Industrial Inaction
I support the right of workers to act collectively in their interests and to strike, even if it inconveniences me. But “free fare days” don’t affect me either way: I have a quarterly ticket. Yesterday, as part of the City-to-Surf, buses and trains were free for anyone with a bib number, but I carried my ticket anyway, just in case, and because I already paid my fare, thanks, so why not use it? I guess if I bought a weekly ticket, it’d be possible to take advantage of these things, but, oh, well. Good luck, rail staff. I wish I could see a 5% raise again someday.

Postscript
I collect book reviews until such time as I need a new stash of unread books to work through, at which point I hit the Strand Book Store online and get my weight in literature shipped down for about the same price a new hardcover runs in this country. Or Book Depository in the U.K. One of those books I've read in the last two years was Postwar, Tony Judt's account of Europe from 1945 onward. It was terrific, by far the most edifying work of history I've read since A Distant Mirror. And now he's dead, just 62. Well, he's got a body of work out there, including an appraisal of the world at present, so I guess I know what's on my list for my next shopping excursion.

Race Day Minus 2
City-to-Surf on Sunday, 14k's of road-running madness. Thousands and thousands of people will be running out of the city to Bondi Beach, and I don't know how they do it, but within the first two kilometres, even though I'm in the second start, there will be dozens, at least, ahead of me walking. Where do they come from? They can't be tired already, can they?

Anyway, I'm down to 76% of full marathon training, having run 188k out of the scheduled 246. Given that the race on Sunday is 33% of a full marathon, that's not so bad. But on the principle that I'm really training for a half-marathon, I'm only 10% over where I'd hoped to be at this stage. But it'll be fun, and I'm as ready as I'm gonna be.

Results Update: 76:32 by my clock, and I might get a few seconds on the chip, since I hit the button early. A better result than I expected.

Worm Turns
I watched the leadership debate last night, although I wasn't expecting anything of any interest to come out of it, and Tony Abbott and the Liberals aren't getting my vote anyway. It seemed worth watching nevertheless, if only to gauge the respective performances. No kidding, these are acts, stage shows, scripted to the greatest extent possible, even with the moderator throwing in follow-up questions and pressing for answers more directly to the point than provided.

Julia Gillard was assured and calm throughout, never off-message. She was good natured, even when zinging Abbott, pressing home on sore points from the last election, points Abbott could only disingenuously respond to. His repetition of "respect for the decisions of the electorate" mean only that if he gets back into power, that has to mean the electorate wants John Howard back. That ship has sailed, Tone.

Abbott generally performed poorly. This was schoolboy vs. schoolmarm. He stumbled, mis-spoke, and looked shifty. His attempts to re-smear Gillard and Labor with their errors and failures - and there have been a few - painting them as an ineffective government, fell flat. I admit they would have done so with me anyway, but I think I can be assured in my assessment, based on the other reason I watched the show: the worm.

As the debate proceeded, audience members, selected for their purported "swing" status, rated the statements and query replies each leader provided. The real-time line graph running along the bottom of the screen was split between men and women, with a third line showing the overall rating. There are a couple of points worth making here. First, the worm is distracting. It's difficult to focus on what's being said if you're watching to see how it's coming across. I expect it's no less so distracting to try to key in a rating while you're listening, and seeing the line ticking up and down second by second it's pretty clear that the audience members had to be pretty frantically hitting those keys.

Another aspect is how consistently the audience was split. Women favoured Gillard substantially above men's ratings, even when men were positively inclined. Women also pretty consistently rated Abbott low, but where he failed to resonate with men, the women were more in line with the ratings men returned, so that the average overall tracked very closely.

Finally, by running the worm in three lines, the broadcasters have made the gender divide the central issue of the campaign. They've been pushing this line from day one of Abbott's leadership, as his standing with women has been a consistent theme of his political life, but that's been more a joke than a serious analysis of the state of play. Not anymore. Gillard's the new Thatcher, or the new Hillary, anyway, and that's where the campaign will stay. Once Labor are returned to power - and they will be - we'll have Australia's first elected Prime Minister. I don't doubt that Labor and Gillard see this as a message to hold on to. The Liberals, on the other hand, may wish they had someone other than Julie Bishop to put forward.

The Next Three Years (approx.)
So having taken the leadership and the Lodge in a spill, Julia's now set to take the country to the polls: 21 August will see us decide if we want the Mad Monk or Ms. Gillard to lead. I like her chances, although it does seem the media's pretty well intent on bringing down Labor, if for no other reason than that they think they can. God knows their take on Abbott is disparaging when it isn't simply incredulous. My own take on this is that the Fairfaxes and Murdochs and Packers and Stokes think they were instrumental in the downfall of Howard, the longest serving PM since Menzies, so doing in Labor as a one-term government, largely if not entirely unprecedented, would see the MSM as king-makers for years to come. It's a fanstasy, not unlike Osama bin Laden's belief that having seen the exit of the USSR from Afghanistan he could do the same easily to the "sole remaining superpower". Even if Labor is ousted, newspapers and television news are going to struggle for audience share and profitability, not to mention credibility, something they sorely lack here as it is.

Anyway, I'll preference Labor, I suppose, if only because to preference the Greens is futile and might see Tony Abbott too often at Kirribilli House for my taste, not to mention the hash he'd make of this country if he had half a chance. I'm just sorry he's got half a chance in August.

Run, Walk, Sit
If it's true that sitting will kill you sooner no matter what, maybe this weekend I should go buy one of these ergonomic chairs.

Calamari
The octopus is a witch! Cook it!

(O.k., that's not nice. Instead, let it go.)

Elections
Julia Gillard is Australia's new Prime Minister, taking over from Kevin Rudd in a leadership spill. I think I prefer my elections direct, but Ms. Gillard is a forceful and intelligent person, likely to do quite well. That she was portrayed throughout the '07 campaign as sharpening a knife for Kevin's back was just mean-spirited, but Rudd's popularity drop over the last couple of months has made the transfer of power inevitable, so here we are. We'll have to see where this takes us regarding policy. I don't anticipate a return of the ETS, but the Resources Super Profit Tax - which I rather like - could also take a hit, which would be bad, politically, anyway.

Meanwhile, I reckon the Liberals leader, Tony Abbott, is going to find it tough dealing with a woman willing to stand up to him. Look for meltdowns.

Like the Sound of Enormous Bees Right Up in Your Face
I've tried to watch the world cup. I got home from the game late last night so stayed up for the Socceroos, but I can't stand the constant drone of the vuvuzelas. I know it's part of the experience of a game in South Africa (although I'll bet it's nothing like this bad normally), but surely television broadcasters have the technology to eliminate it? Even live games are digital, so it seems hard to accept that they wouldn't be able to introduce some sort of noise-cancellation filter in place.

League Experimentation
I've been a season ticket holder for the Rabbitohs three years now, and other than those occassions when the game is technically an away game but hosted at Souths' home ground, I haven't visited any other team's pitch. Tonight I'm headed for the north shore for the Manly match-up and will get to see whether the behavior exhibited by the fans at ANZ bears comparison with the Brookvale crowd.

Update: A one-point loss for the Bunnies, but generally more cheery than I get coming back from a home-game loss. That may be a function of the venue, one not a thoroughly serviced by public transport, as anything else. Still, it was fun, and a much different experience than my norm. Attending a game with 20,000 people in a 80,000 capacity stadium is one thing. Being there where the fans fill the available space? Feels more like a game. My ANZ sightlines are good, but I'm fully 20 to 40 metres further back from the sidelines than at a standard oval, so I don't get quite the sense of the size of the players and speed of the game normally. League is fast, and meant to be so, and I got a good feel for that tonight. Not that I'm going to switch teams.

Turn of the Century
I suppose I had to know that there'd be issues with moving into a building as old as this one and as small. With only 4 units, there isn't a lot of money coming in, so ovderall maintenance has largely been restricted to what's been required more than what would be proactive. When the big hail storm of 2001 tore up roofs all over town, a special levy was required for repairs, but there's been little else. That's about to change.

The building's old. Probably 1920's old, with an extension maybe 20 years on (and apparently clad in asbestos, although opinions differ). The damp course is limited, it seems, to the exterior walls, and one thing and another has led to a significant interior wall rising damp problem. There's a lot of expansion-contraction cracking, interior and exterior, some worse than others. There's sewer-vs.-storm drainage issues - more a regulatory problem than anything else - and pointed need for exterior painting.

The engineer's been through this morning and will provide a report and a recommendation on a builder. It's going to cost us plenty. How much remains to be seen, but I'm figuring on $20-40k, i.e., $5-10k apiece. Still, it'll be worth it, as the actual structural problems we don't have at this point will be avoided.

Wear & Tear
One of the things I meant to do following last month's half marathon was to review the performance of the super-terrific shoes I bought back in January.

I'd meant to buy the trainers, but all they had in stock was the racing model. On the advice of the salesman, who claimed to use the racers exclusively, I went with that choice, although they were far more colorful than anything I'd normally buy.

Back in the days when New Balance was new and Nike were experimenting with waffle irons, it became a principle that the laces would be set back up away from the toes, allowing a better fit and less problems with blisters, or so they said. The Newton pinches a bit around the toes, I find, which was surprising, but in the end it didn't offer me any trouble.

The shoe does indeed encourage, even force, you to land on the forefoot. This didn't cause me much difficulty as I largely run that way anyway. But in some circumstances, such as wet roadways, where the rain interacted with the petroleum by-products lingering on the surface made things a bit slick, it sometimes felt less secure than landing more flat-footedly might have. Still, I didn't slide around all that much, so it's probably just my own insecurity interacting with Sydney drivers, who only get more aggressive as driving conditions deteriorate.

The mesh upper kept my feet pretty cool, a positive, as I'd been experiencing problems with blisters. This was more a condition of running on hot pavement in high summer than the shoes, however. Once things started to cool off a bit, it became increasingly less of an issue.

What I was especially interested in seeing was the wear. From January through May, and putting in something like an average of 20k per week, the shoes held up remarkably well, as you can see.


I'm still using this pair, but in the end, seriously debating whether to get a new set or reverting to standard issue Asics/Nike/New Balance/Addidas/whatever. The main point is that other than the gimmick of the cleats or lugs or whatever you want to call them that force your landing, there was no benefit to these shoes I couldn't get for $50+ less.

Happy Birthday, Queen
Thanks for the day off.

Of course it isn't really Liz's birthday, it's just the commemoration or some such, a practice observed throughout the Commonwealth. Last week it was NZ's turn. Funnily enough, it isn't even her birthday across Australia. I think WA gets next Monday.

I suppose the idea is that in days of yore the monarch would travel through its dominion collecting tributes. Travel being what it is, different days across the year would become the official date for such payments.

I don't know about NZ, but if you want to guess what HRH would have gotten from us? Opals, sure.

Power & Serenity
As part of the Vivid Festival, Lou Reed, as he does whenever he's touring, brought his tai chi master, Ren GuangYi, who graciously consented to teach four sessions for beginners. The rain stopped late on Friday night, but I didn't go for the 7 a.m. session on Saturday, electing to sleep in and go to today's eleven a.m. class. Again, the weather held, and there I was without about three or four dozen others, running through the basics of the Master's Power 21 set, movements meant to be performed in a limited space, but for maximum effect. You see tai chi here and there, but doing it, having it explained - where your weight should settle, how to turn and pivot, you get the sense of the martial arts behind it. The best part: Lou Reed came along and even helped various of us move into the correct stance.


PS: no cats.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Vividity
Slow Music Night was definitely the right choice of show for the Vivid Festival. Not only did Laurie Anderson act as host, Lou Reed turned up to perform, along with the rest of the showcase musicians, and they were a cast of stars in their own rights, mostly. I could have done without the violinist, who was a bit of a noodler, and Holly Miranda didn't exactly wow me with her Feist-meets-Beth-Orton-crossed-with-Cat-Power performance. But Shara Worden, of My Brightest Diamond, whose cover of Blind Willie Johnson's "Lord I can't keep from crying" raised the hairs on my neck, and Colin Stetson consistently blew me away, and the Blind Boys of Alabama (formerly the Five Blind Boys... - only three left) were a stand-out. Emily Haines was o.k., but couldn't keep up with Lou on her duets with him, which was a shame. I hope the rain holds off for some of this weekend, so I can get some Tai Chi in.

Winter
So let's see: it's rugby league season, and I have my home games tickets to ANZ Stadium for Rabbitohs home games, so pretty much at least every other weekend more or less there's an event to attend; the Sydney Film Festival is on (but not much I'm really interested in, although that hasn't stopped me from buying a ticket to a documentary on the roots of Reggae on the same day at the same time as a Rabbitohs game - smart!); the Vivid Festival is on (tai chi on the Opera House forecourt, with Lou Reed & his tai chi master - is Lou an early riser? Saturday morning is the way to go; or does he sleep in? Sunday midmorning, then); and today Leonard Cohen tickets go on sale for his triumphant return in November. So much to do, so little time to do it in.

Fixing Cat
I don’t see any good reason to deny the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens a visa. I also don’t see any reason to reward him by attending any of his concerts or buying any of his music, past, present or future. He supported the fatwa on Salman Rushdie no matter what he claims now. He wasn’t joking, he wasn’t taken out of context, but he is an ass for trying to avoid saying he was wrong and apologizing. Let him go where he wants, but let him play to an empty hall.

SMH Half Results
2:02 clock time and 1:59 chip time is much better than I had any reason to expect. I'll take two weeks to rest before training for the half in October and see what kind of result I can manage then.

It Can't Happen Here
From the Department of Good Thinking, 31 new offshore drilling projects for Australia. I guess it'll be o.k. so long as we don't use BP.

We have more solar energy beaming down you'd think we could make a go of that, but I guess we'll keep digging coal and pumping oil until every last molecule is expended. Thank goodness the ETS was abandoned until 2013.

Around the World in 210 Days
Phileas Fogg's got nothing to worry about, but all props to Jessica Watson, sixteen years old and alone on a pretty small sailboat for all that time. What do you bet she tends to wobble a bit for a week or two now on dry land again? She doesn't get a record - some miles short and the category "eliminated" - but it's quite an accomplishment. I won't go into the whole "what were her parents thinking" trope. That's nonsense, clearly, now. And whether or not technological assistance made this possible only in the last twenty years hardly matters either. Good job, kid. What next?

Half Measures
Tomorrow is the Sydney Morning Herald Half Marathon. I am less ready than I was supposed to be, and my right achilles tendon is pretty sore. Excuses, excuses, but I'll be satisfied if I can stay close to two hours.

Iron Man, All Jets Ablaze, He Fights & Fights with Repulsor Rays
And not just Iron Man, because Iron Man 2 features 'Rhodey' Rhodes as War Machine (basically Iron Man's suit with additional guns). Best of all, it's got Mickey Rourke as Whiplash, and he's about as menacing as you could want in a villain. Sam Rockwell slimes his way through the picture as the egomanicial and ultimately incompetent corporate bad guy so well it hurts to watch him, kinda like Ricky Gervais in "The Office", and Garry Shandling is perfect as the sleazy Senator. The rest I could take or leave. Scarlett Johansen's pretty, sure, and I'm sure she enjoyed flying around on wires as the Black Widow, but that's about as far as that goes, and don't get me started on Gwyneth Paltrow, stuttering her way through every movie I've ever seen her in like she's desperately seeking a good ad lib. But so what? People complain about the Hollywood blockbuster like it's a bad thing. It's not true; they should all go back and watch Sullivan's Travels.

Minimal Maximal Marimbas
Synergy Percussion put on a program of Steve Reich compositions at the City Recital Hall tonight, including Part 1 of "Drumming", one of my favorites, and a new piece, "Mallet Quartet". The highlight of the evening, however, was "Sextet", a piece involving four different marimbas, two of which were, over the course of the piece, played with violin bows. I attended on the mistaken impression that Reich's "Double Sextet" would be performed, the one he got the Pulitzer for last year, confusing it with the "Mallet Quartet", due to my usual vagueness, but that hardly matters, as it was a highly enjoyable evening. The one non-Reich piece, "Kalabash", by Nigel Westlake, was very funky, as advertised, but put me in mind of nothing quite so much as music from "West Side Story", whereas the Reich pieces, for all the staccato sections' resemblance to newsflash dit-dit-dit-dit-dit, really sounded like nothing but themselves, unique compositions finally, not lacking in any way any complexity for all their "minimalism". An excellent evening worth staying up for.

Swing Votes
I’m not surprised that PM Kevin Rudd isn’t polling so well lately. Backing off on even a bad choice on carbon reduction was enough to get me seriously thinking about going Green. Even though, as usual, tax reform gets me nothing, I’m not unhappy with the cherry-picking and slow pace of implementation Labor conducted following the Henry Tax Review, I am unhappy with other, more or less consequential implementation failures. Do we have hospital reform yet? What about water management? Whaling? Getting scared out of the home insulation scheme was just stupid, not to mention ineffective communications management. (I don’t blame the government for contractor errors; I do blame them for letting the Liberals control the message.) A one-term Labor government wouldn’t make me happy, though. If the Coalition does come back into power, and worse, under Abbott, we’d be reverting to anti-labour schemes and the culture wars altogether too soon.

Harold Potter
The Magicians, by Lev Grossman, is like Harry Potter meets Narnia but for grownups. It's pretty obvious, all up, but doesn't pander nearly as much as J.K. Rowlings' books do, naturally enough, since she wrote deliberately for children and only accidentally caught an adult wave of interest, and dispenses with any religiosity such as imbues C.S. Lewis' books, in favor of the principle that if magic is real it must follow its own rules, like physics, an analogy made early on to express the unfathomability of either system ultimately: "turtles all the way down". But it's well done, for all that the ending, particularly the final two chapters, essentially cop out on what might have been a good metaphorical entertainment about real life relationships. You don't miss the point, but you do get excused from feeling it, which is too bad. A little too much set-up, a hell of a climax, and then a big let down. Maybe it's not so far off real life at that.

Cheaters Never Prosper
The Melbourne Storm have been found cooking the books and therefore stripped of two premierships and all their points for 2010, including those they haven’t even won yet, effectively relegating them to the bottom of the ladder for the season. All this, and more, because over the last five years, they’ve exceeded the salary cap by $2 million, buying the best players and a remarkable winning streak. Salary caps are sometimes controversial, but if you’re capped at $4.4 million and spend another $2 million on top, you’re really gaming it and deserve what you get. The players suffer for management’s behavior, and the fans, but I suppose something had to be done.

Round Six
Bummer Bunnies, but it wasn't the ref's calls that did you in, it was all the dropped balls. Two penalty field goals didn't help, and neither did Isaac Luke's missed conversions, but it was mistakes that did us in. Still, not quite 1/4 through, so plenty of time to catch up and make something remarkable of the season. I guess this shows why Roy Asotasi is captain.

So, two more things. First off, track work almost sent me home before I'd even gotten started. I'd let two trains go by before anyone thought to make an annoucement that busses were on in place of trains, and let me tell you the bus out of Strathfield is a nightmare, wherever you're going from there, let alone the bus then to the stadium (which was only surpassed by the bus returning to Lidcombe station, crawling through traffic all the way).

As frustrating as bad traffic and poorly organised bus dispatching may be, nothing tops Rabbitohs fans after a loss. Listening to them kvetch you'd think we'd be in the premiership every year except for the perfidy of the referees. I've sometimes said it would be interesting to go to another team's home ground to compare the crowd behavior during the game, and as this was technically an away game for us, I had my chance. Everybody boos, everybody complains how the other side isn't being held at ten metres or is passing the ball forwards, everybody cheers penalties awarded and mocks injuries it seems. But how they respond to a loss remains unclear to me, travelling as I was in a bus full of Souths fans. I guess the Parramatta supporters all drove in.

Piling on
Like the Counselor, I've refrained from much commentary online, somewhat in deference to my devoutly Catholic parents, and recognizing the complexities of the situation, but just how much stupid am I expected to take from Rome?

The "world attacks" and small words for body of the church to do penance - as if it was all the rest of the members and not its leadership, at every level, that's at fault - the weaseling, the odious comparisons to the Holocaust . . . how is it possible to accept that there are any among the clergy untainted?

I was raised in the Church, went to Catholic schools, including a prep-seminary (for a year; I was a wash-out wannabe, thank Christ), and never had even the least creepy experience, although God knows some of the priests and nuns I encountered had issues, usually of anger. The vast majority were loving, kind, caring persons, and many deeply intellectual. They were mostly educators and devoted to the task, and of those who were merely among the practitioners of mysticism, even those sincerely meant to apply themselves to using their rites to establish a community that would support and nurture among them all and sundry their better natures for the benefit the community thus fostered.

But I always liked John the Baptist best, and there's no way he, of the Jesus who overturned the money-changers tables in the temple, would accept this cabal. For centuries the Church has used its power relationship to abuse the weak and vulnerable, and it has to stop. Calls for penance are meaningless if the amount to rhetoric or the traditional, anecdotal "ten Hail Marys". And so far that's all we've got. It's time to throw it over. Christianity is not to blame, but those who claim its oversight are. Sack the Pope.

Change we can believe in.

Jammed
A big accident closed down a major stretch of freeway yesterday afternoon and evening. Hours of traffic, jammed to a standstill. The Roads & Transport Authority screwed around for an interminable time, what must have felt like eternity, as anyone who's ever been in Los Angeles traffic could attest to, as I have, and swear feels like the least motion forward, forever thwarted, is purest torture. So what are we treated to on the news? The State Opposition party calling for the State government minister's head, no, the whole State government, thank you, all of 'em. This morning we have the RTA head sacked, and fair enough, I reckon, but is this the state of government in this country? Just what is the ministerial responsibility, State or Federal, for their portfolios? At what point are they advised? At what point is their intervention (a) called for or (b) effective? I do not expect any politician, front-bench, let alone back-, to have the day-to-day operational oversight of the bureaucracies that form the civil service or otherwise. Ultimately, from a policy point of view, they must be responsible. For example, if the Minister for Defense were to direct that armed forces payroll should only process certain categories of entitlements in some particular way and this resulted in failing to pay legitimate claims, then that Minister is certainly responsible. If the Defense Department itself reorganized its pay schema and failed in its requirements to pay entitlements, the Minister's responsibility ends with sacking the idiot in charge and ordering rectification. But that's not how it plays here.

It's all very silly, so I thank my stars not to have teabaggers and Republicans frothing at the mouth at every turn, but it can't be long now.

Short Notice
Almost missed the Bunnies third-in-a-row win, beating the hapless Newcastle Knights by a substantial margin, but luckily stopped in for a beer at the pub across the road, where there are reliably two or three of us Souths supporters, unusual for venues so close to Sydney University, where Union is the prevailing code, if not Aussie Rules. Still, it was a good match, even though both sides showed a lack of form in carrying the ball - so many knock-ons it was hard to keep track of who's scrum it'd be. And if I called the Knights hapless, it wasn't for lack of trying. They broke tackles and ran well; just couldn't seem to get it across the line for a try when it counted. This puts us mid-way up the ladder. If we can make it four, we'll be going well, about 1/5th through the season.

Round 4
Of course South Sydney beat the Bulldogs tonight: the Bunnies have to win on Easter.

Dissent into the Maelstrom
It's so much fun living in another country and having to answer questions like "why don't Americans want health care?" and "is everybody over there crazy?" Because clearly they don't and clearly they are or at least some noticable proportion. How has it come to this? Is having a black man in the Oval Office so maddening to some people that they cannot approach any issue he raises with rationality? Is the thought of others having equality, the availability of a social safety net something to make these people sociopathic? Or is it that 8 years of fear and loathing under GWB has deranged this part of the population so that anything and everything that smacks of denigration for the bedwetters' heroic torturers sends them into a rabid fury? Maybe Obama really should take away their guns.

Downside
I have to wonder whether the NY Times’s assertion that “a sizable part of the nation is unenthusiastic” about the health care [insurance] reform bill is another example of their Judith Miller reportage – i.e., we got it from a press release transfusion – or whether it’s more simply the usual broad-brush approach to analysis media outlets seem prone to indulge in for sales purposes. Yes, there’s much to disparage, and yes, many people wish the outcome had been different, but the majority of Americans elected this President and this Congress with the knowledge that “socialised” medicine was on the agenda, among other things, no less so than closing Guantanamo or getting out of Iraq, also recognising, one would hope that none of these issues were any less fraught than another, although that’s clearly hoping for too much. The “tea baggers” – and who among them could possibly be so naïve as to have missed out the alt-sex nuances of the phrase (oh, right, all of them) – and their GOP enablers have decided that a black President and a Democratic Congress must equate to the apocalypse, but anyone capable of taking a deep breath and not triggering an embolism must know that however flawed the present bill really is, and it is, the modern world does not, cannot, allow its population to rely for health care on catch-as-catch can “market forces” because that only leaves the most vulnerable, the most likely to succumb most disastrously to even the most common ailments, unprotected, and solely to maintain an unequable distinction to the least vulnerable. This is the same thinking that has led to CEO salaries of 250% more than the lowest paid workers in some companies, a variable that used to be magnitudes more reasonable, and yet the selfishness on parade is being exhibited by thousands of people who fall into exactly these categories, as if precluding government intervention in such areas would ever give them a chance to close either gap. The “American Dream” has, at least since the so-called Regan Era, become the American Mythology, and many of us now worship these false idols. The wake-up call cannot come soon enough, but I fear for the nature of the alarm.

Gavel: Pen
So Speaker Pelosi used the Medicare gavel to ring in Health Care [insurance] Reform (at last), which leaves me wondering if Obama's got a corresponding set of pens to sign it with? Man, I'd give almost anything to get me one of those socialism biros.

Hooray for the Democrats and another major step forward into the modern world for the US of A.

More Rabbit-woes
I don't really know enough about the rules to be sure of what I'm seeing all the time when the referees call a penalty, and I really think the sledging that goes on is probably more than a little over the top, especially the whole off-sides business, given that our side does it too, but I do think tonight's match was decided as much by penalties as by performance, and that's a shame. The Titan's got a penalty kick through to tie the game at the "golden minute", putting the match into overtime. A subsequent call in their favor put Gold Coast into scoring position, and they capitalized with a one-point field goal, giving them a sudden death win at 19-18. It was an exciting match, all the same, very aggressive and energized, but we failed to take advantage when we had it. I'd guess that some of that aggression also accounts for the number of calls against us. More fundamentals drilling this week for the boys in red & green.

Round One Wrapped, Not Rapt
The Mighty Bunnies performed miserably today. I had to come home to watch the news just to validate I'd seen some of what happened out there. 36-10 is not a result anyone can be happy with, except the Roosters, of course, but the score only tells half the story. Souths went out and dropped the ball regularly and spectacularly, seemingly on every set. Passes were desperate and misguided. Meanwhile, Easts seemed to have an extra man on the field. Every pass they made, every off-load was picked up, as were all of our errors. Our side seemed mired and easily misdirected, leaving the opposition free reign over the field, regularly bringing the ball back to the try line with long, unopposed runs. Only desperate goal-line defense saved the score from being even worse. Russell Crowe's presence at past games has seemed to fire up the Rabbits, but not this time. I'd guess he's hoping for something requiring a distant location shoot soon.

Happy GBLT New Mardi Gras Nudes News
Photographer Spencer Tunick (note: NSFW) came to Sydney at the invitation of New Mardi Gras and as a result, more than 2,000 people turned up at the Opera House this morning at 4 a.m. to get their kit off and stand around for about three hours. We had to wait for the sun to come up, which it was slow to do, a grey, cold morning, made rosier by the blushing. I've been colder in Sydney, but not by much.

It was an odd thing to do, I suppose, but interesting insofar as human behavior goes. I was a little surprised by the numbers of groups there were, not just couples, but four or five people, college students and the like, all about to become just that much more intimate with one another. It got a little uncomfortable when were directed to embrace and kiss, especially as the guy I was standing next to was a good head taller than me.

Somehow it was even less comfortable once we went inside the theatre, which is perhaps why one woman left in tears and one was booed into disrobing. (I rather like the idea of one dressed person; I'd have left her alone.)

It must be said, however, that it's obvious why Mr. Tunick is a photographer: he has zero verbal skills and minimal management skills. "This group here"; "you, with the tan lines"; "this way"; "that way" - these are not useful directions. Dude, take the picture, please.


Correction: 5,200 people.

Rabbitohs, Ho
Rugby League season is underway, with Souths vs. the Dragons at the Charity Shield, a late-starting game that ended at ANZ Stadium in a draw, 26 all. With new players and a new coach, I thought I might see something different from last seasons, and at least insofar as we were aggressive throughout, I did. Nevertheless, one call missed by the ref and some sloppy attempts at on-side kicks and a flagging second half kept us from keeping St George from responding to every try we posted. Only a missed kick at the end kept us from losing outright. Still, it was an exciting, high-scoring game, with 3 trys for Fetuli Talanoa. He ought to make the NSW Blues this year on that result alone.

”You Know, They Call Them ‘Killer’ Whales”
It’s always news when animals kill people, but hardly “man bites dog”, is it? These are wild animals, howsoever trained they may be, and without regard to whether or not it’s a zoo or we’re rehabilitating the creature. I’m sorry when people get hurt like this, I was sorry for Steve Irwin and his family, too, but nobody should be surprised. I’m glad to hear that they won’t be “putting down” the fish. That kind of retaliation is always wrong, too much like trying a pig for witchcraft.

(Thanks to Neko Case for the lyric; came to mind as soon as I heard the story.)

Rings
I don't think I watched any winter Olympics since moving here, so I'm a little intrigued this year to try to catch some and compare the coverage I'm used to - it's all about the women's figure skating - although given that this year we're pretty well assured of being constantly reminded of the dangers now, I reckon it'll be hard to judge. Shame about the luge guy, but aside from ski jumping, and apparently these other new X-Games entries, flying around the ice like that is pretty reckless.

Grey
The post-apocalyptic landscape of The Road is cold and bleak, warmed only by the father's love for his son and the determination to bring him to whatever small salvation may yet remain. This is a movie that reaches into your sense of mortality and shakes it hard, leaving dread and a taste of ashes, even as it offers a final hope. I see why Cormac McCarthy was so happy to endorse the resultant film of his novel: it's better, even while remaining so largely faithful as to be almost bookish itself. It's a hard emotional task to watch this film, like few others before it, but it would have been harder still to have missed it and to deny its power.

Bush Walking with the Ex
Ex-Father-in-law, that is, and only virtually. Russell Atkinson has finally published a sequel (of sorts) to Diary of a Drop-Out: Gone Bush. This is the story of the period during which Russell was well and truly a drop-out, not just an "alternative", but living off the grid up in Bellingen, NSW, and making one good decision after every bad one (if not quite to such an equivalence). The chapters are short and not entirely sequential in time, but each rely on the characteristic Australian dry, ironic sense of humor, although it is a vein of humor that has a fairly universal appeal. I could wish for more - no, really, I do wish for more, as I know there is more to come. When you're ready, Russell, but don't wait so long this time.

Daylight Cinema Limitations
I've kind of made it a practice to wait a couple of weekends before hitting any new releases at the movies and to attend early sessions. This ensures good seat selection and few immediate neighbors, which latter can be important when the room between the edge of my seat and the seat-back in front is restricted to the minimum required by your average dwarf. It can be a problem when the movie selection is something like Fantastic Mr. Fox, at least insofar as the former principle of movie-attendance, due to the increased likelihood of small children. Who were surprisingly better behaved than their parents, who choose to read aloud and otherwise narrate pretty much throughout, due to the children being a little on the too-young side, which became especially apparent at about an hour in when they all started needing to be taken to the toilets. I had hoped that the more "realistic" elements of the film, the growling and other more animalistic behaviors, would send a few out in tears, but you can't have everything.

Mr. Fox was very entertaining, if a little mannered, although it's hard to see how that could have been avoided. Roald Dahl was not a childhood staple for me, so I hadn't encountered this story before, but it's got the same element of not talking-down to kids that Charlie & the Chocolate Factory had, the one Dahl book that came into the household while I was still reading such fare. I enjoyed the animation - and to say the characters were animated should be taken in both senses of the word: yes, puppets; and yes, expressive, active, lively. Wes Anderson's done a good job with the material, and I look forward, as ever, to his next film, whatever it may be.

Bush Legacy: Supreme Court Hates Democracy
The latest ruling from the Supreme Court, making corporations more equal than people in regard to campaign finance, ensures our elected officials will act to the benefit of business - big business, at that - rather than those of us who actually vote. I suppose a 5-4 decision offers some hope that we can get a law back in place, maybe even something more far-reaching than we've had before, but with the teabaggers and haters in a position now to stand pat and block anything from happening, it doesn't seem likely. This is the Reagan-Bush-Bush legacy for the country: democracy doesn't live in America anymore.

More Festival Festivities
Why do event promoters use thirty-year-old photos in their advertisements? John Cale's got to be like 70, so I'm not fooled. For Xmas, M. got me tickets to the show at the Enmore theatre. This is a nice, civilized venue, often putting on the best local, national, and international rock concerts anywhere in town. Cale put in a hard-rocking set, covering pretty much the full span of his early career, up to and including Sabotage. In some ways this was disappointing. I appreciate his early stuff, but it's largely characterized by screaming, crashing finishes after an extended period of seeming to be incapable of bringing the song to a conclusion. His pop sensibilities were perhaps a bit more honed later, and that might have been to the good for this set. Still, with a full band backing him, it was a relief that it wasn't to be a repeat of the last few shows I saw, with him reprising his catalog on solo piano. And thank goodness that his 90's turn into "classical" composition wasn't featured. Songs for Drella and his Dylan Thomas song cycle were dreadful. So, all up: a good night out and a fine performance from a grand old man of rock.

Running
Last year I focused in training in running on my forefoot. I found that I maintained strength in my legs for longer than when I allowed myself to land heel-first. Except for wet conditions, where it seemed a forefoot-strike slid more, I even maintained this gait during the half-marathon. So I was intrigued enough by a capsule article in Wired over Christmas to make a point of finding a local store here that carries the Newton running shoe and to spend more than I ever have on a shoe that wasn't going to get me back to Kansas. I've only been using it in the run-up to the May SMH half for three days now (and 20k) so I don't know if this is really going to work, but so far I like them and they really seem to work. Due to shipping errors, the shop only had my size in the racer, but since I already run this way, I figured the trainer was superfluous. We'll see how it lasts and whether, when the race time approaches, a new pair is required. I'm thinking I should get through the next couple of months o.k., but as I intend to also run the Blackmore's half in October, I probably will need to replace them.

Devastation
Haiti would have been entirely unprepared for the earthquake, such events being probably quite rare in the region, not to mention decades of endemic poverty and governmental corruption. I don’t doubt that the death toll will be terribly high and that recovery will be a very long time coming. I can’t even imagine coming back from this without some very open and forthright assistance from the wealthy nations of the world. I worry that the response will be great pledges of aid that come to little actually spent and less spent where it’s really needed. This is often the problem with underdeveloped countries with entrenched governments with high levels of corruption or despotism, that they insist on sovereignty and keep much of what passes through their hands, favoring this contractor or that who themselves operate similarly, not to mention that charities and even donor nations have “administrative” costs built into their pledges. A million dollars pledged in aid isn’t a million dollars spent on the ground rebuilding homes and hospitals. A better system is needed. Humanitarianism needs to be more open at both the giving and receiving ends.

Meanwhile, could God please call Pat Robertson home, heaven or hell, I don’t care, just please get him off the planet: who knew that Toussaint L’ouverture was the Devil? (Maybe if a white man had freed Haiti from the French it would have been o.k. with Pat?)

A Fan’s Notes
To Neko Case Monday, thanks to the intervention of a Sydney Festival staff member, to exorcise the songs from Middle Cyclone that play on endless repeat in my head day and night. Well, that didn’t work.

The venue is home to the Australian Chamber Orchestra, which may explain the acoustics, unless it’s just the curse of trying to build a concert hall. Has anyone ever successfully built a “sound” opera house? As Ms. Case commenced the first song of the set, she stopped on the first note, taken aback by the room’s lack of acoustical warmth. For someone with such a tin ear as I’ve got, the sound had to be bad that I noticed it, too (but I’d have thought Neko would have noted the quality in the sound-check; guess not). So it was an odd show, and for other reasons, too. For one thing, the backup singer seemed to run most of the stage patter. And while I knew nearly all the songs inside and out (a couple of pieces at the end were from albums I haven’t heard), the lack of warmth, if I can continue to use that expression, kept the experience from replicating or exceeding that of listening to the recordings. I probably should have made more of an effort to get out to the Blue Mountains for the set she did in Katoomba, which was a pub venue.

Finally, the show was perhaps somewhat rushed and shorter than it might have been, which probably affected the performance, due to the fact that Grizzly Bear were due to take the stage at 8:30. This meant Neko was operating with a curfew, annoyingly, especially as I can’t stand Grizzly Bear so see no reason for them to be preferenced. For a band with one of the most critically acclaimed albums of 2009, I just don’t get them.

Glad I went, happy not to miss out, just the same.

Traffic
There was a time in the States when holiday road deaths were publicised, and it may be that years in NYC made this less conspicuous to me, but it seems this time has long passed. So it was surprising to me to be seemingly barraged with details over each long weekend or holiday period with state-by-state deaths on the road figures, perhaps most especially because the figures never seemed so high as to warrant such attention. 10 deaths in NSW vs. 12 in QLD or wherever just didn’t seem statistically significant for a three+ day period. And because nothing ever seems to be done to alleviate what must be of concern to Australians, the focus of the reporting would better serve public interest by shifting to the do-nothing public servants.

Not that I take such criticism as does focus on government entirely seriously. There are an awful lot of pundits whose hearts just bleed over traffic light cameras and speed cameras – as if running a red light or exceeding the speed limit isn’t dangerous. These same commentators say little about the stepped-up holiday period random breath tests.

But it’s been a terrible time to be out on the roads this year, with a week to go, unofficially, for the holiday period, including a tremendous accident involving a petrol tanker exploding, killing the truck driver, two small children and their dad, and leaving the mother seriously injured. The visibility of the incident has people up in arms over the particular roadway where it took place and which is regarded as a neglected stretch of infrastructure and over long-haul truckers sharing space with passenger vehicles, particularly in regard to dangerous materials transport.

I don’t recall what prompted me to read Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says about Us), but I did, and it highlighted some things for me, not least that accidents between trucks and cars are most usually because the car driver does something stupid rather than that the truck driver is hopped-up on speed, overtired, or aggressive, but also that the large majority of car drivers are overconfident and under-trained.

Unfortunately, that’s not news, or not within the consciousness of journalists, anyway. Certainly any reporter pointing fingers at the majority among his or her audience is going to lose credibility. We all know it’s the truckies, the cyclists, the pedestrians, the government – not us behind the wheel. (You, that is, since I’m a life-long pedestrian.) I won’t say, and neither does Tom Vanderbilt, that these other parties don’t share blame, but the majority share should lie where it belongs. I’ve seen enough of Sydney traffic to know that aggression is pretty nearly a universally innate behavior once behind the wheel.

Tom Vanderbilt suggests taking the “How’s My Driving” technique to another level, where the driving performance of everybody is recorded and fed back into a system that rates them and offers penalties and incentives accordingly. The technology only partially exists, but it might focus our attention more appropriately than the usual “He did it” approach.

They Hates Our Freedoms: Boxers vs. Briefs
The Shoe-Bomber. Now the Underpants-Bomber. These guys are scary, sure, but ineffective, inept, except at ensuring that under-trained airport and airline staff are increasingly responsible for making air travel inconvenient and uncomfortable. We shuffle through the security checks in our socks. We're subjected to mandatory pat-downs. Makes me glad I'm not traveling to the States this year. Someday the TSA will work out a way to implement an effective and efficient system of detection and prevention. If the GOP allow a director to be appointed or a bill to get them some money to be passed. But they didn't get that done when they were the majority, either.

Dances with Aliens
So much for the snark, although I suppose I could go on. Avatar is terrific. I sprang for the whole Imax 3-D experience and it was totally worth it. Sure, it's 3 hours of my life, but it rocks, rolls, and left me reeling (quite literally, as I'm a bit prone to vertigo and the 3-D stuff did get to me now and then, but I was able to mostly control for it). I haven't bothered about any of the other big 3-D releases there have been lately, but having done Imax, I think I'll have to do another, just for comparison.

O.k., all science fiction movies come down to westerns in the end, and this one is no different, but seeing Sam Worthington's giant blue girlfriend crouched above his prostrate and incapacitated form, snarling at the villain in giant's armor, well, that was worth the price of admission. And while it's usually considered quite daring for an incipient leading actor to take a role that spends that much time in somebody else's face, the makeup and digital effects are such that you never lose sight of him and that each character is sufficiently distinct and recognizable, which is only a little disconcerting in the case of Sigourney Weaver.

Great stuff, a triumph - and a serious contender for Best Picture, I reckon.

City Views
While I was out, I took a few photos, intending to capture a bit of summer imagery.

Coming back from Kirribilli, I found that the World has come to Sydney, as, in another sense, it usually does, this time of year.


"This time of year" being the run-up to New Year's Eve, when they'll set the Harbour Bridge on fire, sort of, and reveal the logo in the centre, which, from the framework already in place, you can't really work out. The theme is captioned "Awaken the Spirit." I think I miss the disco ball.


The sun's well up by 8 a.m., and glaring off the surface of the water.


There's a similar effect looking into the city from the Botanical Gardens as there is looking across an open prospect out of NYC's Central Park, but things are a bit more open here somehow. Still, I like some of these buildings; they show a bit of flair. Although I wonder at the lack of solar panels. Wouldn't that just be smart?


The Sydney Opera House is a well-known and over-photographed construction, but it's a stand-out nevertheless.


What you don't much get, though, is how broad the forecourt is. During the days of flashmobs, I thought it would be a good place to have a large number of people walking up and down in some kind of pattern and then suddenly dispersing. Maybe with umbrellas, too.


One thing about the harbor: it's very clean. Clean-looking, anyway. I'm not inclined to try the fish.

Around Town
I took a wander into the city this morning, ultimately heading over to Kirribilli, which was dull, but a nice ferry ride back, had some lunch over in the Rocks, and then spent some time at the MCA, which had a show on that I'd noticed but forgotten about and another (free) that was also worthwhile.

Almanac is a presentation of various works from the collection of Ann Lewis, a collector of some note, and provided a look at some truly excellent examples of modern Aboriginal paintings, along with some various other, locally-produced sculptures, photographs, and paintings. My local art dealer, Honeyant Gallery often has works by some of the artists presented in this show, and these were certainly fine examples, as are those Honeyant exhibits.

The other show is one by an artist who has, at least once, made me regret leaving NYC: Olafur Eliasson. Mr. Eliasson is the artist responsible for the waterfalls around NYC's waterways last year. In this show, "Take Your Time", he is working with light, and the works are, each and all collectively, such that you leave the room smiling. The yellow room has delightful and spooky illusion effects - your skin looks grey, and the rooms visible beyond look purple. The circle of light room, which changes color as you stand within in, made the blood flow in my eyes visible to me, but more importantly, as the light shifted into different colors and intensities, eliminated space, suspending me in the colors themselves, blotting out all peripheral vision spectacularly. Other bits were more simply playful, but no less delightful. I'm so glad I went.

Notes
Neko Case is coming to Sydney for the Sydney Festival, but tickets went on sale yesterday and are already sold out. I'm watching ebay, but don't think I'm going to get to what may be the best concert of 2010. So annoyed.

Running Hot & Cold
Kyoto was a farce, mostly because the U.S. bailing out was a great excuse for others to do the same or to do nothing. So my expectations from Copenhagen were not high, even though we have a President who recognizes the science and is willing to make an effort. Because the closer we get to actually implementing a way for every nation to participate it will indeed be the smaller, less industrialised countries that get left behind unless Europe and the U.S. are going to need to share the burden fairly and their innovations in carbon-reduction quite freely, which is unlikely to happen easily if at all. Otherwise, Third World industrialisation comes to a standstill to the point where they can’t compete and shut down entirely, leading to the worst kinds of anarchy, dispossession, and an increase in economic refugees, right alongside the waves of environmental refugees set to increase as global warming progresses, a juggernaut of inertia that carbon reduction will only slow over decades. So the haves keep what they’ve got and increase it at the expense of the have-nots, who continue to lose and lose. And then it’s still just an excuse to do nothing until we absolutely have to so it all takes that much longer and has an even more extensive effect on the less fortunate. It’s all very Aesop’s Fables.

Service Interruption
I've got one day left before my annual leave starts, so when do the State Transit bus drivers decide to throw a strike? That figures. It's a Friday, and there's one last set of reports to run, and the departmental holiday picnic, and I'm seriously considering staying home. Cabs to Central will make a packet, I expect, since it's just that much too far to walk for many of us, and the trains are all that's left, but at least I work somewhere where that is an option, if a long ride with multiple transfers. And this after the change in schedule debacle that's made the drivers incapable of meeting a wide-open timetable. Oh, and fellas, many of us have foregone pay increases last year to keep our companies profitable, if not viable. Do a better job, get more sympathy.

DIY Checkout
Local supermarket giant Coles recently introduced self-service checkout terminals and have been strongly encouraging of its customers to use them. I did, once. I may never do it again.

I pretty much do my own bagging anyway, but, as in the article linked from the BBC, that “unexpected item in bagging area” error is annoying, but only because I got caught answering “no bag” on a couple of things that I decided belonged in a separate bag from the food items I was otherwise processing. It was easy enough to rectify, but still an addition to a tedious process.

Scan. Do you want to bag this? Yes. Bag. Scan. Do you want to bag this? Yes. Bag. Scan. . . . Scan. . . . SCAN! For the love of God, Scan! No, o.k. then type in the 85-digit code, written in tiny characters that even with reading glasses I can’t see easily.

Somehow it all works so much more easily and quickly when there’s an employee present to do the scanning for you. Although the self-service option doesn’t appear to have resulted in a reduction in staff at the checkout. I was “helped” by at least two separate persons on three separate occasions – one who insisted on teaching me how to operate the machine, which is pretty obvious, and then who struggled over the scanner after seeing that the item I was attempting to purchase wouldn’t scan. (And he couldn’t enter the 500-digit code either), and another who helpfully removed items from my bag even if they weren’t actually the offending items preventing the completion of my transaction, let alone all of them.

Checkout clerks may not be terribly efficient, and nobody seems to know how to bag things properly anymore, but even when they’re surly or simply non-responsive, that’s still a better interaction than staring at an uncooperative computer.

I don’t doubt that it will be sooner rather than later nevertheless before I am all lost at the supermarket.

Sippin'
So I saved loyalty points for a long time, but I finally had enough to redeem for a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue.

It's lovely packaging, with a slip-case box, a brochure, and a special bottle-top seal . . . that I just can't bring myself to break. There I was with a week off from work, and I couldn't even try it. AU$200 means, as a known cheapskate, that I may have this around for some time to come, absent a good reason to tear through the foil. Meanwhile, it's very pretty, and it won't go bad, so, what? bids open? Any whiskey fans on their way to visit (with whom I want to share, keep in mind)?

Big Pictures
Terry Gilliam does not suffer from a lack of imagination, but more remarkably he has been an accomplished director pretty much right from the start, with little in the way of duds, except, mainly, as a writer, and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" is another example of one of his fully-realized efforts, all the more remarkable for having lost a principal actor during filming. Heath Ledger had the potential to become a great actor of our generation, in fact, he was one, just didn't get the chance to prove it as extensively as his contemporaries will have had. The "replacement" performances by Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell only prove the point, much as they also serve to prove how adroit Gilliam himself can be, their insertions only fueling the imaginative sequences they serve in. There are a couple of (more or less major) loose ends and at least one plot hole, but they don't really matter. Oh, and casting Tom Waits as the devil is very effective, if not entirely imaginative.

Leader of the Pack
The Liberals are in disarray, as they have been since Labor took government, and I can't say much of Malcolm Turnbull's performance: he's generally just been cheap and petty, bringing nothing to his role in opposition of his reputed acumen. But he did manage to wrest concessions from Kevin Rudd on the emissions trading scheme and seemed to have his party lined up to put it into law. Suddenly, not so much. Joe Hockey leads for a challenge on Tuesday, with Tony Abbott not far behind, and following a spill attempt last week. Joe's a bully, and it seems an unprincipled one, too, now reneging on his acknowledgment of climate change and previous agreement to vote Labor's legislation in, but Abbott's worse. I have a sneaking preference for Abbott to take the leadership, if only because I don't think he could take the Liberals into government, but if he did: disaster. Abbott as PM would put the far right faction on the Liberals into a position of power even Howard managed to avoid, and the country would see a reversion to the 1950's in all the worst ways. Of course, I wouldn't put it past him to be announcing his ambitions only to act as a spoiler for someone else, Kevin Andrews maybe? Or even to enhance Hockey's chances? Still, even Hockey's support for labor-relations reform wouldn't be as damaging as the kinds of things Abbott would surely attempt. Nevertheless, I'd like to see Turnbull stay on. I think he has potential, if he'd step up his game, which would also see the Liberals move into a more viable position of contention at the next election. A strong opposition is the only way we get anything serious done.

Update: Tony Abbott wins, nation loses. Double dissolution, anyone?

Drawing Leviathan
M. and I took in A Serious Man yesterday, and it may be the best movie I've seen all year. Painful, if still humorous, and desperate to the point of breathlessness, following Larry Gopnik's Job-like progression into the abyss, reminiscent in many ways of William Macy's character in Fargo, you can't help rooting for the guy, hoping it will all turn around for him, and maybe it will or maybe it's all just about to come completely unstuck. Like the critics whose reviews I've read, I don't know what the ghost story's about at the beginning or how it fits in with the rest, but other than that, this is a fine return to form from the Coens - or better yet, a serious movie from them for what may be the first time ever. Not to be missed.

Sydney Tourism
I've been trying to get some time off for two months now and have finally gotten what I wanted. So after throwing a day on gardening - there was a tree out front that fell over and tore up the planter it was in, the Council requiring intervention, which meant taking it down, but which also meant leaving a pile of dirt in front of unit 2, so I shoveled everything aside, built a new planter, and re-filled it - I took today to accomplish the Spit-to-Manly walk. Technically, it's the Manly-to-Spit walk, but that really depends on orientation. Being a south-harbour person, I'm Spit-to-Manly. This has the advantage of being able to the get the ferry back to Circular Quay, instead of having to ride the bus, which is bad enough as it is.

Anyway, it's about 10 kilometers along the northern foreshore, but that doesn't really do it justice. This is trail, not just sidewalks and beach and such. Yes, the national parks system has made improvements, some of which are just taking advantage of what's already there and some being the importation of cut or dressed stone. In fact, about four kilometers out from Manly, there were great giant sacks of cut stone, dressed stone, and gravel, tons of the stuff, that, having done the walk, I can't imagine reaching their present resting places by anything other than helicopter.


This is the view back about two kilometers from the start, the Spit Bridge. The Spit is a promintory, finally bridged only sometime around WWII, and which even now forms an immense traffic bottleneck unlikely to be fully resolved any time soon. It's a drawbridge, but also reduces four lanes to two, so a considerable number of commuters spend some portion of their time, having preferenced land travel over taking a ferry, to crawling painfully across a narrow strait, one that took me five minutes to walk, and that was at eight a.m., which Sydney somehow doesn't consider rush hour.

I was hopeful of seeing wildlife, but all I got was this stinking lizard.


Oh, and a big ol' kookaburra.

'bout the size of a small chicken.

By this time, I was about halfway through, sweating heavily, even though the southerly had brought the temperature back down to a reasonable level and it was still only about ten o'clock, with a fine misty rain coming down. Having passed some aboriginal rock etchings, I'd also come upon a more recent example of man's incursions, although in this instance, one that was more a question of taking advantage of what was already there.

All along the track there are examples of this, caves, or half-caves, anyway, cut away but erosion over millions of years, but which came into modern notice with the Great Depression, during which many men took to the bush, trapping what they could, and sheltering where great forces had left natural protection for them. No sign of graffiti, as such, but I suppose those who dwelt within had much more on their minds than making a mark.


Nice view, eh?


From here, it's all downhill. Through all you see, around the point, around a couple of coves, and it's home-free to Manly. This was the end of the hardest part of the track, and there was still over four kilometers to go. I was drenched in sweat and drizzling rain, overheated, but looking forward to arriving at the Corso in time for lunch. The guide-signs laid out a 4.5 hour walk, but I was done in three, which gave me time to catch the ferry back home for a better lunch than was on offer on the north shore and many sore muscles.

Art & Vandalism
Graffiti is not art. Not all graffiti is graffiti, though. “Tagging” most certainly is graffiti, but stencils, wheat-paste postering, individual or group murals defy easy categorisation as graffiti. These show style, competency with the media, and often have an intended purpose that is definitely not about asserting the artist’s ownership or presence in the world as such. But graffiti costs money to clean up, looks ugly as sin, and can get people hurt; the acrobatics required to get your tag on a wall can be impressive. So we go too far in prevention and punishment. I despise “zero tolerance” measures equally with some of the stupidity they’re meant to reduce.

There’s a Sean Penn-Robert Duvall movie called “Colors,” in which Sean Penn, new cop on the block, confronts a street gang graffitist and spray-paints the kid’s face. Now that’s a punishment worth trying, although I guess it’s really child abuse.

Instead, I like the technology-driven solutions already in place. A scout hall here in Sydney has walls that can detect the application of paint and send an alert to the local precinct, which, in a recent case, brought the cops to the location while the tagging was still underway. Cart the kids home and summons the parents, I reckon, with community service imposed on the kids. No jail. No paint-in-the face. Just a lesson.

Your Company Sucks
There are websites available where you can post the name of a company that seriously does a bad job at what they do, and Sydney Buses deserves top honors. Following a complete schedule change on 11 October, not one bus has been anything like on time. This morning, on my way to Olympic Park, three arrived ten minutes past the posted time for two others, and those two were not among them. Every morning, I get to my stop for the run to the office well before the scheduled departure, and my bus is regularly five to ten minutes late. This is at seven a.m., so don't tell me it's traffic. The schedule provides a lot more leeway, too, so there can be no excuses. Since NSW can't run the trains well, it seems they're now determined to screw up the bus system, too.

Summer Shutdown
Now that the Run 4 Fun is over, running may be more off than on as the weather heats up. Although we've had a reasonably cool spring so far this year, temperatures are sure to rise over the next three months, leaving lunch hours too hot for any outdoor workouts. Maybe I'll sign on with the personal trainers in the complex next door to the office. AU$43 for a half-hour session also give me gym access, so it's not too expensive, although I reckon it's still more on the dear side than not.

Anyway, the Sun-Herald-sponsored Run 4 Fun was a good event to finish the year on, although for a race with only a few hundred runners, the start was slow. The finish, through the "champions entry" into ANZ stadium (the underground car park, actually), was sort of disappointingly short across the grass of the field, but I shouldn't complain, as I managed to come through at something like a 5:30/Km pace - by my watch, anyway. Official chip time when it become available.

Update: 54:02: for me, blistering.

Seven Bridges for Seven Hours
Well, that's how long it would have taken, if I'd finished the walk, but the day took a turn that ultimately decided me against going on.

It took me more than half an hour to get to the start of the course. I'd originally planned on starting at Pyrmont, but Rozelle was closer, really, so I hiked down to the City Link West where the course comes in after the Anzac Bridge, pictured above. At that point, coming through the grounds of the old psychiatric hospital, my camera batteries died, so I was forced to consider lugging the thing dead or taking a detour. I reckoned there'd be a shop somewhere, but I've done this stretch on my bike, so didn't anticipate much in the way of shopping for some time. Luckily, a brief excursion before Iron Cove provided the needed electrical resource and I was back on track with only about twenty minutes lost in the wrong direction.

This is something of a controversial bridge at the moment, as the State Labor Government has decided to build a new bridge. It's always a problem to lay in one while still using the other, and as far as I know continuing to do so, thereby inevitably increasing traffic, even if easing some congestion - that's six lanes squeezing into four to cross the bay. Residents are upset, but that's not helping anyone.

The picture doesn't do the bridge justice: it's a steep arc, and long.
The view, however, is terrific, especially with the jacarandas in bloom.

It's not far to the next bridge, but from here on until the Harbour Bridge, we're on the North Shore, so the suburbs start to get a bit ritzier. Interestingly, the view shows very little in the way of solar panels, something you'd think even the rich would take advantage of in this country, but it did show a lot of pools.

Fig Tree bridge isn't terribly special, but it's the last bridge (other than a few pedestrian walkways) I crossed on foot today. Shortly after this crossing, the promised thunder storms started to announce themselves, soon developing into a torrential downpour.

Somewhere between the Lane Cove rest area and Fig Tree Bridge, the planners had created a diversion - and I took the road less traveled, mostly because the one I, and about a dozen or so others, took was way off the mark. At this point, the rain was coming down very hard, so with no umbrella or jacket I was soaked through. Checking the map showed I had probably less than a kilometer to rejoin the route, so I headed up, figuring there might be a tent or shop awnings, or something to shelter in. I stood under an awning for about half an hour, but the gentle breeze that had kept me cool in the earlier stretches was now making my teeth chatter. The shuttle buses laid on for the event were all going in the wrong direction, so I figured: stay moving and keep warm or stand still and freeze.

I reached Wollstonecraft just as the rain finally stopped, so I thought I'd just keep going. I'd done about a third of the walk at this point, so why not? So I walked past the train station, determined to finish.

That didn't happen. Before I'd gone even a little way, the rain started up again. I got to Waverton, where I could pick up a train, and ditched. On the deserted platform, I took off my shirt and wrung it out. Even standing still, the water collected in my shoes and trousers pressed out by gravity and formed a pool around me. Other passengers filtering in gave me a look and detoured widely from my vicinity - and, yes, I did have my shirt back on. I was on a train, then a bus, and home in fairly short order, everything wet through.

Next year I will plan this better. Like bring an umbrella and dress in loose synthetics. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

Around Town
I had such a good time at the State Library in Melbourne, I thought I really ought to check out Sydney's NSW Library. Nowhere near as good. A lot of it was inaccessible, due to renovations or some such, but even what I could see presented none of the grandeur Melbourne put into theirs. Oh, well, it was a nice walk along Macquarie Street, where I could stop and say hello to Dribbles the boar.


As long as I was in a photographing mood, I brought my camera up to the office the following Monday. The industrial park where I work is notable mainly for two things: proximity to Lane Cove National Park and CSIRO, Australia's Commonwealth Science and Research Organisation, which is a number of buildings put up over the years, where experiments of one kind or another are conducted, with some evidence, based on the signage, at this location, that the focus is on food and food resources. "Wealth from Oceans" is one such.

I don't know what they're cooking in this place, but from the effect on the exhaust pipes, it's well done.


And I'm not sure, because I've never seen it in use or any evidence of recent usage, what this wall of glass might be about, but each pane is fitted with a fire suppression sprinkler head, which is my only clue.


Tomorrow is the Seven Bridges Walk, which should be fun and offer more chances to take pictures of stuff. 25 kilometers of stuff, seven of which are bridges, so it'll be a good day. If those thunderstorms hold off.

Movie Money
The Australian dollar used to get us a lot of blockbuster development, but it's been growing more powerful than a locomotive lately, or at least more powerful than Green Lantern's power ring can handle (even when Hal Jordan's being played by an Aussie).

Must be those gold coins and $50 notes.

Playing Politics
Anyone who doesn't understand that the Nobel Peace Prize is political is deluded. Hell, the Literature prize is political. (Who's the last American who won that? Toni Morrison? And her body of work is superior to Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike? Think about why she got it.) So picking Obama this year as for the Prize Committee to exert influence in the world isn't new, isn't really surprising, and probably isn't worth of the wroth and derision it's getting some places. ZOMG, what next? Professional athletes in the Olympics? Steroids in the Tour de France? Save the confected outrage and recognise that the current President of the U.S. may not have saved the world and can't, but he has changed the terms and tone of the debate about America and international relations in ways you haven't and won't, and hasn't even been in office for a year. Congratulations, Mr. President; along with the Committee, I hope you live up to it, even just a little.

ContinuedRemarkable how many people think they know better than the administrators of the prize what the prize "has to be" awarded for, what rules should apply, and who is or isn't an eligible recipient.

Racism Heyday Is Long Gone
The revival of the variety show “Hey Hey It’s Saturday” didn’t generate any interest in me. It looked to be a silly show at best, utterly naf, bogan even. Turns out I was right, and more, since even now they couldn’t resist a minstrel show. That was embarrassing when it was Bing Crosby, let alone Al Jolson. It’s sparked considerable debate here, largely due, however, to the fact that it’s generated some degree of furore back in the States. What’s most galling to me is how many have come forward to defend it. It’s just a joke, they say, it’s supposed to be funny, nobody meant any harm. Yes, they did, even if they were too stupid to understand their own message. Blackface was always demeaning and derogatory and it’s more so now. Golliwog wigs don’t make it any better. The whole country makes me cringe sometimes, and Julia Gillard just lost her favored position as next Labor PM as far as I’m concerned.

Holiday Tourism
I thought this morning would be nice to take the walk along the foreshore extending from the Spit Bridge to Manly, with a leisurely ferry ride home after lunch at the beach, but only one bus runs that route on Sundays and public holidays, and it doesn't stop at the Spit. So I ended up wandering off to Darling Harbour, thinking that those food stalls I'd seen on a previous visit might be open. They were, as it turns out, and they were showcasing food from various Spanish-speaking countries, including one of my favourites, the Cuban Sandwich. Not the best, perhaps, but fresh, authentic, still yum.

Because I'd actually planned to play tourist, for once I had my camera with me, although Darling Harbour and the Pyrmont environs are not so particularly splendid for anything more than touristy shots. The light was very good, however, and I got a couple I like enough to stick up here.

Red Middle Removed
Last night a wind storm blew in and by morning the 100kpm gusts had brought the biggest dust cloud into Sydney that I've ever seen. When I woke up, the sun past the blinds was a vivid red, and walking out into the street was like arriving on Mars. Or the apocalypse, if much quieter. Somehow, even for the usual traffic sounds from Parramatta Road at that hour, everything was hushed, the way it is when there's a thick but gentle snow storm back in NYC. It stayed quite vivid all morning, although by afternoon had cleared. I was particularly interested in the effect the cloud had on colors. Because of all the red and yellow filtered from the light, greens were notably greener, and fluorescent lights - stripped of what makes them seem so white and yet cast such a ghastly pallor on everything - glowed an electric blue. It's just as well it's past, but the reminders will stay for a little while. The rain storm that preceded the dust gave it somewhere to stick, and there were more than a few complaints about just-washed cars, all bearing evidence to the event.

Satisfying Close to Running Season
1:56 by my watch, 2:09 on the clock at the finish. The discrepancy is due to starting well after the gun. I got to the start at about 6, but found getting up at 4:30 for breakfast etc. hadn't actually relieved me of the need to relieve myself, and there seemed to be far fewer facilities and far more people queued up to use them than last year. The family of four small children ahead of me should have been my first clue I was in the wrong line, but these things happen. Anyway, I felt pretty good throughout, sucking down energy gels every 5-6 kilometers, and only walking a little all up. So I'll go with my watch for now - an SMS should arrive shortly to provide the official time.

As for running season, there is a race on November 8, but with spring commencing in the next week or so, the hotter weather is going to seriously reduce how much time I'm inclined to spend outdoors actively seeking to sweat.

Update: 1:57:28, official. Still good.

Taper
So here we are: last long run of the training season done, at full volume, although, in fact, I've been tapering off for weeks now, having given myself time to recover from whatever virus laid me out prior to the City-to-Surf, and then recovery from that race, and the oddity of having found myself strangely less motivated, even in the face of the race a week from Sunday impending. So it's good to do 13K, if on the principle that on race-day I'll have the fitness to accomplish twice my training distance, and I did feel strong throughout. Luckily, there's a November race added to the calendar to motivate me past the running festival; just a 10K, but out at Olympic Park, which was where Nike put on a race one year that I would have like to have as a regular event. Too bad about that, but let's see how things go.

Here's another kind of taper.

Wrong kind.

Alien Nation
That's an obvious parallel, although technology has improved markedly, enough so that aliens can be depicted as something other than Mandy Patinkin in a spotted skin-head wig, but District 9 is also generally better, mostly for the cringing, cowardly anti-hero Wikus, but also for a better pay-off at the end.

Art & About: Non-Sponsored Version
Astrid Spielman took her art to the streets on Saturday, well, to a pedestrian tunnel leading into Glebe's Jubilee Park, anyway. Normally a digital artist with a focus on video, Astrid this time put up a public installation, consisting of panels of 20cent piece-sized sequins lining the walls of the underpass, shimmering in the gentle breeze and illuminating a dark public space, making this utilitarian passage into an experience, one which, as I witnessed, delighted everyone passing through, perhaps particularly all the children on their way to and from the park, and all of whom seemed to take a genuine and participatory interest. Astrid's an inventive and engaging artist, and her work takes on an unexpected depth, at least insofar as prose descriptions fail its ingenuity and effect. I've got a small piece by her hanging in my lounge room, and love how even something less than an A4 sheet of paper can provide so much color and interest without fading over time. It's kind of a shame that the panels installed Saturday were temporary, but I'll be interested to see if there isn't some digitization on offer eventually.

Not Quite Hollywood
There’s an argument I’ve seen made from time-to-time that there should be no government funding for the arts, particularly for such things as movies, which, according to the argument, would make plenty of money if there were any good. There’s something to be said for this, I suppose, but it’s usually only raised by the same kinds of people who argue there shouldn’t be any government assistance to anything or anybody, including, often enough, for health care or housing. These same people can be found also arguing that stop-light cameras and speed traps are an income-generating rort, an intrusion on the public simply to build up the state’s coffers for spending on things they don’t agree with. (Let’s leave aside the fact that if you’re running through red lights or speeding you are also endangering others and probably deserve to lose your license a lot sooner.)

So when actress and filmmaker Rachel Ward bemoans the inevitable fate of her movie in the public press, I’m inclined to let it through as more than just whinging. The fact is, one of the best Australian movies I’ve seen, Somersault, got great reviews – until it didn’t make any money. At that point, everybody dog-piled on to say how bad it was, and it started turning up as the argument against the independent Australian film industry.

Does anybody successfully compete against Hollywood? O.k., I guess Bollywood manages, but that seems a rather specialized market, like romance novels are, with a built-in audience share capable of competing with anyone. Similarly, most foreign films cater to their indigenous audience by reason of using the local language. Chinese films generally aren’t going to do as well outside China as they do inside, Crouching Tiger notwithstanding.

No, this is cultural-cringe stuff, I reckon. Australian movies don’t have to be Mad Max to garner audience share sufficient to sustain the industry as a whole, and it’s tough to get any sort of blockbuster out against Hollywood budgeting capacity, whether for production or marketing. Please also note that Hollywood finds it highly advantageous to spend that budget here in Australia, where they can access state-of-the-art equipment and highly accomplished professionals while taking advantage of the exchange and wage rates. Australia is unlikely to be able to compete against the Matrix or any of the other multi-multi-million dollar projects coming out of U.S. studios, but we can produce engaging, interesting, even entertaining features that are expressive of ourselves instead of imitations of some other culture. If we accept the worth of our culture in the first place.

Birds of the World
Although the office park where I work isn’t one of the nicest – that would have been the one down around Georgia where I spent some time one year training on some software – it has the advantage of abutting a national park, so the wildlife is plentiful, if largely represented by the various fowl: ibises, mynahs (Indian and native), crows, and magpies.

The maggies are big birds, on the order of crows, with a fearsome-looking beak. Their song is a somewhat spooky, fluting, quite distinct.

Every evening as I make my way through the street to the bus station, I pass one building in particular, with a curved face, along the top front edge of which the magpies gather, facing out into the coming night, piping home their fellows, it seems. Since their array is eastward, I can’t quite figure why that building and no other: prevailing wind for take-off and landing? The lowering sun’s not in their eyes or the rising sun is for an early wake-up call? In any case, it’s a pleasant walk, listening to them and recognising their sociability.