormous whale mural and half a jar of stuffed olives. Both have endured well.

Mummy, are there hippies living next door?

Surfers for Cetaceans is a very active ocean advocacy project. These chaps round out the hemp-trousers quota of the International Whaling Commission meetings and basically remind the participants that their clinical, sanitised talk of 'culls' and scientific research is actually about torturing and killing whales.

They are aligned with the Sea Shepherd as well, and today, a day that the Japanese government has reminded whaling activists to be, well, inactive in the Antarctic this summer, and Norway has released its new quota for whale killings, I think it's fitting to spruik these nice people and their plight to get Australia to honour its commitment to protect whales.

In short; Whales are nice. Stop poking holes in them!

More of the same

2009-12-04T21:51:00.003+11:00

How's my flick?

I feel like I should write something about the ever changing state of leadership in Australian politics. For those playing at home, the Liberal party (federal) and state parliament (Labour) both have new leaders following scruffy backroom dealings.

I'm pleased that Abbott is now in charge of the Liberals. Turnbull was all straightforward and "I-believe-in-science'-y. This simply will not do. He was a man without a mandate. Abbott, on the other hand, is a staunch Catholic who doesn't believe in science unless its in the form of a DNA test. Rudd must be pleased.

I'm less impressed with the downfall of Nathan Rees. I kind of liked him. He was big and burly and brusque. I watched him give press releases. His lips spoke of policy and reform, but his demeanor said "You can't come in here in jandals".

And now he's been rolled in favour of, you guessed it, another Catholic. Kristina Keneally is state Labour's first female leader, and, more importantly, NSW's first female premier. But ever since she quoted scripture in her flattened American accent to an inquiry panel, I've found her more than a little frightening. Perhaps it's the power dressing. Or that boggle-eyed, freshly-smacked-in-the-back-of-the-head-expression that some women think passes for being earnestly demure. (Here I am annoying feminists with the oldest trick in the book; slagging off women for irrelevancies). So I'll slag her off for her record instead. She's been the minister for planning. Which is Australian for; 'making the Sicilians look good'.

Nathan Rees got up last week in front of his party and declared that the only contributions state Labour would accept from developers would be horses' heads. You could hear the death knell from here. State Labour, under Keneally, will be back to business as usual.

It's so predictable it's not even fun anymore. The whole state government is hopelessly corrupt, enmeshed in a confusing maelstrom of conflicting interests and dodgy deals. It's not even worth staying up to write about. Thank you and goodnight.

Food

2009-12-02T18:18:00.002+11:00

The hardest part is getting them to swallow the pit

Today we gave our daughter her first solids. At 4 months she's young, but I'm thinking, hey, solids go in, solids come out. Incidentally, I never anticipated a time in my life where a a firm log would make my day (or at least not until I am over 90 and can shoot them at minimum wage aides like an arcade game).

Introducing solid food, like so many other aspects of parenthood, is fraught. Poor people have it easy, they just jam a Dorito in the front of their 2 month old and leave them to it, but middle class people have work to do. We must angst. We must consult. And lastly, we must Google.

The trouble of course, is that almost everyone has babies. And almost everyone has the internet. (Unless of course you are one of the 90% of the world who actually doesn't have the internet, but then you're not going to send me shitty emails, are you?). This democratisation of information has implications: all baby related advice must be tailored to adults who try to do up their shoes with their fists.

I ascertained that 6 months is the recommended age for starting babies on solids. But it hasn't always been that way. Back in my day, it was commonplace to start your children on a watered down mixture of dripping and asbestos at around 3 months of age.

In fact, there are few hard and fast rules about solid food. To wit: babies need to be able to hold their necks upright enough to let the food slide down their gullets. Food must be mushy. Food must not make baby swell up like a screaming hive. It's simple really.

After watching the Poss-Bomb eyeing and snatching at our dinners we decided that I'm not ready for fighting over food just yet so we capitulated. We chose avocado. More fool us. She ate it with a quizzical look that said;

"Hey! Hippies! Haven't you got something in that fridge with a face?!"

New Zealanders may find this amusing...

2009-12-02T11:29:00.002+11:00

We are tentatively planning Possum's first trip to New Zealand. Here's Possum's Dad, who has never been to NZ;

"I've been looking at the ferry website. It's a hundred bucks to get all of us across the strait. Come on, it'll be cool! Go through the Milford sound or whatever. How big are those boats? they wouldn't get tossed around in the sea! I'd love to go on a ferry! It'd be like going on a cruise! Check it out, look at the size of the thing! It'd be awesome!"

Yeah, it's awesome alright.

Trademe treasure!

2009-12-02T10:42:00.003+11:00

"No, this is not a misprint. This is a mossum, a cross between magpie and possum.
This shy creature is rarely seen and to find this roadkill was a rare find indeed.

Mossums are only active at night and feed on decaying carrion and return to their nests at dawn.

This is more than likely a one-off so don't miss this opportunity to buy this
magnificent beast."

I particularly like; "This is more than likely a one-off..."

Shame though.

From NZ's version of ebay, trademe

Thanks to my bro for for link

Man vs Mild

2009-11-30T21:07:00.002+11:00

I am fully aware that since having a baby my engagement with the world has shrunk, as a cursory glance at this blog will attest. Tonight though, is my lowest ebb. I'm watching Man vs Wild.

Can anyone explain to me, ANYONE, what the hell that Bear Grills thinks he is playing at? The intro tells us that he is an ex SAS soldier, an expert on traversing, and surviving, extreme* conditions.

This is the second time I've watched, and here he is again, explaining, in an urgent monotone, how what he is doing is really dangerous.

"Here I am puffing excessively whilst crossing this ankle deep creek! In 2006 a hiker from Chicago skinned both his knees on a section of lawn on the slight rise not 400 miles to the East of where I am standing right now!"

I watched the first show because he was in NZ, crossing from one peak to another using a rope. The New Zealand guide stood off to one side, barely supressing a fit of the giggles as Bear and his mate exclaimed how they were the most....'grunt grunt pant...frightened sob sob.... they had ever been, gasp!

And here he is again, complete with thundering reality TV music, gracefully jumping the two foot gap between a couple of boulders.

Don't give your kid a name like Bear, that's the lesson there.

*EXTREME!!

Merimbula

2009-11-29T21:14:00.002+11:00

Merimbula has whales. Whales and bogans.

It's Sunday night and I'm watching Joanna Lumley breathlessly exploring Norway's frozen north, living out her childhood nursery rhymes of snow and animals with bells on them. I like Ms Lumley despite myself. There's something beguiling about such breathless enthusiasm expressed in such polite diction.

Now she's on a train, showing us the contents of her antique stenciled suitcase filled with a delightful collection of oil pastels, notebooks, quaint colonial guidebooks from the days when Britain was busily pillaging the planet, and of course, a box of excuisite imported chocolates. Darling!

We took a similarly romantic approach to this weekend's trip to Merimbula, hauling along antique bags of kitesurfing equipment, an avalanche of baby gear and a bag of rapidly softening plums. Lumley got an epiphanic northern lights experience. We got fruit fly. Lumley bombastically exclaimed the virtues of the unutterably wonderful indigenous chaps of the arctic circle. We got bogans.

And by GOD, did we get bogans. I've never understood how little old Merimbula, a small town in a beautiful coastal location, can host such a phenomenally rabid community of bogans. I attend the same wavesailing competition every year, and every year nightfall brings out hordes of midgety little men with over-sized ears and ratty hair cuts, orbited by larger, husky girlfriends wearing what for all the world looks like butcher's string. Every year I get harrassed by Merimbula's bogans. It's just getting silly now.

As a side note, I think I feel a bumper sticker coming on; the Southern Cross with the words; Astronomy! Not just for Bogans!

Canberra

2009-11-23T16:10:00.004+11:00

I'm in Canberra. I've been here before so there's no need to repeat myself. Short version; imagine a city run by professional arts students and computer geeks. No-one's pants meet their shoes.

Driving into Queanbeyan last night grit-eyed with tiredness and hot, following wind reminded me (weirdly) of Sacramento: scorched, stubby grass verges and fully grown men wandering half-naked out of gas stations under putrescent yellow strip mall lights.

But today, a southerly, and Canberra feels like Christchurch, in NZ, with its long straight roads, English trees and empty suburbs, and a pointy little drizzle to freeze the knuckles.

I've not met anyone who actually likes living in Canberra, which is odd, because plenty of people have set up camp. Most talk about their tenure in the city as something between a compromise and sentence. In the city centre today (signposted: "City Centre") hordes of Canberrans floated about munching on sausage rolls and chocolate milk. Canberrans can be identified by their neck-lanyards. I'm wondering if a bar code reader gently electrocutes them as they drive out of the ACT.

For all its dorkiness, I quite like Canberra. It's so planned its weird; like a cross between Gliding On and the Truman Show.

And with that, it's time for another cup of tea.

Pants

2009-11-21T13:14:00.004+11:00

Now ordinarily I am not one for Home-Ec. I got thrown out of both sewing and cooking. I did however get an A in woodwork but I suspect that was less to do with my mad Skills, and more to do with my Beaver-Teeth. Perhaps Mr Smith was scared I'd bite him?

Trouble is, I like to sew. It's cleaner and less flammable than gas welding (usually). I like to make things out of other things. I believe the term now is "upcycling" which I initially thought referred to the back view of those shrink-wrapped bike enthusiasts. However, it is, in fact, a nifty way of turning hideously stained old things into hideously stained new things.

I post these pictures knowing FULL WELL that one day my daughter will be HORRIFIED that I dressed her in such ramshackle pants. But the thing is, stretchy pants are handy, and many of today's baby pants do not accommodate the bulky cloth nappy bum. So making them is good.

You can see exactly how I did it from the before and after pic - just re-used the tee shirt hem, and side seams for the pants. They take about five minutes to make too! Perfect for those of us with the attention span of a......

Grumble in the Jungle

2009-11-16T13:08:00.001+11:00

I LOVE trees!

When you buy a stroller you check the important things, like whether the interior is washable, how sun-proof it is, and its handling characteristics when faced with a child who for all intents and purposes appears to be hosting a party of snakes in it.

Not advertised is the stroller's handling ability when empty. It should be, because at some point you will find yourself carrying the snake-wrangler in one arm and steering the empty stroller with the other.

First bushwalk was a success. Trees, birds, booby. What more could anyone ask for?

Num num num

2009-11-12T07:23:00.006+11:00

Being fat isn't just a health risk because it increases your chances of certain diseases, like diabetes and heart disease (where one in five Americans wears their pants pulled up to their heart). Being fat, or, more specifically, eating too many calories also speeds up autophagy (cellular aging*),

This isn't news to many of us, but it is news to the New York Times. In a recent article they detail a longitudinal study where a group of well fed, middle class volunteers reduced their caloric intake by 25% over a two year period. The participants weren't overweight to begin with although the new diet caused them to lose a significant amount of weight before stabilising.

Participants reported feeling cold (as their metabolisms had less energy to burn) but otherwise well, if a little hungry. Which got me thinking about the last bunch of Americans I read about who reported feeling cold and hungry.

In Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, Barbara Ehrenreich spent a year traveling around the US working minimum wage jobs to see how easy or hard it was to live on the shadow of sweet FA.

In the west, obesity is increasingly associated with poverty, as poor people consume more highly processed food containing 'empty calories'. Yet, Ehrenreich worked with poor women who were routinely under nourished, especially in relation to their demanding physical work. She describes women "dizzy with hunger" wondering if "half a bag of corn chips will be enough for lunch".

These women can't afford even enough shitty food to stave off hunger and cold.

It's a peculiarly stratified community we live in, when one bunch of researchers is discovering the novelty of starving while the other is researching its monotony.

Maybe the poor, with their shiny, robust cellular structures, really will inherit the earth.

*Calorie restriction speeds up the rate at which defective cells are 'cannabalised' by the body. This has been floated as a reason for the increase in cancer and other diseases which increase in occurance with age.

Let's get mammalian

2009-11-11T14:18:00.005+11:00

- "And then I said, 'Errr click click click"

- "Touche"

Yesterday we loaded The Poss-Bomb into her stroller and trotted off to the beach, as we often do. A pod of dolphins was rounding up salmon (kawhai for NZ readers) just off the point. They made their way into the bay until they were cavorting straight ahead of us. Poss-Bomb watched, from her Dad's arms, intrigued, as her mother stripped down, dived in and swam out to them.

I've swum with dolphins before, but what always amazes me is how large they are, such big, powerful bodies. Bobbing around in the great pulses of water they displace is both exciting and a little disconcerting. Having spent a good deal of my life in the sea, I have something of an inbuilt respect for large, fishy creatures. It's never stopped me diving with sharks or swimming with dolphins, but I am always humbled by how completely inept I am in the sea, utterly, rightly, out of depth.

Yesterday was glorious. The dolphins paid little attention to me, cruising once around me and then back to the task at hand (fish fish! My favourite! I love fish!). I never foist myself upon dolphins either - I'm not keen on people who leap all over wild animals for a cuddle, (although generally they don't get too many cracks at it). Yesterday I stopped about five meters away and let them come over to me for a sniff.

People often talk of dolphin's intelligence, their eery ability to sense emotions and intent. I suspect many more animals retain these abilities, but are prevented from showing their caring-sharing side by their more compelling hungry-toothsome side. But who knows, our awe of dolphins it could be nothing more than projection on our part. After all, I didn't think any of their jokes were remotely funny.

Things

2009-11-11T13:26:00.004+11:00

Two interesting things I have learned today;

First;

Australia's demographers predict that 20 - 30% of the current cohort of fertile women will remain childless for the rest of their lives. The last time childlessness hit this peak was at the turn of the century, where children required sensible marriage to a well-settled chap. (By the baby-booming 1950's of course, any old riff-raff would do the job).

And I deleted the second one on the grounds that it was fairly man-hatey.

Horsies.

2009-11-08T10:17:00.005+11:00

'If anyone needs me, I'll be in my trailer.'

Prescience isn't always its own reward. Last May I wrote about our newest neighbours, a colony of fifty zillion bats. There was pissing and moaning as each morning the surrounding suburbs found themselves cropdusted anew with a solid coating of sticky, acidic bat shit. I marveled though, that for all the wailing over ruined paintjobs and trampolines, no one seemed particularly interested in the only legitimate problem with bats. Small, mammalian and airborne, bats are an excellent vector for zoonotic diseases.

And then, sadly, in August, Queensland vet Alastair Rodgers died of the Hendra virus. Hendra is transmitted from bats, to horses, to humans.

As a species, you know your days are numbered when hippies start championing your cause.

We heard sentiments like; "The bats are native. Encroaching surburbia and habitat destruction is resulting in increasing contact with bats. We all need to learn to live together, man".

Well, ask the sharks how this is working out for them.

There are already numerous bat eradication strategies proposed all over the country, precisely because of diseases like the Hendra virus. And of course, let's not forget our cultural squeamishness over 'creepy' bats.

Here's the thing. Bats don't give Hendra to humans. Horses do.

Bats are native. They have been here for thousands of years. Why can't we get rid of the horses instead?

I should declare my bias. I hate horses. And I've long suspected they have it in for us. Bats have been here for thousands of years without pestering the humans. Horses, on the other hand, have managed to get us to drive them around the countryside in chauffer-driven SUV's after only a couple of generations. There they are, peering down their aquiline noses at us, while we brush and comb them, plait their tails, carefully fitting new sets of shoes to their pristine, idle feet.

Where will it stop? Get rid of the nostrilly bastards, I say.

Of course, in the colonies, horses, like golf, quietly bespeak a wealthy fundament; access to private land. Horsies are Class.

Without horses, there'd be no Melbourne Cup. No hordes of twittering bints staggering about in 40 degree heat wearing nothing more than cake decoration to distract us from the other costly annual Australian tradition; an increase in interest rates. And relieving the world of pony clubs would be akin to a proletarian revolution. Gone; A whole cadre of young women so convinced of their aristocratic bearing they have to wear jodphurs to make their thighs look fat.

In this age of food security angst, I'll just say one thing of bats and horses; there's more meat on a horse.

Trick or...oh Christ just have a Redskin.

2009-11-03T08:28:00.003+11:00

Perhaps my most pervasive, if somewhat distanced memories of living in California live on in my email. Every October I am bombarded with messages notifying me that I am on the cusp of Halloween.

Halloween bores the shit out of me. Fully grown adults dressing up as monsters or women out-slutting rabbits in little grey leotards and fluffy ears? Meh. And pumpkins are for eating, not fogging up with man-breath.

My lack of enthusiasm might stem from my parents attitude to Halloween (and other forms of witchery, such as Christmas) was less than wholehearted. Discouraging their children from wandering the streets at night begging for lollies seemed a downright 'alternative lifestyle' to other parents. Perhaps one has to experience Halloween as a child to appreciate its magic later on, like Christmas, or vaccinations*.

Or perhaps it's just like my Standard 4 teacher said; I've got no imagination. I don't think I was long on imagination, but I was definitely short on bullshit. Ultimately my mistrust of unicorns and princesses saved me from a cascade of hideous velour bedspreads and dreamcatchers. I'd like to see Mrs Barker's face now!

Perhaps my lack of interest in Halloween is simpler; the antipodean version of Halloween remains something of a plasticky homage to off-pitch Americana. Would we really be so well versed in 'spooky' if it weren't for Scooby's best mate Shaggy? (even if he did provide one of life's important lessons: smoking heaps of pot turns you into a munter with ill- fitting pants).

I thought I was light years away from complaining about American cultural imperialism, but it sneaks up on you. Where's my tin foil hat????

*My parents vaccinated us with the fervour of people who had childhood memories of friends and relatives staggering around with everything from polio to Dutch Elm disease. Still, they didn't have the wisdom of ex-playboy models to guide their choices Back In the Day.

Splutter.

2009-10-30T13:40:00.005+11:00

I don't watch a lot of television anymore. Oh sure, it's there in the corner, blaring away, but I am not actually watching it. This is the right and correct manner in which to watch television; a sort of comforting background noise, a panacea insinuating its way into your subconscious. Before you know it, you're up to your eyeballs in hideous furniture from Harvey Normans and convinced that KFC contains food.

Anyway, last night I actually watched ABC's HungryBeast, because apparently, it is a show for youth. Because what the youth need is more TV. Annyyway...

It had meaningful content! To wit; a story about James Hardie and their utterly disgraceful behaviour regarding mesothelioma.

Hardies wasn't news to me. What did impress me was this;

The program interviewed a woman who was suffering from terminal mesothelioma. She had a family of teenagers.

Often overlooked, I think, is that asbestos was widely used right up till the 1980's. In fact, (something not mentioned on the show - I think) most of the deaths are yet to come - estimates range between 25 and 45 ooo by the year 2020*. Estimates are tricky because mesothelioma is basically a tumour of the lung. Consequently, these cancers are co-present with suspected smoking related cancers. And of course, the risk of cancer is stochastic.

It's hydromatic! It's stochastic! Why, it's Greased Lightening dur nur nur nur nur...etc...

Where was I?

Oh yes. Hardies. Knowingly killing Australians through extreme negligence. That old chestnut.

What I don't understand is how Hardies has escaped a flensing by the Australian government.

Certainly, the NSW Supreme court is currently hearing charges bought by ASIC against Hardies (mainly surrounding issues of diligence), but I think the cruelist twist is that mesothelioma begets such a quick death and a quick death is a cheap death. If asbestos affected more of the population, with a more healthcare intensive disease, the government might be more interested in coruscating Hardies in the manner in which they should.

Here's the other thing I don't understand. If you provide an unsafe workplace, resulting in injury or death, you can be charged civilly, but also criminally.

Criminal charges against Hardies were investigated but only surrounding the dodgy money-hiding limiting their liability in terms of compensation to victims, not the fact that they knowingly placed employees and the public in harm's way. The Public Prosecutor couldn't make a case for the former and the latter seems relegated to something for the victims to sort out with Hardies. I mean, aren't the victims Australians too? Who represents their interests?

I wish someone could explain to me how Hardies has gotten away with this. If the ABC could send in a crack team of post-ironic, deeply hair-gelled gen Y-ers to unravel this mystery to me I'd be more than grateful.

*2020 terminates the data set of people who may have had significant exposure to the disease.

Snoutbook.

2009-10-29T17:02:00.002+11:00

Facebook is a teenage girl.

On my page this morning;

Jenny Bigglesworth* only has 18 friends. Help her find more! Suggest friends for Jenny!

Oh Facebook, how magnanimous of you. Poor friendless Jenny. She's only got herself to blame.

Suggest a makeover for Jenny!

The thing is, Jenny doesn't see these friendly little posts. Ergo; Facebook is saying the same thing about you, but you'd never know. And Facebook knows what to "suggest" because Facebook keeps track of everything you do (when it's not co-ordinating chem trails over your house).

Jenny just spent three hours looking at pictures of her friends' weddings. Her birth-year is 1970! Suggest a boyfriend for Jenny! Or at least a devastating one night stand!

How did this thing insinuate itself into our lives? (PS. please be my friend and make nice comments about my haircut).

*Obviously not her real name.

And more...

2009-10-29T10:57:00.003+11:00

Ahhh Fig trees. Instructions read; young plant likes dry, neglected soil, in fierce sunlight and/or completely submerged stony riverbed. Jam tree into dirt and swear at it. Figs should appear forthwith.

Parrot's Delight!

Self seeded kipflers. Who is noticing a pattern here?

Gardening

2009-10-29T10:42:00.004+11:00

I like this time of year, the raspberries are thinking about being a hell crop by Christmas...

Ahh, self seeded tomatoes, neglect's hearty reward!

More lettuce trees!

Wilding strawberries, fighting it out with the self-seeded tomatoes.

Finally. the zuccinis. This year prudence prevailed and we only planted a few plants, to provide us with neat baby vegetables, rather than marauding marrows visible from space (last year's folly).

Eventing

2009-10-26T13:05:00.002+11:00

That's right, folks, last weekend was the 13th Annual Moruya Jazz Festival, tagline reads; "One of the most affordable festivals in Australia".

That's right, people, shop around! You'll find the Moruya Festival is among the cheapest!

And still on oddly pitched events, we spent the weekend avoiding the Sydney Harbour Bridge. This was because on Sunday the bridge was closed. Because it was covered in InstaTurf. And people sitting on rugs, eating toast. And cows.

The photos in the Herald were quite good, but mostly because it's not often one captures cows in the midst of asking one another; "What the fuck are we doing on the Sydney Harbour Bridge?"

Adventures in food

2009-10-18T15:34:00.002+11:00

As threatened, I made the pumpkin pie, as per Mr Hungry Chef's recipe. I took pictures.

I like step-by-step pictures as it makes me feel like I am back in the sheltered workshop. The pie was delicious. Utterly delicious, according to the three other people who fought me for slices. You'll have to be quicker than that! Hah!

Sadly, my other adventure in cooking has not been so successful. And to that all I can say is: Fucking Edmonds cookbook. Fucking fucking Edmonds. Fuckkit!

I wanted to make a Christmas cake. So I consulted my Edmonds cookbook. And that's where it all went wrong. Look, no-one knows better than me that an overnight soak in booze can have untoward results. But this fucking cake was a disaster. It was burnt. And I didn't even cook it for as long as they suggested. Or on as higher a heat.

However, a day later, and the burnt bits soughed off, we had a salvagable cake. Quite nice, in fact. Thank Christ there's more brandy.

Here we are soaking the fruit. Go fruit go! That's a cassia quill in the middle. I made a couple of other modifications too, just because the New Zealand Edmonds cookbook is not exactly the final word in food, where all recipes are improved by being three times more Hoggetty!

I tell you though, this is the last time I am making anything out of that book. I am leaving Edmonds to the po-faced, kilt-skirted, one and a half axe-handled, Presbytarian 'Country Women'. Never buy a cookbook that contains the word Suet.

Grrrr.

Food

2009-10-15T10:54:00.003+11:00

I recently staggered onto this blog, One Hungry Chef . It's penned by my beloved's friend's husband, an American chef living in Sydney. And it's great....especially because the latest entry is pumpkin pie!

Pumpkin serves as a cultural litmus test. In New Zealand, the humble pumpkin is treated to the same ignominy as the rest of the vegetables that can't run fast enough; boiled to death, or "roasted" (read: fried) in three inches of the dripping kept in the tin under the sink.

Hangi'd pumpkin is about the only decent kiwi treatment for pumpkin, but that's because;

A) it's served with a mountain of greasy hangi'd pork, and;

B) you've already dug a man-sized hole in the ground.

Europeans are slightly more discerning about pumpkin. My predilection for the vegetable was met with a mixture of bemusement and disdain. An Italian friend who came to stay with us in NZ informed me rather snippily that pumpkin was eaten in Italy, but only by animals and immigrants. This could be because he was trying to peel one with a potato peeler at the time, with what can only be described as idiotismo.

The pumpkin refracts American cultural mores as well. Americans eat pumpkin but only when it's mixed with ten eggs, a bucket of sweetened condensed milk and an aorta's worth of cream fraiche (or whatever that what stuff was). Needless to say, this, for me, was PUMPKIN'S CROWNING ACHIEVEMENT!

Pumpkin pie is about the best thing in the universe although I've not made it since I returned south. Like pound cake, I just can't bring myself to put that many kilojoules into a bowl and not end up with an engine.

Anyway; go read this blog. And make some pumpkin pie. Mmm pumpkin pie.....where was I?...