Evil Empire Status Averted
The resemblance of Joe Lieberman to Galactic Senator Palpatine is one of those internet memes that only a certain few are likely to enjoy, but doesn’t reduce my relief that he’s finally dropped out. Now he won’t develop those terrible powers and turn Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader. No, I mean, now he’s gotten at least some of the comeuppance I think he deserved for his behavior as Gore’s running mate.

Ramsay Street Neighbours
Germaine Greer is a name to conjure with, but that doesn’t make her infallible. Actually, like most storied talismans, Ms. Greer lately appears to offer the good right along with the bad, a sort of sociopolitical Monkey’s Paw. For Australia Day, Ms. Greer offered her assessment of Australia, but insofar as what she says has any validity, it is well outweighed by the injustices she perpetrates (and perpetuates from her own life for that matter). So when the headline on her recent opinion piece is “Slack and Insufferable,” I have to wonder if she recognizes the irony. Her piece is itself as insufferable as its research is slack. By the end, I’m left wondering if she wouldn’t rather live in Iceland than England. First of all, England is where Australia gets most of what she complains about. Second, Iceland is the only country I can think of that didn’t decimate a native population, has a robust political and intellectual life, where urban or rural life dominates over suburban, and where the economy’s development doesn’t rely on the decimation of natural resources but harnessing them instead. Since summer in Iceland is mercifully brief, the kinds of relaxation that offend Ms. Greer are less available to the population, so although they, too, rely heavily on imported manufactured goods, at least they’re probably pretty wound up over it.

Making Ends Meet
Based on a Metafilter item I did a little look-up to discover what’s minimum wage in Australia. It’s AU$11.35 per hour, based on a 38-hour week. Don’t ask me how they get a 38-hour week, though, since that’s 7.6 hours per day. 0.6 hours is 36 minutes. I guess that’s lunch. Meanwhile, back in the States, minimum wage varies, with US$8.50 in San Francisco vs. US$5.15 in NYC. A Federal standard seems worthwhile, so long as it raises the bar for everyone, but then Australia’s workforce is much smaller and more easily administered, perhaps. Oh, and at the current exchange rate, AU$11.35 is US$8.63. (Adjusting for a 40-hour week, the wage would be approximately US$8.20. I’d say our waitresses can outspend service personnel in the U.S., by and large.)

Who’s That Man?
I have had to travel for business with some considerable frequency in the past, a bit less for personal reasons, but the experience of checking in at the gate for a flight I booked was always the same: show your ticket and show some airline clerk an ID. I was once told that I could have my ticket dishonored, be thrown out, or even arrested if I failed to produce a valid driver’s license. Corporate ID has been rejected in my experience if the clerk didn’t recognize the company. I actually spent a couple of months traveling on the same flight once every two weeks, checking in with the same clerk every time, only to have my ID rejected after about three months without any explanation. Presumably the clerk had gotten in trouble for accepting as ID something other than a driver’s license or passport. In any event, the following trip everything was back to normal. The FAA issues regulations and recommendations to the airlines regarding the administration of their passengers. The safety demonstration is an example of a regulation. The ID check is a recommendation. Airlines treat them both as mandatory. It’s easier that way. For them. It doesn’t do any good at all. The airlines are happy to require an ID check because it enforces their policy that tickets are non-transferable. It makes sense to say that the luggage stowed in cargo and the passengers match up, but what about mail? Who’s checking that? Besides, why would a suicide bomber tag his luggage under a pseudonym anyway? Look, if you don’t want me to fly, don’t sell me the ticket. Up until the point when you take my money, you can refuse me service. After that, you’d better get me on the plane even if I did have a beard when I had my ID photo taken. Want real safety? Impose realistic safety measures.

Three Years On
M. and I have been married for three years today, two in NYC and one in Sydney. We’ve done quite well, if I say so myself, having survived a move across the planet; finding, buying, and furnishing a new home; four months of unemployment; and the continuing trials daily met by any couple anywhere. Tonight we’ll celebrate with a fine dining experience, as it is our tradition to meet the anniversary with as posh an event as we can devise, although we may have to save up for milestone years before trying to match the night at the Waldorf with which we instituted that ritual. We’ve got great hopes for the future, and I know I couldn’t have chosen a better partner with whom to meet the years ahead.

Morning into Evening and Again
As I stood on the platform the other day, dazed with sleeplessness from a later night than expected due to a fire alarm that brought the fire department (just smoke; somebody cooking something that got out of hand or some such) and an earlier awakening than usual (the cat punishing me for helping stuff her into her carrier and haul her out to the street: but we were saving your life!), I was considering the necessity of familiarity and what my present situation provides in that regard. Beyond the cultural divergences and geographical reversals, much remains the same in kind while distinct in the details. Business is business, I’d say while we were planning our relocation, speaking of the kinds of change I’d face in seeking employment here, and that’s been true overall, even though I’ve come to discover just how untrue it is at the same time. Take contracts, for example, a very common employment condition here, whereas “employment at will” is much more the rule back home. My duties under contract are no more explicit nor my performance of them any more measurable than when I toiled under the vague conventions of the U.S. system, although I’d guess that’s really only because individual contracts are simply a legal mechanism, a formality, setting out the “at will” condition of the employment. The same late nights and lunch-at-your-desk assumptions appear to be at operation here as anywhere else I’ve worked, and will probably only spread to exert influence on increasing numbers of workers as more and more categories are reclassified as “professional” and therefore exempt from overtime. (There is more than one reason secretaries are more often Administrative Assistants these days, and it won’t be long before most of them are Administrative Officers, at which point they might as well just set up a cot next to their desks and sign up for child care services.) But I like routine, knowing when I will do something and where I will be day-to-day, even as much as I enjoy breaking out of the routine to do something, go somewhere different. “Different” is, however, a relative term. Different is going to the movies when you haven’t been in a while, or even just going to see something with subtitles (that aren’t translating from the Klingon). Different is going to a restaurant you haven’t tried, having the green curry instead of the red. Different is familiar – most of the time. I would like something truly different, which is pretty remarkable considering that I am on the other side of the world, living in a distinct cultural milieu, amid a unique set of environmental conditions (no koalas or kangaroos, but there have been kookaburras sittin’ in the ol’ gum trees, but that’s beside the point; think heat, drought, desert, serious UV exposure, and the eucalyptus scent of the trees), under unrecognizable constellations. The language is different, too: colors are coloured, authorizations are authorised. . . . It’s the little things. And the big ones. But every morning during the week, I get on a train to travel west for work and for the first twenty minutes of my ride I’m travelling on the same line I did to get to my last job. The train leaves from the same platform to go to Parramatta as it did to go to Epping. When we travel to Windsor, we’re still on platform 18. Reliable and efficient. At the office, I have the same job I did in NYC, although the larger context is quite different from that in which I have previously operated. As Kath ‘n’ Kim say: Nice, different, unusual. What’s it all about? After four months of unemployment, I find myself more than ready to retire, except for the part about the money. Damn.

Social Deconstruction
George II has been going on quite a bit lately on the topic of gay marriage, without of course addressing marriage itself except to say that it must be preserved. There have been a couple of ‘blogs I track to one degree or another where the subject has come up from a self-interested point of view. Since the topic came up in public debate, I’ve always taken the liberal line: everybody should have the right to get married if that’s what they want, regardless of sexuality. Follow Me Here posts a report on the decline of marriage in Scandinavia, tying the situation to the rise in the acceptance of gay marriage in Sweden and across Europe. I wonder how much of a relationship there really is, but even before I get to that question, I wonder if I shouldn’t have reservations about expanding the institution of marriage to same-sex couples? In the end, there isn’t much of a debate for me. The distinction between marriage and “civil union” seems like splitting hairs: except in a religious context, it’s all “civil union.” Government is involved in registering marriages to ensure that some level of social equity is maintained regarding responsibility towards one’s partner and towards any children resulting from the partnership, as well as to take advantage of the taxation situation. To be fair, “take advantage” is a relatively modern development, I expect. The “marriage penalty” many couples encounter paying taxes is a development of the increased number of dual-income households. It was much more the case that getting married improved one’s tax situation, albeit at the same time as imposing an increased financial responsibility at home to offset it. So why should government perceive a need to “defend” marriage? The institutionalization of relationships has been in decline for a very long time now, particularly as the benefits of stamping your commitment “official” have declined. There are only two reasons I see for government to insert itself into the debate: tax revenue implications and political expediency. If allowing gays and lesbians to marry causes heterosexuals to stop marrying, this could have a negative impact on taxes. Couples would be able to file singly, at least one of them claiming any children as deductions, and millions upon millions of dollars would stop flowing into the coffers of the IRS. Society would crumble. Democracy would fail. O.k., the rationale isn’t reasonable, and no sane politician would argue this way, because it would just admit to the greedy nature of governments. Political expediency, however, is meat and potatoes to those in or seeking public office. What is the perception, the opinion (regardless of whether it’s informed or not) of the public, and what stance will ensure I get (or don’t lose) votes? Does allowing gays to participate cheapen the social imprimatur of marriage? Is the average married man or woman (non-gay, obviously) offended by those dirty gays signing up at the courthouse? The only thing I find offensive is that straight and gay don’t sign up under the same laws. I’d rather see laws regarding marriage amended to include gays and lesbians than distinct (not to say “special,” which implies unique entitlements that aren’t really being enacted) legislation. On the other hand, a special law had to be passed to give women the vote, and nobody much minds that anymore. Some step has to be taken to provide equitable treatment under law, and enacting gay marriage rights may be a clumsy move, but inevitable as our perceptions and understanding of the human condition expand. Watching the first instalment of Michael Apted’s Marriage in America last night, we heard a lesbian couple explain their decision to go to Vermont as a way of demonstrating to their families and friends the seriousness of their commitment. The civil union was merely a step towards encouraging participation in a subsequent ceremony enacted with the more traditional appurtenances. If the churches don’t want to permit homosexuals to marry, that’s up to them. Such bodies have long operated separately from civil institutions, one of the benefits we got from the schism caused by Henry VIII wanting a new wife. George II and others who would seek to prevent everyone from marrying really ought to look to their roots: unless you’re a Roman Catholic, your principles are the result of the Protestant Reformation, the Medieval course of events that led to the separation of church and state, in which case you should probably mind your own business and let others mind theirs. As for the Catholics, well, I think the Paulian doctrine would say that living in a society where the state constitutionally operates without regard to the tenets of any church doctrine obliges you to honor the separation regardless of your religious principles.

Going to Bat
The parallels are fascinating, but it does leave you wondering how we’ve come to this pretty pass, that the Democrats are turning the next election into a battle between what John Edwards calls the “two Americas,” highlighting George II’s kleptocratic assertion of the privilege of the privileged in the U.S. economy, and that here in Australia, Mark Latham is asserting a similar agenda, describing that the Howard government has done more in Australia to create “battlers” while doing less than any previous administration for them. The anger and activism of the Left in both countries is a great relief – in the U.S. after less than four years of blatant pandering to corporate interests over those of the lower and middle classes, while Australia has suffered John Howard for nearly a decade longer. But that’s the worry: can the U.S. unseat Bush on the present Democratic agenda? Is the example of Howard getting in time and again an augury of how easy it may yet turn out for the Bush-Cheney ticket to renew its presence in Washington D.C.? Perhaps it’s wrong to allow my fear of November back in the States to color my expectations in my new home, and vice versa. I’d like Mark Latham to get the top spot here and to be able to hold on to it for long enough to put a halt to some of the present tendencies of the Federal government, just as I’d like to see Dean or Edwards or Kerry or, well, no, maybe not Kucinich, but a Democrat get the White House back, but it’s tough to unseat an incumbent, especially when there’s so much fear and it’s so easy for them to keep us alert if not alarmed.

Dr. Dolittle Resources
I once saw a diagram of a group of European dogs greeting one another, the French Poodle saying “ouah” to the German Shepard, who responded “wau,” triggering the Puli to say “vau,” etc. The idea that animals were also affected by the curse of Babel was a source of some amusement to me at the time. In case you’re going overseas, this online animal dictionary offers a way for you to talk to the animals. No giant Luna Moth, though, and no Pushmi-Pullyu.

Get Into the Groove
Baby, you got to prove you want to loose weight. Probably Dance Dance Revolution takes up less room even than a fold-up treadmill.

Food Good, Monsanto Bad
Mendocino County is pushing a referendum to ban cultivation of genetically modified organisims, and as the chef of the first fully-certified fully-organic restaurant in California, younger brother endorses the effort, naturally enough. I see his point, and the County’s, but I’m afraid the genie is well and truly out of the bottle on this one. Aside from the glow-in-the-dark fish, there’s the corn and the rice, and soy is reportedly one of the most extensively modified foods on the planet, although I don’t think that involved direct genetic manipulation. On the other hand, those who would argue that these things can be controlled should probably know that there are organic farms in Canada currently being sued for infringement of Monsanto’s patents. How? Well, pollen is pollen, and I wouldn’t trust anyone who tells me they can prevent bees from travelling from one field to another. So for the privilege of no longer being able to claim organic status, these farmers are in court and the businesses they supplied have to go elsewhere. Vote Yes on H: you are what you eat.

All the Way with JFK?
That’s John F. Kerry, of course. Anyway, more to the point, the perennial question during the primaries is: which front-runner will choose which also-ran for Vice President? This round, the answer is: not Kerry-Edwards. It is a tradition of long standing that a candidate for President cannot win unless he can deliver the South, and that to do so, there needs to be some ticket-balancing. Kennedy is supposed to have tapped Lyndon Johnson because Texas is technically a southern state, but sufficiently maverick that he’d owe nothing to the Deep South that might otherwise preclude social change in respect to civil rights for blacks. George II, of course, is “from” Texas, giving him southern credentials that he balanced with Cheney, who is “from” Wisconsin. (They’re really from Maine and Texas, respectively, aren’t they? Still, North & South, isn’t it?) That Kerry, a Boston Brahmin, would tap Edwards, makes sense. Earlier, everyone wondered who would grab Wesley Clark. I’m not even sure where Clark’s from, but as career military, he’s honorarily southern, at least. There have been those who have said Dean ought to match with Clark, and I can see some anti-war benefit there, but Kerry’s got the momentum right now, so the ticket questions are being lobbed his way. A bit early.

Urban Philosophification
I sometimes find myself engaged in a discussion of “do I miss NYC” which sometimes turns into “why don’t you miss it?” or even “I know you miss it, but you won’t admit it.” I don’t give it a lot of thought, most of the time, really, unless I’m asked, and that does happen even now more than you might think. I suppose I would if we’d ended up in some dismal suburb, but even at that I might not, having spent my early years in the hundred acre wood (without the imperialist subtext of the Milne stories, of course – more like the inanity of Peanuts). I spent time in and around farmland and out in the Midwest, traveled to Europe, met people from all over the world, studied other cultures, etc., and NYC is pretty much an aberration as cities go. NYC extends well beyond Manhattan, of course, but nobody much thinks of it that way. Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the Bronx are just dense suburban extensions (as are the near reaches of New Jersey and Connecticut for that matter) of the city proper, which is a macrocosmic city forced into a microcosmic scale by confining it to a (relatively) tiny estuarial island. Paris may have the Île de Cité, but the majority of that is taken up with tourist destinations. NYC’s central island is larger and contains the majority of midsized to large businesses as well as a sometimes overwhelming density of housing. Most cities in my experience are sprawling constructions, especially if they haven’t been culturally or commercially superseded by time or their neighbors (cf. New Orleans), having started from a central point but grown well beyond it, eventually developing ancillary “center” points. This can have a dismal effect on a city’s starting point. Downtown Los Angeles, for example, is very nearly a wasteland outside of business hours, and hubs of activity of one kind or another have taken up position around it, each operating as a distinct urban environment for the area residents. Similarly, however, the original center and its outpost locations can equally thrive. Atlanta is a possible example; Sydney definitely is. Perhaps it’s my understanding of this that’s colored my experience of having relocated across the globe. Parramatta and Chatswood operate as remote branches of Sydney city center, and the suburbs that string themselves along the access routes offer distinct tendrils of enterprise and culture characterized by the populations having driven the overall pattern of growth. You can go as far as you like, or not, in availing yourself of what’s on offer. Sydney, like other cities, presents its idiosyncrasies as well. Over Christmas and New Year’s, Sydney offers a distinct experience from any comparable period in NYC, but what sometimes doesn’t get taken into account is that there is no worthwhile comparison to the northern hemisphere. It’s high summer here, school’s out, the ocean is warm and inviting. Nobody stays home, nobody goes to town. We’re all on holiday, and we like it. Now think about what’s summer in the city up north. Different in kind, if not in detail, isn’t it? Just like the weather. My first year in Sydney presented this as a remarkable experience, but this year it was only lacking in normality because we had our first international visitor in and therefore sought to overcome the entertainment limitations we perceived. It turns out, naturally enough upon reflection, that we overestimated those, as Bondi and similar excursions were more than sufficiently engaging. Well, this is what other Sydneysiders do, as do other visitors to this country at this time of year, so I don’t know why we should have been surprised. The uncertainty principle of quantum physics (whatever; what, I’m a scientist now?) asserts itself philosophically: what is observable in time makes space indeterminate and so forth. Christmas in NYC is not Christmas in Sydney, etc. The Fourth of July is not paralleled by Australia Day. But why should I want it to be in either case? Just so that the experience I have is familiar or that more restaurants are open when I feel like going out for a meal? There is actually very little requirement of me to adjust my expectations. Just like moving here in the first place. Adapting to life in Sydney has required no more than learning to know where what I want is, not in having to learn what what I want is. I say kilometres and think miles, speak of temperature in centigrade rather than Fahrenheit, but that’s not very different from most born Australians my age. I have my cross-cultural temper tantrums, to one extent or another, just like anyone else would (and there’s a television serial out of Britain, called “A New Life Down Under” about just that, with a group of English ex-pats moaning over their problems adapting to their new environments: whingers, all of them), but don’t you just hate those people who come from one place to another and believe their prior experiences are the template for all future experience, who arrive in a place and believe they should be able to behave, to think, as if their presence in a place confers ownership, without taking responsibility? If I’m going to live in Sydney, don’t I have to participate in the city? I did in NYC, and although there were enough people there who didn’t, there were plenty of us who did. Listen, just because you can get a bank to loan you the money for a home or to open a business, that doesn’t privilege you above all others in the neighborhood, just like there is no privilege in having tourist dollars to spend versus spending your daily wage. There are some things I’d like to change. I’d like Sydney to be more pedestrian-friendly, for one. The infrastructure is there, the attitudes are not. I expect that will change, however, over time as the population increases and the sprawl can’t keep up. The inevitability of urban life in this and many other respects is that all these people cannot live together so closely unless civility prevails, although I’ll admit that this is paired with the inevitability of some level of conflict, too. Sydney is just not as accustomed yet to a densely urban life as it is becoming, but it will be: it’s inevitable. One of the factors that have made Australia such a distinct place is that it has always been separate, an isolated continent whose dominant culture existed at such a physical distance from its roots and has been so desirous of retaining a connection that it has foisted off change even while it has been forced to accept it. This is not the same place Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes and their ilk refuse to live in, although you can still find that place here. Australia’s position in the Pacific, in Asia as a cultural region, is much more acknowledged than it has been, and that’s having an inevitable effect, and not just in population density and disparity. In many respects, this is where East meets West, and it may well be the place where that scale of change begins to spread across the rest of the world. I feel like I may be getting in on the ground floor.

Globalization Role Play
The Morning News includes an RPG outline of the Ikea experience, and it’s just like that. The gaming instructions fail to mention, however, that despite your best intentions never to return, you will go back again and again until you have more non-identical allen wrenches lying around the house than you can ever think of anything to do with them except maybe as some kind of post-ironic art. And just what is a lingonberry?

Justice in Operation
I figure this case, shutting down part of the egregious USA Patriot Act, to have been decided by the Ninth Circuit, yeah? If only all our civil liberties suits could be brought there. It does bug me that the Humanitarian Law Project is also trying to help out the Tamil Tigers, but under the rule of law, everybody gets a witness.

Open and Shut
Thank goodness Kim’s really Australian, because she’s the last one in now that Lleyton and Mark bit the dust in the fourth round. Is it the U.S. Open if Roddick and Agassi go to the finals?

Net Results
The Bottom Line is closed forever. I only went a few times over the years, most often probably for John Cale, who was a regular, but always saw a terrific band and a solid performance, sometimes unexpectedly, as when I saw the Violent Femmes while they were both still good and new as well as only just signed to a label. Lou Reed is probably the most memorable musician I saw there from an iconic NYC standpoint, and although I can’t think of an exotic night, at least I never had to sit behind one of the pillars or posts that framed the outer seating area. Sure, the Palladium in its heyday was a better overall concert venue, but in my time, only Folk City would have rivaled the Bottom Line for an intimate musical experience. To be fair, they couldn’t pay the rent, but a 250% mark-up is pretty severe.

Advance, Australia, Fair
Yes, happy Australia Day. I don't know that commas belong in the lyric of the anthem like that, but it seems correct. The final line is, after all, an admonisment to the nation to give all and sundry a "fair go," a noble sentiment worth pointing out on the country's national day, especially in light of the last year's refugee crisis and various other multi-cultural hiccups. I probably ought to look up the rest of the words. Meanwhile, tall ship races down on the Harbour, military fly-overs, hot air balloons, fireworks (of course), time on the beach and by the barbeque . . . so much to do, so little time to do it in.

Maintenance
Dear Editor: I am not a crank. But your comments don't work. O.k., I changed the comments to HaloScan, and we'll hope for the best. Of course any comments previously posted are now gone (sorry, but tough), but I promise I read them all. Really.

Year of the Built Environment
The Australian Federal Government has named 2004, as it has named other years, for the particular area of improvement it wants to highlight. 2002 was the “Year of the Outback,” and 2003 was “Year of the Child.” 2001 was the Centenary of Federation, so there wasn’t any activist sponsorship, probably because in 2000 the effort for making Australia a republic failed. I thought this year was supposed to highlight Volunteerism, to judge by the fifty-cent piece in ciculation (or as of yesterday, the Monkey), but the so-called “built environment” seems a worthy enough effort, given the present and increasingly problematic global warming situation. It seems too little too late to tout the latest business efforts towards energy-efficient buildings, especially when we’ve had a hundred years or more of greed working to the opposite end, but every step is one in the right direction, even if I may yet end up with waterfront property in my lifetime, but without any effort of my own to that condition, especially since the Ross ice shelf is collapsing and the North Polar icecap is thinning already. We probably should have bought our property at the top of Surry Hills, but there’s lots of room for more Harbour in front of the Opera House. Meanwhile, the greening of office buildings and new efforts in developing more environmentally friendly homes, especially given the nature of the country’s nature – extended periods of drought, increasing problems with soil salinity, etc. (not to mention the problem of foreign fauna, such as the Indian mynah, mucking with the locals) – could prove to be another front on which Australia advances the cause of the planet. Advance Australia fair, indeed.