scratchindog pisses on a tree

Dark Brown Thoughts

2010-07-26T02:17:00.001+07:00

Gordon Brown has just given his first major speech since loosing the UK elections. He was speaking in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, and was pumping up the future of Africa. In an attempt at self-depreciating humor he said he "spent some time as a politician before becoming a community organizer." This sent a little shiver down my spine - a community organizer? He goes on to say that he wishes to see the creation of an "African century".

"Future growth in the world economy, and future jobs in the developing world, will depend on harnessing both the productive potential and the pent-up consumer demand of this continent."

"There is an alternative to a decade of low global growth which would fail to meet both the development needs of Africa and the growth needs of Europe and America."

There is an underlying assumption here - an assumption that lies at the very heart of capitalism. Continual economic growth. In this case 'world' economic growth and the 'growth needs of Europe and America." These are linked to the "development needs in Africa." To the naive cynic this might imply that if Africa's development needs are to be addressed, we better make sure that the economies in Europe and America continue to grow. Otherwise the aid tap may be turned off and Africa can go fend for itself.

Perhaps I am being too cynical, for Mr Brown also addresses development in his speech. I shall quote verbatim from the BBC (link provided at the bottom):

Turning his attention to the developmental aid given to Africa, he said this needed to increasingly focus on private sector wealth creation, and not just providing services for the poor.

"The job of aid is to kick-start business-led growth and not to replace it," he said.

"And so I believe we need to focus not just on poverty, but on wealth."

Not just providing services for the poor, hey? Is that because we have dealt with that problem already? And the job of aid is to kick-start business-led growth? Is that where I should presume my donations are going? I'm not against business per se, but there is business and there is business. Are we talking about business that is started at the grass roots level? One that employs local people at decent wages and provides benefits and profits that feed back into local communities? Or are we talking big business? American and European business that can fly in, charge a lot of money, hire 'expertise' from overseas, and send the profits back outside of Africa? They may, almost as a side-effect, leaving something useful behind. They may, or they may not. What they leave behind is not the main point of the exercise. The extraction of profit is.

One of the suggestions Mr Brown had was "the rapid expansion of internet access in Africa". I presume that would have to be provided by European and American companies, as only they have the expertise and size to enable such a grand plan. I guess that internet surfing would distract people from the lack of infrastructure, health, education, electricity and water that so many suffer in Africa. It could distract them if they could find somewhere to plug their non-existent computers in. I love the Internet. It teaches me countless things, and wastes countless of my hours. I do prefer, however, safe drinking water, access to food, access to health services, and a whole raft of other things I have come to take for granted. Once those have been provided across the African continent, I'll be the first to say "Let them surf!"

The corner-stone of modern capitalism is perpetual growth. Perpetual growth allows for profit, that can be reinvested to maintain growth. Some of the profit, of course, also goes into private hands to maintain lavish lifestyles. A little bit of it even goes into paying the workers who underpin the whole structure, so they can maintain their basic lifestyles - if they are lucky. The central contradiction in modern capitalism is that it is occurring within a strictly finite system. Finite resources. At some point perpetual growth bangs up against finite resources. You can delay the moment - and we do - with technological innovation. Yet that is a delaying tactic, not one that solves the underlying contradiction. And that contradiction is already becoming very obvious in the effects of climate change and resource conflicts.

The problem is not that there is not enough money in the world. It isn't that there is not enough food, or water, or land in the world. The problem is in the distribution of those resources. The current world economic system is primarily designed to funnel money from the masses to the minority elites. From public funds to private funds. Those in the elite will always be able to buy access to dwindling resources, whilst the rest can fend for themselves (or more often than not, fail to fend for themselves and suffer the consequences). I have heard the catch-phrase 'sustainable growth' and it is a good idea. If it was taken seriously. A better phrase would be 'sustainable practices'. I have a feeling that the 'growth' in 'sustainable growth' is only there to make it palatable to modern capitalism - for its underlying assumption is growth - and any cost.

Let's slip in to la-la-fantasy land for a while. Let's say an evil terrorist virus infected the whole world. It made world leaders throw up their hands and say: 'Terrorism has won. We give up. We are going to stop all funding of anti-terrorist activities and put that money into something useless, like meaningful development aid'. That money is more than enough (if wisely spent) to meaningfully tackle the most common killers in the world. Provision of clean water for all. Provision of adequate food for all. The eventual eradication of water borne diseases, malaria, HIV, tuberculosis to name but a few. The provision of basic health care and education for all. All those silly little things referred to in the UN Declaration on Human Rights.

Of course the terrorists would take their cue and started killing indiscriminately across the globe. Because that's what terrorists do, right? Thousands, tens of thousands would be slaughtered now our security services were not looking after us. It would almost be enough to distract us from the millions and tens of millions that were being saved by our silly little development projects. Some brave journalist might even say the obvious. "Look, its nice that all those people are being saved from ignoble deaths, but they are the wrong people. Look at all all those people dying from terrorism in the West!'

Let's go further into la-la-land. If there was a meaningful redistribution of wealth and resources, such that everybody had access to the basic needs of life and liberty, would there still be such an motivation for terrorists. If everyone had the access to those things required for a life with dignity, including the freedom to practice their own religion, would there be as much support for terrorist activities? For terrorism, like all highly organized groups, requires the support of people. And if the support is not there - they have a hard time getting anything done.

OK - time to wake up. The fight against terrorism is not going away - it is far too profitable (for some). It also directs money away from development aid - which is not as profitable. Politicians and the Business behind them are going to continue supporting the main tenant/contradiction of perpetual growth until something snaps. And then those with the money and power will look after their own interests - and the fluffy talk of democracy and human rights will fade into the background as 'tough decisions' are made.

Why did I wake up with such dark brown thoughts today?

Brown says global economy reliant upon growth in Africa

Reading habits, writing non-habit

2010-03-26T15:34:00.005+07:00

For a while I have been suffering from literary constipation - nothing coming out. I am thinking of changing my blog's subtitle 'To create the habit of writing, irregardless of quality' to something that more clearly reflects the realities of my writing habits. It seems I am stuck between two bad ways of thinking. One has been previously described by Henry Miller - the desire to write literature. That is, to write something of the quality of the writing of authors I admire. The second is to write accurately - to write non-fiction that has been researched to the level of good journalism. Both reflect a failure to write because I don't think I am good enough (in terms of either quality or accuracy). In short - I lack faith, I am fearful of criticism, I lack motivation. Objectively I recognize both these bad habits, and that they should not stop me from posting blog entries. Just reading other blogs is enough to see that there are many who disregard such concerns with abandon. Unfortunately, I am not currently among them.

Constipation can occur because nothing for a long time is going in, or despite something going in, nothing is coming out. My affliction is definitely the latter. So much goes in. I am given a mild boost in the knowledge that my head churns, gurgles, even seethes with sentences, metaphors, starting paragraphs etc… Now and then are short explosions where a few paragraphs are expelled - written down and saved but never published. Literary flatulence.

Just over a year ago (12 March 2009) I posted a list of books I had read whilst in Vietnam. For the sake of my own memory, I thought I should update the list to include those I have read since then. I have missed many out - having been returned to their rightful owners or just forgotten for the moment. I also also spent a lot more time this year reading online news, blogs and marginalia of the web - which has cut into my 'real' reading time more than I would have wanted. Still, I feel blessed to have had the time to read so many good (and a few awful) books. These are listed in no particular order:

The Pornographer's Poem - Michael Turner
Hospital - Toby Litt
In Defence of Food - Michael Pollan
Good Germs, Bad Germs - Jessica Snyder Sachs
The Botany of Desire - Michael Pollan
Omnivore's Dilemma - Michael Pollan
Tropic of Cancer (reread) - Henry Miller
A Pale View of Hills - Kazuo Ishiguro
A Personal Matter - Kenaburo Oe
The Silent Cry - Kenazburo Oe
First Abolish the Customer - Bob Ellis
Common Wealth - Economics for a Crowded Planet - Jeffrey D. Sachs
The End of Poverty - Jeffrey D. Sachs
Economics Explained - Robert Heilbroner & Lester Thurow
Naked Lunch (reread) - William S Burroughs
Footsteps - Pramoedya Anata Toer
House of Glass - Pramoedya Anata Toer
The Great War for Civilisation - Robert Fisk
Middle East Illusions - Noam Chomsky
Rogue State - William Blum
Perfect Spy - Pham Xuan An
Bias - Bernard Goldberg
The Political Mind - George Lakoff
Lipstick Jihad - Azadeh Moaveni
Requiem for the Sudan - J. Millard Burr and Robert O. Collins
What is the What - Dave Eggers
America Town - Mark L. Gillen
Ghost Wars - Steve Coll
The Road of Lost Innocence - Somaly Mam
The Fugitive - Pramoedya Anata Toer
All That is Gone - Pramoedya Anata Toer
The Wisdom of Whores - Elizabeth Pisani
The Great White Shark Hunt (reread) - Hunter S. Thompson
Pathologies of Power - Paul Farmer
Where the Ashes Are - Nguyen Qui Duc
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer

Currently Reading:
The Hidden Connections - Fritjof Capra
The Giants - J.M.G Le Cleszio
The Slap - Chirstos Tsiolkas
Philosophical Investigations (rereading) - Ludwig Wittgenstein

cassowary and suicide on holiday

2009-10-22T17:55:00.002+07:00

contemplating suicide
Originally uploaded by Scratchin Dog.

"Perhaps he found what he came here for, but the odds are huge that he didn't. He was an old, sick and very troubled man, and the illusion of peace and contentment was not enough for him... So finally, and for what he must have thought the best of reasons, he ended it with a shotgun."
'What Lured Hemingway to Ketchum?', pg. 395 in "The Great Shark Hunt" by Hunter S Thompson

So Hunter finished his piece about Ernest Hemingway's final days in Ketchum, Idaho. He could well have been writing about himself. On February 20th 2005 Hunter shot himself in the head at his home 'Owl Farm' in Woody Creek, Colorado. I have just finished rereading the long and rabid collection of his early work "The Great Shark Hunt" and it has sent me back to that hot summer holiday in Australia when I first heard the news of his death.

We flew into Cairns in mid-Feb 2005. A smart beautiful English mathematician I used to live with was visiting Australia and we took this opportunity to stay in a friend's holiday house on Etty Bay. From the airport we picked up a small red rental car and headed south through the flat stretches of sugar cane country. The heat of Tropical North Queensland shimmered over the roads creating mirage pools of water ahead that you never arrived at. Along the dust at the side of the roads were numerous stalls offering every kind of tropical fruit imaginable. Just past Innisfall we took a left and headed for the ocean and soon wound our way down to an arc of sand surrounded on all sides by dense tropical vegetation. There was not much there - a small shop and a surf club. At the shop we picked up the keys from a one armed man with leathery skin and perpetual squint. He pointed us towards a gap in the trees and up a short steep dirt road we found our holiday house - a squat concrete building with cyclone shutters pulled down over two sides. It hunkered down amongst a fecund, almost threatening abundance of plant life.

Inside was a basic beach house with a main room that could be opened to the elements by rolling up the shutters, a couple of bedrooms and a bathroom. The floor was tiled and designed to be hosed out when too much sand had been walked inside. Across the ceiling were lines of meandering dots where vines had grown in and attached their roots before being pulled away. The air was full of insects and the noises of insects and other creatures unseen. We dumped our gear into the house and changed for the beach. It was off season, so the beach was practically deserted of people. Warning signs, however, were plentiful. There was a large rectangular swimming zone surrounded by nets that were meant to keep stingers at bay. A variety of poisonous jellyfish are populous in these waters - the stings ranging from irritating, through painful to deadly. A plastic bottle of vinegar is permanently placed below the life saving ring at the top of the beach as a first treatment for stings. The nets also help keep out sharks, and caution was to be taken at the creeks at each end of the beach where crocodiles were not unknown. Poisonous spiders and snakes were also common, though those at least, I was used to.

What I was not used to was the cassowary - a couple of which we immediately met in the car park on the way to the beach. These are a huge kind of flightless bird - the third largest, and second heaviest in the world. The kind of bird you only usually experience in nightmares or whilst caught on acid in a turkey pen. They can stand up to 2m tall and weight 70kg. Their long necks are a violent blue and they sport a thick bony horn like protrusion on their head above their thuggish red eyes. Their feet are composed of three large claws - the middle one particularly savage - which they can use to disembowel whatever they find threatening and in their way. And the problem is whilst they are physically huge, their brains are very small, mean and vicious. Very much like that of inbred conservative politicians in remote country areas where unwary travelers can disappear without a trace. It is the same kind of glazed dumb eyes that assess the world in terms of food, fuck, fight or flight - and when I gazed into those eyes I backed away and didn't even try to get the camera out. They unnerved me - monster mutant chickens with a chip on their shoulder about every mcnugget that has ever been eaten.

Yet the sand was white and clean, the water near body temperature which is the only way I like it. I floated, and swam to the nets and back, and floated more and let the summer Queensland sun lick my arc-light-white body into redness. On the walk back to the house was a stretch of road where the trees on each side made a canopy overhead and a stagnant creek ran along the side. We soon discovered that it was a mosquito infested tunnel of hell where walking would guarantee you at least a dozen bites. There was no option but to wrap a towel around as much exposed flesh as possible and run like buggery to get back into the light where you could slap yourself all over in some fiendish high-speed mockery of an Austrian dance. I soon found it also helped to keep your blood alcohol level as high as possible to potentially stun the evil fuckers once they took their first sip of blood. Once back at the house, however, with the mosquito repellant on, mosquito coils burning, and thick clouds of intoxicating smoke spiraling around your head, it was possible to relax reading books until the tiredness came upon you and you slept the sweat drenched tropical sleep of the Heart of Darkness.

Each night it was important to take the rubbish of the day down to the sealed bin in the car park. If you didn't, the whole thing would be ripped apart in the night by possums, rats, bush turkeys and a dozen other denizens of the night that you could hear, but not see until you came face-to-face with them on the kitchen counter. And whilst possums look cute in daylight, something about stumbling out bleary eyed to face off with a arrogant marsupial making devil noises through its yellow teeth at 2am isn't worth encouraging. So on the third night I dosed myself with repellant, finished my joint and picked up the rubbish to make the dash through the mosquito corridor. The corridor was only about 40m long and straight - but very dark and totally infested. I picked my way over the rocks and around the curve to the beginning of the straight, then broke into a fast run. About two thirds the way along I collided heavily with something solid, soft and covered in course feathers. For the next long 5 seconds the world was nothing but my screaming mixed with a high pitched banshee squawking and a rain of garbage coming down as both me and the cassowary ran randomly around in the dark finding anyway away from each other. I heard it crashing into the foliage of the creek as I rounded the bend back to the house. That garbage had made it far enough that night and it took much scotch and sedative smoking before I regained any semblance of control which was mostly hysterical hyper-ventilating laughter.

We had brought no laptops or music systems and had to make to with the local radio station which played the usual round of cheap music and adverts for agricultural suppliers. The band Green Day had just released their latest hit 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams' and it was being played on high repeat - it seemed once for every four other songs. Despite not even liking the song, it became the defacto anthem of the trip through repetition. We would start singing along with it without even thinking... "I walk a lonely road, the only one that I have ever known. Don't know where it goes, but it's home to me and I walk alone." And I think it was after one such playing that the news came on and delivered the news of Hunter's suicide. The pithy words of the song for a moment seemed to hold some meaning, though of course they didn't, and I was thrown into contemplation of the death of a literary hero of mine. I cannot remember exactly what I was thinking back then, but having just finished 'The Great Shark Hunt' again, I have been drawn back into contemplation of what I think of him, his mythical persona and his writings.

And a week later, with copious notes and hours spent mulling what I think I am no closer to finishing this damn blog entry. One thread follows the style of writing where the journalist is a character in his own work. The role is made explicit - and with Hunter - even mythical. The style is in opposition with 'objective' reporting that still makes up the mainstream of contemporary journalism - a style dedicated to 'telling it how it is' or 'just the facts'. The years I have spent contemplating the more corrosive side of philosophy (corrosive to the concept of attaining simple value-free 'facts') have made me wary of this style of journalism. 'Objectivity' too easily is a cover for unstated bias and subjectivity. The value of injecting the journalist into the story explicitly is that usually you can tell from what perspective the story is being written from. Did anyone ever wonder what Hunter really thought of Richard Milhouse Nixon? Philosophically speaking - I see no problem with subjectivity - especially when it is explicit. Partly related is Hunter's use of his contacts. He knew many people, from all walks of politics, and was not afraid of quoting them verbatim (nearly always taping his interviews) and naming his sources. Every second opinion or 'quote' in today's papers are from unnamed or anonymous sources - with all the abuse to truth and accountability that comes with that. However, I have not been able to expand upon this thread coherently.

Another thread concerned a corollary of injecting yourself into a story - that you end up writing about yourself. I think most people would concede that writing objectively about yourself is nearly a contradiction in terms. Our everyday lives involves projecting a persona into the world, and writing about yourself is projecting yet another persona. In this sense Hunter reminds me of another two authors I respect, Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski. In each of their works - the author is loosely represented through a persona that is a hyper-real fictionalization of themselves. Miller hams up the sex in his works, Bukowski the alcoholism, Hunter the drugs and violence. Each is deeply concerned to project the individualist freedom of their self-characters. And in each case they were criticized for 'making stuff up' about themselves. And in each case, they experienced problems when people expected them as people to confirm more to their fictional characterizations of themselves. I remember the photos run by Playboy of an elderly Miller playing ping pong with a naked buxom young woman. Photos of a over-weght Bukowski climbing into a box car to represent his homeless drifting (though he never rode in a boxcar) and his famous acting the belligerent buffoon at university readings. In a 1978 interview with the BBC Hunter said: "I'm never sure which one people expect me to be. Very often, they conflict - most often, as a matter of fact. ...I'm leading a normal life and right along side me there is this myth, and it is growing and mushrooming and getting more and more warped. When I get invited to, say, speak at universities, I'm not sure if they are inviting Duke or Thompson. I'm not sure who to be."

And yet - when they were not writing about themselves - there seems to be a honesty of purpose or truthfulness running through-out their work. Each in their own way writes in a humanitarian way that seems counter the male-centric bravado of their personas. And perhaps the key to this seeming conflict of perspectives is the fierce anti-authoritarian that each author espoused. In siding against authority, they tended to side with those who are the natural enemy of authority. Those without power or position, the poor, the oppressed, those that want to be left alone to drink or take drugs without harassment. I wouldn't want to draw too many parallels between these authors on this thin thread. Many would contest my opinion of Miller or Bukowski as humanitarian writers - there are plenty who would write both off as misogynists and leave the argument there. Being labeled a misogynist is like being labeled a racist, or anti-semite - in some circles it is case closed - there can be nothing good about the writer. And I'm too tired to try and fight those battles, too tired to even have a firm opinion on them. I will stand with the anti-authoritarian nature of their writing and leave it there for others to draw conclusions from that. All authors have plenty in their writing to offend you if you are looking to be offended. All I would say is that there is also plenty in their writing to be uplifted by, if you are looking to be uplifted.

In contrast to being uplifted, I was also thinking about three books that produced strongly negative reactions in me. I remember reading 'Disgrace' by J. M. Coetzee that put me in a depressive angry funk for a week. The mathematician I went on holiday with highly recommended reading 'Broom of the System' by David Foster Wallace, one of the few books I have hurled across the room after finishing. And finally one of the books I read whilst on that holiday in Queensland, 'Something Happened' by Joseph Heller. Nearly 600 pages of waiting for Something to Happen which it only does in the last 10 pages and leaves a bitter resentful taste in the mouth. Each of these books are rightfully acclaimed as fine pieces of literature - but I hated them at the time and have no desire to return there. Strange how it works... Like how my memory of that holiday long ago as been pinned into my personal chronology with a unusual degree of clarity by the death of Hunter S Thompson.

the big question - why bother?

2009-05-22T14:27:00.001+07:00

Usually if I post two blogs on consecutive days I feel a sense of achievement. My original excuse for coming to Vietnam was to focus on writing - and writing blog entries minimally fulfills that ambition. However, I did not feel a sense of achievement after the last two postings. They represent the completion of two mini-projects that I had started - both involving the media. The first - the world's response to Haruki Murakami receiving 'The Jerusalem Prize'. The second, to provide the only full online transcript of Hunter S. Thompson's interview with the Australian ABC.

The reason for examining the response to Haruki Murakami winning The Jerusalem Prize was a confluence of three things: My liking of Murakami's writings, my following the latest Gaza incursion, and Noam Chomsky's allegation that news that is unfavourable to Israel does not get coverage in the USA. I also wanted to know how Murakami would react to the open letters that encouraged him to boycott the prize. Two examples of such open letters can be found at palestine-forum.org and here. It took a lot of time to research this question to my own satisfaction. I concluded that with the exception of AFP (whose article was taken up by the Australian ABC) there was no coverage of Murakami receiving or accepting the prize in the mainstream US media. The only main stream coverage in the UK was by the Guardian (but not the BBC). The AFP, the Guardian and the ABC all took their quotes directly from The Jerusalem Post - which I hope I showed were somewhat misleading paraphrases at best. I did find coverage in India, Iran and Israel - and from a host of bloggers around the world. The best coverage indeed came from Israel itself (if not from The Jerusalem Post). I found Murakami's response morally satisfactory. I found the reporting of his response less so. Noam Chomsky's allegation, in this case, seems to be justified.

The Hunter S. Thompson piece was a natural confluence of my liking of his work, the fact that he was interviewed by someone in Australia, and my interest in (if not belief in) conspiracy theories. I was surprised at some of the good material that was left out of the aired interview. I don't think this in itself was a conspiracy of some sort. The Media Report obviously focuses on the media - and the interviewer did edit to keep the focus on the US media post 9/11. I just felt it was a pity that parts of the interview that pertained to the Australian media, and the Australian government's position on the yet-to-be-started Iraq war were cut. Some of the more funny parts were cut, parts that dealt in more depth as to why the US media reported the way it does were cut. I feel a slight happiness to be able to provide some of Hunter S. Thompson's views publicly in text form, but given the time it takes to transcribe audio to text, it is a small gain in happiness for a lot of work.

The sense of achievement in completing and posting these two mini-projects was small and short lived. I find myself thinking - why bother? It is much easier to write about my dreams, to write personal nostalgic pieces about my past and my failing memory. Why do a lot of work to produce relatively dry pieces that are of little interest to anyone out there? I have yet to come up with an answer to that question yet, and I have no mini-media projects planned for the future. I can only concur with Hunter when he says 'Boy, it really is lonely out here'.

Hunter S. Thompson interview with Mick O'Regan

2009-05-20T12:39:00.002+07:00

bad reading habits
Originally uploaded by Scratchin Dog.

A really good conspiracy theory has intention going all the way back to the beginning. A true master-mind kind of conspiracy doesn't rely upon accidents happening. I stumbled across the the mother-of-all-contemporary conspiracy theories on the web recently. That the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were master-minded by those within the US administration itself. Note that the official version of 9/11 is already a conspiracy theory. A band of mostly Saudi Arabian terrorists hijacked 4 commercial airliners, with the plan to crash them into 4 buildings (3 carried successfully). This horrendous yet ingenious way to terrorize the American people was all planned and organized remotely by the nefarious Osama bin Laden from his hideout in Afghanistan. This already is a great conspiracy theory that has mesmerized the world. The extension to it is even more fantastic, even more unbelievable. That this first conspiracy is an illusion, that the savage destruction was an inside job.

I wasn't looking for this theory. I wanted to read Al Jazeera (English) for my morning fix of international news. But my hands had hangover shake over my bookmarks and I ended at Dissident Voice. What the hell, I'll read one article. And the comments. Link to microcinemadvd.com, who had just announced the release date for 'Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup' by Dylan Avery. I checked out the website loosechange911.com then went to youtube to see what I could find. One of Dylan Avery's previous full length documentaries '911 Loose Change' is there. I watched an early edition (nearly 2.5 million views so far) - I haven't yet watched the fully revised over 2 hour version that is now available out there. This made for a fully enjoyable morning of suspended disbelief.

But 9/11 conspiracy theories are not what I want to write about today. Up until 7 min 43 seconds into the movie, my paranoid fantasies were accompanied by the regular monotone trance inducing commentary running over the visuals. Then suddenly I was accosted by a nasal Australian twang. An interviewer, following by a guttural laconic American accent that really got into my brain. "American journalism I think was cowed, had been cowed and intimidated by the this massive flag-sucking, this patriotic orgy that the White House keeps whipping up". Click. I knew that husky stop-start way of talking. Hunter S. Thompson. "You sort of wonder when something like that happens, well who stands to benefit? Who had the opportunity and the motive?" This is too good to be true - Hunter S Thompson and 9/11 conspiracy theories. I had to find this interview.

It didn't turn out to be that hard. It was an interview between Mick O'Regan and Hunter S. Thompson that played on The Media Report, a show on ABC Radio National. It aired 29th Aug 2002. There were links to the audio for this program in a number of places on the web - but the audio file was no longer available from the ABC - only the transcript. I was sad to see in passing that the show ceased being produced in January 2009. I was able to locate the audio file eventually on indybay.org (15.2Mb). This appears to be the full interview - not the heavily edited version that was played on the ABC. This phone interview is over 30min and had a lot more content that was available on the ABC transcript. The more I listened, the more I realized what had been cut. Some great stuff. I looked in vain for a transcript of the whole interview - and then decided to sit down and transcribe it myself. The following is the results of that transcript. It isn't perfect - Hunter is not exactly the easiest person to follow at times. I have made corrections to the text where the ABC had transcribed incorrectly, or cleaned it up too much. The red sections roughly show what was kept in the on-air version of the interview. Bits I couldn't figure out I have either labeled 'inaudible' or made my best guess and put it in brackets. It is interesting to see what hit the cutting room floor.

Interview of Hunter S. Thompson by Mick O'Regan
The Media Report - ABC Radio National - 29th August 2002

Mick O'Regan: Unlike Walter Cronkite, Hunter S. Thompson is a stirrer, a deliberately provocative commentator and a freewheeling iconoclast, infamous for his relentless critique of the American government and military.

He lives in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and that's where I found him at the end of a less than perfect telephone line, to ask his opinion of the state of the US media.

(The version of the interview I downloaded starts here)

Mick O'Regan: This first question I had is basically to get from you a sense of how you would rate the American media in their coverage of the event of the attack last September? What's your assessment of how the American media has performed?

Hunter S. Thompson: Well let's see, 'shamefully' is a word that comes to mind, but that's not true in the case of well it depends you know you have to... the papers... The New York Times, The Washington Post, but overall the American journalism I think was cowed, had been cowed and intimidated by the this massive flag-sucking, this patriotic orgy that the White House keeps whipping up. You know if you criticise the President it's unpatriotic and there's something wrong with you, you may be a terrorist. And I've been (raging) against this from the very beginning, but I don't have much of a (constant) national platform because I've been working on this book The Kingdom of Fear which probably describes what's been going on over here - The Kingdom of Fear.

Mick O'Regan: So in that sense, Hunter S Thompson there's not enough room for dissenting voices?

Hunter S. Thompson: There's plenty of room there's not just enough people who are willing to take the risk. It's sort of a herd mentality, a lemming-like mentality. If you don't go with the flow you're anti-American and therefore a suspect. And we've seen this before, these patriotic frenzies. In wartime they declare... It's very convenient having an undeclared war that you can call a war and impose military tribunals and wartime security and then we have these generals telling us that this war's going to go on for a long, long time. Maybe not so much the generals now, the generals are a little afraid of Iraq, a little worried about it, but it's the civilians in the White House, the gang of thieving, just lobbyists for the military industrial complex, who are running the White House, and to be against them is to be patriotic, then hell, call me a traitor.

Mick O'Regan: Do you think that most of the American media, or say most of the influential American media has bought that patriotism line, and as a result are self-censoring themselves?

Hunter S. Thompson: There you go, self-censorship, yes, that's a very good point. Yes, I would say that. Now there are always exceptions to that but there've been damn few. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, I'm trying to think of who else, there's not that many of them (at the moment?). And you get that corporate mentality of well what will the advertisers think? You know, in the times against the President therefor we won't advertise in it. A corporate kind of, we're all in this together thinking, so yes the publishers have always been Republicans, and the working press usually are Democratic, the smarter part of them, but not even the Democrats have been very strong on this, Not strong enough to get anyone excited.

Mick O'Regan: So is it the White House laying down what they think is appropriate journalism, or is it the news media outlets deciding that they have to be patriotic, that they're under some sort of undeclared duty at the moment, to somehow reflect the patriotism of the American public?

Hunter S. Thompson: Well it goes a little deeper than that, because this Administration is well on the road to seizing power, and Tom Dashell, the Senate Democratic leader the other day accused Bush of trying to seize dictatorial powers. Now that was a big breakthrough, and I'm starting to sense that the tide may be turning against the President; we have to beat this bastard one way or another. And the easiest way to do that is vote. I mean not (going to use) terrorism to beat a little fart like that. Just voting is a... should be sufficient and I have a sense that there is a... some kind of flag of courage of some sort, courage to disagree with the government. And that's what this country's all about really.

Mick O'Regan: Well historically that's obviously hugely important for America that (track breaks up) so your argument at the moment - we're not seeing that (media) coverage of the whole...

Hunter S. Thompson: And the American government is the greatest enemy of freedom around the world that I can think of. And we keep waving that flag, freedom, yes, these people are flag-suckers.

Mick O'Regan: What about the language that's being used to describe the so-called undeclared war? I mean there have been criticisms in the mainstream press in Australia that journalists have too readily taken up the language of politicians and bureaucrats, that they have uncritically declared the war against terror without really thinking it through; what's your assessment of the situation in the States?

Hunter S. Thompson: Well I'm glad to hear that - you're talking about Australian journalists?

Mick O'Regan: Yes.

Hunter S. Thompson: Yes, well that's good. Congratulations boys. There is not much of that in this country yet. The New York Times - the paper of record - has been I think they've pretty courageous in terms of this laying out what is going on. Reading the New York Times for the past year has been like, one funeral dirge, or you know, just one funeral after another. This over here is the most paranoid, most insecure country that I've ever lived in, I mean it's the worst this country has been since I have ever seen it. And I've been covering politics for a long time. Henceforth.

Mick O'Regan: So that's how you'd characterize the popular debate at the moment? That its full of paranoia?

Hunter S. Thompson: Yeah, but now on the other side we don't have what appears to be just a bunch of half-bright Jesus-freaks. But soon if look at it just a little bit with a different prism this could be a military takeover - could be called that. Have you noticed all the power being centralized in the White House, in Washington. When these super agencies taking over the FBI, the CIA, the super cabinet positions. This little bastard of a President - the goofy child President - I used to call him that but goofy is way too friendly for a President whose been nothing but a... presiding over the looting of the treasury and the looting of people's pension funds. He's done a lot of damage. And he's trying to. And he's trying to... His next step I guarantee is to over-rule the Freedom of Information Act that is key to the survival of journalism in this country.

Mick O'Regan: Do you feel like there's a restriction of media freedom, of the freedom to speak, in the freedom to martial opposition arguments at the moment? Is there a restricted space for media freedom?

Hunter S. Thompson: Well I think what happened... I wouldn't say it's a restricted space, but it's a dark and dangerous grey area to venture into. Several journalists have lost their jobs, columnist Bill Maher on ABC you get these tides of public protest when journalists [inaudible]... but some people were made an example of early on. And then you have this argument, well, you want to criticize like that you're making fun of the victims or people who died in the disasters, the crashes. I'm still not sure who did that. And I think there's a lot more too it that than we've been allowed to know over here. The media doesn't reflect world opinion or even a larger, more intelligent opinion over here, it's just this drumbeat of celebrity worship and child funerals and hooded prisoners being led around Guantanamo. No I'm very disturbed about the civil rights implications of this, and everybody should be.

Mick O'Regan: So just on journalists who may have lost their jobs, are you saying that people who came out and were fearless in their critique of the government or the government's planning, government's policy, that those people actually lost their jobs as journalists?

Hunter S. Thompson: Well I can think of two that come to mind right in the beginning. I haven't heard of any since. But I think Bill Maher, there was some kind of rave after 9/11 that all these people, cowards, you know these dirty little bastards, who snuck up on us and pulled off what amounts to a perfect crime really, no witnesses, very little cost; talk about cost-effective, that was a hell of a strike. I'm not sure I'd call them cowards, but that's what Bill Maher said on TV and he said he considered our missile attacks our bombing attacks on unseen victims, wedding parties etc. that that was cowardly. Whacko. Boy a huge tidal wave of condemnation came down on him. And that was the ABC, yeah.

Mick O'Regan: So at the moment people don't want to hear that sort of criticism, they want people to rally round the flag and support the military?

Hunter S. Thompson: I think that's right, and I think the reason for that is that they don't want to hear it because boy, that's going to be a lot of agonising reappraisal, as they say. What reality is in this country and the world right now. Yes, popular opinion in this country has to be swung over to "the White House is wrong, these people are corporate thieves. They've turned the American Dream into a chamber of looting." It would take a lot of adjustment, mentally.

Mick O'Regan: At the moment, even in Australia, the media is preparing for the first anniversary of the attacks in a couple of weeks from now. Can you give me a sense of what is happening in the United States? How is the American media preparing to sort of commemorate the first anniversary of the September 11th attack?

Hunter S. Thompson: You would never believe it, it's so insane. This is a frantic publicity. Every day on television the President's on TV at least once a day, and celebrations of the dead, the patriots, exposes on Al Qaida, it's just relentless, in fact 25 hours a day, of just how tragic it was and how patriotic it was, and how much we have to get back at these dirty little swine, and I wouldn't be at all surprised for as hideous and dumb as it sounds, an invasion of Iraq on September 11, yeah I'll get out and take a long shot bet on that.

Mick O'Regan: That you think that the occasion might actually be used as a way of using that popular fervour or that popular patriotism as an appropriate day to launch an invasion?

Hunter S. Thompson: Well it seems like that to me, because that's their only power base really, is that frenzy of patriotism, and it's our revenge strike, you know, Uncle Sam gets even. If that's going to work at all, there would be no time when it would work better when everyone in the country is cranked up into emotional frenzies. I find myself getting a little teary eyed last night watching some CNN special. Anita was crying. This reminds me exactly of the month after the attack when there was just drumroll after another. But there is some opposition now popping up in this country, a lot of it. A lot of opposition.

Mick O'Regan: I would like to come to the opposition in just a moment. But just on your arguments about what would seem to be the manipulation by the media of popular sentiments. At the moment, what do you think the leading media outlets should be doing? Because obviously there is deep feeling within the American community about the attack and the aftermath of the attack which it would seem to me that the media is obviously going to pick up on, but how to they represent that feeling without manipulating it for some other less nobel purpose?

Hunter S. Thompson: Well, the way that (grease) has been manipulated here and turned into a platform for revenge, on who? Osama bin Laden? I wrote on the day after the thing occurred that he was probably dead. (inaudible) trying to write a column for ESPN.com, a sports (thing) and yeah to just assume that first it was Osama bin Laden, and then it was Saddam Hussein. It may be that the secret police, and the intelligence operations of America are so much smarter than we are and knows so much more than we heard and are so much more responsible and effective than we are. That's possible I suppose... It's not possible to me but in theory, but in fact all these agencies have been embarrassed. They've been proven to be buffoons and liars. Some FBI agent lost 700 guns in two years... These agencies are riddled with corruption and it is an unwillingness to challenge the word of authority. That is, you'd think you know (inaudible) an un-American way to lean back and be a sheep and act like a good German. And it just really just a question of authority that I believe is the root of this over here.

Mick O'Regan: So you would see Hunter S Thompson in recent years there's been a failure to challenge authority so the media is actually buying the government line far to readily?

Hunter S. Thompson: No, there hasn't been much challenging of authority for quite a while and this President here, this little bastard, is just a (creation) of his father and Reagan brain-trust and a lot of those people came out of Nixon, it's really like the rebirth of Richard Nixon. Or Nixon lives. But these people make Nixon look like a liberal.

Mick O'Regan: You would argue that George Bush Junior make Richard Nixon seem like a liberal which is a startling admission from you because of the caustic way you have previously described Richard Nixon.

Hunter S. Thompson: Yeah, it shocked me when I said it. But I'll stick with that. In terms of just the programmatic mean greedy tunnel-visioned looter, these people make Nixon look like a statesman.

Mick O'Regan: Now Nixon, of course, was undone by the actions of two members of the press, Bernstein and Woodwood, who doggedly pursued him even though it wasn't initially apparent that that trail would bear fruit. Is there a new generation of that type of investigative journalism in the United States, and is this the moment when it should come forward?

Hunter S. Thompson: Oh boy, I've been looking for that... the rise of that generation for a long time. You know the... Yeah, Nixon was always convinced of there was a massive liberal conspiracy to get him. Well, he was right. Yeah. And I was part of that. And I'm proud of it.

Mick O'Regan: Now is that, so called, massive liberal conspiracy, is that emerging now in the debate around the potential invasion of Iraq or the conduct of the Bush administration at the moment?

Hunter S. Thompson: No, these Jesus-freaks have managed to give the word 'liberal' so a bad name that in this nation now its really a matter of shame to adopt the word 'liberal'. See, I've never been a liberal. I've (been know) to the bastards for years. But liberal, no, there's no ground swell of liberal sentiment driving this questioning of what the administration is doing. Now these people want to go into attack the Arab world, the Muslim world, with no allies except England and Israel...

Mick O'Regan: And possibly Australia.

Hunter S. Thompson: Oh my god! Don't tell me your god-damned Papist bastards are that off, I thought you were freedom loving (inaudible)?

Mick O'Regan: Well what's going on here as we record this interview in Australia, there is actually a debate about the degree to which the government has made clear whether it would support a first strike policy by the United States government and the call in Australia is for a much fuller debate both at a parliamentary level and in the media about what the Australian government should do, but the Prime Minister of Australia has reserved his judgement, but he's made it clear that his government is very keen to support the US if called upon.

Hunter S. Thompson: Well, thats err... that's horrible. Well I guess err... that's right, you people voted that you really are err... you're all subjects of the Queen, didn't you?

Mick O'Regan: We voted to not become a republic, that's right.

Hunter S. Thompson: No, no, you re-affirmed the power of the Monarchy as I remember, over you.

Mick O'Regan: That's right... Look its a digression, but that's right. But just on that... One of things that the media in Australia is really trying to take up I suppose is to draw from the government some clearer position. You know, will Australia support the US, what are the implications of the US striking pre-emptively against Iraq. I'm very interested in your assessment of that debate in the States. I mean, are the particular areas where criticism is coming from?

Hunter S. Thompson: Let me first say that its very important that you guys get a statement, a clear statement out of the government. And the longer they won't give you one, the more ominous it's going to sound, right? It will be... I mean if they won't tell you they won't support the United States in the event of a first strike, what do you guess their position is going to be?

Mick O'Regan: Look in Australia Hunter, there's been a policy of bi-partisanship, a history of bi-partisanship, and that's the other thing that's up for grabs at the moment it would seem. Whether the Labor party opposition to the Conservative Federal government is going to sort of strengthen its opposition to any Australian involvement or whether its going to go ahead and support the government as it has done in previous military campaigns. That's a major issue, but its an issue being played our in the press. What I'm interested I'm supposed is your assessment of how that's being played out or not being played out in your own press.

Hunter S. Thompson: Well we get a lot of encouragement, say from Germany, France, the entire Arab world. I mean, nobodies really in favor of this. I don't know who, I mean if you want to name some people? Who else really wants Saddam Hussein so desperately out of power? I look around, I don't see anyone else waving the hatchet, do you?

Mick O'Regan: [Well, no, no. Hunter] Could I take you back to September 11th. What I'd really like to know is your reactions. And I know you said you were writing a sports column for ESPN when the planes hit the towers, but could I get you to tell that story of when you found out about it and what you were doing and what your reaction was?

Hunter S. Thompson: Yeah I was really (inaudible) in a low key way. I had in fact just finished a sports column for ESPN. I've forgotten exactly what is was about. It was pretty good. No sooner it had gone over the wire than I was on the phone with John Walt, general editor of ESPN was on the phone saying 'You have to write about this disaster' and as it happened I'd been going to bed after my column, it was late Monday night, I was just going to bed, the TV was still on. I usually have it on just for the news, and I happen to see the first plane hit, and in my fog condition, I'd been up all night writing the column I somehow knew it was real. I don't know why I've seen enough real life... What is that noise? Yeah, there was no mistaking the reality of that. It didn't make much sense. And it still doesn't really, but I, oh here we go, here we go. This is the column I wrote, let's see 09/12/01. Here it is: 'It was just after dawn in Woody Creek, Colorado when the first plane hit the World Trade Center in New York City on Tuesday morning. And as usual I was writing about sports. But not for long. Football suddenly seemed irrelevant compared to the scenes of destruction and other devastation coming out of New York on TV.'

Mick O'Regan: You went on to say in that article, which I have in front of me, that 'even ESPN was broadcasting war news. It was the worst disaster in the history of the United States.' Do you think that the event completely transformed the way in which Americans see themselves and their own vulnerability?'

Hunter S. Thompson: No, the event by itself wouldn't have done that. I've seen planes hit the Empire State Building before, I didn't go totally out of my mind. People had been killed. But it was the way the Administration was able to use that event. And to use it as a springboard for everything they wanted to do. And that might tell you something. I remember when I was writing that column you sort of wonder when something like that happens, Well who stands to benefit? You know, its like murder. Who had the opportunity and the motive? You just kind of look at these basic things, and I don't know if I want to go into this on worldwide radio here, but -

Mick O'Regan: You may as well.

Hunter S. Thompson: All right. Well I saw that the US government was going to benefit, and the White House people, the republican administration to take the mind of the public off of the crashing economy. Now you want to keep in mind that every time a person named Bush gets into office, the nation goes into a drastic recession they call it.

Mick O'Regan: It sounds almost like the plot of that film 'Wag the Dog' where film producers sort of concocted a national event to inspire patriotism to take the public's minds of misdemeanors committed by the President. Are you, I mean, It seems a very long bow to me, but are you sort of suggesting that this worked in the favour of the Bush Administration?

Hunter S. Thompson: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I have spent enough time on the inside of, well in the White House and you know, campaigns and I've known enough people who do these things, think this way, to know that the public version of the news or whatever event, is never really what happened. And these people I think are willing to take that even further, so I don't assume that I know the truth of what went on that day, and yeah, I just looking around and looking for who had the motive, who the opportunity, who had the equipment, who had the will. Yeah, these people were looting the treasury and they knew the economy was going into a spiral downward.

Mick O'Regan: From this distance it does seem extraordinarily conspiratorial that you could sit there and see the hand of the US government in this attack rather than seeing international terrorists bent on somehow hurting America and the American people. What sort of reaction did your views get among your peers or amongst other journalists?

Hunter S. Thompson: (laughs) I was greeted universally with a kind of nervousness and almost nobody agreed with me, nobody thought it was the right thing just to answer your question. No it was about 99 to 1, but since then...

Mick O'Regan: Did you publish those views anywhere?

Hunter S. Thompson: I'm not sure if I said that, if I haven't then I meant to. Now let's see...

Mick O'Regan: I was going to ask you for the reaction to them because, I don't want to seem Polyannish here, but it doesn't seem an extraordinary conspiracy theory that your putting forward, that your first reaction was somehow implicate the US government in this attack, rather than an enemy of the US government.

Hunter S. Thompson: Well you want to keep in mind that I have lived, not just through, but very close to a lot of real tragedies in this country, and let me ask you, do you think you know who killed John Kennedy or Robert Kennedy?

Mick O'Regan: Look I have to say I was a boy at the time, but no, and I haven't read the Warren Commission Report, but it seems to me that that in this case there were so many more people involved it would seem to be much less likely some sort of internal conspiracy.

Hunter S. Thompson: Well it does, I mean I can see why you are a little edgy accepting this from me and...

Mick O'Regan: Well let me just ask you on that. I mean you've pioneered a form of journalism called Gonzo journalism, in which it's almost like there's no revision. What you see and feel is what goes down on the page, and it's that first blush, that first image that hits the readership. Does that mean that Hunter S. Thompson that in a way it's hard for you to appear credible within the US media because people would say Oh look, that's just another conspiracy theory from a drug-addled Gonzo journalist like Hunter S. Thompson?

Hunter S. Thompson: Yeah, that's a problem. I'm not sure if it's my problem or other people's, or their's, but I stand by this column and the one after it. I've been right so often, and my percentages are so high, I'll stand by this column that I wrote that day, and the next one. So what appears to be maybe Gonzo journalism, I'm not going to claim any prophetic powers, but...

Mick O'Regan: Well one of the things you do say in that first article you wrote, you say, 'It's now 24 hours later, and we're not getting much information about the 5Ws of this thing.' Now by the 5Ws I'm presuming you mean the Who, the What, the When, the Why and the How. Is that still how you feel, that a year later those key questions haven't been answered?

Hunter S. Thompson: Absolutely. It's even worse though. This is just a suggestion, in 24 hours we were not getting much information about the 5 Ws. Well, how much have we got beyond that? How much more do we have than we had a year ago? Damn little, I think. We know a lot about the firemen who died, a lot about the people who stole money from their charity fund, a lot about the people who donated all that blood and Red Cross had too much of it and had to throw away 5 tons of blood or something like that. That may be an exaggeration. No, I will stand by almost all my, well no no, come on, look, great a grip on yourself Tom, you can't talk like that...

Mick O'Regan: Hunter S. Thompson, let me ask you about you new book, I mean, The Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Cross Child in the Final Days of the American Dream. It's a very apocalyptic title. Has this book, this new book, has it come off your reflections about September 11th and the way it was handled by the American media?

Hunter S. Thompson: Well it came off of the, yeah, the atmosphere in this country as of September 12. Yeah, Kingdom of Fear. That's the way I see this country. I'm not just writing a long (scree) front-to-back, some kind of a political tract. But, in the book, I've tried to explain a little bit about how I got this way and why you should pay attention to my predictions.

Mick O'Regan: Is this a critical time for the credibility of US journalism? How this current war is being covered, and how it is being reported on, and the sort of public information that the American people get? Is this a sort of critical test of the credibility of US journalism?

Hunter S. Thompson: I think definitely, but I'm not sure how much credibility US journalism really has given that we, well let's see, in 5 years we lost two Presidents and 1 civil rights leader to mysterious bombs or assassins or (wicky haired) strangers, and US journalism has never dug out the truth about that. One of my great shames as a journalist is that I still don't know who killed Jack Kennedy and its always bothered me, always haunted me. And no doubt that I don't know, and there's not much doubt that journalism doesn't know. And in a lot of ways, that maybe because we haven't asked. When I say asked, I mean the people who, well, most of the witnesses were killed weren't they?

Mick O'Regan: But did that need for certainty, is that what underpins your critique that US journalism has failed to provide in your life the key answers to the key events that you needed answered.

Hunter S. Thompson: I would say that and I would include myself and I worked as hard as anybody. The rules really changed in this country when Reagan came in and started these test invasions of other small nations. And when they decided to test the policy of no more battlefield access for any journalist. Vietnam was totally different and that's why we got that war ended. But (I went to) Grenada and that's in this book too. And you can see it forming right there, I'd never seen it before. I'd never seen journalists beaten up by military police and hogtied in the middle of the road. I'd never had to... I'd always had a press pass and access. But when the military - the Pentagon (inaudible) - they seize the advantage they never give it up. The military is still not allowing anybody else to know what's happening in Afghanistan or wherever they're fighting. It's always, you know, press releases, staged events.

Mick O'Regan: Hunter S. Thompson, do you think that the so called 'Gonzo' style of journalism which you've become famous and some would say notorious, do you think there is a specific legacy that what makes that kind of journalism work makes it more necessary at the moment?

Hunter S. Thompson: Well, I've never properly defined that term even to myself.

Mick O'Regan: What do you think it does mean?

Hunter S. Thompson: Well, from my point of view it means being very skeptical of the pronouncements of authority, and that as a gambler I would say that its a bit of an even bet that if you question the statements and truths of the white house and the government, more often than not you'll be right. And that you'll... I don't know, I just try to get as close to what I'm writing about as possible in order to find out what's really happening. A lot of times its weirder than it appears in my stories. The truth is usually stranger than fiction. In my life.

Mick O'Regan: Hunter Thompson, will you be at home watching the commemoration programs on 11th September? Will you be among the audience, which I imagine will number tens of millions of people who watch what happens in New York?

Hunter S. Thompson: That's a good point, that's a good question, and yes, it's soon, isn't it? No, I won't. I think I'll grab Anita and take a road trip. We'll just go off and have a little fun. Why sit around and watch that stuff? Now what I'm afraid of see is (inaudible) media cover for a sudden move on Iraq. And that little monster will come on TV and say 'Today the erh...' I can't say allied forces, I can't say coalition forces anymore, he'll have to say yeah 'Today we invaded Iraq'. Now, this seems so impossible I'd be happy to loose money on it. I'd bet on it. But it seems too logical for that kind of tactless thug mind set that this is the time to do it. I can't think of a better time if I was going to do it, I'll put it that way.

Mick O'Regan: Because the nation's effectively distracted by the commemorations in New York that its almost like saying quick while no ones really paying attention let's invade another country.

Hunter S. Thompson: Exactly. It's so cynical, and so stupid and so self-defeating in the long run that you'd think that no one in their right mind - or President - would plunge us into a war like that with no allies and... on the other side of the world.

Mick O'Regan: Just out of interest, I mean, for these comments to be broadcast on Radio National in Australia which is part of the ABC - part of the public boardcasting network - it occurs to me that you probably wouldn't hear those sort of comments on the other outlets. In America (inaudible) voice to your conspiracy theories about the role of the US government.

Hunter S. Thompson: Well I definitely will be when this book comes out in December. Now, unfortunately we're going to have that election up here in November. And that is going to be an extremely key election in time to... if you care about this country to really vote. And I've been working on this book for so long I feel like I've been in a decompression chamber of some kind.

Mick O'Regan: So obviously these very critical views will appear in your book. I suppose what I'm interested in asking is where else would people hear views like yours. I know their coming out later in the year in your book, but across the US media, radio and television and print where would people be now hearing these very critical comments such as the ones you've been making?

Hunter S. Thompson: Well, heh, where else hey? Where indeed? I know a lot of journalists across the country that would agree with me. But whether their writing this stuff and saying it in public I don't know. You can ask Maureen Dowd and see what she feels if I'm right or wrong. And, I can't really tell you anybody else. (inaudible) Boy, it really is lonely out here.

Mick O'Regan: Hunter S. Thompson, just as a final question and look its a big question but let me ask it anyway. I mean, how do you see from your position as a critic on the left of America journalism, how do you see the future of journalism in your country?

Hunter S. Thompson: Well, I have a very dim view of it I guess. Yeah, the future of journalism which I really thought was unbounded after Watergate but right now I (don't see any reason) to be optimistic about it. Because of the, erh, no just one huge scam they pulled off here but because of the everyday reality of journalism is celebratory driven. The news over here barely covers. I watched some BBC stuff and then some CNN foreign news - the one that, the world news that doesn't get into this country. I read the Paris Herald Tribune. That kind of news doesn't get through in this country. Now you have to read the New York Times very carefully and to maybe see what they're talking about. But I don't think my views would be seen as crazy or absurd or out of the question in most countries in the world.

Mick O'Regan: Do you ever worry, given the current climate in the United States and the surge in patriotism that's going on that you could be personally at risk from someone that took offense at your critique? That you own personal security might be threatened?

Hunter S. Thompson: Yeah, yeah I think about it. (inaudible) to be true.

Mick O'Regan: Have there been occurrences when you've been threatened?

Hunter S. Thompson: Oh yeah I'm constantly, I have been all my life. Yeah. My kind of journalism that goes with the territory. There are going to be threats, and there are going to be people very unhappy. And, knock knock, I don't think it is a matter of luck I think its a matter that I've pretty well stuck to my battle plan. And, they've tried to come after me, the federal government, all kinds of governments. I've got tons of warrants and courts - I have to keep like four of the finest criminal lawyers in the country on retainer. Yeah, you have to fight for these rights in this country, they didn't come in on any a... the stork didn't bring a bill of rights. A lot of people fought for it.

Mick O'Regan: So that's how you'd see yourself as fighting for freedom of speech in America?

Hunter S. Thompson: Absolutely.

(The version of the interview I downloaded ends here)

Mick O'Regan: US journalist, Hunter S. Thompson with a very personal and idiosyncratic view of September 11.

Haruki Murakami and The Jerusalem Prize

2009-05-19T15:29:00.005+07:00

A few months back I read on ABC website that one of my favourite authors Haruki Murakami had won "The Jerusalem Prize" for literature in Israel. The ABC article makes mention of Murakami's musing as whether he should accept the prize or not - "I asked myself - is visiting Israel the proper thing to do, will I be supporting one side?" The article does not provide an answer to this question - but obviously he did turn up and collect the prize. The article did, however, provide this rather quixotic quote: "If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg. Because each of us is an egg, a unique soul enclosed in a fragile egg, each of us confronting a high wall, the high wall is the system". I was bemused by this quote and wanted to read the transcript of the speech, but at the time I could not find it anywhere on the web. I wanted to know what Murakami had actually said at his acceptance speech in Israel given the deadly incursion into Gaza at the time that left upward of 1300 Palestinians and 13 Israeli's dead.

The original ABC article came from AFP, who in turn quoted the Jerusalem Post. Reading the Jerusalem Post article (which quotes more Murakami that the ABC article) I was not much clearer as to what Murakami had said. If he had given a personal opinion about the Israeli / Palestinian conflict. I got the distinct impression from the article that Murakami had not given a direct opinion, rather had embedded his opinion in an obscure wall / egg metaphor. The title of the Jerusalem Post article was 'Murakami, in trademark obscurity, explains why he accepted Jerusalem award'. The first lines of the article are: "Israel is not the egg. Confused? This might be the only explanation we will ever hear from Japanese bestselling author Haruki Murakami - and in true Murakami style, even it will be somewhat vague." A little later in the article, the author with tongue-in-cheek says "And here Murakami... making a clear statement that left no room of reinterpretation. No time for ambiguity, this." Tongue-in-cheek because he then quotes a slightly extended version of Murakami's wall / egg metaphor. It is not a clear statement.

Many weeks later I remembered that I wanted to read that speech and thought perhaps it had now been uploaded. It had been. Here are four places I found the speech:

http://www.47news.jp
http://www.salon.com/
http://www.haaretz.com/
http://fidanuar.blogspot.com/ (contains a Japanese translation)

I read the transcript and didn't have that much trouble figuring out what Murakami was saying. He was on the side of the Palestinians. Not that he was anti-Israeli (as people), but he certainly wasn't on the side of the Israeli State (or government). I also realized that the quotes in the paper were not very accurate, in fact they were paraphrasing. I'll take three examples:

Jerusalem Post: If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg.

Transcript: Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg. Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will do it. But if there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?

Jerusalem Post: We are all human beings, individuals, fragile eggs," he urged. "We have no hope against the wall: it's too high, too dark, too cold. To fight the wall, we must join our souls together for warmth, strength. We must not let the system control us - create who we are. It is we who created the system.

Transcript: We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, and we are all fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called The System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong--and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others’ souls and from our believing in the warmth we gain by joining souls together. Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow the System to exploit us. We must not allow the System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: we made the System.

Jerusalem Post: When I was asked to accept this award," he said, "I was warned from coming here because of the fighting in Gaza. I asked myself: Is visiting Israel the proper thing to do? Will I be supporting one side?

"I gave it some thought. And I decided to come. Like most novelists, I like to do exactly the opposite of what I'm told. It's in my nature as a novelist. Novelists can't trust anything they haven't seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands. So I chose to see. I chose to speak here rather than say nothing.

Transcript: A fair number of people advised me not to come here to accept the Jerusalem Prize. Some even warned me they would instigate a boycott of my books if I came.

The reason for this, of course, was the fierce battle that was raging in Gaza. The UN reported that more than a thousand people had lost their lives in the blockaded Gaza City, many of them unarmed citizens - children and old people.

Any number of times after receiving notice of the award, I asked myself whether traveling to Israel at a time like this and accepting a literary prize was the proper thing to do, whether this would create the impression that I supported one side in the conflict, that I endorsed the policies of a nation that chose to unleash its overwhelming military power. This is an impression, of course, that I would not wish to give. I do not approve of any war, and I do not support any nation. Neither, of course, do I wish to see my books subjected to a boycott.

Finally, however, after careful consideration, I made up my mind to come here. One reason for my decision was that all too many people advised me not to do it. Perhaps, like many other novelists, I tend to do the exact opposite of what I am told. If people are telling me - and especially if they are warning me - "don't go there," "don't do that," I tend to want to "go there" and "do that." It's in my nature, you might say, as a novelist. Novelists are a special breed. They cannot genuinely trust anything they have not seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands.

And that is why I am here. I chose to come here rather than stay away. I chose to see for myself rather than not to see. I chose to speak to you rather than to say nothing.

My apologizes for the long transcript quotes - but it shows clearly how the "quotes" in the newspaper articles were more paraphrases of sentences that occur in different paragraphs. The quotes from the Jerusalem Post are those that were picked up and transmitted around the world via AFP, The Guardian, ABC (Australia).

And how about the Jerusalem Post's claim of 'obscurity' and 'vagueness' regarding the wall / egg metaphor? Well, let's quote Murakami himself:

"What is the meaning of this metaphor? In some cases, it is all too simple and clear. Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high, solid wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them. This is one meaning of the metaphor."

Not the most obscure unpacking of a metaphor I've ever read. If you add the above paragraph with the 'I will always stand on the side of the egg' quote - then it isn't hard to say which side of the conflict Murakami's sympathies lie. Murakami then goes on to outline a deeper meaning of the metaphor where we as individuals are the eggs, The System is the wall. "We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called The System". It would seem to me that his sympathies lie with individuals (regardless of their religion, nationality or race). It wouldn't be too much a stretch to see The System as those institutional structures of State, of Capital, of Church that seem to exist independent of individuals - yet in whose name those individuals suffer war, poverty and intolerance. But that is me putting words into his metaphor now...

I think it obvious that the original Jerusalem Post article is deeply misleading - and in as much as it is - the international press that quoted only from the Jerusalem Post is equally misleading. Not all the international press, however, relied upon the Jerusalem Post. Haaretz published the transcript of Murakami's speech on their website. And reports I read in the Iranian press appeared to be able to quote Murakami correctly.

Regarding the transcripts of Murakami's speech - I discovered that there were in fact subtle differences in the online versions of the speeches that I came across. Murakami gave his speech in English (though not particularly easy to understand English - see the excerpt on the youtube video). The Haaretz version of speech was largely re-published word-for-word on Salon.com - though strangely with a noticeable exception. These two paragraphs didn't make it through to the Salon.com version:

"This is not to say that I am here to deliver a political message. To make judgments about right and wrong is one of the novelist's most important duties, of course.

It is left to each writer, however, to decide upon the form in which he or she will convey those judgments to others. I myself prefer to transform them into stories - stories that tend toward the surreal. Which is why I do not intend to stand before you today delivering a direct political message."

The 47news transcript also misses out the above two paragraphs, and also the following italicized section: "Any number of times after receiving notice of the award, I asked myself whether traveling to Israel at a time like this and accepting a literary prize was the proper thing to do, whether this would create the impression that I supported one side in the conflict, that I endorsed the policies of a nation that chose to unleash its overwhelming military power. This is an impression, of course, that I would not wish to give. I do not approve of any war, and I do not support any nation. Neither, of course, do I wish to see my books subjected to a boycott."

What is interesting about the 47news article is the note (in Japanese) from the person who posted it saying that he had edited the official transcript given out by the organizers of the Prize where it differed from his own recording of the speech. And there are a number of places where his transcript does indeed differ from that on the Haaretz site. Here are the main differences I noted (there are other smaller differences):

Haaretz / Salon - Diplomats and military men tell their own kinds of lies on occasion
47news - Diplomats and generals tell their own kinds of lies on occasion

Haaretz / Salon - One time I asked him why he did this, and he told me he was praying for the people who had died in the war.
47news - One time I asked him why he did this, and he told me he was praying for the people who had died in the battlefield.

Haaretz - And I am glad to have had the opportunity to speak to you here today.
47news - And I would like to express my gratitude to the readers in Israel. You are the biggest reason why I am here. And I hope we are sharing something, something very meaningful. And I am glad to have had the opportunity to speak to you here today. Thank you very much.
Salon - the whole last paragraph is missing from this version

I am not sure what to make of the differences between the transcripts. Is it possible that the organizers added in a couple of paragraphs into the speech to emphasize that Murakami was not making a political message? Was the transcript published by Haaretz the full script provided by the organizers? Was the 47news reporter working from his/her recording not putting in those sentences because they were never said? Or did the 47news reporter take those sentences out of the organizer's transcript by accident or design when editing the script? (However - those same sentences were removed in the Salon.com version which is otherwise near identical to the Haaretz verion). I have some faith in the 47news script in part because it does contain more text in the closing paragraph of the script - 3 sentences are not in the Haaretz version - 3 sentences that even the Jerusalem Post was able to quote almost correctly because they supported its case. Without finding a video or audio recording of the speech (and I have looked for one) I cannot say why these discrepancies have occurred.

One thing is for certain - Murakami was not expressing support for Israel's actions in Gaza. He later published an article in a Japanese literary journal Bungei Shunju strongly condemning Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. You can read an article about this at ynetnews.com. Unfortunately I have not been able to get a hold of this article - and being in Japanese would not be able to read it myself if I could. If anyone comes across a translation of the article - I would like see what he actually said.

Wedding 2.0

2009-04-24T14:24:00.004+07:00

At the beginning of the year we went to Japan to get married. In April, we returned to act out the celebration before a cast of dozens - it was a lot of fun. Tick. If you want to know more - go to flickr. Now back in Hanoi and I have descended back into 'on-line research' whilst continuing my favourite past-time of quitting cigarettes. Extended hours of alcohol fueled mania investigating the news of the world at the moment have ensued - but before we get to that. Book club update:

Whilst in Japan I read:

Footsteps by Pramoedya Ananta Toer

The last book in the Buru Quartet. I have mentioned this series before - so won't repeat myself here except for this: If you want to be part of a nationalist uprising, or wish to suppress one, you can learn lot from this amazing quartet and its author.

Perfect Spy - The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An by Larry Berman

Pham An was a Vietnamese Communist agent, and a reporter for Time Magazine, and this an excellent biography by a historian who sat down and talked with An and had access to his personal collection of documents. One of the things I am interested in is the media. One of the over-whelming messages in becoming a professional reporter is 'objectivity'. Now I believe quite seriously that 'objectivity' is a ideal that cannot ever be reached. My belief in this stems from my previous study in Philosophy of Science - where 'being objective' is taken very seriously, and found to be rather a complicated beast even for the hardest of sciences. In reportage, being objective seems to have various meanings. One meaning is 'balanced'. Another is 'authenticity'. What strikes me about Pham An is that he appears to have been an excellent reporter on many levels, as judged by his fellow (American) reporters, even after he was exposed as having been a Communist agent. He seemed to understand that his cover was based on being authentically good at his cover-story - being a reporter. He wasn't just acting as being a reporter - he was being a really good reporter - and had more reasons to be so than most. And by this account he successfully balanced his nationalistic duties, his reporting duties, and his duties towards his friends. That is quite a remarkable feat. There are many things in this book that made me think - and if nothing else - it is a damn fine spy read - the better for being based on fact. And also the guy was a chain smoker for life - he died of complications from emphysema. In my present state, I give honour to someone who died by these little 'tubes of joy'. (I have a feeling that 'tubes of joy' came from a quote by playwright Dennis Potter - though I am unsure. Watch this section from Dennis' 'The Singing Detective' that provides some insight into his view of the medical profession.)

Bias - A CBS Insider Exposes how the Media Distort the News by Bernard Goldberg

Whilst in Japan I visited the bookshop Bookoff that has a fine selection of second-hand English language books. I bought four. This was the first that I read. How 'Media Distort the News' - it grabbed my attention - this is what I have been currently interested in. And for only $2! Later when I read the blurbs I was confused... 'Again and again he saw that the news slanted to the left... no one listened. The liberal bias continued'. Hold on, the US TV news, slanted to the left? I needed to read the book to find out why I was so confused about the US mass media - I had always thought it was a little the other way... I read, and the book made me angry. I was also trying not to smoke, which made me angry, so perhaps it wasn't the book's fault? The basic premise of the book - the US mass TV news media slant the news coverage to the left. They continuously promote liberal observations and experts and ignore conservative observations and experts. This slant can be seen in reportage of: affirmative action, homelessness, HIV/AIDS, and men. My observations on objectivity have concluded that objectivity depends on your standpoint. And if you are a patriotic conservative in the mainstream American media - I think Goldberg is right. The media is biased to the left, a liberal bias. If you are a patriotic liberal in the mainstream of American media - I think their observation that Goldberg is a traitor to their efforts is correct. If you are not in the main stream American media - perhaps say in the media outside of the US - or perhaps a foreigner not in the media at all - you can agree with Goldberg that the main stream media in the US is only concerned about making a profit and that motivation seeps into every part of their coverage. Goldberg labels them as hypocrites. Sure. I would just like to extend the term to the 'conservative' section of the main stream US press as well. US main stream media coverage can seem strangely alien to people outside of the US - my guess is it feels the same to many within the US too.

The problem I had with the book was that it was purely domestic, aimed at the domestic audience. It barely mentioned the world outside the US. But where it did was instructive - the second last chapter 'Connecting the Dots... to Terrorism' the domestic media is lambasted... 'Why would journalists, so interested in connecting the dots when they thought they led to Rush Limbaugh, be so uninterested in connecting the dots when there might actually be dots to connect - from hateful, widely held popular attitudes in much of the Arab world straight to the cockpits of those hijacked jetliners?' (pg.211, italics in the original). And does this lead to a comment about US foreign policy? No. The dots are not connected from 'widely held popular attitudes in much of the Arab world' to possible reasons why many people may hold those attitudes. Which leads me to the next book I read...

Rogue State - A Guide to the World's Only Superpower - by William Blum

This book also made me angry - but more the anger I felt after reading The Shock Doctrine (Naomi Klein) and The Age of the Warrior (Robert Fisk). It is a very dense and concise summation of US Government's sins both overseas (largely) and domestically. If you want to 'connect the dots' here is a good place to start. Blum has been praised by both Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal - so it is easy to see by association whether you want to read this book or not. To me this is a valuable reference book - it has a detailed reference section - unlike Bias. Find the author's (in need of a web designer) site at: http://www.killinghope.org/. Why not check out his 'Anti-Empire Reports', but beware of liberal bias!

At present I am reading Noam Chomsky's 'Middle East Illusions'. What a left wing pinky I must be ;-) Whilst reading these books I have come across a number of strange and interesting websites. This man's blog (Bill Totten) links to many articles from American's not at all happy with where the USA is going. Note - he is based in Japan and has given up his American citizenship to become Japanese. I was surprised to see how many people in the current economic crisis see the seeds of the US downfall (especially see Cluborlov). I do not follow this line of thought. I feel the current economic problems are not accidental, not unforeseen, and are largely used as the instrument to move a lot of public money into private hands. Similar in line to the main thesis espoused by Naomi Klein. I don't see this as the last gasp of capitalism - just another grab - before the next one. For more insight into the US economic crisis check out The Baseline Scenario. If you are worried about bias in the media - perhaps this is a useful link: Source Watch.

Onto other things:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PnYb_ZvMzU
Curing Kleptomania
I once worked at a University - and sometime lecturers would want to put up videos of themselves talking about dull subjects - talking heads streamed to your computer. It was widely acknowledged to be a terrible format for educational purposes - but still continues today. Here is a short talking head video whose dull (and problematic in my eyes) subject is enhanced by a few simple cartoons. For any online educational institution that is forced to put talking head videos online - perhaps hire a cartoonist to make them more palatable, even entertaining.

http://www.ciachef.edu/
The Culinary Institute of America
Perhaps I've been reading too much reactionary material about the exploits of the CIA - but I took a double-look at this site before I could decide it was authentic. Was the web-designer possessed with a rarified sense of irony and humour? (Under Quick Links: Cooking Programs: Boot Camp, Flavors of Latin Cuisine [first 2 listed]). Or watch 'Cooking Secrets of the CIA', a PBS television show. The New Haven Restaurant Institute was created in 1946 as a 'vocational training school for returning veterans of World War II'. The Central Intelligence Agency was created in 1947. In 1951 the New Haven Restaurant Institute became the CIA (Culinary Institute of America). One of its notable alumni is Anthony Bourdain, whose book "A Cook's Tour" planted the seed in scratchindog's head all those years ago to move to Vietnam. To the paranoid, there are connections everywhere...

Röyksopp
Music pick of the week
I have been killed only once to my knowledge. That is, cut-off so entirely and utterly from another person as to have all the appearances of being a ghost. Not that long ago I quietly and privately held a one year wake of the day I heard the absolute last word from my assassin - 'disappointed'. I deserved the treatment - I was very bad - and the following utter silence was a devilishly successful punishment if that was its intention. Walking around Hanoi with my ishuffle on random - I kept hearing some fantastic music which I couldn't place. I have tracked down who it was from playlists from before my fall from grace. I still mourn the loss of my friend - finding this band is a small bright jewel found in the rubble over a year later. Röyksopp (Norwegian electronic music duo Torbjørn Brundtland and Svein Berge) use a sample in their music (e.g. around 2:04 minutes into the version of 'Röyksopp's Night Out' I have - but also in other tracks) that sounds exactly like the default alert for gchat. It has had me switching windows for days and wondering what the hell is going on. Tricky bastards...

Little Red Riding Hood
By Tomas Nilsson, music by Slagsmålsklubben
Beautiful - but note also Röyksopp's similar video concept which is also lovely.

off to Japan - goodbye web surfing

2009-04-03T18:57:00.003+07:00

I've been spending an inordinate amount of time internet researching - in other words - web surfing. Whole days slipping into oblivion as I trawl through the endless offerings that are out there. All wasted time, and time away doing nice, lovely things, like writing pithy blog entries.

I'm off to Japan in a few hours. A couple of weeks with wonderful distractions to keep me away from both blogging and web surfing. Could be a couple of weeks before I get back to the keyboard. To make up for it, here is a little of what I was wasting my time on before I left...

Media Stuff:

http://www.projectcensored.org/
Project Censored - The news that didn't make the News. My favourite media site of the week. Featuring the top 25 censored stories from each year. Newsworthy stuff that doesn't seem to make it to the main papers. I spent a whole morning reading through this stuff - love it! Read it. Get paranoid. You should be... and this is a long term serious project involving media students and submissions from around the world.

http://www.truthout.org/
A reader funded news agency that provides a "stable voice for independent journalism". I found many interesting and well written articles on this site.

http://www.aim.org/
Accuracy in Media - "for Fairness, Balance and Accuracy in News Reporting" - which stands to revert the overwhelming liberal bias in the US media. Ho hum. See for yourself how they do this. Note the Annual Report is 'Coming May 2008'.

http://mediamatters.org/about_us/
Media Matters for America - and from the other side a not-for-profit center "dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media."

http://dissidentvoice.org/
And one more step to the left - "a radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and social justice".

http://www.everything2.com/
I couldn't quite figure this site out. A place to post your opinions, writings or knowledge about pretty much anything. The postings are vetted by the users, and can be discarded by superusers. There is a voting system, and you can 'earn' some form of non-monetary credit for your writing. Individual pieces represent nodes, and nodes are connected by readers, and interestingly also automatically by analysis of the browsing patterns of readers. It is not a wiki - your writings are not editable even by yourself. I was interesting floating around in everything2 for a while - but I wasn't attracted to the format. It seems to float between a blog and wikipedia and I don't know where that is exactly...

http://www.nowpublic.com/
"Crowd Powered Media" anyone can be a reporter and have it broadcast here to the world.

http://www.trackernews.net/
A news aggregator with a particular focus on Health, Humanitarian work and Technology as it applies to both. Links to a wide variety of interesting sources - not just news sites. A project of the NGO Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disasters (InSTEDD).

People organizing together:

http://www.wikicrimes.org/
Users make reports of types and locations of crimes in Brazil on a map based wiki site. If enough people participate - then crime areas are clearly identified and pressure can be brought to bare on the government to address the issue.

http://www.addiopizzo.org/english.asp
Taking on the Mafia. A group of shop owners and merchants who are publicly banding together and refusing to pay protection money - or pizzo from the mafia. By forming a collective and publicly listing those merchants who refuse to pay pizzo they have started to gain public support. The public also have places to shop without indirectly funding the mafia.

http://www.barcamphanoi.org/
There have been barcamps all around the world now - and I wasn't only slightly disappointed to find out they were outside drinking meetups - but that is what bia hoi is for I guess. These are technological educational events - but without the formal structures of a conference. Often called 'un-conferences' there is no distinction between presenter and audience - everyone is expected to be willing to participate and present. This is Hanoi's attempt.

Art:

http://www.stickygum.com/slownotes
Postcards from Vietnam by Damien Frost (http://www.dfrost.net/). Very beautiful drawings, and a nice homepage.

http://ryoheihase.com
Some beautiful - if somewhat disturbing art. I particularly like his Repetition - strange dog men and rabbit men...

http://www.hotdocs.ca/index.php/audience/festival/
Hot Docs 2009 Festival. Documentary showcase in Toronto - why can't I go to Toronto?

Software:

http://www.thebrain.com/
Visual information management software. Again I was on a search for a way of organizing the diverse and scattered bits of knowledge, or sites, or books that I keep running across. I didn't end up downloading it - though I may yet do so. I couldn't face yet another software learning curve, and am still unclear as to what or why I want to organize. What is it I want to achieve - and given what I want to achieve, how can this facilitate it? I'm still stuck on the what.

german daze

2009-04-01T16:24:00.001+07:00

It has been a strange couple of days. We have had guests in town - well - people who know people who know one of us kind of guests - in short - strangers. However and whatever, we met and had dinner at Highway 4 on Hang Tre which is a fine eating establishment and the first stop to take out-of-town folk who you want to introduce to Vietnamese cuisine. Or at least, Vietnamese rice wine. Our guests were two Germans, one American, all architects. Lovely people on a one week whirl-wind tour of Vietnam. Afterwards we popped into tadioto - a place I have been able to wipe away inconvenient memories by the application of patent designed alcohol swabs. The next night, only one German, and we ate Japanese at Ky Y, and another stop at tadioto. The next night it was the full quotient of 3 again and fine French dining at La Badiane, then tadioto.

And today I spent a brief time at Cafe Cong helping a fine young sexually charged man with his WordPress site. As we sat there with our laptops, the owner of tadioto passes by making various rude gestures at us. Mistaking these as an invitation to pass by my-living-room-away-from-home, I come and sit at the black bar of contemplation to read, drink a beer and enjoy the afternoon in subdued shadows. And who should walk in but Gerhart Schröder and his entourage. Well - it is Hanoi and anything can happen on a school day afternoon when you are having a quite beer. Minding your own business.

On Friday late evening I fly to Tokyo to prepare for the celebration of the fait accompli - my marriage. Let us leave these German things behind us for the moment and think Japanese.

bia hơi and Toer

2009-03-27T11:35:00.003+07:00

Bia hơi Quán Sứ

Ten AM bia hơi, and I am not alone
Today the sun is shining
A faint blue struggles through the smog
To sit and drink and read and write
In the morning, on the street
Watching the traffic on a busy round-about
Smoke curls through my fingers
A woman sells me a safety razor
An ode to my enduring love of Hanoi
Why has the West forgotten these simple pleasures?

OK - its all very good and well of me to wax lyrical about the joys of bia hoi in the morning - but I am in a privileged position. My wallet usually contains half a months wages in Vietnamese terms (did I walk around in Australia with two grand in my pocket? no I didn't). And even the Westerners here look upon me with suspicion as the non-tourist who is unemployed. Whilst others toil at teaching English, I sit in the sun at a bia hoi and write poetry and read books. I've got to be careful... Envy will find me and strike me down. However, after half a life of loyal service to The University of Sydney I am going to take this period laying down. I always thought salaried work was a kind of blackmail. For this short period of time I shall enjoy the opposite. What shall I call it? Whitemale?

I have almost finished the last book in the Buru Quartet - by Pramoedya Ananta Toer (This Earth of Mankind, Child of All Nations, Footsteps and House of Glass). An extended story of colonialism and the birth of indigenous nationalism in Dutch Indochina around the the beginnings on the 20th century. A must read for anyone interested in colonialism, politics, economics and class repression. Or control of the media, or how to organize a resistance against oppression. A manual for popular uprising, showing many of the wrong paths to take, the perils and successes of social consciousness raising. Or a thesis on why which language you write in counts. There are many good book reviews online, so I shall just provide my imprimatur to these books. They are good. Get on your lazy arse and read them.

Many thanks to deepwarren and hellsexy who physically relayed the last two of the quartet from Oz to here. What would isolated readers do without the international readers' conspiracy?

tadioto

2009-03-22T15:48:00.001+07:00

tadioto
Originally uploaded by Scratchin Dog.

There were no strange dreams last night, only the abyss of a dead drunk sleep. This morning, the sickness. Coffee sickness. Cigarette sickness. Moving sickness. All the sickness a third level piggy-backed hangover can muster. The heavy pressed full-stop at the end of each of my last three days has a name, and its name is tadioto. Or perhaps it isn't a full-stop at all, but a long drawn out ellipsis...

Tadioto is a bar in the making. It isn't open yet, so I'm not going to tell you where it is. There are no customers, only consultants. I am the Jamesons consultant. The bar top is a long expanse of dull black rock, the kind of bar top that should only exist in a Murakami novel. I like to sit at the far end of the bar so I can gaze down its light absorbing length. It reminds me of the obelisk in 2001 - except you put your scotch on it. The lights are low, the music excellent and unobtrusive. The other occasional consultants are an eclectic mix of the scum of the earth - reporters, photographers and the like. The bar stools are unfeasible narrow and uncomfortable. If you want to sit at the bar it is hard work. If you can't take the pain of the stools, you are relegated to the easy chairs in the corner. Only the real drinkers, the professionals, sit at the bar. The consultants.

The young Vietnamese bartender - practicing for when the bar finally opens - is uncomfortably handsome. He is tall and elegant, and doesn't so much move as silently glide from space to space. He has that strange quality of being-almost-not-quite-there. A skill shared between the best barmen and ghosts. Or ghost barmen as in The Shining. His voice is barely audible, and often I wonder if we have conversed at all, or whether the entire communication has taken place by telepathy. On the top of my bar tab that he meticulously updates in impeccable handwriting he writes 'Mr Jamesons'.

And then there is the other one. The owner. I don't want to write his name, or even think it. Of late, each time I hear his name a rapid pain shots through my internal organs. My kidneys and liver strain like a terrified dog on the end of a chain. He does not write anything on my bar tab - and if he is behind the bar my glass is never half empty. This man is every alcoholics dream, every alcoholics nightmare. An assassin with bottles. This is why the consultants gather here. This will be the finest bar in Hanoi if it ever opens, but the bar is but the body. The man is the heart and mind. And like moths to the flame, so the consultants come and work towards their early graves, to listen to this man. Like some hideous parody of the sermon on the mount, the owner dispenses his wisdom and we lap it up like starving curs. We should be ashamed.

I do not look forward to the day when this bar opens. Part of me hopes it never will. Customers will clutter the place up, degrade it, sully it with their noise and pointless chatter. I much prefer the quiet company of the consultants, gathered around their despondent Jesus. Perhaps the only good thing that can come from this bar opening is it may just save my life.

the truth about my life in Vietnam

2009-03-12T15:42:00.003+07:00

I've been dealing with a lot of those 'what have you been up to over there' kind of emails of late. Vietnam sounds so exotic. You look like you are having a great time. Yadda yadda yadda. These questions bug me mostly because they encourage me to sit back and ask myself the same thing. What have I been doing over here? I don't work. I often don't even leave the apartment until dinner time. I am not writing my great Australia/Vietnamese novel. I'm not even sitting back staring at the wall with some kick-arse drug habit (cigarettes and booze don't count, if only because they are legal). So what is it I've been doing all this time?

I'll tell you what. I've been reading. Call it 'research towards the novel', or 'avoiding all my responsibilities'. I've looked at myself hard in the mirror and asked where all those hours, days, weeks, months have disappeared to. And it is reading. Whenever I can't face life, or reality, I pick up a book. And obviously I've had a lot of responsibilities to avoid. I've sat down and listed all the books I remember have read since leaving Australia in April last year. This list is in no particular order, and I've probably forgotten a few. However, there are only two books on the list which I felt happy to see the back of - the Paul Coelho and the Iain Banks - they didn't do it for me.

Bowl of Cherries - Millard Kaufman
The Age of the Warrior - Selected Writings - Robert Fisk
The Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein
Interpreter of Maladies (short stories) - Jhumpa Lahiri
This Earth of Mankind - Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Child of All Nations - Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Generation of Swine (reread) - Hunter S Thompson
Failed States - Noam Chomsky
The Zahir - Paulo Coelho
A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali - Gil Courtemanche
Shalimar the Clown - Salman Rushdie
Snow - Orhan Pamuk
Last Night I Dreamed of Peace - Dang Thuy Tram
Dirt Music - Tim Winton
A Wolf at the Table - Augusten Burroughs
Possible Side Effects - Augusten Burroughs
Running with Scissors - Augusten Burroughs
The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
In Evil Hour - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Short Cuts - Raymond Carver
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (short stories) - Raymond Carver
1967 This Is It! - Lowell Tarling
South of the Border, West of the Sun - Haruki Murakami
A Wild Sheep Chase (reread) - Haruki Murakami
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Birthday Stories (shoter stories - various authors) - ed Haruki Murakami
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
The Piano Teacher - Elfeiede Jelinek
The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck
Double Vision - Pat Barker
Underground - Andrew McGahan
A Song of Stone - Iain Banks
Two Caravans - Marina Lewycka
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian - Maria Lewycka
Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris
Strange Pilgrims - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Novel with No Name - Duong Thu Huong
A Viet Cong Memoir - Truong Nhu Tang
Ho Chi Minh: Selected Writings
Dumb Luck - Vu Trong Phung
Brazil - John Updike
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
The Tears of Autumn - Charles McCarry

currently reading:
Footsteps - Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard - Kiran Desai

A week of headaches

2009-02-16T11:45:00.002+07:00

There were two topics I wanted to write about last week, and both of them ended up being too hard for me. First there was that thorny personal issue of smoking - and the quitting thereof. Nearly four days I spent not smoking, with nicotine patch firmly planted on arse (alternate cheeks on alternate days). Then I snapped - and it has been a low dose of my wife's clove cigarettes ever since. I have achieved a marked reduction, and I know the next time I suck on a non-clove cigarette I'll think it is disgusting. However, my lungs are still torched and I feel like the loser I always feel like when I fail to quit yet again. The second topic was the Israeli / Palestinian conflict. Now why the hell would I want to touch that subject? A topic so complex, with such a mired history, that it is close to impossible to get the facts right. And even if by a miracle you could get the facts right, there are just too many people out there on both sides that will slam you down whatever opinion you may dare to put forward. Well there are two reasons I wanted to write something about it. The first was that I had just finished the near 500 page collection of Robert Fisk articles 'The Age of the Warrior'. The Israeli / Palestine conflict runs through that collection like a never ending car crash. I am deeply affected by books - and after obsessively reading these articles I was miserable, depressed, angry. To write something about it would be to help expunge the hopelessness and disempowerment I felt after finishing it. (The last book that provoked such powerful feelings in me was 'The Shock Doctrine' by Naomi Klein). The second reason was the constantly repeated double deatholizer figures from the last Israeli incursion into Gaza. 13 Israeli dead, 1300 Palestinian dead. Without going into further detail right now - there is just something horribly wrong in that ratio.

Yet I couldn't write anything about either topic. Damn it - I still can't. It is 9:30am and I've just come back upstairs after opening my first beer of the day. Just thinking about writing about these two topics has caused me to start drinking earlier than usual (only a few hours earlier - but still...) Before I left Australia I disposed of my rather large and disparate library. This is not the time to discuss that, only that I have few regrets about doing so. One of those regrets just occurred. I had a number of books by the fantastic author Céline (aka Louis-Ferdinand Céline, aka Louis-Ferdinand Destouches). He is responsible for my over use of ellipses... One of these books had a forward by Kurt Vonnegut Jr - one of the best forwards I've ever read. He complains that writing this forward is giving him continual headaches - I wish I could quote him correctly here. Celine has often been denounced as an anti-semite. Kurt Vonnegut was a great admirer of Celine's work - yet obviously was in no way an anti-semite. I can see the cause of the headaches. I've been having headaches all week. No all of them to do with nicotine withdrawal.

Back to a safe topic. Dreams. I've been putting on nicotine patches before I go to bed to cut off that morning cigarette urge at the root so to speak. And one of the side-effects of this is that my dreams have become much more vivid, intense, and personally interesting. Yesterday I started reading 'In Evil Hour' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Last night I was treated to a retelling of the first 30 pages of the book in a stylized filmatic form. The priest, the mayor, the judge made their appearances. The action was no longer in Spain, but contemporary Faulconbridge / Springwood - the towns in the Blue Mountains I grew up in as a teenager. In some parts the dialogue was spoken like an awful high-school performance of Beckett. Other parts were depicted as a cartoon (a la Kill Bill). And one beautiful entrance (the Judge) was sung in a distinctly Gilbert and Sullivan fashion. In parts of the performance I was one of the actors - in other parts I was watching the whole thing on my laptop whilst charging it up before the train ride to my old school. As often happens now when my high school slips into my dreams, I remember that I have graduated from University and no longer need to debase myself into going to my much disliked place of earlier learning. I remember feeling happy in the dream when I realized this - 'Great, I've got a day off!' - I remember thinking. I awoke with the dream not finished and had an urge to roll over and sink back down perchance to sneak another episode. After all, John Goodman had mysteriously made an appearance. My wife was making the coffee, however, and the guilt of my selfishness rolled me out of bed.

10:30am - second beer. The headache is back. The patch is my left cheek today. Why do I want to write about Palestine / Israel? Why don't I want to write about it? OK. Let's bite the bullet here (no pun intended). The Israeli military invasion of Gaza disgusted me. Like every time you see the vastly more powerful, the vastly more resourced antagonist, pummel, pound and annihilate a weaker opponent. Like when a pack of big kids beat up the small one. When a burly drunken husband smacks the shit out of his wife or daughter. Even trivially - in a professional boxing match when one opponent just far out-classes the other. When the cat plays with the half-dead mouse. There is something disgusting in watching naked power reigning down upon the weaker opponent. There is a myth about Australian's that we always bet on the underdog (it is a myth - there are plenty of Australians both as individuals and as a government that relish playing the role of the bully). Yet there is that visceral feeling of disgust I get when I see unmatched opponents. I guess I'm not a sadist at heart. 13 Israelis dead. 1300 Palestinians dead. The ratio does not diminish the deaths of those Israelis. A death-is-a-death-is-a-death. Irreversible no matter what your nationality, creed, religion, occupation etc... But that number - 1300. Almost 200 people died in the recent (on-going) Australian bushfires. This is, quite rightly, seen as a national disaster. The Australian papers have been overflowing on the subject. It is an awful number of deaths. More than 200 children were killed in the recent Gaza invasion. That number is mentioned here and there in the press, and is now quickly being forgotten. But a death-is-a-death-is-a-death...

Why don't I want to write about this stuff? Because there are plenty of people that as soon as you sympathize with the Palestinians will accuse you of being on 'their' side. To criticize the Israeli invasion of Gaza is synonymous with being anti-Israeli, and then it is just a short step to being anti-semetic, and then someone is going to bring up the Holocaust. And this familiar slope is just so much bullshit I don't want to get dragged into. Don't I know that 'they' were firing rockets into Israel? Yes - I know that. Does it justify killing 1300 people. No. Am I supporting those terrorists Hamas? No, I am not supporting the democratically elected Hamas government. When Hamas (or other factions) kill Israelis (or other Palestinians) I don't support it. Believe it or not - you can hold a position where you neither support what the Israeli government does, or the Hamas government, or the Fatah government, or the US government. There is a position where you don't support any of the major players - but still find the sheer death and suffering caused unbearable to watch. And find the lies, misinformation, demonizing and endless justifications from all sides sickening. And this is when the headaches start. So much easier not read about it, not think about it, not try to understand. Because when I try to understand - I get sick. And why should I get sick over something that I largely cannot do anything about? It's too late. I already know about it - and it has been banging around in my head for weeks, months, years - and the best I can do is try to learn why this happens. Why this continues to happen. And what it is about humans that makes this - and so much much worse - possible. Robert Fisk has just published another column which makes a fair stab at why writing about this stuff is something most sane people would want to avoid. It is so much better than what I can do.

Is this my third or my fourth beer now? It isn't quite midday. I should be ashamed of myself. I want a cigarette - but I asked my wife to take all the open packets out of the house to her workplace this morning. My headache is real and getting worse. Screw this writing shit. The next piece is going to be about another dream. Who reads this stuff anyway? (And if there happens to be some Vietnamese government censor out there who does read my blog - keep up the good work - I hope you are getting something out of it!).

I want to tell you about a girl...

2009-02-03T13:17:00.002+07:00

A long time ago - before I even turned 18 - I fell in love with a girl. She wasn't the first girl I fell in love with, nor the last. Yet at the time I felt very deeply that I was in love with this girl. She came from a well-to-do Hong Kong / Australian family. My own family was a traditional long distant import from Europe that in the last generation had crawled into the middle classes. She was beautiful in the way that symmetrically faced young asian women often are to young white males. More than beautiful, however, she was smart. No, not smart. Many people are smart. I was smart. She was ridiculously intelligent. One of the best of the elite students in the country that year. Great at mathematics, great at English, great at wherever her intelligence was directed. And more than smart, she was kind, modest, with a subtle humour and flawless manners. Entirely dedicated to her family. Everything that a well-to-do family could ever hope for in a daughter. It was hardly surprising I fell in love with her - the only mystery was that so many others hadn't. Or perhaps they had, but she never had a boyfriend, nor seemed to show any interest in getting one. Perhaps like me, suitors were simply too intimidated to actually express their feelings to her.

I dreamt of her last night - and this morning it has brought back a handful of disjointed broken memories. Memories of non-connected events that no more create a picture of her than the reflections of a broken mirror. Indeed, like that broken mirror, it shows nothing more than a collection of miniature reflections of myself rather than any image of her at all.

I cannot exactly remember how we met. I cannot remember the first time we talked. Our meeting was, I do know, through a mutual female friend who I shall call Sally. I remember the only time I ever went to this girl's house was with Sally. It must have been my 2nd year in University. We had all know each other for quite a while then - and we were allowed to sleep over in the room outside the girl's bedroom. We all stayed up late that night, but at some point the girl had to go to bed and retreated to her bedroom and shut the door. Sally and I were outside, perhaps on a fold-out bed or sofa and we started fooling around. Both of us were still virgins back then, and rarely did either of us have this opportunity, this night-time proximity with the opposite sex. I cannot imagine that this fooling around went very far. Kisses and wandering hands under clothes and giggles and arousal. However, we must have been giggling a lot and when we heard the noise from the room we both stopped dead. Behind the closed door the girl was crying - sobbing into her pillow. We both felt bad. And then we both felt even worse, for neither of us could bring ourselves to go comfort the crying girl. Our friend. The girl I was supposed to be in love with. It was the first time I realized that the girl who was everything a well-to-do family could ask for was also extremely lonely.

Another memory - much later - now I must have been in 4th year University. By now I had lost my virginity (by coincidence - and disastrously - with Sally). A year and a half in a private residential college had turned me into a drinker. Third year University in the United States had reinforced my taste for alcohol, introduced me to soft drugs and broadened my knowledge of flirtation, love, obsession and sex. I was now a tutor at a famous University whilst I hammered away on a minor dissertation and attended classes on philosophy and sociology of science. The girl was now clearly a woman, and more than half way through her medical degree. She still had not ever had a boyfriend. I was still in love with her. I had still never told her so. I was a more confident creature now, and after pacing up and down the rooms of my share-house for days on end I thought this was the time! I really had to face rejection and ask her out.

We were the type of friends who did not meet often - but when we did it was usually alone and we would just talk for hours. And those talks were fresh, honest, interesting, frank, and simply some of the best conversations of my life. It was unusual for me to phone her up - but not unheard of. So without really knowing how to ask her, I picked up the phone and dialed her number. She still lived with her parents. I have no memory of how I asked. I imagine that a few seconds after asking I had no memory of how I asked. But ask I did, and the answer I remember clearly. It wasn't an out-right rejection, and certainly it wasn't an acceptance. It was simply that it wasn't possible. Someone had asked her out yesterday - and she had said yes to him. After four years of keeping my mouth shut - the possibility had slipped by less than 24 hours before.

I was devastated. Not on the phone of course, that would have been impolite. But once that receiver went down I was in shock. The irony of the timing. Whilst I was pacing up-and-down someone had beaten me to the question. Not just someone even - but one of my own bloody students. I had a third of a bottle of scotch in my room - I drank it listening but not listening to Nick Cave on repeat. My friend and neighbour came to enquire what was going on - as one does when you hear your neighbour playing Nick Cave on repeat. God bless him, he brought me over another bottle of scotch and left me alone to stare at the wall and continue drinking. This was the first time, but not the last, that I had the experience of drinking to excess without the pleasure of getting drunk.

Jump forward another year. During the early months of a PhD degree that I would never finish. The girlfriends and sexual encounters I had had were starting to pile up - partly helped by my having learnt basic massage a number of years before, but not yet the ethics that should go with that skill. The woman came over to my house to talk - as we always had before - but this time I ended up giving her a back massage. And there she now was underneath me - her naked back under my caressing hands - the curve of her breasts pressed into my mattress - the long black hair swept in a whirlwind over her left shoulder. She was still going out with my now ex-student. I was still insanely jealous of him - though to my credit he did receive the excellent marks he so fully deserved from my class. And here was his girlfriend, the object of my years of desire, all but naked underneath me, on my bed, in my room. And I know my heart beat wildly. And I know my hormones were boiling. And I know there was a deep intimacy between us at that moment that bordered on the sexual. And I, and I, for once, did not take advantage. And once finished I climbed off her, and she half turned to me and said 'she wanted to ask me something...' and then she didn't ask. The question died in her throat and lived forever in my mind as the thing unasked. The question that I wish to this day she had asked. Then she was dressed again, and the day was for us over.

I'm not sure if it was months later, or years, but she got married to the same man who had asked her out a day before I had asked her. I was at the wedding reception. I left the Great Hall of the University where the reception was held, barely saying goodbye to the proud parents standing at the grand entrance and I ran. I ran to the quadrangle a few minutes away, crumpled into one of the sandstone arches and wept uncontrollably. A demented self-pitying wretch - I wept for what could never have been. Ever.

Years later we met for lunch. She was now a doctor in a hospital. We ate Japanese and later walked down to a park near to where she and her husband lived. As always, our talk was frank and wide reaching and I talked of some of the events remembered above. I said how much I had loved her. And she said that it wasn't love. That I hadn't known her well enough to love her. And perhaps, perhaps, she was right.

Compiling the final list of invitations to my own wedding celebration I crossed her off the list of people to invite. She and her husband had moved to the United States. She has already had her first child and is now a medical specialist. I know this last fact because I did some google stalking whilst compiling the invitations. I haven't contacted her for years - I haven't got a contact email, address or phone number. I would have to go through Sally to get one, and since I didn't when I heard she was pregnant, when I heard she had had a child, I didn't now. I would love to meet again, to talk, the engage once more with that clear sharp insightful mind. But to ask her to my wedding celebrations seemed just one-step-too-much-all-about-me.

And then last night I had the dream. She was as beautiful as I had always seen her - with white braiding through her jet black hair. Hair that in the harsh light of Sydney reflected so bright that it almost seemed white itself - a observation I mentioned to her. Her smile was pure, unabashed happiness. She was walking with me, my parents just ahead of us. We were walking away from the wedding rehearsal - our wedding rehearsal. My father had jokingly asked why she was marrying me - and she jokingly said 'because of all the great sex we shall have.' And the strangest thing was that it was all entirely news to me. Somehow I had been transported to a world where this woman - this woman I loved for so long was actually about to marry me. Then she playfully kissed me and I suddenly thought of how I had wanted and desired and prayed for that kiss so long.

I woke up next to my own perfectly real wife. The wife who I love very dearly and I lay dazed, turning the dream over in my mind. What the hell was that about? How could my subconscious be so unendurably cruel as to put this upon me? To use a past love - was it love? - to create a gorgeous perfect moment - to create what could never ever have been - and impale me upon it. Deep down, do I really hate myself this much?

rolling dreams

2009-02-02T09:28:00.002+07:00

I've been dreaming again. Nights and early mornings of multiple features that leave me confused and wondering what is going on up there. And why my subconscious is so much more imaginative that my feeble day time consciousness is...

I woke up on the side of the road - half under a parked car. The sharp cold gravel stuck to my naked skin and had to be forcibly brushed and picked off. Some time after I realized I was actually wearing black shorts - which was good. I started walking home - possibly to the old family house in Faulconbridge. I found useful objects along the way - wire and clips that you hang pictures off the wall with. Later, I found a pile of useful discarded tools on the grass verge. Screw-drivers, drill bits, saws etc... I thought these would be useful and started to collect them up. In the back of my mind I could see they would be useful in creating ART. Then this bloke turned up who obviously owned this stuff - who was just leaving it there whilst getting more tools - and I put the load down again. I turned to walk away then stopped. I turned and apologized to the bloke and stuck my hand out to shake his - which he accepted. A few polite words, then I was back walking home.

Arriving home I found the house abandoned. The front door had the remains of some kind of attempt to barricade it shut - the door was open. Walking into the first room down the corridor I was met by the family red setter who bounded madly around the room as red setters do no matter what mood they are in. Half his tail lay on the floor, a foot of bedragled red hair that had a surprising weight to it when I picked it up. I had the impression that he had gnawed his own tail off. As I walked through the house the feeling of abandoment of continued. The backroom was littered with more red dog hair, piled high by the wind from the open back door. More signs of failed barricades. A large plastic tub filled with fetid liquid and amophous white globs propped the back fly screen open. Abandonment. Invasion. Fear.

This was one of a number of dreams from last night. Each I vividly remembered as I lay semi-conscious, mulling over the contents of my mind. Figuring out which houses were represented, which people. Now, of course, all the others are forgotten. If I am lucky, some random object or thought will resurrect one of them in my memory today - but more likely they are gone for good now. Perhaps I should keep the notepad next to the bed like so many people do - jot down these strange and disturbing images.

Lucky's Cafe

2009-01-24T07:46:00.003+07:00

Off to Bali - taxi at 6am - might as well stay up all night drinking bad scotch except for a power nap on the sofa. Took a walk down to my old house a few blocks south at 3am. Even then, women in conical hats were cycling produce somewhere - the odd motorbike not slowing down at intersections horn blaring into the darkness. A green suited cop glaring at me from his mini-stool on the corner. Nothing happening. The streets at this time are fairly clear - not like the Tet Offensive of the day where the usual traffic chaos has been superseded by traffic suicide. Unless there is a traffic cop trying to collect Tet bribes on the corner - then the traffic lights are now ignored. Two streams of perpendicular traffic somehow merge through each other continuously... I have to walk through in the periods of jam where a bus (the kings of the road and not to be fucked with) breaks the flow. Anyways - get to house - pick up 3 bottles of mosquito repellent and some good Australian literature, drink a can of Beer Lao that has been sitting in the fridge for a while, and then home.

But now at Lucky's Cafe - Hanoi International Airport. Where you can get pho, beer, strong coffee, and can smoke at will - and god bless wifi. Since it is early I have gone for the strong coffee (liberally strengthened with bad scotch from a water bottle - iced tea I calls it). Akiko goes for the pho bo, I for the nem hai san (seafood fried rolls). Downstairs in the airport foyer we bumped into Vanessa. She is leaving Hanoi for the first time since March - for a 24 hour romp in Bangkok. She went to the infamous nightclub Solace in Hanoi last night - on a boat on the Red River. And just like me when I have gone there - lost not only her memory, but her mobile. Unable to contact her friends who she was going to travel to the airport with, she has come assuming they will not wait for her. One night in Bangkok - god speed you well love. Then we bump into Paul and Chung - the intriguingly grumpy English MIT lecturer and the hard-core Vietnamese kindergarten manager. Off to Da Nang to meet Nick, Queenie and others to enjoy the fine food of Hoi An. Paul bitches about the airport, but its kisses and pats on the shoulder and good trip and goodbye.

Lucky's cafe - how I love you and your service with free attitude. Hanoi International - one of my favourite airports in the world (because of the cheap alcohol, the free wifi, the allowed smoking). Goodbye dear Hanoi - who is damp, cold and absorbed in Tet. Hello to Bali with its sweaty hot days and hot sweaty nights. Will I be possessed by an anilmalistic spirit like last time? Or have some American come and dig up a jar of weed from the floor of my bathroom? Who knows? I love Bali too, and am glad for a week off to rest and read. I believe this is my honeymoon!

Here comes the change from the bill - there goes Akiko to challenge it. We must go, we must go. Till we meet again Lucky's...

I'll show you the life of the mind

2009-01-22T11:09:00.002+07:00

Yesterday I re-watched the disturbing Cohen brother's film Barton Fink. One of the most gripping images in the movie is John Goodman with a shotgun running down the hotel corridor as it erupts in flame behind him shouting 'I'll show you the life of the mind, I'll show you the life of the mind'. It is a pity that the DVD makers used that scene for the intro to the menu page - rather than letting viewer be surprised by it in the natural course of the movie. However, it wasn't that scene which has stuck in my memory over the years since I first watched this movie. What I distinctly remember is the very final scene of the film. A woman sitting on the beach, her arm crooked as she shades her eyes to look out over the sea. The woman - the beach - the pose - is all exactly as in a photograph Barton has been looking at on his hotel wall since the beginning of the movie. In the final few seconds of film a seagull flies across the background, and about half way across the screen drops like a stone into the sea. I remember thinking when I first saw it - how did they do that?

Except what I distinctly remember is wrong. The bird isn't a seagull, and it doesn't drop dead into the sea, but dives in like fishing birds do. You see it pop back to the surface just before the credits roll. And the woman on the beach isn't exactly like the one in the photo. It is very obviously a reference to the photo - but on the hotel version there is a beach umbrella which is absent in the recreation. I have described this scene to various people over the years - and now realize that it was my description that is what I remembered - not the scene itself.

I am writing up an invitation list for my wedding celebrations. I drew up a list of all the people over the decades who have meant a lot to me (even though many of them I haven't been in contact with for years). Since the reception space is limited - I then have to whittle the list back down - which is a horrible soul-destroying job to do. Even worse, however, is the spiral of nostalgia and memories that are being invoked by the exercise. And even worse still is realizing that great iceberg chunks of memory must have been breaking off and melting away into the sea of alcohol I have been adrift in for so long. I have been left paralyzed trying to remember the last names of once good friends - sent trawling through email archives - performing acts of internet stalking to fill in details. And how much of what remains has been Finked? How much resembles events and people past and how much is fantasy recreations of the life I wish I had had? Last night I dreamt that I was married to a different woman - a girlfriend from maybe a decade ago - one of the people on the list. My dream seemed to be saying 'I'll show you the life of the mind'.

sicko

2008-09-13T14:55:00.001+07:00

sicko
Originally uploaded by Scratchin Dog.

The Asian Canine Flu has got hold of me. Scratchindog is going down and I don't know where the spiral will end. Hot, hot fevers. Chills as I clutch blankie around me and call out deliriously for nursie. Every movement is an effort - only the walk the to the bathroom seems urgent enough to move me. And yet, and yet, with the exhaustion and tiredness sleep evades me.

5am I sit in front of the computer looking at the news - smoking half a cigarette (down to 3 a day) - drinking a wee scotch to ward of the germs. My mind a heaving festering jumble of thoughts and emails to be posted, failed quotes to negotiate, of trips coming up. Hurricane Ike is about to slam into Houston and people are ignoring compulsory evacuation orders. Do they think god will save them? Do they think their houses will be burgled by scuba wearing underwater thieves? It seems a harsh way to raise the general educational level by letting the most stupid die. Is 'compulsory' too big a word - and why are they not forced out? A disaster about to happen.

It is almost a week since I returned from Laos to attend the lavish and extremely fun wedding reception of Hanh and Steve. One of the highlights of Hanoi social life for the year. Alcohol rained down from on high, children hacked ice swans to pieces, men wrestled on the floor, there was food, dancing and a fine array of eclectic fashions. Sunday was a quiet day among the ex-pats in Hanoi. Mumbled thanks to gods unnamed that the last weekend of organized liver damage was done and life could return to normal levels of inebriation. And so they have.

The week since has been spent trying to become a real citizen of Hanoi - which means having a bank account here so I can stop being financially raped by my bank in Australia. My future landlady (for I move in a couple of weeks now) only accepts crisp $100 US notes. It's OK for some isn't it? And don't kid yourself, I have seen the US and Vietnamese Dong notes rejected for being too crumpled, or god-forbid, having a small tear in them. Their is a belief that these minor blemishes render the money not worth the paper its printed on. Which for the lower denominations of Dong is probably true.

resignation and escape

2008-08-25T09:24:00.001+07:00

resignation
Originally uploaded by Scratchin Dog.

Hanoi days are here to stay by the looks of it. Resigned from my job in Sydney to escape the terror of returning to become institutionalized again. How do you wake up to find you've been at the same University for 18 years? That is half my life.

So SE Asia it is for the present. And back to the horror that is looking for work - my most disliked activity next to eating my own puke. Well - almost - looking for work that is. In fact, have esaped from Hanoi for few weeks to travel around Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. My first few days in Bangkok were spent in 5 star luxury at the Sukhothai Hotel. Buckets of ice and plates of lime bought by room service to pad out my Saphire Bombay gin and Tonic. Beds like solid clouds, pillows more fluffed than any porn star. Even the Asahi brought to me by the pool came with its own individual ice bucket. The pool assitant smiling in that subservient way whilst he directed the shade umbrella over my head and I tipped my cigarette into the solid brass ashtray. This is the life.

Well not anymore! From 5 star to no star as I awoke this morning on the rock hard mattress of the New Vuang Thong Hotel. The mattress could be described as soft only if compared to the pillow. All I want from room service here is that resupply us with toilet paper. Drunken screaming Indian neighbours, moudly life-size pictures of 70's holiday beach resorts and an air conditioner that sounds like a small prop plane. This is more the life I'll be living for the next three weeks of travel through Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. At least I still have some of the gin left, sneakily transferred into a plastic water bottle for easy travel. I'll post when I can, upon what I can. End of dispatch.

blatant advertising

2008-05-14T11:48:00.005+07:00

I am aghast at how incredibly awesome this short film by BLU is. I guess part of the awe is thinking just how long this would have taken to pull off...

too many days of wondering where i am when i wake up...

2008-05-14T09:05:00.003+07:00

I have a feeling of being unproductive - which is not healthy in the professionally unemployed. So I have decided to make a list of things I have learnt in the last day:

1) Learnt that 'learnt' is British English but in the US they 'learned' things... Which to me sounds like they did learn something, then forgot it... I learned many things as a young man... Whereas if you learnt something, you still have it floating around your cranium somewhere. Explains a lot about Americans really.

2) How to make a movie with massive copyright infringement... but at least the video is mine.

3) i) Đây là cái gì? (What is this?)
ii) chuếnh choáng (hangover)
iii) đắt thế! (expensive)
iv) dừng lại (stop)
v) lấy vợ (take a wife)

4) Found that making your own wall paper in Vietnam will be convenient and affordable.

5) Realized that adding scotch to your morning coffee is not considered as 'sophisticated' as I thought it was. But it still tastes nice.

6) Understood that wherever you are in the world, someone will still steal your lighter.

7) Learnt that when Vietnamese say 'iloemyieanmyieoeshiein' they mean 'I love my wife and my wife loves white wine'.

Enuf said. Time to take a break.

blog self-identity crisis

2008-04-30T17:46:00.004+07:00

As has been my want this week, I have spent yet another day mostly at home. I do not immerse myself in the exotic oriental bustle of the Old Quarter, nor recline in my cyclo as he doggedly peddles from one cultural marvel to the next. I potter, I cook, and trace various ingenious routes around an apartment whose multiple doors allow you to walk in a figure eight-and-a-half. I spend grossly unequal times looking at a computer screen and gazing over West Lake. Mornings are mostly spent chatting to the peeps online. Returning emails to the peeps back home. Updating scratchindog's flickr site and writing in my diary. That is writing with a pen. Onto paper. In cursive script.

The hand written diary. The romantic looking pages full of English trained whirly-curly-ness. You would think that is where the juice is. Alas, it isn't so. My feeble organic memory has its mnemonic hands quite full with just standard day-to-day necessities of life. It tends to, after a few days, dump vast stretches of virgin memories into the trash bin. Even worse, it produces Reader Digest condensed versions of those that survive the cleaning and keeps them for Catherine the Great village purposes. The hand written diary, disappointingly for my many future biographers, is a simple narration of where and when with whom did what. Remembering the basic facts of the past becomes the physical act of turning pages. This is not mirror of the soul stuff. There are no interpretations of the shadowy inhabitants of my seething passionate subconscious. Do you know how long it takes to write in long hand? When is the last time you wrote two full pages by hand?

Friends claim that they want to know what I am doing here. They appear to show an interest in the day-to-day stuff of my life. More interest than I show in their lives anyway. Should I ditch this hand writing nonsense and post it on the blog instead? Sacrebleu! No way! It is way too boring. Do they want to hear a list of names of people who are not introduced? Do they want to see addresses and place names faithfully noted but not described? The written diary is a scaffold, tied off along a series of temporal-space locations with objects and people dangling from it. It is a tool for me to explore the trajectory of my past. To choose a spot and orientate myself with the help of a few notes. It assists that strange resonance construction method the brain appears to use to remember the past with us: Create a model of a situation in your mind. A few particular folk in a particular place doing some generic action at some time. Take your model down to Reflection Beach on the shore of Memory Sea and show the sea your model. Does the sea resonate with your model? Given the sea's layered and compressed and moth-eaten experience, have you provided it with something it can work with? Is there a form of empathy? If so, you can watch those salty tendrils reach out and clothe your model with the whole gamut of emotion and sensation, mood and context. The sea will paint-in details, extend the framework, even do some renovations (to produce a nice holistic effect). This beautiful construction may have nothing at all to do with an event in your past, but it can certainly pass itself off as one. Or it can indeed faithfully depict a scene from somewhere far far away and a long time ago. I guess it depends on your model and your relationship with the sea. Tangents aside, my hand written models for Memory sea are not the stuff for an audience.

If my friends or parents or workmates or hairy-man lovers of the internet want to know what I am doing day-to-day, they are not going to read my blog. The are going to look at scratchindog's flickr site. If a picture is a thousand words, then my word count on flickr is pretty impressive. Here you see the people, are immersed in the bars, ogle the food! And if you really really must have words to get your jollies, there are pithy titles and sometimes humorous mini-descriptions to give you context and local flavour. Yes... that's blogging your life. Who cares for opinions when you have pictures? Who cares for your deep existential self-destructive abyss of self-loathing when you can make a witty word play on bòng dền? If the diary is my tool for divining the past, then flickr is my public relations department of the present. Here is the exquisitely crafted propaganda of my life. And in a certain bent of mind, watching a slideshow of the last three years of my edited life can be enlightening narcissistic entertainment.

Obviously the scandal, gossip, licentiousness and horror doesn't make it directly onto flickr. Blog worthy? Yes! And many people make a fine life out of it too. But being the discrete, polite, realpolitik, Machiavellian coward that I am - I cannot do it. I need these friends (my dear dear friends) who are closest to my heart in all the world. I trust, respect and value these people. If they all knew the details I'd be lynched - and who wants that? No, no, no. The detail is a potent, often fatal, herb that requires a specialist hand in distribution. A little here, a little there, mixed with the right accompaniments. Never too much for any one person (it builds up in the mind like mercury in the body, and at critical levels can cause similar physical malfunctions). However all the little morsels are eventually put out there into the world. My mornings of endless gmail chats and email replies are the rafts upon which these little creatures are sent out into the world. Cute little chaps by themselves or in small fluffy clumps, but if all brought together, like gremlins, they would kill us all. I do not need my blog as my coffin.

So each morning I now have to feed three functional word mouths - the Guide, the Bard and the Ugly. (Ed note: This pun is so bad it should be removed, but because it could possibly be reformed into a joke about New Zealanders or the Irish we have left it in.) What hope is there for the fourth cousin without a job? The poor little blog who stands at the window of morning looking in at the others gorging themselves. I do not know, I do not know. For the meantime it will have to shiver in neglect. Get the odd bone thrown at it. Scramble for attention in those glorious author drunk moments when anything seems like a good idea. All three members of the global audience will just have to make do until a purpose is found...

and the rain came tumbling down...

2008-04-22T15:11:00.003+07:00

So today I met up with a friend for lunch at Koto. Koto is a not-for-profit restaurant and vocational training program for disadvantaged youth in Vietnam. It has recently opened its new and larger premises at 55 Văn Miếu opposite the Temple of Literature. The ground floor has a nice laid back café atmosphere, though we choose to dine in the comfortable lounge/bar area on the next floor up. I believe if you keep going up, then there is roof top seating with a good view over the Confucian Temple across the road. There is a good mixture of both Continental and Vietnamese fare available - all appealing in both flavour and presentation. Prices are reasonable for ex-pats (60,000 đ or $4 for a roast duck salad - always a favourite of mine), and the atmosphere is of quiet understated luxury. It also has wifi!

It was sprinkling as I left, and my friend was concerned about me walking away in the rain. 'Haha - this is nothing!' I was getting wetter from the sweat coming out than the rain coming in. I walked along Nguyễn Khuyến, then Hàng Bông back into the Old Quarter, and finally took a right down Hàng Trống towards Puku cafe. Puku is an excellent ex-pat hangout, especially if like me, your wireless at home is crap. A lot of my time here has been spent finding good wifi points outside of my house to continue my life of aimless surfing and procrastination. Puku was set up a number of years ago by a Kiwi (who is really lovely - but probably doesn't need my publicity). It has changed hands since, but not the menu. They do a largely western breakfast, lunch, dinner menu - and they do it well and at a reasonable price. But the reason to come here is it is comfortable, the upstairs floor is particularly open to the air, and they don't seem to mind how long you sit here on your computer sucking back Halida's and smoking. I looked up the weather forecast and it says scattered thunderstorms. Sure, whatever! Except - bang! - it began. Rain like the rain back in Sydney. Rain that makes the trip home on the back of a motorbike taxi look particularly suckful and uncomfortable. Rain that has just started leaking through the roof onto my laptop keyboard... This blog entry has been brought to you by the rain. I've got no where else to go now.

west lake haiku

2008-04-18T19:05:00.002+07:00

above west lake sit
watch bats swoop towards their aim
tabula rasa

Geckos

2008-04-16T12:50:00.002+07:00

Geckos live in my apartment. Small and pale, they cling and move on the ceiling and the walls with their splayed sucker like feet. They make a distinctive popping sound that helps mark the passing of my time. The other place I have seen geckos is in the bottom of large bottles of rice wine, thus making gecko wine. This wine supposedly has all kind of medicinal properties, though its primary effect seems to get people wildly drunk. Recently at bia hoi, amidst the endless rounds of cheap weak beer, many bottles of gecko wine were ordered. The wine was poured into small glasses, perhaps two thumbs widths high, and knocked back in one after some incomprehensible toast. Eight glasses violently clinked together in almost well-aimed synchronicity, sending a small fountain of wine into the air and down hands, wrists and forearms. Repeat. In the collective consciousness of Gekkonidae I think they know the fate that awaits a minority of their family. The sound they emit is exactly like the sound of brain cells imploding.

hanoi space

2008-04-09T10:47:00.002+07:00

It is hard to conceive of the structure of Hanoi unless you have a Borges bent to your thinking. There are the big streets that the tourists trot down, weaving between the street cookers, bike repair men and motorbikes. The shops and houses appear to make a unbroken chaotic frontage extending as far as you stumble. But look closer and scooters dart from darkened spaces between shop fronts, people slide in and out of these unseen passage ways. Descend into these tight spaces and you find other alleys, passage ways, squeeze spaces. And from these diverge even more conduits of human traffic with walls that tower four stories above, and doors opening onto living cum workspaces that themselves are divided up into human sized pods where inevitably there is a mattress or straw mat for rest. Even then it continues subdividing so the cats have their spaces, and the rats theirs as well. Each square formed by the intersection of four roads is a termite nest of humanity and more - not even just in the floor plan - but stretching up into the sky. Steps, spiral staircases and ladders extending into the gloom of the air. A fractal space folding into and onto itself repeatedly and endlessly. Each block a cartographers nightmare, a madman's dream.

one day this war is going to end

2008-04-03T13:27:00.002+07:00

All the planning was in getting here. Now I am here, what the hell am I supposed to do?

Hanoi has reverted to its perpetual mist to greet me. West lake lays like a sheet of gun metal out the window. I hear power tools, motorbikes and Led Zeppelin. OK, so I'm playing the music. Dazed and Confused has come on the random play list and it seems rather appropriate at this juncture. For the moment it is better not to plan. For the moment, it is better to walk out the door and get lost on the streets until clarity returns.

Thank you Sharon for getting me complete to the airport. Thank you Nick for getting me complete from the airport. Now I'm going to walk out the door and see the world. Seeing I still get lost in Newtown, I doubt that anyone will ever hear of me again...

walking in a suit

2007-09-27T16:12:00.000+07:00

Special day today. A day swanning around the Web Directions South confernce currently running in Sydney. It is two days of having the perverse pleasure of wearing a suit. I don't wear suits as a rule unless its a job interview. Today I wore a Nerhu collared black number I had made in Vietnam. Poking out the bottom were the hand-made (again in Vietnam) zip up black leather boots. There are 600 web folk wandering around - all of them talented in something. Perhaps 40% of them are women. Nearly everyone is dressed down, because, you know, they are web people and they don't need to make an impression through how they look. They are smart, and if you are smart enough to engage with them, you will see through the mirage that is dressing for appearance only. Everyone dresses in the way that makes them feel comfortable. So I get to be the only guy looking sexy in a suit except the waiters and sponsors. Sweet! And you can tell I'm not a waiter because I'm wearing a People's Army of China cap (also made in Vietnam) and spend half my time outside smoking cigarettes and cursing the fact that at a Web confernce with free wireless I can't get a frigging connection so am cut off from the world. But don't believe the hype, I am enjoying myself.

ruby rails to india

2007-09-25T16:36:00.000+07:00

Have spent a day listening and watching a man move too fast and speak too much. But as an introduction to Ruby on Rails it was good. I don't know what I've learnt, but I can feel the pressure in my skull from all that damn knowledge. I am going to go out, poke at some food in a thoughtful way and drink a shitload.

In a few hours Mic leaves on a plane to India with her boyfriend. Whilst I am still officially in denial and thus do not feel the consequences of this right now, part of me knows that something tomorrow morning will be broken. The inner circle can no longer function in balanced harmony. The machinary will start to go awry, spinning too fast and tipping from its safe axis. My world - by a simple absence - is going to start slipping from control. Sydney will become defunct.

Good morning Vietnam.

near a month as gone by

2007-08-07T18:43:00.000+07:00

it wasn't meant to be like this. i'm sorry blogger, it was just.. it was just....

Telstra cut me off my goddamn ADSL for 10 days!

and it all went to shit after that... i am back from the wilderness... and after a good drink i can start spreading the word again.

i'll just have that drink

another two weeks later

2007-07-10T16:22:00.000+07:00

I have floated through another two weeks. Two weeks is the measure of my floating. Whilst I am not particularly materialistic, my payday is fortnightly. The sudden influx of cash each fourteen days causes a flurry of bills, paybacks and stockpiling being attended to. Which leaves one well stocked, up-to-date and broke for the next couple of weeks. Such is the structured pressure of the capitalist world that impinges upon us that do not necessarily feel the consumerist need.

Perhaps a better metaphor is catching the wave on payday and riding it into shore fast knowing it is all good for the trip. Then there is the effort of paddling out again, and waiting in the cold for the next good wave to come past. Though since I pretty much avoid swimming at all costs I wouldn't know what the metaphor means first hand.

There is a lot of change in the air. One flatmate is leaving overseas. A flurry of discussions about bonds and bills and who is going to be on the phone bill. Boxes appearing in hall ways. Mutterings of goodbye meet-ups. I can understand why dogs get freaked out when they see the suitcases come out. The new tax year is upon us. Vietnamese lessons are starting again. I sit back and think about it. This is the normal amount of change. Change is always upon us. And it always catches me by surprise and gets the same drunken stoner stare down. And the change always slides past, is absorbed and the ripples past out and leave still waters.

Still waters are not always deep. Some times they are just drunk and happy. For no particular reason I did not drink yesterday. This morning I had an anti-hangover - which is much like a hangover except you are not used to it. Tonight I am having a cheap bottle of white wine in an extravagently over-sized glass. No anti-hangover for me tomorrow!

two weeks later

2007-06-27T15:01:00.000+07:00

and life took me away from my blog to show me what was outside. Nice, apart from the rain...

The busy season at work begins today. Let's install a new mail client (hello Outlook, I believe we met before in darker times). Let's install a new job tracking software (Is This Serious Mum?). Let's try it without a team manager. And as always, remember to smile. This is meant to be fun, right? And you know what? I can smile. Sure I get cranky. Sure I get pissed off. Then I remember the magic mantra... 'This is annoying. Pulling that head from attached body would cause me satisfaction. Why can't they just... oh, fuck it. Who cares? I had sex this morning and everything after that is merely a shadowy backdrop.Work crap just doesn't rate in this grander scheme.'

And it works...

and the rain came hammering down

2007-06-14T14:22:00.000+07:00

yet more night sweats, more dreams... cannot find my vietnamese books on the shelf... lots of not being able to find the things I need... what does it all mean? virus my arse... what do the doctor's know? this is obviously some psychic invasion by alien forces...

fever pitch

2007-06-13T09:18:00.000+07:00

12 hours in bed with sweats and hallucinatory dreams but little sleep.

drinks with cousins

2007-06-11T07:45:00.000+07:00

spent most of the day in bed recovering from last night's excess. then spoilt all the good work by meeting up with my cousins in kings cross and drinking many bottles of red wine. back where i started again, hungover and struggling to leave the bedroom.

family dinner

2007-06-10T12:06:00.000+07:00

left the rarified atmosphere of redfern with G and headed north north over the bridge and far away to where my brother lives in lindfield. arrived and set about cooking up a storm... leg of pork, leg of lamb, lots of veg both roasted and steamed. let loose in the wine cellar, reds from the 80's and 90's, so old they had corks in :-)

both my cousins from melbourne with their respective partners were there - my brother, his wife, the four children. much wine, beautiful food, brandy and excellent conversation. so I broke an 18th century chair? and slept walked naked around the house? and urinated in inappropriate places? and tried to get in bed with my cousin and her fiance? these things can be forgiven, non?

never, ever, ever go to the north side...

irregardless of quality

2007-06-05T17:51:00.000+07:00

I was quoted a few nights ago: "But no! Wait! Pretszels! Magic dust!... Running man". It was a visual moment...

Robert Rowley rolled a round a rolled round, and if Robert Rowley rolled a round a rolled round,
where is the round roll Robert Rowley rolled round?
from THEOPHILUS THISTLER by SONIC ANIMATION

2007-05-30T15:04:00.000+07:00

I was very happy this morning, and a days work has barely dimmed the sheen. Deep happiness. So happy it is annoying for other people. Sometimes you've just got to have a day like that.

a pat on the back for everyone

2007-05-28T12:57:00.000+07:00

i can't show you this weekend's face, but a big thank you to all involved in making it a complete excess. i was proud to walk with Professionals who know that a good conversation sometimes takes 40 hours. who shoot pool as an exercise of rationality with passion. who understand that alcohol is a medium of communication. i salute you!

2007-05-25T12:38:00.000+07:00

Another night another sofa. 5:30am bolt upright from family dreams - since when couldn't I tie a tie? And who was the mystery guest coming for me who never came? Thank god for Fridays - delieverance from work if not from dreams. Bike fixed - mobility re-returns.

2007-05-23T14:51:00.001+07:00

had some alone time yesterday. was so excited I had to go out and tell someone about it. saved by nightime conversations. two poem morning. unheard of. pay day tomorrow.

some kind of wisdom

2007-05-22T17:25:00.000+07:00

love will get you like a case of anthrax, and that's something i don't wanna catch
-- Gang of Four

lyrics of the night. brought me out of a temporary dazed emo moment into the cold harsh wind that is my window open. too much thinking leads to self-reflection and bad shit. don't listen to your heart unless you are a trained professional...

mondayitis

2007-05-21T15:46:00.000+07:00

itchy, scratchy, tired. problematic day where simple tasks get tangled, bike tyre flat, people walk in your path... grumpy... monday

slippage

2007-05-20T13:19:00.000+07:00

Naughty dog, no content. Have been entertained by what you can add to blogs without actually saying anything. Also entertained in First Life by quality people, lovely people. Vietnamese and cocktails in Newtown, coffee and study in Glebe, cocktail parties in Enmore, breakfast in Bondi. No money again - but pay only a long stone's throw away. Sunday warm, winey and a bath is imminent.

One week to payday

2007-05-17T14:54:00.000+07:00

The economic countdown begins. Accounts empty, a week of miserly daily allowances calling softly from my slim wallet. Wine stocks running low, scotch gone. However my bike is repaired! (curse those over-quoting gobblins who fixed her...) Mobility has returned.

2007-05-15T21:15:00.000+07:00

Late night discussions about free will do not help in quitting smoking, as enjoyable as they may be.

Tuesday good

2007-05-15T16:35:00.000+07:00

Not bad for a Tuesday. Worked most of the day from home AND was productive. Various drop in conversations in the early evening, trailing into a night of philosophical discourse over beer. Post graduates dream of these days, but the monkey tech boy gets one today!

And so it begins... again...

2007-05-14T18:29:00.000+07:00

5 cigarettes... back in the old office... butting head against Flash... is all looking a little familiar, yet somehow a little bit more advanced. and so onwards :-)

2007-05-13T19:23:00.000+07:00

In the last hours of Sunday, I smoke the last dregs of my rollies and fear the morning realisation that I said I was going to quit.

2007-05-12T14:20:00.000+07:00

Dinner party trailed into happy oblivion. Cleaning assisted by the spoils of war - happy alcoholic doggie-bags of love. Into the night towards pool (game with balls not wetness).

2007-05-10T22:45:00.000+07:00

Ended day teaching lasagna cooking to ex-flateate. much shopping as its payday. large dinner party tomorrow...

2007-05-10T07:37:00.000+07:00

Woke up on a phycisist's floor with the false confidence of the still drunk.