Month: June 2024

Cast your giant shadow my way

New podcast. For this one we go back to the fuzzier end of the mid to late 60s and early 70s, the era where so much of my musical heart is really located; if I wanted to limit myself to just doing mixes from one period (which, to be honest, I don’t, cos I like too much music from other times), the later 60s would probably be it. Playlist:

    1. The Sonics, The Witch
    2. The Misunderstood, Find the Hidden Door
    3. William S. Fischer, Saigon
    4. Iggy & The Stooges, Penetration
    5. Buffalo Springfield, Hung Upside Down
    6. Blonde on Blonde, Castles in the Sky
    7. Traffic Sound, Meshkalina
    8. Flamin’ Groovies, Slow Death
    9. The Pink Fairies, Do It
    10. Dana Gillespie, Andy Warhol
    11. The Rolling Stones, Complicated
    12. The Byrds, Bad Night at the Whisky
    13. Timebox, Gone is the Sad Man
    14. David Bowie, Holy Holy (1972 version)
    15. The Who, Baby Don’t You Do It (live)
    16. Yardbirds, Stroll On
    17. Love Sculpture, Sabre Dance

The very image of manhood

Oh Caleb. Frankly, I am not the world’s greatest example of an “Aussie man” myself, so I arguably shouldn’t be criticising him for not being one either… but fuck him, he’s Caleb Bond, the obnoxious cunt deserves all the beating you can give him. He has even less right than me to present himself as an “Aussie man”, this freak who was born at the age of 40, this joke that got out of hands years ago and went on too long past its punchline, a joke that he himself will evidently never get. I mean, I perhaps overstate my own failures as a person sometimes, but at least I’m aware that they exist. And I know I’m still less of a piece of shit than Caleb Bond. And what’s he so outraged about? This guy:

This is Michael Sneesby, an executive from Channel 9 who was fronting some parliamentary enquiry or other while conspicuously not wearing a tie. And Lord love a duck but OH how Caleb got the vapours when he saw this:

A tie signifies not just authority. It shows respect and attention to detail.
Any old bugger can chuck on a white shirt and a navy suit. When you introduce a tie or a pocket square you have to take some time to think about colours, patterns and matching your clothes.
Accessories convey personality. And while the tieless suit may have started as a mark of nonconformity – you’re not like other bosses – it’s now so common that it is essentially the most pedestrian thing you could do.
Standards have slipped. You can do what you want – and yet everyone does the same thing, just in a different form.
Some argue that’s a good thing because it means we’ve become more egalitarian and interested in function over form.
I think it’s a sign of decay. A man who can’t wear a tie with his suit screams laziness – or perhaps that he’s on his way to court and he’s busted out the one suit he owns for all occasions.

But THIS turd promoting himself as a serious thinker is a sign of a healthy society?

Apparently this is what giving thought to his daily drag looks like to Caleb, a not particularly attractive suit that serves him about as poorly as that beard does. Still, at least it’s good to see he still has his finger on the pulse when it comes to the REAL problems facing Australia, namely things that might’ve been a faux pas in 1924 but in 2024 no one gives a fuck about; one day he might be able to parlay that keen observation of his into a job at a real media outlet…

Assange… walks?

Personally I don’t think I’ve ever fully trusted Julian Assange, even when he was a “good” guy, and especially not after his work turned into a vendetta against Hillary Clinton specifically, and Wikileaks has always struck me as, you know, a potentially mixed blessing depending on who Assange decided to target. But after years of other countries, especially the US, shaking their fists at him, it looks like he’s… getting away with it?

Julian Assange has been released from a British prison and is expected to plead guilty to violating US espionage law, in a deal that would allow him to return home to his native Australia.
Assange, 52, agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US national defence documents, according to filings in the US district court for the Northern Mariana Islands. […]
As news of the plea deal spread on Monday night, there were widespread expressions of relief that Assange’s years-long captivity appeared to be coming to an end. But there were also concerns that a conviction, even on a single count, could have a devastating and prolonged impact on investigative and national security journalism.
Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University which defends press freedom, said that the plea deal averted the worst-case scenario of a full-on prosecution. “But this deal contemplates that Assange will have served five years in prison for activities that journalists engage in every day.”
Jaffer warned that the outcome could “cast a long shadow over the most important kinds of journalism, not just in this country but around the world”.
Meanwhile Mike Pence, the former US vice-president, criticised the deal, saying it was a “miscarriage of justice”.
Writing on X he said: “There should be no plea deals to avoid prison for anyone that endangers the security of our military or the national security of the United States. Ever.”

I find this genuinely bizarre news, as I would’ve expected Assange to eventually be handed over to the Americans, and once they had him he woud never see the light of day again. Instead, this basically means that he pleads guilty and then they let him go with time served in the UK; the odd location of the court date is avowedly because the Marianas are handily close to Australia. It still depends on the judge actually agreeing to the deal too, but that probably won’t be a problem. I was fully expecting him to get life in prison at best.

Notwithstanding my own personal ambivalence about him, I’m not actually sorry to see Assange going free as such; the UK government really should’ve shat or got off the pot about dealing with him years ago one way or the other. Either give him to the Americans or let him go. I am, however, wondering why now. And, more to the point, what are WE doing here in Australia. Biden did say recently he was considering Australia’s request to drop the prosecution, and evidently he’s actually done that, but… why? Why’s he doing it now? And what has Australia offered to convince him? Cos, you know, this is surely not just out of the goodness of his heart… And, even more to the point, what will WE do to Assange when he gets back here? I cannot imagine he’ll just be left alone by either the Australian government or the US, and I’m sure the latter will be expecting us to keep hm under clos watch. Pardon me if I remain a bit suspicious about this…

Charming indeed

Someone posted on Bluesky tonight about Robert Mitchum’s brief but baffling career in calypso music, and that put me in mind of someone else whose own career as a calypso singer back in the 50s looks equally baffling now, Louis Farrakhan… or “The Charmer” as he was known before that encounter with Elijah Muhammad in 1955…

Of course, the subject matter— i.e. Christine Jorgensen and her famous sex change—is almost as perplexing as the idea that LOUIS FUCKING FARRAKHAN of all people would be singing about it (I don’t think he’s a big fan of our trans cousins these days). In NINETEEN FIFTY-FUCKING-FOUR to boot. A CALYPSO song on top of that. This was a hell of a thing to be singing about in popular music of the 1950s…

And the B-side is, frankly, almost as perplexing, being a song about zombies, which is another subject you didn’t hear much of in mid-century popular music. Am unaware of Louis’ current opinion of zombies, but I don’t suppose he’s much of a fan of them now either. Even conceding that Farrakhan’s career as a singer only really looks weird in hindsight, these really are peculiar songs…

The Conquest of Bread

Book #14 for 2024, with which I have exceeded in just under six months my tally for the whole of last year… anyway, I thought it was probably time I not only read a classic, but a classic of politics which is something I rarely do read, and Kropotkin strikes me as an interesting figure, an actual Russian aristocrat who turned his back on all that in favour of anarcho-communism… I am not exactly the most advanced political thinker; I am basically in favour of decency towards humanity, and I suspect social democracy or democratic socialism (never can tell the difference, assuming one exists) is probably what I lean towards most as far as that goes, so I’m not 100% in tune with Kropotkin’s particular vision. That vision, it must be said, is kind of grand and well-expressed; I think the overall analysis of how capitalism and concentration of wealth and resources into a few hands fucks over the majority of people and holds back progress seemed solid and the vision of how much better things could be under Kropotkin’s form of anarcho-communism is an attractive one (though, to be sure, the book gets somewhat bogged as it goes on in the more exact details and welter of figures).

Which is why I wish I could believe in it more than I do… unfortunately I’m a lot less optimistic than him about the disappearance of the state; it may not be necessary as such but I don’t think it’s going away in any hurry… and Kropotkin acknowledges the utopian dimension of his thought, but remains evidently convinced that the outcome of the revolution he foresees will necessarily be the one he describes. History, alas, notably proved at least some of his predictions were dubious (particularly the one about an authoritarian socialist regime collapsing quickly in the face of the people revolting against it), and I think the optimism of his vision (particularly is somewhat romantic and sentimentalised… plus I’m also also kind of bothered that he has practically nothing to say about people unable to work (as opposed to the unwilling, who he’s happy to cast out), saying instead no one is so weak of body they can’t at least take care of a machine. I don’t find that encouraging somehow.

But, in fairness, I do think some of his basic principles aren’t wrong, namely that any successful revolution is going to have to be led by the actual people, and that any revolution which doesn’t start by considering how said people are going to actually live during the period of upheaval, and how they’ll get food, shelter, clothing etc, is kind of fucked from the outset. So there are some things in here I do find myself sympathising with, even if just on the “vibe” level. I also have Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid, so I’ll read that at some point soon too. Just wonder if I should’ve gone with that first now…

And we turned our backs on the sun

New podcast up now. Going a bit more in the darkwave/goth direction this time round (more relatively recent stuff at that), also the rank nepotism direction (that’s people I actually know behind Sequential Zero). Playlist:

    1. Sims, Breaking the Ice
    2. Night Battles, Curse the Day
    3. Esben and the Witch, Marching Song
    4. Massive Attack & Mos Def, I Against I
    5. The Soft Moon, Zeros
    6. Puritans, God of the Gutter
    7. Black Cab, Underground Star
    8. Ital Tek, Cobra
    9. Drab Majesty, Cold Souls
    10. Wovenhand, Field of Hedon
    11. Sequential Zero, The Banishing Spell
    12. The Faint, Violent
    13. Sextile, Into the Unknown
    14. Death Index, Ego-Dance

Ruby’s mother was Darth Vader?!

GODDAMNIT, now we have to wait until Christmas (apparently Moffat’s writing this year’s) for more Ncuti, eight episodes (nine with Christmas special) really wasn’t enough, especially when he was barely in two of them… But all right Davies, I’ll concede those misgivings and reservations I had about your return have proven mostly unjustified, you actually generally pulled it off. Bluesky is mixed about the finale, seems mostly divided between “greatest thing since sliced bread” and “eh, it was OK” with a scattering of “what the fuck was THAT bullshit” in the mix; I imagine Twitter is mostly the latter, and there’ll be a bunch of that from the Youtube grifters…

Predictable if nothing else, though.

And I can understand why to some extent, cos the ultimate revelation of Ruby’s mother is nothing if not out of fucking NOWHERE (parenthetically, it also answers the question of Ruby’s dad which has gone noticeably unasked throughout the series)… but in a way that I personally actually rather liked. I think Sutekh was, in the end, dealt with kind of… easily given he’s a god who’s just destroyed all life in the universe, and on the whole the script is a bit unbalanced; even with another ten minutes to play with, it still felt wobbly and stumbly at the end. I’ve seen a few comments that this episode should’ve been split in two itself, and maybe that wouldn’t have been a bad idea, maybe it could’ve clarified a few points. I don’t know.

On the whole, though, I’ve enjoyed this whole season a damn sight more than I ever expected to. So yeah, props to Rusty for getting things mostly right. Maybe we’ll find out who Mrs Flood is in the next series, too…

Well said

Mildly ironic seeing this from Thought Slime, cos they’re one of those leftists I myself am annoyed by. But the point is still accurate, and I do find it vexing every time I see one of these “I didn’t leave the Left, the Left left me” goons… I mean, I’m hardly a doctrinaire lefty myself (I am particularly cynical about revolutions), but that doesn’t mean I’m therefore going to turn right if I’m still broadly in agreement with the left…

Scared of girls

I went to Sydney Boys High School, which was a single-sex school as the name may suggest. So was Sydney Girls High School, obviously, but we were adjacent to each other out there at Moore Park, so there was a fair bit of mixing going on between the two. We managed to coexist.

Unlike these Newington College alumni having a normal reaction to the news that NC is planning on taking in female students…

A Sydney barrister and Newington College old boy leading the fight against the private school’s coed shift has sent an impassioned email to alumni, detailing his plans to fly to Tonga this week to lobby King Tupou VI on the issue. […]
In the email, seen by Guardian Australia, Morgan wrote: “I am flying to Tonga on Saturday, nothing is clear, but I am working on meeting with the King of Tonga to explain we are fighting for a tradition in which they are important.”
Newington’s brother school, Tupou College, is in Tonga.
“It’s hard to keep fighting but myself and a lot of people on this link have worked very hard to fight against the bullshit that is destroying a school we love,” Morgan wrote.
In the email, Morgan also encourages the recipients to “never give up” and to oppose the school’s “strategic direction”.
“We will need to show like at the SGM the silent majority disagree with the ‘Strategic Direction’ aka ‘transgender midgets get free schooling paid for by hard working normal people’. What a joke.”

In the midst of this hysteria, the article includes a photo of Tupou—whose father is apparently a Newington old boy, hence the otherwise baffling idea of getting Tonga mixed up in this nonsense—at the UN, addressing the general assembly in 2019. I feel somehow that, despite the family connection, his majesty might feel that sort of thing is more befitting his position than getting involved with this tedious gang of paranoid reactionary shits. I could be wrong about that, of course, and should be prepared for disappointment.

Anyway, I said SBHS and SGHS engaged in mixing, and that occasionally included classes as well… such as my year 11 and 12 German class where we had an honest to goodness girl in the class with us. I don’t know if I ever knew exactly why this was so, but there she was anyway. And how did the boys react to this situation, this invasion of the distaff into our hitherto all-male gathering? By getting on with things. We had work to do in that class and we all got on with it like adults. Which we weren’t quite at that time, but somehow in 1991 and 1992 we were more adult than Dallas Morgan and these other dickheads. I have my issues with my time at SBHS but I’m still glad I went there rather than Newington…

A semi-precious shell

Saw this on the socials this evening. This is by one Auguste Leroux (apparently no relation to Gaston) and apparently it’s from a 1920 edition of J.K. Huysmans’ A rebours, which is a fairly peculiar book and this is one of its more grotesque moments… A rebours was one of the key texts of the later 1800s’ Decadence and Symbolist movements (and probably the “poisonous French novel” in The Picture of Dorian Gray), it’s about a somewhat etiolated aristocrat who withdraws from society into a world of his own aesthetic satisfaction; nothing much really happens as such, it’s Des Esseintes having sensory and literary experiences of various kinds, including one point where he does notably leave his house (cos reading Dickens inspires him to go to London, but he decides that eating at an English restaurant in Paris was near enough and the real thing would only disappoint him).

But there’s one particular episode that this picture shows, i.e. the one with the bejewelled tortoise. Astonishingly, this actually seems to have been based on an actual thing; the book’s Wiki entry notes that one of the models for Des Esseintes was the real aristocrat Robert de Montesquiou, who once invited the poet Stephan Mallarmé to his house, with the latter reporting that one of the many sights he saw there was “the remains of an unfortunate tortoise whose shell had been coated with gold paint”. Huysmans obviously jacked that up by having Des Esseintes cover his tortoise’s shell in gemstones, which makes the shell weigh so much the poor bloody animal dies as a result. It’s a really kind of obnoxious moment that’s lingered in my memory more than most of the details in that book (I can’t remember how long it’s been since I read it, but it’s probably not since at least the early oughts, possibly even the late 90s), hence how I managed to recognise it immediately even before I read the caption identifying it. I probably should re-read it at some point.