Australian Screen Online

You know, the Australian Screen Online site really is ace. Loads of great clips you can check - from all eras. And you can search via film type, decade, or by title. See the short hand-cranked Lumiere Cinematographe clips of Queen St Brisbane in 1899, or Kanakas working on the cane fields of North Qld, or the 1896 Melbourne Cup.

Or check the later clips of hard to find Australian cinema classics like Wake in Fright (1971). I could be lost in here for days. Send cheezels and jaffas!

Our Lady of Prosciutto

Pure Shit (1975)

Well let's face it, who isn't a little curious to see this film - banned then abandoned for a generation - about Carlton junkies in the mid-70s? Raided by vice-squad at its own premiere, this little underground film stayed that way longer than Ramos-Horta lived in hotel rooms. Its got it all: gritty intravenous realism, chase scenes, chemist break-ins, and excellent pre-fame cameos from Greig Pickhaver and Max Gillies. For all that, the scene-stealer is actually Helen Garner's hilarious appearance as a speed-addict, with advanced psychosis of the obsessive cleaning variety. There's even a social commentary poke at the earliest manifestations of the methadone program.

Australian 70s cinema. When will it be matched, let alone topped? I'm not holding my breath.

See the DVD trailer here.

Carpe pm: seize the afternoon

Yes, if I can't sleep in, it ain't my revolution! etc. I don't know about you, but early's never been my scene. Indeed, I was just recalling the other day, when I was younger, in me carefree 20s with fewer responsibilities to other humans, my normal hours of sleep were 4am to 12pm.

Time and circumstance has modified all that, of course; now its 2am to 8.30am. Cutting back on sleep hasn't really led to any productivity gains though - I rarely have a sentient thought before 10am. My brain still gets 8 hours, though the body has learned sleep-dressing and transport management.

I can't really help it, and to be honest, I don't want to change. These hours of solitude and focus have been the most productive of my life. I reckon I wrote most of my PhD between 10pm and 1am. I guess I'd like to know there are others out there still staying up, despite careers and so on. Perhaps well into middle age!

For example, I suspect my men HET here, princes of Dutch 60s freakbeat, still kick it late*. Now that semester two is nearly done I'm hoping to be back here (at Fort Segue) more often. Check it out!


* Hat tip to my bro, aka The World of Yentl, for putting me on to this ace track.

Blog Action Day: 350.org

So, I got an email this morning from 350.org saying its blog action day today. So this is the least I could do. (And never let it be said I didn't do the least I could do).

As you may know, BmL is a big supporter of the idea of direct citizen action on global warming. Leaving it all to governments is a dead-end street.

To that end, we here at BmL are sending a smoke signal to all coastal fortalezas in the greater Solor/ Larantuka region that October 24 is the International Day of Climate Action.

You can check local events in your area through this handy widget, which will hopefully embed below. There's a whole bunch of useful info here on why 350ppm is such an important goal.

Days Left

On October 24, join people all over the world to take a stand for a safe climate future.

Enter your City, Country, or Zip/Postal Code below to find an event near you.

Águas de Março

Yes, rockin' the fortaleza with Sealab's version of Jobim's classic Águas de Março. Hilarious clip! Great song too. In fact, it was once voted the best Brazilian song of all time by, like, Brazilians.
É pau, é pedra, é o fim do caminho...

Municipal Solar?

Ok, now let me run this scheme up the commentary pole and see who cheers (or jeers...)!

I've argued over at LP for a while that councils should look at developing municipal solar energy. That is, use the greater scale of council buildings, vacant property (and rates) to generate larger-scale solar power and feed it in to the grid at local area level. This would offer clear economies of scale in greenhouse abatement - that households can't hope to achieve - and produce larger volumes of power per dollar. Equally (by reducing net consumption of non-renewable energy across the municipal area) it would financially benefit all (both ratepayer-owners and tenants) by reducing household power bills in the mid to long-term. Households would receive the generated power as 'pre-paid' solar, at no further cost.

Households with private solar would get a double benefit, the rest would benefit by the effective socialisation of solar at the council area level. Perhaps they also could cut deals with state governments for the use of vacant Crown land.

Essentially, its a variant on the old school municipal socialism idea: in Britain in the late 19th and early 20th century councils were in the front line of creating public ownership of tramways, gas, waterworks and other utilities, using their greater collective buying power.

Fathers & Daughters

So, I was chatting with my bro (in the normal, non-NZ sense) today, who is recently the father of a baby girl, and has a son a fair bit older. We were watching my daughter play, and I was talking about the relative lack of weight of expectation on father/ daughter relationships. When I'd raised the same theme at other times - prior to his daughters birth - it didn't seem to ring any bells for him - but today it did.

Of the four parent/ child combos, it really is the one least dwelt on by popular culture, psychology, home spun theory and general folk wisdom of the ages. And in my experience, that's been the great thing about it. Makes it a lot easier.

Of course, it's a relationship that can be majorly screwed up, like any other, sometimes in utterly horrific ways - but aside from those awful cases, there aren't a lot of negative stereotypes attached to it. 'Daddy's girl', for example, is fairly neutral where 'Mummy's boy' most certainly isn't. Then there's the inherent role-modelling pressure of of father-son, mother-daughter relationships; so frequently subject to the 'individualise-via-conflict' vibe, sooner or later. And no offence, Mums, but in my experience there's virtually no limit to the matters affecting a boy's life that his mother won't feel absolutely entitled to dip her oar in the water about. Even well into his 30s*. Bless 'em.

Whereas there's just no point even asking Dad about tricky girl-to-woman stuff. He won't have a clue. And most importantly: that's understood - by both parties.

Nothing to offer but love.

I hope no one gets offended by the above. But I write here in defence of father-daughter relationship. Against its broad cultural neglect. It rules.

* There is a some possibility the author generalises unduly from personal experience here.

Can't think of a new post...

...cos I blew all my good material on facebook. But in the most lame-ass of comedic traditions, let us now ask "so....what's with that??".

I guess its a bit like fast-food, or 20-20 cricket. An instant gratification pigout that leaves you belching, bloated, yet ultimately dissatisfied. Not that blogging is exactly the French slow-food movement - but I do find that ideas I might previously have turned into blog posts (and thus subjected to a more sustained reflection in blog comments) now get frittered away on a quick farcebook update.

Which incidentally, I now refer to as 'Slide Night'. My theory is that farcebook is - in effect - a high-tech socially acceptable version of boring your friends senseless with pics of what you did on yer holidays. Except that they don't HAVE to look at them. In that sense, it fits neatly with shallow neo-liberal consumerist notions of 'choice' and 'liberty': it's all complete rubbish, but you get to choose which sandwich de merde is pret-a-porter.

Or am I reading too much into it? I've never Twittered. I can only imagine that's worse.

CO2 Counter

So, I added a CO2 counter to the sidebar, which measure parts per million. Just to depress myself on a daily basis. Apparently 350ppm is considered the upper level of sane by most scientists. Oh look, its already 386. Naturally, we in Ostraya are basing current policy settings on a putative global aim of restricting it to 450ppm, which is totally effing visionary etc, except that it more or less guarantees disastrous climate change.

I need some good news on climate folks. Give me hope!