The Ultimate Paradox

12:10 pm - "Women can't write about sex"

I thought some readers of this LJ might have something to say about this.

09:10 pm

So the apartment has had no hot water for more than two days now. I'm very unimpressed.

Current Mood: annoyed

10:43 pm - Today on the Violence Channel

This weekend int and I went to the Blue Mountains. They are cold, but not really that big a deal compared to fucking Canberra cold. We went to Katoomba and I saw the Three Sisters which I thought were much more isolated but aren't. It's like the whole reason the town exists. Continued on to Jenolan to go caving which was fun. Similar deal to the caves down sound in WA but obviously every cave is different and always entertaining.

Watched Idiocracy, which is both hilarious and highly depressing, and Army of Darkness (AKA Evil Dead 3) with the very awesome Bruce Campbell in it killing zombies in medieval England. So much win for a totally stupid and incredibly campy movie lol.

Today I did a whole stack of sightseeing a photo taking and ate pancakes as I always do at least once in Sydney. It was good but I walked around heaps and now my legs hurt. Back at The Oz tomorrow for another week.

Current Mood: tired

07:16 am - Rules to skippering your drunken friends through a night out

1. No one gets left behind. Ever.
2. Stay together, make sure everyone knows where everyone else is at.
3. Assess the male/female ratio of your group, make sure you have enough guys to keep eyes on all the girls.
4. No girls leave the club alone and in pairs only if they have a well-defined exit strategy.
5. Dance in a position where you have eyeballs on everyone, or can at least check them every 10 seconds. If there's more than one reliable not-drunk person, divide this up.
6. If someone is really drunk or not overly responsible, watch them like a hawk and always assign someone to look after them if they wander off.
7. Make sure your search and rescues don't leave holes in your coverage.
8. Identify and quickly neutralise any problem entities either by monitoring activity, stern looks, strategic positioning or, if necessary, direct action.
9. No one falls asleep.
10. Keep your phone on vibrate.

Add more.

Current Mood: sad

09:58 pm - Things

1. Have not started essay. I have a flexible extension due to the whole getting pneumonia thing, but it needs to be done really soon as I have two more to get done for Sunday.

2. UWA finally scores a point. It won't let me sit my exams in Sydney and I'll still be over east during the deferred exam dates. $400 and three days of interning will be lost flying back to sit them. Fuckers.

3. UWA doesn't do external at all. This mean's I'm going to have to overload next semester (insane) because I (hopefully) won't be around to do exams in first semester next year.

4. Insurance for internships is driving me crazy and may make the entire venture fall on its head. Fingers crossed.

5. Have three days to sort all this out.

6. WCG is during second week of second semester exams. If my exams are during this week I have a problem and will have to somehow convince UWA to move them. I don't think it will sit well as a reason.

7. Silver lining: May get to go to the Australasian Reporting Awards Dinner next Thursday - AFR is trying to get me a seat. It's a business reporting awards thing. It's definately not the Walkleys but I'm pretty psyched about the possibility.

Now to work.

Current Mood: frustrated

11:10 pm - Who remembers The Truth? lolz

Looking back on it now, this was a warning to me. Someone was telling me, "Don't go to work for the Truth". Remember Truth? Ezra Norton's amazing weekly - ANOTHER NUN OVER THE WALL AT TEMPE CONVENT. BEASTLY BROTHER IN BED WITH BOY. NORMAN VON NIDA CAUGHT IN LOVE BUNKER.

I did go to work for the Truth, and I was ambitious and foolhardy, so the editor said one morning that the paper was stuck for a sex maniac story, and since it was too late to find one I'd have to make one up. To my everlasting shame, I did. I invented a sex fiend who travelled on crowded suburban trains. He had a hook fashioned from a wire coat-hanger up his sleeve, and he would surreptitiously lower the hook and gently raise the skirts of girls standing next to him to glimpse the tops of their stockings.

The editor loved it. "If it's not true", he said, "it should be." The only change that he made was to christen the sex fiend THE HOOK, and have him operating that very Saturday night among crowds coming into town. The following Tuesday it was clear that we had got away with it. No other paper had denied it. How could they? The railway authorities had not complained, and there was no word from the police. Then my telephone rang, and an official sounding voice said, "Detective Sergeant Plowman, Bankstown police here. You the reporter who wrote that story about the sex maniac, the Hook?" "Yes", I said. "Righto," he said, "just wanted to tell you that we got the bastard this morning."

- Phillip Knightley.

Current Mood: amused

01:28 am - Editing essays at 1.30am

Lizzy's essay: The public generally considers the Democrats to be better at handling unemployment and Republicans better at fighting crime.
Me: Haha, "Republicans better at fighting crime."
Lizzy: lol, I kinda gave up.
Me: I have a mental image of John McCain in a red cape and tights, with zombie Ronald Reagan as his sidekick.
Me: I like it, it's staying in.

Later at 2.30am:

Me: OK done editing.
Lizzy: With Australian examples and shiz nit?
Me: I made up some BS, yeah.
Lizzy: Is it accurate BS? Is it actual stuff that's happened?
Me: Yeah. You can google for references.
Lizzy: So long as you're not like "this can be seen when John Howard wore a green thong at a nursing home."

Current Mood: amused

08:54 pm

Californian politics is so messed up. Citizens should vote for less things, not more.

12:06 am

See, what the people who are a little bit thrilled about the decline of newspaper companies don't get is that while the diversified new media thing might be sleeker, cooler and what people allegedly want, it's basically toothless. You need gigantic, monolithic newspapers or their associated websites with large, broad readerships and fearsome reputations to keep the powers-that-be in check. Some random niche website will not command the same kind of respect or terror as the NYT or Washington Post.

Even I, a tiny little intern, know that when I call up someone and say "hi this is Nic White from [insert scary publication title here]" they need very big balls indeed to fuck with me. You need massive audience, clout and reputation to force people to cooperate, they need to know that if they mess with you, if they stall, if they lie, if they beat around the bush, you will nail them to the wall and everyone will know. At the same time, they know if they play ball and are reasonable, they might get some good press that will help them out. Neither carrot or stick work if no one cares who you are. The increase in cooperation I've witnessed moving up the intern food chain from uni publications to local papers to The West Australian has been very educational.

The only winners are the powerful who wish to do whatever they want without consequence. Everyone else, without exception, loses.

Current Mood: bitchy

03:41 am

Oh so I forgot to mention that I'm in Melbourne with a few people from interstate/overseas this weekend. I'm typing this from the hotel lobby. It's been fun so far and I'll update more later. I'll be back on Monday.

Current Mood: tired

12:09 am - Out here in the fields

So before I do a proper update on the happenings of the past 10 days or so, I'll devote an entire post to Saturday night. It was the night of The Who + Counting Crows concert that I'd been working up to for months since I bought my tickets. It did not disappoint.

You could tell the concert goers on the train. Some were obvious, dressed in distinctive red-white-and-blue target shirts, retro vests and flat caps, others could be identified by the sense of excitement and expectation. After more than four decades, The Who were back down under - and this time they were bothering with Perth. We bought the tickets months ago, but it's real now. I arrived about 6pm at Perth Oval. It is not a big oval, dwarfed by Subiaco and used only for soccer, WAFL and rugby, but does nicely for a good-sized rock concert.

More than half the field was covered in chairs and, to my horror, a huge spotlight and camera tower that completely obscured the stage from the general admission stands. Fortunately, I had paid good money and would be sitting in front of it on one of those chairs. There were only a thousand or so people sitting or milling around buying food, beer or merchandice from trailer stalls.

After not too long a random British band I'd never heard of took the stage and played maybe half a dozen songs. They were surprisingly good, but there weren't enough people around to give them hearty applause. I walked around a bit, taking in the progressively intensifying atmosphere.

The sun set, the lights went out and Counting Crows were up next, a band that rank high among my favourites and have crafted some truly magnificent rock ballards that still shake my soul after countless listenings. Their style and demographic was not at all compatible with the title act so it was a bit disappointing to not see them recieve as much attention from the building crowd as I was prepared to give them.

Unfortunately I don't have their latest album and therefore didn't know half their 11-song set, but they played "Mrs Potter", "Long December" and, mercifully, "Mr Jones" - my unrivaled favourite song in the world. No performance by this band is the same as they routinely drop segments from songs into each other, change lines and play with pitch and harmonics. This was quite evident and while sometimes it's disorienting, others it's a powerful insight into the inner workings of a band let by such a tourtured soul.

The dreadlocked and bearded lead singer Adam Druitz's struggle with his own brain chemistry is in many ways the driving force behind the band's musical direction and possibly the reason for its magnificence. You can hear in his voice and see in his eyes the turmoil within. It's not just a band playing music, it's people baring their souls and letting them become instruments in themselves. We will be back, they said.

Intermission. People run to the toliets, grab one last round of beer or stock up on chips. There's only half an hour to go. Can't miss any of the two-hour set because your baby boomer bladder can't hold out. I find my friend Louise and her sister and father, who remembers the old Who, and discuss plans to get up and dance in the aisles whatever the security had to say. It didn't matter, by halfway through the first song, "I Can't Explain", the entire stadium was on its feet, where we all remained, chairs and reserved seating be damned.

It was electrifying. The surviving members - singer Roger Daltrey and lead guitarist and songwriter Pete Townshend - may be 65 but they can still sing and play with barely a hint of slowing down. Sure the voice has aged and graveled like Bruce Springsteen, and the outlook is no longer one of youthful rebellion, but they're no Mick Jagger who should have stopped years ago out of sheer embarassment. Not only did they have the stamina to play 22 songs, but many of them were extended beyond their already longer than average lengths.

The crowd loved it, particularly as this was the first time they had ever been able to see the band live in Perth. Many of them were older and had grown up with The Who in their prime and mustered the strength to rock out with them, hopefully not for the last time. I had been concerend the atmosphere would not compare to that of more recent bands, but while it lacked some of the energy and insanity of Southbound and other shows and festivals populated by under-30s, the crowd belted it out with as much vigour as anyone else. We danced, sang, jumped and waved arms around in a euphoric way that only great music can move you to.

The band spoke of how sad the night was, it being the last stop of their tour, and how much they had enjoyed being in Australia and loved and appreciated the people they had met and got to know. "We want to know more about who you are" Pete said before launching into "Who Are You". He said they regreted taking so long to come back. I know bands say this stuff to everyone, but we can only hope they mean it and will be back sooner rather than mater. They spoke of what their songs meant to them and how they had come up with many of them. In some ways, the show was an allegory of how the band has changed over its lifespan, beginning with their first hit "I Can't Explain" and ending with a mournful acoustic of new song "Tea and Theatre", which really tells the story of getting old, which was proceeded by "The Amazing Journey".

They're a band keenly aware of themselves and their place in the world. "My Generation, we fucked it up... You fix it," they ad-libbed during "My Generation". They aren't the young rock soldiers they used to be, back when rock and roll began and civil rights were still a contentious issue. Their role has changed with their hair. They failed, they fucked it up, and now it's our turn. We're supposed to do better, not make the same mistakes. Who's next?

Current Mood: impressed

03:18 am - No kidding

"My Generation... we fucked it up. You fix it." - Pete Townshend during My Generation at tonight's concert.

Proper recap later.

Current Mood: tired

09:24 pm - WIN

Current Mood: amused

02:29 am

Current Mood: amused

10:57 pm

Is a general decline in political party identification a good or bad thing for a democratic country? Discuss.

01:09 am - Device not recognised

I've had shitloads of enforced free time (besides the hundreds of pages of readings) but haven't got around to updating in like a week. Hah. I was going to write so many things. Oh well.

Wednesday and Thursday I worked at the Fremantle Myer, basically moving stuff around. They have a basement that was once floor space but is now just storage. It's a pretty sad place, lots of dust, disused offices, broken stuff, etc. The old offices in particular are like something out of one of those post-disaster video games. Anyway they decided they wanted to do a big cleanout so they called us forsaken casuals with no damn shifts, plus some gun--for-hire contractors, in to move it out to the dock and shove it on trucks bound either for scrap metal or the tip. I rode to one of the tip runs and there are heaps of pelicans there for no reason. Seagulls I get, but pelicans? Truck driver let me drive the truck for like 5m when we needed to move it forward a bit, yay. Some of the usable stuff got sold off to salvage so we moved a fair bit of that into rows for no reason. God it makes you feel so blue collar, ick.

Then on Thursday night I hurt a total of four toes on both feet. Not sure if I broke any but it hardly matters. So I didn't get to uni on Friday and haven't left my house since. My house is a fucking deathtrap for toes thanks to its weird shaped archways. Plus there was spilled water to slip in. Sigh. Should finally be able to drive tomorrow.

Sami came over on Sunday night to do a stupid literature review of a ridiculous and annoying article that was mostly polling data and speculation. Then my PC decided to die, first by having no USB and then by refusing to start half the time. I'm running a repair install but it's taking hours to do what should take 40mins so I'm rather concerned. Might have to get creative on Thursday if this doesn't work. Big sigh.

Uni, Prosh writing and Irish pie tomorrow and my first day at The West Australian on Wednesday. Then I'll have about 11 days to do a presentation and a 1000 word essay on topics I don't have yet. Growl.

Current Mood: lethargic

03:35 pm

I went to the gym on Friday for about 30-45mins. I had intended to get an hour in but my muscles weren't any good by then. Went to the Beach Bash several hours later, which was ok but whatever, and got home after midnight. Woke up on Saturday with all the muscles in my upper body hurting and being difficult to move. I was fine on Friday, gah. Only today have they started to get better and I probably won't be able to go back to the gym again until Friday.

Saw Watchmen last night. It was alright. Most of the scenes are, in themselves, very good and it is rather visually satisfying, but as a coherent narrative and overall product it has a lot of problems. It feels very disjointed and there is little or no linkage between the scenes due to slavish attention to the source material. If the script had been tweaked significantly it could have been a very good film. As it stands, I can't really give it more than 7/10.

Work is still being shit. No shifts this week, again, but they called me today to offer shifts in fucking Fremantle doing logistics from 8am. So Wednesday and Thursday will be awful but will net me like $300, which I desperately need.

Current Mood: blah

01:17 pm - Fuck CityRail

One more reason why Sydney has a worse transport system than Mexico City.

Current Mood: annoyed

09:46 am

I'm so fucking sick of wowsers like these. That's just pathetic.

Current Mood: annoyed

11:54 pm - TAKE THAT

Mitchell Johnson and Marcus North are totally my new heroes.

Current Mood: excited