Obviously I am seriously mistaken.

I always thought the point of being in politics was to get more people to vote for you, not less.

Let's punch out some polls!

Update: And a little Tony Abbott quote for all the lady voters out there:

"We have a bizarre double standard, a bizarre double standard in this country where someone who kills a pregnant woman's baby is guilty of murder but a woman who aborts an unborn baby is simply exercising choice."

I think we have the Liberal Party's 2010 election slogan!

Boo Fucking Hoo Part TWO!!!

I am well-aware of what schadenfreude is, and, as of today, how warm it can feel.

Premium suburbs bear brunt as real estate market reels.

"At auctions across tree-lined streets in Toorak, Brighton and Kew, bidders are keeping hands in pockets, with auctioneers forced to pass in homes and hope. "I would say there has been a 10% to 15% fall."
Local agent Richard Mackinnon, from Bennison Mackinnon, referring to those suburbs.

Be strong, children. Think of the plight and thank your lucky stars and moons that you're not so unfortunate as to be selling a five-bedroom bungalow in Toorak!

I know, I know: shame on me, these people worked their whole lives, mortgage stress, etc, but hearing about 4-bedroom house going for "only" a million bucks after years of baby-boomer bubbling, completely fails to make me reach for the hanky. Being told almost weekly that my generation is one that will never be able to afford a house has hardened my impecunious heart somewhat.

Except for you, Kath. You go, girl. Gouge those finnicketty buggers.

***
GTH - Last post's picture was of Mele's Nonno's greenhouse and his homemade tools. Nonno died last year, but he left behind an amazing culture of love and respect among his family and through the stories they tell, the pictures they show and the things he left around the farm. I wanted specifically to say with this picture that not all death is pointless, leaving nothing. It can be delicate and beautiful and personal. Points to everybody who had a go.

Child Abuse

Those of you following my birthday invitations will be aware that I am staring at thirty like an SBS cooking show: interesting, slightly unfamiliar and inevitable. But I know some sick sick child abuse when I see it. Watch this video.



OMG!
Amzng!
Fkn sik bra!
Or, as one of the esteemed Youtube commenters put it: "... dat is prpr sick! fck da queen m8!!!!!" (katiomou)

No, actually. It's not prpr sick. It's neither sick, dope, jiggy, mad, def, fat, phat, tight, stylin' nor "kewl". It is, as another, more astute Youtuber, Windowpenis, put it: "Blatant fake. The vidya's pretty convincing, but the description on the site tries way too hard and can't be anything other than some goatee'd viral marketing prick trying desperately to relate to the yoof of today."

Kingtag is a single page site containing the above video, two screen shots and a short textspeak proclamation:
"wnt 2 c da queen but she waznt @ her crib. dun dis 4 da $$$ check on dis 2 graf dis film tag n hit buck pal n tagged it up prpr. nunaya can tuch KT!!!! i iz getin a G 4 dis shit!!!!"
To give your index finger 3 seconds more of respite from the onset of RSI-induced arthritis later in life from mouse clicking, I'll spoil it for you by telling you that the "dis" "King Tag" refers to is the MySpace page for "One of the COOLEST films of the summer!", The Wackness.
The movie itself is nothing to speak of. Watch the preview below. Or don't add to their view count and read on.



The ingredients can be found in the front of The Great Big Book of Movies For Idiots. Turn to the "American Tweenagers" section, skim through the section on Exploiting The Insecurities Inherent in Every Childhood for Financial Gain, find the recipe for Coming of Age Story and follow the simple recipe:

1. Traditionally cool setting - New York. (Los Angeles is also acceptable). Young people need to feel that the "cool" place they are being shown is definitely that in order protect themselves from true individualism and unpredictable consumer patterns. New York has an established history of individualism and "cool" attached to it and therefore is a safe plot investment.
2. Urban (read: de-blackified black) activity - graffiti. Co-opting black culture from trends begun in black ghettos in the '60s, '70s and '80s is necessary to ensure again that your young, mostly white audience feels as though it experiencing "cool" without actually having to endure the upheavals and danger associated with the free-thinking and antiestablishment self-expression of hip-hip, graffiti, rap, breaking, skateboarding etc. To this end, black culture has been carefully re-named "urban" in order to include white teenagers and their pocket money. Use the word "urban" as often as possible.
3. Unknown young male actor carefully chosen for resemblance to current day's heartthrobs' style - Emo. Ensure that this actor is sexy without being sexual, straight and adept at urban activities (see above). Under no circumstances may he possess any identifying markers of minority groups (Central and South Americans, Asians, homosexuals, Jews, Eastern Europeans, etc). Nervous teenagers need to be reassured that they are identifying with someone who may play an outcast, but who will never truly be one.
4. Adult behaving differently to play mentor - Ben Kingsley, smoking bongs. Preferably a British actor, male, white, etc. 10% more interested in the sex-life of the main male character than would be appropriate for an unrelated older male. Have them engage in "young" and "cool" activities (drug use, above-mentioned "urban" activities, etc). Never a father-figure, always a teacher.
5. Utterly stylish young girls in leading female roles must never be allowed to star in anything ever again. - Young female audience members can see changing styles from film to film (and consume them accordingly) but without the low-fiscal-returns of static role models and identifiable actors.Young male audience members experience the vicarious thrill of watching sexually attractive females on screen without having to relate to or be challenged by these females (who they are threatened by in real life). Keeping young males from identifying with females as more than objects will result in poor fiscal returns and negative outcomes for the multi-trillion dollar Industries of Attraction and Extended Boyhood. Men interested in and committing themselves to deeper relationships with women spend less on attracting those women (from cologne to clothes to cars) and also less on items which replace the company of women (electronica, cars, collectables, etc).
6. Spray liberally with essence stolen directly from indie youth films which have done well recently - The oddball retro modern realism of films like Juno and Napoleon Dynamite will buff out the sheen of a well-designed marketing campaign and provide a filter for the consumer-driven messages.
7. Blend. Ensure that main character experiences love and second base. Screen. - Avoid controversy in the film, but ape it in the marketing, both direct and viral. Remember to use the word "urban"

There is nothing wrong with making a movie, squealing "urban" at every opportunity and completely expunging black people from the narrative so that nervous white American teenagers will spend their money on it. To paraphrase Bill Hicks, we will all be paying a higher psychic price, but the world needs shitty films too. Even just as an example of what is but should never be.
My problem is with the casual child abuse of marketing. When marketing is done well, it's like John Howard: still evil, but you can at least learn from it and how to resist it. When it's done like this, it's like a flasher. One minute you're wondering why that pale-skinned fellow is wearing a coat on a nice day like this and the next you're wishing you'd never asked.
Viral marketing has become as ubiquitous and pointless as junk mail. I first saw the above video on The Age website, for crying out loud. "Graffiti artist appears to tag Buckingham Palace". The Age video didn't work, so I hit Youtube, wondering what these young film makers were up to, genuinely hoping that it was a wind up for a film, instead of a dirty, yucky viral marketing campaign designed to expose young people to child pornography before they're old enough to recognise that their own tools of self-expression were being used against them to take their money.
I was disappointed.
The whole carton of caboodle, from the nose-blow-by-numbers movie to its inherent racism to the MySpace page to the textspeaking King Tag plugging for the graffiti competition which amounts to nothing more than free advertising for the film, stinks like a room full of people with marketing degrees whiteboarding things they've heard and read about "young people" in order to design a product which bring in the maximum bottom line.
It's ascusting.

***
GTH - River takes it away with the unbelievably astute observation about how long it takes to get a decent latte out of the machine when I'm pushing the buttons. Jolly good show.

Sorry

Taken from the ABC report on The Apology in Adelaide:

"A critic of the formal apology is Port Lincoln mayor Peter Davis.
He says he can't see it making any difference to the real problems facing Aborigines.
"As for instance granting equal citizenship the 1967 referendum, the same euphoria from the same southern (and I'm not being disrespectful) 'do good' sectors resulted in no real physical or mental better wellbeing for Aboriginal people," he said."

This is probably the same guy who doesn't let his children have a party and cake and singing on their birthdays. What good would it do?

I got a little bit emotional this morning watching it on television. Those stories hurt. I suppose I could understand what Nelson was meaning when he had to blah on about war veterans - that an apology for past actions doesn't mean a blanket of shame over everything - but if you don't understand that by now, then a politician's speech isn't going to educate you.

I think the difficulty that Australians who are against it have with the apology is a lack of understanding of what it means to the Stolen Generations and Aborigines in general. I think that in the decade of silence since the Bringing Them Home report was first issued, John Howard has taught Australians to act their political lives on a purely personal level and encouraged the belief that everyone was entirely responsible for their own circumstances. This equated to an attitude that those in need had, in whatever small way, placed themselves there. They were to blame for their situations. He took this attitude right to the end when he took full responsibility for the Liberals' election defeat.
But his ten years of "You Look Out For Yourself" policy had the effect of telling Australians that they were never, ever wrong, as long as they never admitted it. You can have a four-wheel-drive, as long as you don't feel bad about it. You can buy anything you want (education, health, etc) as long as you earn the money to pay for it.
The Stolen Generations and their request for an apology didn't fit into that brand of "self" politics. John Howard had trained the political hearts of Australians to look no further than their own immediate influences and something as complicated as assenting to an apology on their behalf by a democratically elected government in the present made on behalf of previous governments for now-overturned well-meaning-yet-horrifically-catastrophic policies that have effected all aspects of life for a specific group of people is just too far removed from the Howard-era mindset that truly believes that since they didn't physically take the children away then there's nothing that they can offer. Regret. Sure. That must have been tough, but you were only a little kid and plenty of people have had tough lives and have really pulled their finger out in this great land of opportunity and really made something of themselves.
These people can't get it through their skulls that they are not the ones saying sorry. They are not responsible in the way that Howard has taught them they were (or could be). They are also not the ones who have lived with racism and the pain of decimated families. To paraphrase Brendan Nelson in this morning's speech: I challenge any of those detractors to visit the Aboriginal communities where the results of past Australian governmental policy are all around and truthfully say that they wish they had been born there.

Sorry doesn't fix anything on a practical level, it doesn't bring families back together. But, for the people who needed to hear it, hearing it from the government they needed to hear it from, it does make a difference. It makes it a little bit better.

But what now?

***

Update: Further quote from Pt Lincoln mayor in a new variation of ABC story: "

"I mean, to me life is a lottery whether one is Aboriginal or black or white or blue or brindle.
"As far as I'm concerned [it] makes no difference; the past is past, we've got to make our life into the future.
"And I can tell you I personally have no sorrying to do, nor have I on behalf of the Port Lincoln community." (bolding mine)

Sort of proves my point really...

Wake up, Australia

It's been a little while since I mounted a crusade on this blog. In fact, I've only ever mounted one from memory and that seems to have either been very effective, or so unimportant that it dropped from view anyway.

This one, however, is an issue I have come to feel very strongly about. As all of you will know from her blog, Nai, of Legend of a Cowgirl fame, has recently completed a month of working in the Pitjantjara Lands in Central Australia and has written two of the most confronting and evocative blogs I have ever read. They are the thoughts and emotions of a young white woman working in an indigenous community in 2007. The two posts, entitled Welcome to the Hellmouth (Parts 1 & 2) show her journey from feeling the responsibility of a gentle, comfortable, white outsider to respect and work with the community

"I like to think (and man, I hope I'm right) that I am in a different category from the reactionary right because I can see the 'how's' and the 'whys' not just the mess that needs fixing, but I could be wrong." (Part 1)

to the shock, anger and despair for the current (almost?) irreversible situation that indigenous Australian communities are in:

"Here is another basic timeline: Stone-age hunter-gatherer culture, invasion and disempowerment, dehumanisation (not citizens until 1967!), indentured and forced workers, limited education possibilities for the majority of indigenous people and then; "Here, have a multi-million dollar corporation and welfare/guilt money- but don't fuck it up". (Part 2)

If you only read one blog post about the current state of indigenous Australia, read this one. It's in two parts, and I strongly urge you to read them both:

Welcome to the Hellmouth (Part 1)
Welcome to the Hellmouth (Part 2)

If you have a blog, an email, a large-readership print publication, whatever, please try to direct your readers to this fascinating and infuriating piece.

***

GTH The points go to River for getting in first and fastest in this week of multiple blog entries! They were ginger pork dumplings from Beijing and the most delicate things I've ever eaten.