thought for the day

fuerza bruta, muy bruta

Originally uploaded by Sebastian Miquel.

i used to think the world had to solve the problem of the underprivileged, but of course, i had it ass about.

it’s the overprivileged that are the problem.

yesterday was really something

funny, i nearly left the pda at home on the charger when i rushed out to work this morning, but i know better. sure enough, barely 50 metres down the road a grizzled old codger sat on a doorstep, holding his cigarette pack out delicately between finger and thumb, displaying to oncoming passersby the handwritten message double-etched in biro on its face:

16-8-05
YEAH

yesterday’s date. his other hand was clenched in a fist of gentle triumph, or perhaps it was exhortation, and held beside the message; every couple of seconds he shook that fist – was he urging us on? was he exulting in having got this far? what happened yesterday? i’m sad that i didn’t have time to ask him, or even to take his photo. clearly it was a significant moment, worthy of record.

i had a dream

I was in Berlin, for some reason – not the real Berlin, but some Berlin-of-my-mind – living in the student/backpacker zone in a large and exotic hostel with a bunch of very cool kids.

I say kids but I mean young adults of the kind that refuse to buy into the world they are supposed to inherit. There were about ten of them, of varied nationality/ethnic background; pierced, dreadlocked, shaved, tattooed, and elaborately dressed according to their own individual takes on the established codes of rebellion… all very beautiful. For me they were new friends; I didn’t yet feel entirely safe with them (recognising their own need for defense/attack) but I knew they had essentially accepted me, and the sense of their liking felt good.

I had been in an antique shop; some of them were also there, admiring both the lovely old deco architecture and the overpriced occasional tables and suchlike. I ended up making tea and laughing with the shop attendant, a youngish woman who also seemed to like me. Suddenly two of the girls from the gang were with me and the shop attendant melted away. I was wary: they came from nowhere and my experience of beautiful/popular young women is that they can be astonishingly cruel. But these two seemed not to have any intention beyond getting to know me better.

A lot better, as it turned out, though that was just a moment in this strange cryptic saga.

minute and a half to midnight

evangelicals… they’d be funny if they weren’t so scary

The Armageddon Clock

life goes on

life goes on

Originally uploaded by Illuminata.

Today, although for me a day like so many others – teach a stretch class, fulfill two modelling engagements, blog on the train – is in fact a day of mourning, a dark day, a grave day indeed.

Today marks the beginning of the end for democracy in Australia – if you think I’m overreacting, hear me out – as John Howard’s Liberal-National Coalition government takes control of the Senate. Ten years of bullish policy-making, economic hardball, sententious propaganda and outright, bald-faced lies have borne fruit for the man we have come to know as the Prime Miniature, and we are about to witness his unbridled response to voter complaisance. Progressives shake their heads in fear and foreboding; the rest of the nation is yet to realise the destructive potential of a government of limitless greed – without qualm, without conscience, without compassion and now without restraint.

Of course, much of the rest of the nation are apparently cheering the little fucker on, perhaps hoping that if he goes far enough up George Bush’s arse he’ll come out his mouth. The Herald recently published poll results indicating that a majority of Australians would support the curtailing of civil liberties to increase national security. A major assault on the labour workforce has already begun; worse – much worse – will no doubt follow.

this week in news #1

this week in news #1

Originally uploaded by bJORk(D)mAN.

too good a collage not to add to the ongoing political commentary… the original collagiste and photographer uploaded it to flickr on september 14, 2005; i blogged it september 24 and backdated it to sit beside the ‘end of democracy’ entry – the one titled ‘life goes on’.

i was a child in the sixties

By the time you grow up, they said
everyone will wear climate-controlled jumpuits and take their meals in pills
By the time you grow up, they said
we will control the weather so there will never be droughts or disasters and it will only rain at night, like in Camelot
By the time you grow up, they said
we will work a three-day week, machines will do our housework for us, and we will spend our time in art and other edifying leisure pursuits
By the time you grow up, they said
we will not use paper

we will not use petrol

we will have eradicated poverty all over the world

…Is this why, even as I stare down my wrinkles in the mirror, I have the nagging conviction that I never really grew up?