Dead I've been reading often too many stories in the last year or so of police abusing and even murdering unarmed persons, both in conducting justifiable and unjustifiable arrests, usually of African-Americans, and I know one thing: it didn't happen to me and this is the indisputable truth of US police are out of control. In 1981, I was in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a university town and about as peaceful a place you could ever want to be, as well as being about an hour outside of Detroit, even then a place many people didn't want to often be, for its rampant crime and its terrible working class poverty - and yes its racial disparity. A friend and I had gone out to blow a small windfall of money on a nice dinner in an actual restaurant, and were hitch-hiking back to the center of town, at about nine o'clock. We got a ride quickly, we thought, ran up to the car that had pulled over, ebullient from our meal and our luck, only to find ourselves staring into the barrel of a pistol. The person who'd pulled us over was a cop, and he had us at gunpoint. And we didn't die. He didn't shoot us. The story he told us was that he'd had a radio call of two males possibly breaking into vehicles in the parking lot of the shopping plaza we'd been coming from (yes, we'd been to a restaurant in a mall and thinking we'd been somewhere special, but they did serve wine, after all). Not actually breaking into vehicles, just maybe, but you know, maybe. I was 5'10' and about 140 pounds, so tallish, thin, glasses, but yeah, it's dark. My friend was over six feet tall and 300 pounds. Big guy, also white. The suspects? Can't tell you, of course, but just how likely is it that we met any description that cop had? How likely is it that we weren't just two guys leaving the vicinity? And how likely is it that a cop would be within his rights to hold us at gunpoint without backup, without even calling it in - which he did and which he had not? As I pulled upon the front passenger's side door and leaned in to thank the driver, I was inches from being shot, and when my friend and I the next day confronted the officer and his superior, we didn't get an apology, we got an arrogant dismissal. Every encounter with the police in the United States can end up the same way, or worse. I didn't get shot, and I believe it's because I'm white. That if I'd been African-American or Hispanic, that when I pulled open that car door, that cop would have shot me, that I might very well never even touched the door handle and the cop would actually have been out of his car, leaning across the roof and shooting me and my friend both, with no warning and no justification. And I was oblivious enough at the time to have thought myself only aggrieved at having been held at gunpoint, not damn lucky to be alive. I don't believe the police first, not anymore, not since then, not anywhere. They don't deserve the benefit of the doubt. And today they are more heavily armed than ever, and very clearly far more apt to shoot without justification. I'm very sorry for the victims of mass shootings, very sorry that America refuses to do anything about gun control, but also that it refuses to believe it has a problem with its police and that this is part of its problem with being a gun culture, with being over 200 years old and still thinking it's the wild west and that that's o.k.

War We invaded Afghanistan after 9/11 because of a violent act of terrorism that resulted in 3,000 deaths. But we do nothing when, year after year, Americans slaughter one another with hand guns and semi-automatic rifles. The statistics are damning. And it's not just criminals. It's suicides. It's police shooting and killing civilians - even unarmed and even innocent of any wrong-doing. But gun violence still remains a frightening and unsustainable outlier. In the last decade, as shown in the chart accompanying this article, terrorism has killed 3,300 people in the US, but gun homicide accounts for 165,700: 98%! I've written to my Congressional representatives to demand they stand up against the NRA and those constitutionalists who argue spuriously, from whatever motivation, for strict Second Amendment rights. I don't believe the Constitution of the United States should continue to be interpreted as it has been, but I'll settle for sensible and strong Federal gun control measures to stop guns getting into the hands of criminals and the insane. Not another mass shooting should be allowed.

Immortality Did you know there's a Toy Hall of Fame (at all, let alone in Rochester NY)? The current list includes: alphabet blocks, Atari 2600 Game System, baby doll, ball, Barbie, bicycle, Big Wheel, blanket, bubbles, Candy Land, cardboard box, checkers, chess, Crayola Crayons, dollhouse, dominoes, Duncan Yo-Yo, Easy-Bake Oven, Erector Set, Etch A Sketch, Frisbee, The Game of Life, G. I. Joe, Hot Wheels, hula hoop, jack-in-the-box, jacks, jigsaw puzzle, jump rope, kite, LEGO, Lincoln Logs, Lionel Trains, little green army men, marbles, Monopoly, Mr. Potato Head, Nintendo Game Boy, Play-Doh, playing cards, Radio Flyer Wagon, Raggedy Ann and Andy, rocking horse, roller skates, rubber duck, Rubik’s Cube, Scrabble, Silly Putty, skateboard, Slinky, Star Wars action figures, stick, teddy bear, Tinkertoy, Tonka Trucks, and View-Master. Blanket? Cardboard box? What about dining room table with a sheet thrown over it to make a fort? Other nominees this year were American Girl dolls, Fisher-Price Little People, Hess Toy Trucks, My Little Pony, Operation Skill Game, paper airplanes, pots and pans, Slip‘N Slide, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. See? Pots and pans! Anything can be a toy. Why Mr. Potato Head when a real potato will do? And where are chemistry sets? I think that if the Easy Bake Oven can be in the Hall, then the Strange Change machine can be, or one of those other electrical plastic melting devices we loved to burn our fingers on. Like space heaters.

Confessions The Waiting Wall is a public art project that posts messages from anyone of their secrets, dreams, messages they can't otherwise express; sort of like Postsecret online and offline. It's kind of amazing.

Bridge Run 54:23 in the Sydney Running Festival's 9k Bridge Run on Sunday. Just under 6 minutes per K (the course distance is actually just over 9k), so a satisfying result, if not the under-50 minute outcome I'd hoped for. Maybe I shouldn't have gone out to watch the Swans the night before.

Don't Forget Where You Put It If scientists really have created an invisibility cloak, can they prove it? I mean, here's this guy with his hands up as if he's holding something, but you can't see it. Are you sure it's actually there? What happens if you put it down somewhere and can't remember where? I can see this being easily weaponised, too. Remember that jacket with the taser-like electricity delivery system built in? Now add the invisibility cloth as the outer layer.

PM5 Malcolm Turnbull has successfully toppled Tony Abbott to be Australia's fifth Prime Minister in the last five years. There is hope for this kind of churn to now stop, but less for the country to be effectively governed. The next election is, after all, sometime next year, so Turnbull will have little time to get the Liberal house in order and has already set a substantial portion of his side of the House on edge: the Nationals portion of the Coalition is already disgruntled, resentful of Turnbull's action in challenging for the leadership, regarding the move as sidelining and expressing disregard for their role. (Not that they have much role, being effectively the rural rump of the Liberal Party anyway, rather than an effective political force in their own right.) There will be those front-bench ministers dismissed or resigning from their portfolios and the back-benchers who stayed loyal to Abbott, all lined up to help Labor give Turnbull some knocks. Possibly the independent Senators will be more open to Turnbull's overtures, but what actual policy changes can we expect? Will Turnbull's Treasurer, whomever that turns out to be (not Hockey, of course, whose statement of support for Abbott prior to the Party room vote was an exemplar of bullying and a threat of non-cooperation), produce a budget that doesn't direct all its cost-savings at the poor and all its revenue-raising at the middle class? I'm betting not. As Hockey pointed out, Turnbull raised none of his objections in the Party room or in Cabinet previously, so any claims he makes to manage the economy better than Abbott are hollow, as we can anticipate his persuasions to be honeyed attempts to mask bitter pills. Remember: Malcolm Turnbull is a Liberal. He's also of that delusional ilk among Liberals that believes government is a business. He will govern - or attempt to - accordingly. But at least we're rid of that troublesome failed monk, Tony Abbott.

Plague Explain to me why the US military is playing with biological weapons. Other regimes have been overthrown for less.

The Funeral of Kings A state funeral has been conducted for a horse trainer. Why? Because he made a few rich people rich by training horses for races. The wealthy owners then made heaps of money in prizes, funded by all the punters gambling their hard-earned dosh and getting little or nothing in return, unless you count whatever pleasure can be obtained from watching animals being abused. Horse racing, dog racing, it's all just like bull fighting: despicable practices. And for this, politicians and "dignitaries" have turned out, abasing themselves, right along with the "horse racing identities", who will include people with too much money but who won't spend it on helping people, gangsters, and social parasites. No mention will be made of however many horses this animal abuser condemned to early death.

The Changing Society, the Changing Economy Ever read "The Grapes of Wrath"? Probably the closest would be you've seen the movie, but here's a passage I think appropriate to the current crisis of refugees in Europe and disgrace in Australia: ". . . repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. . . . The money was spent for arms, for gas to protect great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmuring of revolt so that it might be stamped out. The changing economy was ignored, plans for the change ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the causes of revolt went on." What's sad is how hopeful of revolt Steinbeck was, and how little and paltry the response required at the time to eradicate its potential, and how cruel the response is today. They've got the guns, the power, and the hate. The rest can only hope to reach a place of sufficient safety to be exploited and denigrated as subhuman. And us in the middle? We're the ones who let our politicians make them subhuman. We're the cowards waiting for our turn and hoping it never comes. And all it takes is a bad bout of ill health, a few extra weeks of unemployment. We're lucky, until we aren't, so we'll dehumanize whom we can and pretend otherwise. Take note especially of the phrase "The changing economy", equating even then society and the economy. It's well past time we stopped that conflation of terms.

Comics I'm only disappointed that Dr. Hormone's super power isn't making teenagers break out.

30 Things So the pretentious lecturing snobs at the Sydney Morning Herald’s section devoted to ensuring house prices continue to rise and ensure that no one they lecture to can even hope for more than reading their columns, let alone implementing their “requirements” (otherwise known as Domain), have now published a list of the 30 things you must have in your home to accompany the 30 things they previously published that you must not have. Must-have’s are: 1. Non-stick saucepans. Really? Because cast iron is too hard or stainless steel too prone to discoloured by inept cooks? Do they not know that even the best non-stick start to lose their virtue and eventually start flaking off into your food? 2. A dinner table. Because we have room, don’t we? Always. Everyone. Especially sufficient room to have a dinner party. 3. “Furniture that didn’t once belong to your parents”, which is probably not much of a problem, if your parents are still alive, as they are likely to still be using theirs. 4. Art. Actually, I can get behind this one. It’s not hard to have a nice piece of original art you like and will enjoy for years. 5. A plant. C’mon, buy some flowers now and then, if you really need indoor foliage. 6. Grow-your-own herbs – on the balcony, if you’ve got one (and doesn’t everyone), or tomatoes in the garden (ditto). Much as I appreciate that the new economy approaching will require us to grow our own food as much as possible or starve, this isn’t very feasible for the vast majority of people desperately searching Domain for a place to rent or to buy. 7. A full set of cutlery. By which they mean a set, matched, not just a collection of knives and forks and spoons. Does anyone actually care? 8. A full set of wine glasses, reds and whites. Nice to have, but how many of each? And did you know that Riesling may use a different glass than chardonnay and so on? It’s true, if you’re pretentious enough. 9. Filing system. An organised drawer to put things in that you won’t look at for years, if ever at all, but are still required to keep for at least seven years, just in case the tax man comes looking. This is item 2 in the actually worthwhile list. 10. Books. Specifically recommended are four worth reading and some crap. 11. An electric blanket. Your power bills aren’t high enough. Use more coal. 12. A cat. Don’t do it. Really. And not a dog, a fish, a bird, a lizard, a snake, or whatever else alive you think you should have. They will rule your life. I love my cats, but if I didn’t have them, I wouldn’t. 13. Home automation. Go ahead, pretend you’re Tony Stark. I know where all the light switches are and the power points and why isn’t that enough? The refrigerator is automatic, but beyond that I really don’t see the point. 14. Good bed linen. This is item 3 on the worthwhile list. (10% Not getting even a D- at this point.) 15. Bread knife. (13% now; still not a pass.) 16. Throw pillows. Because the furniture you bought isn’t comfortable. You couldn’t afford comfortable furniture without stealing it from your parents, not with the rent you’re paying. 17. “A solution to every conceivable household problem”, which specifically mentions mosquito coils – good idea, 15% - and a “failsafe remedy for removing red wine stains” that isn’t throwing out the stained material. Good luck with that; no points. 18. “Cool fridge magnets”, because why? Because no. 19. A bowl near the door to keep your keys. Half points. Having a consistent place to put your keys is smart, but the bowl by the door means a table by the door and you may not have room. (16%!) 20. Board games. I enjoy these, but I don’t need them. Do you? You don’t have enough good books to read. Work on item 10. 21. Teapot and tea cups. Entirely unnecessary. This should garner negative points. 22. A “feature piece” of furniture or furnishings. I’ve got one of these. It takes up so much of my living room there’s hardly room to live. You have art. Leave it at that. 23. Wooden coat hangers. Don’t have to be wood, and only Joan Crawford will be upset if you use wire. 24. Blender, specifically a “whizz-bang blender”, by which I suppose they mean a thermomix or nutribullet. If you’re not making margaritas, you can do without. 25. Tupperware. This will sort itself out, but try applying portion control, too, and avoid storing leftovers you’ll only just throw out in a year. 26. They skip this one. Not sure if that’s a maths problem or editing. As it’s the online edition, I suspect editing, which generally sucks in online publications. 27. Cookbooks. Entirely unnecessary. Read the recipes in the paper, learn a few stalwarts, and move on. These are just dust-collectors and don’t count as books. 28. Toolkit. Definitely. With a power drill, a hammer, adjustable head screwdriver, and a collections of screws etc. Go from there, but keep it limited so you can find what you’re looking for. 20%! 29. Wine decanter. If you’re a pretentious git. Just let the bottle breathe for 30 minutes or more and don’t think it’ll still be good next week. 30. “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up”, by someone named Marie Kondo. Just clean now and then, and you’ll be fine. The things you shouldn’t have in your home after age 30? 1. Unframed prints and posters: if they’re worth keeping, they’re worth a frame. I have two. 2. Trophies on display. You kept them? Dude, that was high school. High school sucked. 3. Pine furniture. Purely a matter of taste, although I’d have to agree with this. 4. Ikea anything. Now that’s just silly. Billy bookcases are excellent, and you should see the things you can do with a couple of Lack tables and the stuff in your toolbox. If you can afford better, and more comfortable, by all means, but some of this stuff is too utilitarian to give up. And did you know that their office chair was rated #2 for ergonomics? That was a couple of years ago, but it was the best one I’ve ever used. 5. Incomplete dishes and cutlery. See at 7, above, which doesn’t mention dishes. If you have enough plates and bowls to serve your friends, I’ll bet they don’t care if they match. 6. Shot glass collection. I wouldn’t, but people do. I’ve got more Doc Savage paperbacks from the 1960’s than you do and some other things that could be said to constitute a collection. I’m not entirely proud of them, but neither am I ashamed. Meanwhile, at 18, above, they think fridge magnets are cool. At least with shot glasses you can have a contest, if you’re so inclined. 7. Inflatable furniture. Generally yes, but it doesn’t hurt to have one of those mattresses they’ve got these days, which can be surprisingly comfortable, for as long as they retain the capacity to hold air. 8. Lava lamps. The explanation for not having them is incomplete, at best. It’s because they stop working eventually and then you have to get a new one. 9. Kitschy picture frames. Absolutely agree. 10. Mosquito net. Oh, but mosquito coils are o.k. (see at 17, above)? These things work. 11. Fake plants. Yes, o.k., but you don’t need real ones, either. 12. Unopened mail. You don’t open your mail right away or bin it with the recycling? What’s wrong with you? Most banks and so forth will let you opt for email anyway. 13. CDs or DVDs on display. Where else are you going to put them? They can actually be as decorative as books, and like books you are going to use them. Having them handy is sensible. 14. Anything under your bed. Does that count monsters? Or just storage and dust? 15. Dust. You do it. I hired someone. That’s as far as I’ll go. 16. Beanbags. People still do this? 17. Anything covering a window that isn’t a curtain. Anything fabric that you hang off a rod is a curtain. Venetian blinds, on the other hand, are an abomination (see at 15, especially). 18. Glow in the dark stars. Unless you have kids, sure, o.k. Personally, I say, good luck to you. Have the stuff or don’t have the stuff. Eventually you’ll meet someone and start seeing these things differently and may choose to alter the mix. Unless they like it, too. Then you’ll only have to worry when you have pets or children that will attempt to eat some of these things, at which point you can put them away for later.

Movies Australian movies tend to be very bleak or very silly (much as I enjoyed the last one I saw: Mad Max: Fury Road), but sometimes they're just good. Last Cab to Darwin being an excellent example. Based on a stage play, unlike many other such productions, it's very natural, perhaps because of having the whole of the Outback to be expansive in, but more likely because Michael Caton, as Rex, is just so good. Yes, all the other characters are secondary, yet still drawing on some serious Australian acting talent, so he has to carry the movie, but he does, and it's no mean feat, especially when he's often been a comic actor, perhaps best known for The Castle. Defintely deserves viewing in a cinema.

The Need for Speed A whole minute faster than two years ago's City Mile Dash? That's what it says. Makes my whole weekend.

City2Surf 2015 4 minutes slower than last year, but I'll take it.

Grown-ups To make up for all the B-movies I've been seeing (and will attend later this year), we went to see Mr. Holmes last week. Ian McKellan makes a very fine Sherlock, but for all the Holmes of the movie, this is about memory, how it is a trap of shame and an opportunity for redemption. All the players are terrific, and the movie doesn't really falter in any way until the very end, and even then, it hardly matters, and is of a piece with the MacGuffin of the mystery.

Movies The winter blockbuster season continues. Serious movies have to start coming out soon, or my brain will rot. Terminator Genisys continues the fine tradition of unnecessary misspellings, unless it’s just that Skynet’s spellcheck failed in its mission, as its robots usually do, but manages to entertain, largely with its revisions to the original film, playing with alternative realities like a good time-travel movie should. (Did you know that Twelve Monkeys was made into a television show? Neither did I.) The human heroes of the movie have zero chemistry and the villain doesn’t get really villainous until fairly late, but it doesn’t stop moving and Arnie’s as good as he ever was. For a B-movie, it’s not half bad. Call it a B+. Meanwhile, the Marvel juggernaught keeps churning out enjoyable films. Ant-Man , like Guardians of the Galaxy doesn’t take itself too seriously, with decent comical characters, mostly, and gags tossed through to the point where it might as well have been played entirely as a comedy. Certainly the personal-lives plot parallels between the original, Hank Pym, and the replacement he recruits, Scott Lang, are lightly sketched enough to have been dispensed with. I guess it would be asking too much for the sountrack to have been modeled on Guardians. I know I said I was done with comicbook movies, but this is still a movie to see if you’ve got time and a discount voucher, and I had both. So, in another couple of weeks, out comes the latest franchise reboot, with Fantastic Four. Yes, I will go see this.

Bad Burger So David Chang, celebrity chef, thinks Australians can’t make a good burger (except at Mary’s? I’ve had theirs, and once was plenty). Anyone recommending American cheese as the sole cheese for a burger has no taste, or no tastebuds, so I’m pretty well inclined to discount all Chang’s cuisine in consequence, although I agree with the inclusion of pickles – something Mary’s burgers neglect (so go figure why he gives them a pass). American cheese should be called “cheeze”. Is McDonald’s his paragon burger restaurant? On the other hand, scientist chef Heston Blumenthal makes an effort: his burger does it all. I watched this episode of his program, and he was even testing the bite radius. O.k., the grinding and patty formation is a little over the top, but we’re talking science! Notice, however, the use of gruyere cheese. How good is that? Oh, well, it’s not like I was even going to try any David Chang food: his Sydney branch is in a casino. He ever starts selling his recommended burgers, he’s going to lose those stars.

Unextinction As far as I can tell there are two reasons for Jurassic World: reboot the franchise and make a lot of references to past giant-monster movies. It’s entertaining, certainly, and pretty much gets right into the whole running-and-screaming thing, but what I really enjoyed were the references to King Kong, Jaws, etc. That must have been fun for the filmmakers. I think I need to see a French movie, as a palate cleanser, before Ant Man comes out.

Rock Opera One of the great failings of rock ‘n’ roll, especially in its days of aspiration to being “classical”, i.e., the 1970’s, was the Rock Opera. This was, I think a fundamental misunderstanding that all music is folk music, and that rock was, essentially, no different from anything ever written by Mozart or Beethoven or Monk or Parker or whomever you’d like to distinguish the forms as superior/inferior over the ages or just last year. If rock did anything different from classical it was to keep it short, and if it did anything different from the blues or jazz it was, well, to make it more broadly popular for a moment than the form that it was ripping off. One thing that appears to be true, however, is that the overarching category of “rock”, but which encompasses pop music generally, has not actually changed in form in any significant fashion for the last hundred years, effectively since jazz became popular. Nevertheless, it’s no less effective, no less evocative than it ever has been, and is now more artistically representative than ever before. Today, going to a musical stage production, watching a television show, listening to the soundtrack of a movie, you’re very likely going to hear material that is or is more akin to rock ‘n’ roll than ten or twenty years ago, because pop music is at this time more universal than at any time previously. That’s not a bad thing. At least not for most of us living today. Whereas once the ability to play an instrument or sing accompaniment was an important factor in social behaviour, that isn’t true, and hasn’t been for at least fifty years or more. More significantly, we have, since the 1980’s, at least, imbued our lives with our own personal soundtracks, to the point where we can hardly stand, it seems, to be without the appropriate music the appropriate time. Which brings me to B-Girl, a one-act musical production, just finishing up at the Sydney Opera House. It’s the story of a housewife who retreats into fantasies of glam-rock stardom, and it’s a production that deserves a much broader audience than just the basement playhouse of the SOH. I’ve seen a lot of mainstream and off-beat theatrical productions over the years, and I truly believe this one could very easily be the next “Hedwig” or more. I think there are some tweaks yet – as I understand it, some of the more “theatrical” effects had to be abandoned, due to technical issues (and let’s all be grateful for lessons learned from Broadway’s attempt at “Spiderman”, eh?), and their reintroduction could help. Mainly, I’m concerned with getting the spine of the narrative more firmly established before the rest is fleshed out, but it still works, as-is, and that’s important. This is a production that can go far, and with a little push, further still. I’d love to see it at BAM, and it’s almost “Next Wave”, but might need just a little more to get there. Meanwhile, I’m sure it will do well on its global tour, when that comes, including NYC, but Berlin, London, Paris, the world. I am very enthusiastic about this show.