Twitchy
I never had a name for it, all the years I’ve suffered from it, but it’s called “Restless Leg Syndrome,” and it seems to be a real medical condition. Well, if you can believe the rather equivocal encapsulation on Yahoo! Health. (And why is it listed under depression?)

It first manifested itself on long car trips, and I found that massaging my leg or stretching as much as the cramped back seat would allow relieved the sensation that would, if left alone, make my leg twitch uncontrollably, with a kind of itchy tingling behind my knee. Later, as an adult, I’d often get this when I was trying to sleep, and doing stretches or lightly keeping my foot moving would relieve the urge, almost always restricted to my right leg. Eventually, I noticed something else: it would strike most often during the early days of a period when I wasn’t running regularly, or after I’d started back up again. In either case, after a couple of weeks, it would ease off, only happening rarely. My father-in-law, a former naturopath prescribed an increase in magnesium. I can’t say whether it helped, but it’s been a while since I was taking any in supplements, and the exercise-related pattern seemed to persist, anyway.

Then I found out Mom had it, too, which reinforces some of what’s presented in this article: it runs in the family, and mothers with multiple children may find it persists beyond pregnancy. I’m not anemic, so that’s not the problem, but could I have some kind of dopamine issue? How would I know?

In addition to its use in treating Parkinson’s, to assist patients in controlling involuntary motion, which is the applicable purpose for RLS, there are other functions affected by dopamine in the brain. My memory stinks, so there’s that, but I don’t breastfeed, so that’s not an issue, but I’ve always been a bit shy, so maybe there’s a relationship after all.

Next time I talk to my doctor, perhaps I’ll inquire about trialling some ropinirole or something. Of course, I could just drink more water or ensure I’m running every day.

Sorry
When the subject of widespread child sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities was first raised, many months ago, there was much tutting and argument and the usual lack of agreement or action. Now we have a thorough assessment and the impetus to action. The PM has taken the lead and will send in some police, maybe some of the army, and the first thought going through many heads was “Stolen Generation.”

The Stolen Generation was the result of paternalistic practices whereby the government forcibily removed Aboriginal children from their parents and placed them in white homes or orphanages to be raised without their language or culture, to ensure the assimilation of the indigenous population, eradicating it, in effect. This was still taking place into the 1970’s. The effect continues, and has a part in what we’re now seeing in the Northern Territory and elsewhere, what we’re now having to fix.

The first thought going through most heads was “thank God someone’s doing something; better to act swiftly and decisively than not at all.” True enough, as far as it goes, but what we need to think about is how to avoid the mistakes of the past, because when you look at what’s being proposed, what you see is power being exercised over the powerless in much the same fashion as has been done before and for much the same rationale.

It’s true we have to send in the police and social welfare service providers and monitors now, but we also need a bigger plan, a more long-term approach. David Tiley at Barista provides an excellent summary of what’s happening and what should be. What should be happening, essentially, is taking effective, immediate measures – banning alcohol and porn (and I’d add getting that unsniffable petrol in sooner), controlling access to Aboriginal communities, medical assessments and assistance, the abuse reporting desk (but what’s all this about 5-year leases?). Great care, however, should be taken over the issue of controlling welfare payments. And greater care needs to be taken in drafting the legislation, because the point, ultimately, would be in creating a plan for building Aboriginal communities positively, rather than furthering the breakdown. Stripping more power away from powerless people forces them into further dependence. Building power where it’s needed is a medium- to long-term project, and I’m just not hearing anything from either side of Parliament to suggest that’s where we’re going. I don’t expect it from Mr. Howard, so I can only hope that opposition leader Kevin Rudd will do more than just support the government’s plan, and come up with something more for when – if – Labor next takes over.

Reconciliation redux is something we must avoid.

The Cheese Factor
Please: Celine Dion? That’s what Hillary’s campaign theme song’s going to be? “You and I”? A Canadian? A cheesy Canadian? A strident, cheesy, Vegas-act Canadian? Celine freakin’ Dion? Yes, my mind reels so thoroughly that no analysis is possible, no coherent commentary. I’m freakin’ out, man. And the video clip, aired on the news here last night, complete with Sopranos comparison clips, how cheesy was that? And is there any synergy between HBO gangsters, Celine Dion, and running for President? Oh, I can hear the moonbats already. O.k., so the Dixie Chicks would have – maybe – been a problem, due to their “we’re ashamed to be from Texas” crack about Bush a couple of years ago, and the Smashmouth song is a cover of a Monkee’s number and probably just a little too obvious. I’ll have to go back to my Temptations compilation CD and listen to “Get Ready”, but that has to have been a better choice – Motown, after all, so it could grab off some African-American soul cred from Obama (whose only song so far is the one some fan put up doing a Marilyn Monroe-style tribute). Oh, I’m voting Edwards for sure, now.

President Mike
Bloomberg for Prez? Gimmie a break. First, I admit I left the city before he entered City Hall, so I have no first-hand experience of his mayoralty. I’ve followed events in my former home as closely as the on-line New York Times and various other sources, like Gothamist allow, however, although, as a second point, I’ll concede some measure of bias in the coverage thereby afforded. But no government executive at any level is immune from criticism when they do something wrong, and praise for their right actions often comes off as muted. So balance Mayor Mike’s performance during the GOP convention or the police harassment of bicyclists since against the 311 information system. Sure, he rides the subway and lives in his own home like a regular person. He did those things before he was mayor, too. What else has he done? How else is he qualified as a potential President. And please leave aside the fact that he’s got the dough to run on his own hook, no public financing or campaign contributions needed.

Actually, his wealth may be the one qualification no one can match: he’s beholden to no one.

No, no, it’s not enough. Ross Perot and Stephen Forbes were beholden to no one, either. Neither one was a viable candidate, and thank God for that.

Well, he’s not running yet, so there’s time to find out after, if, he announces, what President Bloomberg would be all about. I’ll admit I’m intrigued, but I’m also suffering from campaign fatigue already, what with all those Republicans and all those Democrats already running, not to mention all those Democrats who aren’t. Yet.

Silly Victims of Self-Inflicted Wounds
I am beyond tired of reading self-identifying liberals who buy into every myth perpetrated by the reactionary right. Matt Taibbi cites every clichéd example of the “latte left”, chardonnay-sipping Che enthusiasts, and Democratic elitists he can think of, but they’re all recycled canards straight out of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly. When was the last time anyone wearing a “I Read Banned Books” t-shirt turned up at your door? Or at Matt Taibbi’s door, for that matter? It never happened. The problem with liberals in America is that they’ve accepted the lies as truth and the ones working for the media spend their creative efforts wringing their hands over how unfocussed and misdirected they are. We’re most of us, 90% of us, far better than that, far more active, and far more thoroughly integrated into American society than we admit. Victimhood? Taibbi’s got it in spades. If we’re victims of anything, it’s supporting middle-of-the-road candidates because they’re “electable.” Go ahead, I say, vote for Kucinich.

Famous
Congratulations to Radio Birdman, former angry young men, on their upcoming induction to the ARIA hall of fame.

Movie Notes
28 Weeks Later is scary, but not as good as 28 Days Later, although I admit the zombie Dad is a more haunting image than anything from the first film, and I did have a more disturbed night’s sleep than I’d expected, even after watching The Big Lebowski when I got home.

Candy is about the best adaptation I’ve ever seen and a pretty damn good movie, too. The casting is too perfect to be believed. Heath Ledger’s junkie-performance is first-rate, although – naturally – nowhere near as humorous as that of David Wenham in Gettin’ Square.

Ousmane Sembene
Sembene, who died today at age 84, was one of the great figures of modern African literature, although he abandoned novels in favor of movies, from the belief that film was a medium better suited to African literary sensibilities. I still re-read God’s Bits of Wood, his novel centered on the railroad strike in pre-independence Senegal, every now and then, but have only ever seen Black Girl, his first movie. His influence, however, in African arts, is undoubted.

Feast vs. Famine
The storm that grounded a ship in Newcastle passed the reservoirs pretty thoroughly, but left the Hunter Valley and Central Coast pretty well done in by floods. Here in Sydney, it's all just tree branches and soggy playing fields, but the game between Wests Tigers (my local footy team) and the Newcastle Knights was played at the Knights' home field without anyone getting even a little muddy. Must have had the tarps out.

And now it seems that the ships lined up outside Newcastle when the storm hit were all warned to pull out to sea, but not everyone did, reluctant to lose their place in line. So while the ship's captain is responsible for the safety of his crew and vessel, there's still a message here to the NSW government to get this port in shape.

Infrastructure Upgrades
This freighter might have run aground in a storm anyway, but if there was a reason to upgrade the Newcastle port facilities before, there’s even more reason now. Honestly, if the ships weren’t lined up 75-deep to enter the harbor, I’m betting we wouldn’t be rescuing the crew in a driving storm right now. If the NSW Labor government isn’t embarrassed by its inaction, it ought to be, whether you want to blame Bob Carr or Morris Iemma. I’m sure everyone will come out o.k., but it’ll be criminal if anyone gets hurt.

Rash
They let that woman out because of a rash? Put her back; she isn’t done yet, not until she’s flaking all over with eczema.

An Album Cover
For anyone who's wondering, colonoscopies are not fun. (And if you don't get the title reference, watch the video; that line makes me laugh just thinking about it - but don't make me laugh right now.)

(Oh, and, yes, everything's fine, thanks.)

mp3
I cashed in my Coles-Myers “Flybuys” points on an iPod Shuffle. (It’s worth it, the points expire faster than I can build them up enough for anything really expensive, like an airline ticket.) It hasn’t arrived yet, so I’m still using the $20 job I bought some months back. I get about 50 songs on it, which is usually enough to get me through a few days’ running. The Shuffle will be a whole gigabyte, so I expect not to have to refresh the mix too often. But I’ve got a peeve, and a don’t expect the iPod to offer any improvements: the headphones wires are very thin, subject to breaks, so you’re left, at some stage, to fiddle with the wires, trying to get a stable connection, or listening to music only coming through one ear or breaking in an out. Yesterday, I replaced my player’s stick-this-in-your-ear headphones with the over-the-ear model my gym membership bought me. They were useless immediately, perhaps because I’d been carrying them in my bag for a few days, banging around with the rather large hardcover book I’m reading (“Wizard of the Crow”, from Ngugi wa Thiongo, of Kenya). The nice thing about earbud headphones is that if you are in the midst of a run and need to remove them, you can stuff them in a pocket or otherwise get them out of the way, whereas over-the-ear models pretty much have to be pulled down around your neck, which is how I spent the next four kilometres. Surely the wires could be thicker, sturdier? It wouldn’t add much weight, and they’d hold up under exercise. I recommend this to anyone producing sports-model headphones. Thank you.

Please Hang Up the Tights
How bad is Spiderman 3? Everyone who worked on this movie, particularly Tobey Maguire, should take a very long vacation and maybe think about retiring forever so we don’t have to think about the possibility of a fourth movie. O.k., actually Thomas Haden Church was good. Or anyway, well-cast, since that’s pretty much exactly the way I remember the Sandman being drawn in the comics. That could have just been the shirt, though.

Everywhere, But Not to Drink
Walking past the Camperdown oval the other day in the pouring rain, I was not amused to see the sprinklers on, watering the grounds. In fact, over the course of the next few rainy days, I noticed the grounds continued to receive their regular watering, which, as the weekend approached, I couldn’t imagine the local footy team appreciating, as they’d be playing in quite a quagmire by Saturday. In any event, it comes, therefore, as no surprise, that business and government are eating up the water savings made by Sydney residents, with little recycling going on, and on-going infrastructure-related losses. It’s not good enough. Local councils and the State government have to step up their game. Earth Hour is a nice stunt, but there’s more to the situation than kilowatt hours, and it’s not just a matter of desalination plants.

Health & Well-Being
I joined a gym about a week ago. It’s probably a bad move, since the only branch convenient to me is just down the road from work, but in the opposite direction from the train, and I’ll have to make a special effort to go there instead of for a run in the park, but I’ve heard that aerobic exercise is of reduced effectiveness without strength-building activities. So now I can play with the weights machines. (Yes, there are also free-weights, but I’m intimidated by the guys in there; I’m foolish-looking enough, compared to all these young, muscle-y, and, frankly, thuggish-looking people. It’s bad enough that the arrangement of the machines is, as always, such that you are constantly faced with facing others working out on their pecs or abs or whatevers, and none of them are ever over-stuffed middle-aged nerds. I’m not there for pick-ups; move the machines to provide some semblance of privacy, please.) I can also use the cross-trainers or the treadmills.

Last night I went in for the first time. I made the rounds of some of the weights machines for half-an-hour or so, then went to explore the aerobics machines. The cross-trainer I got up on squeaked horribly and it was difficult to find a rhythm. Plus, my shin splints kicked in hard almost immediately. I persisted for a few minutes, but since the panel wasn’t operable, I don’t really know how long. I moved off to a treadmill and put in a few kilometres, gradually building up my speed, as I do on the street, and pounding along. These machines are not built for hard running, since as my effort increased, so, too, did the noise, pounding along under my feet. I’m a bit of a flat-footed runner, normally, although lately I’ve been making more of an effort to land on my toes. I read on the BBC news site at some point that the foot is designed to take impact better that way, and it’s easier on your knees. Since running up on my toes also means my shin splints don’t bother me, I’m happy enough, but it’s more effort, and I can really only manage a couple of K’s that way.

The aerobic machine room is a tiered rank arranged in a semicircle in front of an array of television screens, the centre eight playing music videos, and the nine to the left and right playing one of the three commercial broadcast stations. The machine noise drowns out the music, so it would probably be best to bring headphones. I think there’s a jack you can plug into. Or I could just listen to my own mp3 player, I suppose, although I think there’d be some level of audio conflict. Still, I find when I get off a treadmill – and this isn’t new, just something I’m mentioning now – I’m actually a little dizzy. I don’t know why that is; it doesn’t happen running on the street, no matter whether it’s an easy run or hard. It’s disorienting, so music might be a bad idea, might throw off my balance more. I wonder if that happens for everyone. Maybe I’ll get used to it. Or maybe a branch will open near home and I can skip the treadmills and go run in the street after the weights. That’d be good. There isn’t really enough time for both at work, unless I go after hours, and then I feel bad about the cats, waiting for their dinner. Maybe I’m too co-dependent to use a gym.

Connected
I bought a t.v. and DVR over the weekend, with the idea that I’d catch up on some quality viewing. What I’d forgotten is that there just isn’t any to speak of. Right now, it’s pretty much all about Big Brother, and who cares? These are all incredibly stupid, narcissistic wannabe’s behaving badly in enforced intimacy, occasionally required to participate in truly pointless and spiteful activities to garner the attention of a purportedly vast audience of viewers seduced into believing they are also participating in the show, although they’ll walk away at the end with nothing more than a significantly larger telephone bill than usual for any similar period of time while somebody else gets a car. Idiots.

I don’t get home in time even to enjoy a nice Simpson’s re-run, thank God.

Also, I opted for the 61cm screen, instead of the 48cm, or whatever, and really regret that. It looked a lot smaller in the store. Stuck in the space under the stairs, it’s truly immense, and I have to sit on the other side of the room in order to see it, or wear reading glasses. I guess it’s not just ceiling heights that affect how we live, but every element of room size, including the stuff we jam into them.

Look, I bought the damn thing for the DVR, mostly. There are a large number of movies I’d like to see that I missed in the theatres, for a variety of reasons, so now I’ll watch them. I’m debating over The Departed vs. the Kill Bill’s first. Yes, it goes that far back, maybe further. In fact, yes, further. Plus, when there’s stuff on late, I can whack a disc in and program to record whatever old movie or late-night U.S. show, like Bernie Mac, I’ve been missing. If I got Foxtel (never; no Murdoch anything in my house), I could even watch baseball again. I’ll leave that as an excuse to go to the pub.

Emboldenning the Terrorists, or the Liberal Party, Anyway
Oh, no: Tony Blair's set a deadline for pulling out! What will happen in Iraq, now? All they have to do is wait until June 27, and then John Howard will announce an election, and then next year will be the U.S. primaries and Presidential election . . . why, by the end of January 2009, the whole thing could be over.

Sui Generis
I decided to pass on the complete Naked City recordings in favor of the single-CD package, once I saw the price tag, and while that was probably the right decision, I can only imagine just how far the full set could have gone. John Zorn is a fascinating musician, composing and performing material unlike anything else I’ve ever heard from anyone else. Yeah, somebody’s sure to say, oh, no, there’s this guy, and so on, but, look, this isn’t Ornette Coleman or John Cage or any of that post-fusion stuff from the ‘80’s (although Fred Frith plays bass here). Zorn’s music isn’t for everyone. It’s often very hard to listen to at all, and I like it. He’s got a very pointed fascination with movies and television, or their music, anyway. One of the first Zorn albums I ever bought was The Big Gundown, a collection of Ennio Morricone movie soundtrack songs. Naked City is like that, sometimes, with “A Shot in the Dark” and the James Bond theme being the most easily recognizable offerings. “Batman” and “Re-Animator” are in there, too, although I’ll probably have to rent those again just to refresh my memory of their dominate musical themes. I could do without the vocal gymnastics – screaming, really – but Zorn’s of that school where Diamanda Galas and Meredith Monk come from, pushing the boundaries of what constitute singing. And look: Frith, as mentioned, and Bill Frisell, the latter of whom, if you are listening to his current work, you’d never imagine here. Now that I’ve had one listen, I know I’ll start wishing I’d just bought the box.

Not Conservative Enough
Imagine: Newscorp owns Dow Jones. Not yet, but just think of what would become of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page if it were operating at the behest of Rupert Murdoch. The mind boggles.