Sound (&) Vision
Glasses have long been one of the more expensive necessities of my life, and with frames starting at over $200 even before they put my expensive prescription in them, finding a way to reduce my semi-annual out-of-pocket upgrades is something of a priority. As a result, I've taken to doing my shopping on-line, where starting prices, complete, start at $100. That doesn't mean I'm not spending up big anyway, since, as I say, my prescription is for coke-bottle thick, pretty much requiring that I opt for the extras, like specialty-thin. The big trick lately, however, is that I am increasingly decrepit, needing reading glasses. I originally opted for a distance paid and a reading pair, with slightly different frames for ease of identification, and have swapped between them. I've also left my sunglasses un-upgraded, since, effectively, as medium-distance glasses, I can both read and see far enough for most purposes. But carrying extra glasses and having to juggle them seemed stupid enough in the end that I bought a pair of bifocals for this year's model.

It is very important that I keep my head still, or at any rate that I don't move my eyes in advance of moving my head, as the tilt-shift is absolutely nauseating. Walking down the hall, every irregularity in the floor seems to throw my inner ear just enough that I want to go back to two pairs. Also, I don't think the distance on these is as strong as on my pure distance-glasses. Reading's o.k. - so far.

I've heard you get used to this, but it's not a particularly pleasant period of adaptation just right now.

We Many, We Lucky Many
Although at this point if you get 'flu, they say it's sure to be HSV, there are other things to get, like a plain ol' cold. Nothing like the cache of having a potentially fatal pandemic virus, just a rhinovirus. Annoying, damaging to keeping up training, and not glamorous. I take consolation in scaring the living daylights out of everyone I encounter.

Library Card
I really need to get it together to get myself a library card. I’ve never even visited my local public library, and while the little time I’ve spent in other branches hasn’t impressed me, Glebe’s looks like it might be big enough to be worth visiting. I say this with a few unread volumes of one thing or another sitting on a shelf waiting for me to get to, but books are among the most expensive consumer item in this country, and I consume a fair few. Despite a recent move towards opening Australia to cheap imports, there’s a hue and cry, as there often is in these protectionist matters, of opposition. Australian publishers, particularly in regard to Australian authors, can’t compete against the prodigious output of America, or even the U.K., for that matter. And Australian authors can’t compete if they can’t even get published in their own country, and they won’t be if the local publishers can’t afford to stay open. Theoretically, I suppose, there would still be some demand for local product, forcing the number of publishers to shrink and specialize, but more likely it would simply send Australian writers overseas and to abandon writing, if only writing about Australia. Sure, we’ve got a Nobel Prize winner, and sure, screenplays have been adapted from our stories, but nobody much reads Patrick White anymore, no matter how good he was, and those movies didn’t do particularly well at home or abroad, so where’s the worth? I’m not a fan overall of protectionist trade practices, but I’d hate to think Tim Winton would have to give up or move to California, or that we’d lose out on the next Miles Franklin ever having a brilliant career. The small Australian houses have, over the years, been eaten up by multinational publishing and media conglomerates, and that trend would only be exacerbated by the end of import restrictions. It’s bad enough that television, movies, and Microsoft dictionary settings are undermining Australia’s authentic voice. Not our writers, too.

Pandemic Pandemonium
One guy in the office came down with the new ‘flu over the weekend, and that whole corner of the floor has been evacuated for the next two days. I heard or read somewhere that, at this point, if you get ‘flu, it’s Swine, so every sneeze and cough on the bus makes the back of my neck itch. I’ve also heard that it’s being recommended that you don’t cover your mouth and nose with your hand when you cough or sneeze, but instead use your sleeve. Welcome back Sixteenth Century! We are our own plague rats now.

Athletics
I decided this year that a full marathon having been accomplished left nothing else to prove, so signed up for both the City-to-Surf, in August, and the half marathon, in September, about as full a race season as is easily available around here. I’m at about 96% of the training schedule to date, which isn’t bad, but this year seems harder than last year, when I had to have been more out of condition. I guess age is a factor. This weekend I did 19k in just under two hours, for a pace of just over 6 minutes per. Last year I’d have done it faster, and my goal is to be as close to 5 ½ as possible. My split in the marathon was something like 2:05, so I figure training for the full marathon, even if I have to miss a little on the goals, week-to-week, should make a sub-2 hour half possible. My main concern at the moment is “heartbreak hill” in the City-to-Surf, a long, fairly steep section of the course. Hills presently are my bane, but I’m trying to overcome this barrier. 5, 10, and 5 this week in the park across the road, and the 10 requires about a 2k uphill grade starting at about kilometre 4. It was tough last week, and it’ll be tough this week, but it’s gotta help.

Red Centre Restrictions
It’s on my list to go to Alice and visit Uluru, and I know about the climbing ban, which is disappointing. Maybe I’ve seen too much Peter Weir, but the spiritual charge of places like this seems to me to almost require as much interaction as possible. So, climb or not climb? Frankly, things I’ve seen or heard in documentaries about Aboriginal Dreamtime proprietorship and caretaking sometimes verges into the ludicrous, but I can’t have it both ways – either I respect their claims or I don’t, and I’m not comfortable with making a nuisance of myself. I don’t go to churches and disrupt the services or soil the draperies, so if somebody tells me this big ol’ rock is a leftover from the days of the Rainbow Serpent, I guess I’ll stay off. And I’ve got no problem with shutting down access.

Round 17
Wests Tigers tomorrow, early enough that I'll get home at a decent hour, late enough that it'll be dark and cold. We haven't won a match in a while - last time was the legacy match, against Wests, interestingly, but the difference between tenth and fourteenth may be a lot closer than is comfortable just now as a result. Go, you mighty bunnies.

Requisite Requiem
Michael Jackson was dead by the time I got to work on Friday, probably well before, actually, and it's a little hard to believe. I mean, we're the same age. Of course, he had a lot of problems that I don't, not least being an apparently excessive surgical modification jones, but that's pretty young for a heart attack, so I'm inclined to think he was over-medicating again and his doctor will have something to answer for, at least as much as any doctor treating Elvis in the King's final days would have.

I wasn't a fan, although I acknowledge his song-writing abilities and his dancing. He was deeply disturbed, even if he wasn't a child-molester, and the court system says not. I read someone sneering at his comeback attempt, but from the public displays of grief and mourning, I'd say he'd have solved at least some of his final money woes with this tour, and I'm sorry it won't happen. There'll be plenty of money somewhere for his kids, though, and for his family to fight over, I expect, although their focus will be on fighting over the kids, so I'm sorry for them, too, perhaps especially. What will happen to all those efforts to keep them relatively anonymous? So much damage done to him, perpetuated now and for how much longer?

At some point, they'll stop playing his songs non-stop on the radio, the news repeats will go into bulletin mode and then die off pretty much altogether, but there'll never really be an end to it all.

Any chance he's really still alive? Like Elvis?

0101010101...
Last weekend I bought a digital t.v. set-top converter, but couldn't for the life of me get it to work. Luckily, the salesman at the store was helpful, acknowledging that pretty much everyone who'd bought that particular model had tried to bring it back as defective, when really it was just the instructions failing to mention a few crucial configuration matters. Like which wires to plug in where. (Not just a matter of swapping out the aerial feeds, apparently.) And how to get the menu displayed.

Never mind, it's working now, and I have two whole additional channels, leaving aside the additional public access stuff (one of which broadcasters was presenting the results of the 2007 Sculpture by the Sea awards - a repeat, I guess). Unfortunately, it's also altered my ability to record one program and watch another, and not for the better. Suddenly, entering the digital age returns me to something slightly pre-digital. Not that I record very much generally. Frankly, the DVD mail-order thing is more worthwhile than anything on broadcast television anyway, HD or SD. Other than getting cable, which is expense, this is probably as far as I need to go.

I heard that the digital change-over recently accomplished in the US wasn't entirely successful - I wonder how many people have no t.v. now, having failed to get a converter - but the anecdote's I've seen have largely been in regard to signal strength. What with the numbers of drop-outs I experienced last night, I'd guess there are a few people back home who are not entirely pleased with Congress right now.

Four Straight
New South Wales’ got the Blues, alright, with Queensland taking the rubber in two straight games out of three for the fourth year in a row, and while all credit to them for a fine sporting achievement, the NSW side’s performance was marred from the very beginning by some truly atrocious ball-handling, resulting in egregious turnovers deep within their own territory throughout the night. While in the second half the Maroons started out with some errors of their own, they never faltered in defence, easily outmatching the Blues’ strategy of running sideways along the line looking for a hole that just never turned up.

Olympic Park’s ANZ Stadium is the home field for the Rabbitohs, so I’ve spent many an evening and afternoon there (80 minutes at a time), but I’ve never attended a State of Origin match, or any other event capable of filling the 90,000-seat capacity venue. This one was off that mark by just under 600. It was jam-packed, with queues for food and drink and toilets, and crowds milling through the corridors. It’s an expensive ticket, so I normally wouldn’t have gone, but I had an invite via a vendor, so who wouldn’t jump at such an offer. Of course, your first thought is naturally: sky box! corporate box! – not: ow, my nose! But for all my vertigo being seated so high and at so nearly perpendicular a pitch, I can’t really complain. We were seated in front of and to one side of a group of young men whose enthusiasm for the Maroons could not be contained for a single moment, one in particular of whom spent the entire match foully slanging the NSW side individually and collectively, when not chanting, Queens-land-er, or offering an alternative Queensland-AAH! and managing to instigate a first quarter punch-up – almost – snatching the cap off the guy sitting in front of him following his side’s second try. A bad baiting choice, as the Blues supporter and all his friends were of a size sufficient to use the kid as a toothpick or snap him as easily. Luckily it came to nothing, and for a minute the chants and cat-calls were notably muted, if not entirely silent.

It was a fun night, generally well-behaved coming and going, but I’d still rather have seen the Blues make more of a game of it. Maybe next year.

Summer Blockbuster Checklist
So now that I’ve seen Terminator Salvation I can get on with the art-house movies maybe. T4, if I can call it that, may very well make Sam Worthington the newest Australian Hollywood superstar. The movie itself is as full of holes as most of its characters by the end, but it rocks along with only a few bits where you wonder if they’ll ever get around to wrapping things up. It ought to be the final in this franchise, too, speaking of wrapping things up, although for as long as these things can continue to make a buck, or a million of ‘em, it won’t be. Oddly, however, it must have made an impression, as I had apocalyptic Terminator dreams all night, even despite the typically cheesy ending that ought to have spoiled the whole thing.

Fitness Levels Fading . . .
I’m seriously considering registering for the World Master Games, if just for one event, really, which I guess would be the 1,500, which is the closest approximation to my high school track distance. The fact that I’m present running my marathon training at about 6 minutes per K means I can expect to do very, very badly if I do, so is AU$220 really worth signing up for that much humiliation? Even though that price includes being admitted to compete in as many as four additional indoor events and all the outdoor events, I wouldn’t, especially as that would merely heap humiliation upon humiliation. I haven’t even signed up for the half marathon in September or the City-2-Surf in August yet. Nevertheless, the deadline approaches; a decision must be made.

Nerdiliciousness
I went to see the Star Trek reboot over the weekend, having waited for enough time to have passed so that the larger numbers of the fan base would have already seen it, but also taking the precaution of choosing Sunday at 10:30 a.m. (which helped, but still left me buying my ticket among vast hoards of children attending Bob the Builder and Night at the Museum 2. It’s not terribly comfortable being an older single male adult. Parents seem to regard such persons in close proximity to their progeny with some suspicion. Oh, well, tough.

So Star Trek was fun. It was a bit loud, but it was fairly suspenseful throughout, even if you did always know the good guys would win. Sylar, I mean the guy playing Spock, was a good casting call, as was everyone else, I’d say, except Leonard Nimoy, whose dentures were very distracting, although at least it was nice to seem him having fun with the role, something he had some trouble with in the past, but how believable is it that the only thing that will make him lose control is a series of “yo’ mama” jokes? And are telescopic swords really standard Star Fleet issue when they’ve got phasers? (Nice redesign of those, by the way.) I did get a little tired of hearing McCoy use the “I’m a doctor, not a . . .” catch-phrase as often as he did, and Kirk must have a cast iron nose, not to mention indestructible teeth to get so very punched-out so very often and not to be spitting a lot of chips.

Well, now I can get on with some art-house stuff.

Fever Fever
I understand that the new influenza variant is rated as being dangerous and appears to be less so among the usual groups warned to be extra cautious, the infirm, elderly, and infants, which is kind of scary in a 1918 way, but the hype seems exaggerated and the responses beyond silly. Here’s a family quarantined in a hotel (and no word in the article who’s paying), and even more, here’s a whole cruise ship stuck at sea because a couple of passengers and crew have been diagnosed. It puts me in mind of 28 Days Later, or any of the modern zombie movies. How realistic is it to enact quarantine this way? Doesn’t it mean that you are deliberately exposing 2000 people to infection? And the hotel staff delivering room service, coming in to clean, etc. – are they wearing biohazard suits? With over 100 cases (which doesn’t even rate as a percentage and is only nearly as many as there have been deaths worldwide) confirmed in Australia, and 13,000+ overall are we even at pandemic? Is it really that bad? Well, keep washing your hands, cover your mouth when you sneeze or cough, and stay home if you’re feeling unwell, as you should anyway.

”Adios”
When Sol Trujillo arrived from the States to take over Australia’s largest (and formerly state-owned) telephone company, he was met with mockery for daring to be so presumptuous as to provide the press with a pronunciation guide to his surname (in a country that pronounces the “j” as a “j” in “jalapeno”). Jeers reverberated for days, and his chairmanship was denounced and derided throughout his tenure. Granted, he did a lousy job, and quitting early, and sneaking out of the country as he did, only serve to point up just how bad his performance was, regardless of whether the stock price did anything notable (which it didn’t, unless you count a 37% slump), so now he’s more than welcome to sit at home in Texas or wherever and claim PM Rudd’s farewell jibe, “Adios”, was a racist taunt.

I have to agree that there is racism here, and I believe Sol was on the pointy end of it, but I doubt that was Rudd’s intention. I also have to agree that the country itself can be experienced as being some years behind the U.S. or Europe. It’s a slower pace for pretty much everything here in many respects. Maybe not twenty years backwards, but still not quite up-to-speed everywhere. But every day that changes. New undersea cabling is bringing higher capacity internet access, we’re second to none in new technology take-up, and we’re the ones who just invented a multi-terrabyte capacity DVD, not to mention our terrific record of medical advancements.

Australia isn’t New York – looking at our major cities or the country as a whole. There isn’t that incredible capacity and diversity in the performing arts that’s available in NYC, LA, London, et al. It can be years before any major acts even tour here. But our home-grown production is excellent, often, at least on a proportional measure.

There are days that I find myself walking through my leafy suburb wondering at the change in fortune that brought me here, how different my life has turned out to be from any expectations I might have had previously or even entertained however briefly in my former circumstances.

As for the racism I’ve seen at work here, it’s only denied by those who hold their bigotry more dearly than any vision beyond the perimeter of their quarter-acre Australian Dream (the only kind of “Dreaming” they’d ever acknowledge as having any legitimacy for that matter). The idiots celebrating the so-called Chk-Chk-Boom girl’s use of the term “wog” (fraudulently, as it turns out, in every respect – not a witness, the shooter was probably a white bikie, etc.) can’t admit the term’s objectionable content because they’d have to admit when they used it on Sol or their Italian or Lebanese neighbor it wasn’t an endearment. But they’re passing away, too, off to the trash heap of history, just like all the other discredited systems and recalcitrant, recidivist know-nothings are everywhere.

So I won’t join Rudd’s “adios” to Sol, but I will say: good riddance.

Update: See? What "back in time"? We've got Eno. He's totally futurific.

Upper East Tel Aviv?
ZOMG - this Starbucks that just got blowed up is on the corner where I lived. Glad nobody got hurt. Don't recognize any of the names in the article.

Rugby Is an Autumn Game
Friday night I had to debate with myself over going out to ANZ Stadium to the Rabbitohs vs. the Parramatta Eels. Souths were sitting well above Parra on the ladder, so it seemed a good opportunity to enjoy another win, but the rain last week, for all it was intermittent, was tumultuous. By 5 p.m., it had seemed to ease off, so I went home, fed the cats, geared-up and headed out. I made it halfway to the entrance of the stadium before it started pelting down again. My seat is about twenty rows back from the field at the forty-meter mark, and well out from under cover, so I headed up a couple of tiers to be under the overhang. The field was far away, but in some respects it was a better vantage, maybe because I see more games on t.v. than I do live, so the overhead viewpoint was helpful in keeping track of the passing.

There were a couple of times during the course of the 80 minutes that the rain was coming down so hard it nearly obscured the playing field from view, and you’d have to wonder how those guys stood up under it, but it’s a game traditionally played in mud, just like American gridiron (even though that’s not true anymore, outside of high school & university). Ball-handling was remarkable for how fewer errors were committed than would reasonable be expected.

Anyway, it went to full-time tied at 16-all, and two overtime periods of 5 minutes apiece failed to resolve the situation., sending the Mighty Bunnies down one rung. We’re still playing better than last year, so even a draw is satisfying.

Campus Activism
Student Union fees meant nothing to me when I was at university. I guess they went into supporting a wide variety of enterprises – the student council, campus newspaper, Union Hall amenities, discounted movies and concerts, stuff like that. I guess other organisations benefited, too, although I don’t recall any organised political agitators. My impression of latter category is that such groups organised themselves and had little effect on campus life.

In the final years of the Howard government, a successful effort was mounted to eliminate student services fees, to no little hue & cry on either side of the debate. Many students fully supported the cut and many opposed it. Those is support were, by-and-large, commuting students, a not uncommon situation here. Those opposed fit, broadly, into two categories: the politically-inclined and the sportif.

Self-proclaimed maverick (don’t you hate that word?) Senator Barnaby Joyce is supporting the Rudd government’s efforts to reintroduce the fees, limiting their scope to sports alone. I can see his point that allowing mandatory fees to be collected and distributed would allow politically-motivated groups to claim and receive some portion of the funding if the fees come back with no restrictions, but I don’t think this is a bad thing, and didn’t when they dropped the fees. Students living off-campus who don’t participate or take advantage of the full array of activities and amenities offered via the support of these fees could, I suppose, pay a reduced rate, but realistically shouldn’t. Instead, let the fees be used to subsidize commutation on large scale, as well as fund sports teams, newspapers, the library, the grounds-keeping, building maintenance, and political groups. Make it means-tested, even, both for collection and distribution. Small groups get less, big groups get more.

Inactive Activity
I love sports. Watching, anyway, although most of what plays as sports on television is not terribly exciting: cars, motorcycles, cricket, golf. . . . Luckily, somehow, I've become quite a fan of Rugby League. I've tried to get into Union, too, but it just won't take. In fact, I can really only generate the necessary enthusiasm for League during the actual season. The special one-offs, like Test matches, do nothing for me. Odd, but there it is.

Anyway, while weekends are usually just doing chores, running, and petting the cats, I'd heard the Rabbitohs-Tigers away match in the Heritage round was being held nearby, at the Sydney Cricket Grounds, so I bought a ticket, something I wouldn't bother about normally, being a season pass holder. I'm very glad I did.

Sydney Cricket Ground is an odd place to hold a rectangular game, and my seat was terrible, staring into the setting sun nearly throughout, so I don't think I'll do it again. (It's not much better at night games at ANZ Stadium, of course, what with the lights and all. Rugby's a day game, but like all professional sports, t.v.'s been its ruin.) And while Souths specialize in games meant to keep fingernails well-clipped and teeth ground down past the enamel - and this one was no exception - a spectacular win engenders great joy amongst the fans. Kicking a field goal in the last 5 seconds of the match to win by one point nearly caused a massive group cerebral hemorrhage. I got home in time to catch the kicker, Nathan Merritt, proudly tell us all that he never practiced field goals and had never previously kicked one. The Tigers were devastated and their fans disconsolate, after spending so much time dominating us, but it was quite a show.

Cat Fight
Wolverine, the first in what I expect may turn out to be a spin-off franchise from the original X-Men movies (just like the comics, really), wasn't half bad. They managed to link back X-Men 2 - although Patrick Stewart looked so bad, I wondered if maybe they didn't use a stand-in (he's uncredited) - and to keep the various Weapon X characters and X villains I remember, but there's a fair bit of revisionism at work, too, which I sort of object to. It's not like I've been keeping up on the comics over the last eight years, and the whole X-franchise is so expanded, I don't think Marvel does, either. Anyway, the effects weren't bad, the acting is only such if you care to call it so, and in the end, it's just another comic book movie. Unlike the Bourne movies, you don't come out of the theatre with your whole body thrilling with superpowers. There're plenty of explosions, lots of yelling, grunting, groaning, and growling - it's kind of like watching rugby. You know it's just gotta hurt.

As we exited, it appears that my expectations of paralyzing cognitive dissonance hadn't kept the nerds and geeks at home - the line was out the door for entry to the new Star Trek, which will have to be my next movie.