rasta raster

2009-07-13T14:47:00.003+10:00

It’s the same old tale of the palpitating nigger every time – what?

One of the rituals of the game of Australian Rules football is the playing of the competing club songs before the game, and of the winner after the game. The tunes, recorded by the Fable Singers many years ago, have stood the test of time incredibly well. I remember the backlash in 1998 when Geelong decided to release an "updated" version of the club song. It lasted about two weeks. I wonder how many people are aware that these tunes are WWI-era pop songs. Some are obvious, such as Yankee Doodle Dandy (Hawthorn), the Toreador Song from Carmen (Geelong) and When the Saints Go Marching In (St Kilda). But many are not, and here I present the findings of a little research project I had in mind for some time. See if you can pick them!

and lastly:

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/music/goodbye_dolly_gray_hugh_donovan.mp3

2008-11-13T16:08:00.002+11:00

I just read John Wyndham’s science fiction novel ,Chocky' for the sole purpose of attempting to ascertain whether this novel may have been the source of Thom Yorke’s nicknames (Tchocky, Dr Tchock, and the White Chocolate Farm).

Wyndham’s book is about an extra-terrestrial being that can communicate with a young boy (Matthew) on earth. The being seems benevolent and toward the end of the novel it becomes apparent that its purpose is to educate the people of Earth, through Matthew, about more efficient power sources:

It is true you have an elementary form of atomic power which you will no doubt improve. But that is almost your only investment for your future. Most of your power is being used to build machines to consume power faster and faster, while your sources of power remain finite. There can be only one end to that. You should be employing your resources, while you still have them, to tap and develop the use of a source of power which is not finite. Once you have access to an infinite supply of power you will have broken out of the closed circle of your solar-economy. You will no longer be isolated and condemned to eventual degeneration upon a wasting asset. You will become part of the larger creation, for a source of infinite power is a source of infinite possibilities.

This seems to fit with the technological dystopia of ,OK Computer' and especially ,Subterranean Homesick Alien':

Up above
Aliens hover
Making home movies
For the folks back home […]

I wish that they'd swoop down in a country lane
Late at night when I'm driving
Take me on board their beautiful ship
Show me the world as I'd love to see it

Given that Radiohead are well-read (you can’t be the smartest band in the world without being well-read) and that ,Chocky' was first published in the year of Yorke’s birth (1968), it seems highly likely that Yorke would have read the book as a child, and later used it as the basis for his nickname.

2008-10-20T14:14:00.006+11:00

J. G. Ballard’s novel ,Kingdom Come' achieves a lot, but perhaps the most enduring idea to come out of it is the connection between sport and facism. The novel, set in England, puts the St George's Cross in an entirely new light, when the flag is flown above households and among groups of people that engage in violent and racist behaviour. The connection between sport and facism is not, of course, a new one, nor is it an especially strong one. (There is, of course, a reason why many – especially East – Germans are reluctant to outwardly support German national sporting teams, or to display the Bundesflagge.)

Ballard makes it impossible to ever again think about nationalism and football in the same way. His nationalistic gangs, whose ,tribal tattoo’ raps the roofs of passing cars, recalls for me a passage from ,Monkey Grip':

We got off the bus in Melbourne at six o’clock on a Saturday evening. Cars waving blue and white streamers cruised down Victoria Street as we walked up it carrying our two string bags.

‘What is it?’ asked Gracie, bewildered.

I stared about me in confusion, still slow from the orchard.

‘Yew fuckin’ bewdy!’ bellowed a drunk in a T shirt, leaning out of a passing car and pointing at my blue and white striped jumper.

‘They are people who believe in football,’ said Gracie with disdain. ‘And you’ve got one of those – what is it? – Richmond jumpers.’

If I am not careful, my reservoir of quiet will be punctured here, it will leak or squirt out, and I’ll lose it.

This parallels my own bewilderment walking down Brunton Avenue as a child when a fan leant out the window and shouted „It’s not the MCG it’s the GCG!”

Moreover, the corporatisation of sport (inevitable in a society in which everything is corporatised) might further promote antisocial behaviour. As a grand final week article in ,The Age' observes,

The AFL has been incredibly successful in its promotion of the game, in no mean part because it has corporatised the game at every level, from the growth in corporate packages to at the grounds to the sales of TV rights. […] But there’s been a cost. Some of the egalitarian spirit of the game has been lost.

But this change is symptomatic of wider changes in society. Not only has the egalitarian ethos that Australia is best known for been watered down to some extent by our embrace of market society, in some ways it has been reversed.

That the outlet for Ballard’s nationalists is immigrants recalls the Cronulla race riots in Australia. And Ballard’s consumerist dystopia (which might as well be set in any Australian city) leaves violence or madness as the only available avenues of overcoming. Whether in controlled circumstances, like competitive boxing, where „after three rounds you’re alive again,” or in uncontrolled ones, on the streets, violence provides the adrenaline – living – which consumer society – in its utter downwardness – can not.

2008-08-25T20:50:00.002+10:00

A link at Dead Air Space led me to the film ,The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’. That film and Nicholas Kozloff’s book ,Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left’ are the basis for what follows here.

It is interesting for me when my definition of the left is based largely on my experience in Australia, to come to a definition of the left in Venezuela that arises from redistribution of oil wealth among the nation’s poor. This is a noble and immediate concern. But that Chávez is in power on this premise alone I find somehow problematic: What would be left of his platform if (for example) the oil ran out? Or if the demand for oil significantly declined? Or if the value of oil significantly declined? Or even only if the demand from the USA alone decreased? And before dismissing these possibilities as purely hypothetical, remember that the Arctic might melt any year now, opening massive oil reserves.

What makes Chávez interesting to me is that the new Venezuelan concept of the left has little environmental component. Chávez is well aware of carbon, and Venezuela has ratified Kyoto, but by providing as much oil to other nations as it is doing, the picture of Venezuela’s impact upon the global environment is skewed. Chávez calls his platform „socialism for the 21st century” and Kozloff describes it as „neither communist nor capitalist but a mixture of the two.”

At Melbourne University I attended the ,Ideas to Challenge Capitalism’ forum, which is a Socialist Alternative event – i.e., a Marxist event. The idea of workers overthrowing their bosses I think is more farfetched in Australia now than in any country anywhere else in the world. Even in the United States phenomena like the subprime crisis could conceivably spark something. Where it is happening right now (for example, at the Hotel Bauen in Buenos Aires) it remains legally unclear what the result will be. And yet here, where we believe in the law second only to the economy, the speaker at the Socialist Alternative event gives the example that Australian mine workers could overthrow their bosses. Now, mining bosses are, probably, overpaid. And miners are, probably, underpaid. But to claim that the miners could do the job of their bosses equally well is preposterous. And to claim that the difference between the value of the miners’ work and their wages objectively constitutes exploitation is questionable. Marxists claim that people can be exploited without ever realising it, which seems unclear until consideration is given to an example like WorkChoices, where people perhaps did come to realise it. Or did they merely come to realise something different?

What is the point of a blind, frustrated Australian socialism that aspires only to a redistribution of wealth, arguing that it is the right of the working family to be entertained by a plasma television at the end of the day? The frustration of he who wears a leather jacket and fills up his car at the bowser once a week is noone’s fault but his own. A socialism that can not even identify the absence of perspectivism about the economy as the main problem is utterly impotent. In Venezuela there are many projects of Chávez’s (like the women’s bank) which attempt perspectivism, but they are still ultimately economically evaluated.

What Australia requires is an environmentally conscious, rational left that aspires to consume less – and we already have one. The question is how popular it can become.

2008-07-30T14:11:00.010+10:00

Last night I attended the public lecture at the University of Melbourne on ,The Future of Cities’, by Cassio Taniguchi („one of the world’s foremost experts on urban and environmental planning”).

After a gratuitous dreamlarge advertisement the event commenced with Taniguchi’s premise that since the proportion of people in the world living in cities has been rising for twenty years, it will continue to do so.

He may as well have pulled his pants down on the spot.

After revealing his ignorance of the problem of induction, he proceeded with a presentation which neglected to mention carbon emissions whatsoever. I think by now we all know what dreamlarge stands for.

Even granted his premise, however, he provided little that was constructive. He used his experience in the city of Curitiba in Brazil as a model – apparently put forward for us simply to duplicate. Curitiba provided few suggestions aside from more green areas, and a few ideas on road structures. Oh, and converting a gunpowder factory to a theatre. Good one.

Taniguchi littered his presentation with obfuscating powerpoint diagrams. He mocked a hierarchical diagram of a governmental structure, (saying „What are these – squares?”) and then presented a circular one, with arrows connecting it and terms and weasel words strewn everywhere – some of which included „Conquer Conitance” and „Affirm the Integrant.”

Never before have I seen such muddled thinking. His conclusion boiled down to a digression about Easter Island, and the mantra „Think global; act local." By running 20 minutes overtime he conveniently prevented the possibility of any questions being asked.

A realistic starting point for the future of cities and the environment is clear:

Our awareness of Carbon levels will (of necessity) increase. Commuting to work will become exceedingly expensive and increasingly acknowledged as detrimental to the planet. The rise of conference technology will make it possible for people to work closer to their homes, decreasing carbon emissions as well as individual stress from commuting.

I would like to thank the University for flying out Taniguchi and illuminating the dichotomy between dreamlarge and rationality.

2008-07-13T21:14:00.004+10:00

The Australian Football League has opportunely chosen this, the time of the descending of thousands of national flag-wearing Catholic minors upon Melbourne and Sydney, to announce that it is considering granting an 18th license to a ,Sydney Celtic’ team in order to „bring an expanded television audience in Ireland and across Britain.”

That Mike Fitzpatrick is even giving consideration to introducing a Celtic team – with all that entails – into our supposedly non-denominational game, confirms him as the league’s latest psychopath elect. The lure of „opening a marketing bonanza given the international cache afforded the Boston Celtics (basketball team) and Glasgow Celtics (sic) (a soccer team)” seems to echo James Hird’s grandiose Manchester United–Essendon alliance of 2004. I don’t watch much Premier League any more, but I have yet to see any red sashes on the terraces at Old Trafford, (or, for that matter, in downtown Poipet).

The role of the governing body in any other franchise competition is to protect the member clubs. In this the AFL has colossally failed in deference to the pursuit of its own narcissistic objectives. I need not here juxtapose the turmoils of the Victorian clubs with the bizarre manifestation and inevitable rise of each of the teletubbie clubs since 1987. Caroline Wilson rightly identifies the Brisbane Lions as Wayne Jackson’s love child, and there may be two more bastard siblings to come.

2008-06-10T23:43:00.007+10:00

I was lucky enough a few weeks ago to clap eyes upon a book on the shelves of a secondhand bookstore on Flinders Street. Unmarketable is both a tour of contemporary marketing strategies and a rare example of an attempt to escape them; to „find a disconnect between marketing and the marketed.”

The author, Anne Elizabeth Moore, identifies that marketing has now moved beyond mere branding and on to emotional connection. No longer is the physical product what is being bought; identical products with different logos will fetch different prices as determined by the market, and marketing is largely the science of this phenomenon. If you are interested, I highly recommend reading the book for the many examples of canny marketing strategies. For now, though, here are two particularly sentient examples that I like:

One emotional disconnect was captured in the PBS Frontline documentary The Persuaders during a segment shot at a market research firm outside Boston. A perky researcher questions a subject about a product. “I’m going to read you some different emotions,” the researcher begins. “For each one of them I just want you to tell me yes or no as to whether or not you think you feel that emotion when you’re eating white bread. The first one is accepting.”

The subject, a reasonable-looking man in a grey cardigan, looks slightly baffled, and rolls his eyes over the room. After a lengthy pause, he haltingly responds, “Yeah, I would say accepting.” It’s clear that it had never occurred to him that he might feel accepting of such a meal, but the suggestion that he might was persuasive. The researcher continues as if nothing is amiss. “Affectionate,” “lonely,” “disappointed,” “afraid,” and “trusting” all get negative responses, however, and it is not until “uncertain” is called out that our subject seems to clue back into what is going on.

“Yeah,” he responds. “A little uncertain – I’ve got a question,” he hurriedly adds, knowing this is breaking the rules established for the survey. “Have you found people to feel, to say yes, they feel lonely when they eat bread?” […]

That is the moment when the subject voices his emotional distance from the process of emotion based marketing.

The second example concerns the author and her peers going to see a Star Wars movie. In my own case the example would do just as well by replacing instances of Star Wars with The Simpsons Movie:

Star Wars is so deeply wound into the mythology of the underground – and the rest of our culture at large – that it is genuinely unthinkable that we wouldn’t attend and support every episode of the series. In this one case, the perfect formula for propaganda under democracy has been discovered: individuals may grumble mild criticisms but never question brand allegiance.

For example, I saw Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith because I was raised in a media environment that dictated I care how the series concluded. In other words, I saw it because it seemed inevitable that I would. In a way, it is inevitable – it might be on at a friend’s house one afternoon, background noise for some themed event, or just always already on somewhere. I didn’t have to run out within days of the film’s release and watch it in a theater for nearly ten bucks. […] A quick poll of sixteen individuals, mostly friends, who have worked hard to create entertainment and distribution systems entirely separate from the corporate world’s, and often under conditions of poverty, revealed a similar ambivalence. All but one of 16 of my friends polled had seen Revenge of the Sith – most in the theatres, and a shockingly large percentage on opening weekend. And they – we – went not with a sense of joy or anticipation, but with a sense of resignation knowing straight up that the movie was going to suck.

Here then, „Star Wars represents our ultimate advertising nightmare: that marketing can force us to act in a way that’s antithetical to our own interests. […] Good, smart, and not rich people are actively voicing displeasure with entertainment consumed seemingly of their own free will. They were convinced to consume not because their better judgement dictated they do so but because their emotional connection to the product and the mode in which it was marketed compelled them to. I know – I was one of them.”

It is clear that „if a disconnect between marketing and the marketed is going to occur, it’s going to have to be based on emotion.” But how? „Strategies that do not play directly into the maniacal logic of consumerism are difficult to locate and describe, precisely because doing so plays directly into the maniacal logic of consumerism.” We have all come across the dissenters, particularly on t-shirts, where Nike becomes Pike, Nestlé becomes Nasty, Ford becomes Fuck, and so on. But (and here’s where I started to learn), „rarely does an antimarketing campaign contribute to effective change… because strategies that rely on parody or other forms of image reuse directly reproduce what is being rebelled against.” Pike says Nike as much – or even more – as does Nike, because despite that the brand is obscured, it is still communicated. Moreover, the brand is strengthened because it is communicated without even being properly there! „The differences between mocking and mocketing are negligible if they exist at all.” Further, „Don’t drink Starbucks” is a little too similar to „drink Starbucks”. And given that marketers mine Naomi Klein’s No Logo for fresh marketing strategies, more broadly anything sounding whatsoever like „No Logo” is too similar to „Logo”. Worryingly, any „participant accedes victory by simply agreeing to play.”

In one example that does identify a disconnect with emotion-based marketing, Moore encourages children to „send letters to corporate entities as a first step towards engaging in critical dialogue with the faceless businesses that dominate our world. [Her] suggestion was that should a response fail to come we could perhaps decide that our emotional attachment to these corporations was misplaced and undeserved.” (Compare with Dave Eggers' wonderful Letters from Steven, a Dog, to Captains of Industry in The Burned Children of America.)

But the promise of her book – a model of a disconnect between emotion based marketing and the marketed – disappointingly boils down to a few paragraphs at the end. Her proposed model she describes as „perfectly appropriate for our dirty, messy underground." It is „a stain. A slight flaw. A little failure. A mark imperceptible to most, and difficult to locate but impossible to remove, a stain looks very much like everything that surrounds it, until you notice its fundamental difference. And by then you can’t get rid of it.” Huh? A stain? This all sounds too abstract, and her only working example is a band called HeWhoCorrupts, who I am not familiar with, but who, despite their talk of „demographics” and their „ridiculously well-conceived merch” and moreover that „their goals are pure profit,” she somehow cliams are different because they „fail to pursue profits over passion.” I can’t make any sense of this, and I am not prepared to familiarise myself with the aforementioned hard-core punk band. But we need not think for too long about Moore’s abstract criteria for a disconnect in order to find a model of our own, and it happens to be a band as well. Who gave away their music for nothing? Who performed in London at short notice and for free? Whose worldview is „imperceptible to most, and difficult to locate but impossible to remove?" Do I need to spell it out in a cipher code?

How and why the underground can not articulate its objections to guerilla marketing, or consumerism, or capitalism, is only a small instance of the wide phenomenon in which the subtlety of the anxiety of the left can not combat the unambiguous goals of the right. Everywhere „we think the same things at the same time / we just can’t do anything about it.”

In the end, for Moore, „as long as you are still working on stuff – building communities of resistance and politicizing culture and actively making meaning on your own terms – you are still powerful.” It’s not a bad start, but it remains that „YOU ARE A TARGET MARKET”...

2008-05-24T00:59:00.003+10:00

I thought Radiohead’s position on football was clear in light of Stanley Donwood’s (very) short story Sky Sports which featured in the Scotch Mist webcast:

One day I found out that my urine was acting like a powerful foaming agent. I thought that I could take advantage of my ability by hosting piss-scented foam parties in the pub toilets, but the landlord wasn't keen. He didn't think that people would be interested. In fact, he said that it was a disgusting idea. I said I'd rather go to a piss foam party than watch the fucking football, but he said that I'm in a very small minority and the big screen stays.

So it was a big surprise to me to find in an interview that Ed O’Brien is a Manchester United fan:

Ed O'Brien is a happy man this Thursday lunchtime. Not only did Radiohead play two fairly flawless shows for the BBC yesterday but his beloved Manchester United beat Roma 2-0 in the Champions League at the Stadio Olimpico. "The football was better than the gig," he beams. Being Oxford-born and now resident in north London, Ed clearly fits the description of the Man U fan to a tee but at least he went to Manchester University. He still knows "a few boys" at Old Trafford who get him tickets, and is concerned that Mani of The Stone Roses/Primal Scream has defected to the breakaway anti-Glazer team AFC Manchester. […]

When we made our first record, Sean and Paul [producers Slade and Kolderie] said I was sort of like the keyboard player. I took great offence at the time but now I realise it's kind of true. I see myself as a bit of a sweeper – bit of rhythm, can play up front or in the hole. I'm not a Ronaldo or a Rooney: that's Thom and Jonny. But in my dreams I'm a Paul Scholes."

Surely this isn’t for real! And yet now the cryptic title ,Ed Becks McLaren’ that appeared above a photo of Ed with a newspaper that appeared in January on Dead Air Space makes sense.

Perhaps I shall attempt to source and forward to Ed one of the Manchester United shirts overprinted with torture victims from Abu Ghraib prison that I saw at the pinko screenprinters on Sydney Road a couple of years ago!

2008-05-22T17:41:00.017+10:00

A group of Australian cyclists training for the Olympics recently crashed when the driver of a Ford Falcon purposefully swerved in front them and abruptly slammed on the brakes. In the aftermath of the accident, as the cyclists attempted to discern whether any of the group had been killed, motorists in other vehicles yelled abuse as they passed, including „Get a car, tightarses.”

That the driver of the Ford was frustrated at driving his Ford is not surprising. I see drivers all the time flooring the accelerator, screaming round corners, and mounting curbs, and they are almost invariably in Holdens or Fords. This mode of driving is symptomatic of a recessive malaise with the vehicle in suburbia.

I am reminded of a quote by Max Bruinsma I saw in the design journal Open Manifesto. He says, „in today’s visual communication there are, bluntly speaking, two operative strategies for a designer; to sedate consumers or to activate citizens.” It is due time for such dichotomies as these. We have lived in consumer society long enough to know where we stand. It is about time for we sympathisers to rail: Act upon your suspicions.

„You’re either in the club, baby, or you’re not.” The lines are drawn.

2008-05-14T02:52:00.009+10:00

2008-04-29T12:13:00.006+10:00

Credits, respectively: PictureEd (flickr), L. Deam, Unknown, Almixnuts (flickr)

2008-04-15T22:09:00.014+10:00

I remember reading in The Age a considerable time ago an opinion piece in which the writer (it may have been Catherine Deveny or Fiona Scott-Norman) said words to the effect that if she saw one more Crumpler bag she was going to scream. At the time, I thought, ,No way! – Crumpler is rad!’ How naïve I was.

Crumpler was founded in Melbourne in 1995 and initially produced bags designed especially for bicycle couriers – they were waterproof, bright coloured, and easily accessible while riding (unlike a backpack). The company initially gained publicity by a viral marketing campaign in which stencils of the logo were spraypainted around the city in areas frequented by bicycle couriers. Messenger bags were instantly recognisable – especially the flagship model in blue with red and yellow stripes. When I was in the UK in 2004 a Spanish workmate asked me why I had the Catalan flag on my bag. In my six months overseas I did not see a single other Crumpler bag, and only Australians would recognise or comment on my bag – Crumpler was quintessentially Australian, even quintessentially Melburnian. But the demise of its vogue can be traced to two events. The company branched out to making camera bags, which were plainer in colour and spawned a trend for monochrome bags popular among the meek; and it set up retail outlets in cities around the globe. The abundance of bags in two tones of grey on the backs of besuited despots in CBDs across the world represents a homeopathic dilution of the original Crumpler ethos. I never thought I would, but, I’m calling it. Crumpler is dead.

A closer look at Crumpler’s viral marketing strategies also reveals a calculated association with alcohol. The volume of the bags is shown on its jarring, honkytonk website in terms of how many six packs fit inside; in New York Crumpler has a regular ,Beer for Bags’ event (replete with Fosters coasters) in which beer can be traded for bags; and Crumpler has been a long standing sponsor of the Meredith Gift – an alcohol-fueled naked footrace at the annual Meredith Music Festival, in which the participants are sprayed with Crumpler logo stencils. Perhaps in 2005 a Crumpler thinktank pinpointed the demographic that now bemoans the withdrawal of cans of premixed bourbon under Kevin Rudd’s binge-drinking campaign when it produced bags that candidly featured the text, ,Limited Edition Tenth anniversary bag. Celebrating ten years of the same old shit from CRUMPLER.’

2008-04-10T17:34:00.042+10:00

I was moved and humbled late last year at my otherwise unremarkable RMIT graduation ceremony to hear the representative Wurundjeri elder invite the audience at the Telstra Dome to take a leaf or two from a gum tree the next time we saw one, and, in doing so, consider ourselves welcome on the land. I could not help but wonder what the audience thought of the gesture, given that it consisted largely of parents of international students. I do not believe immigrants living (even temporarily) in Australia can see that they have exactly the same psychical considerations and responsibilities regarding the land as do people whose forebears may have participated in its colonisation.

Australians are in a unique position in the world: we are surrounded by nationalities we do not understand. Furthermore, we are in possession of land traditionally owned by a people we do not understand. We tell jokes about situations involving Englishmen, Irishmen and Frenchmen, or Kiwis, or blacks, or Asians, because a joke about a situation involving an Indonesian, a Malaysian and a Korean makes little sense to us. The frequency (and similarity in context) of reference to ,Australian natives’ or ,Aborigines’ in the writing of non-Australian academics is also illuminating.

Irrespective of Kevin Rudd’s apology to the stolen generation, the Australian ,condition’ is irremediable – Patrick White nails this in Voss and A Fringe of Leaves. Australia, the United States, (and now the UK) are atypical places in that people live side by side with people they have little to no understanding of. Cultural diversity is sometimes stimulating, but its net product – at least, on an economic rationalist backdrop – is tension and conflict due to the lack of awareness by the majority, and the branding of any identification of difference as ,racism’. In mainland Europe stereotypes are more acceptable because they are patently truthful, but stereotyping does not constitute racism. The Collins English Dictionary defines racism (with my italics) as

1. the belief that races have distinctive cultural characteristics determined by hereditary factors and that this endows some races with an intrinsic superiority over others
2. abusive or aggressive behaviour towards members of another race based on such a belief.

Of course races have distinctive physical characteristics determined by hereditary factors: that is how they are defined. But even if one wants to hold the (more difficult) position that cultural characteristics are determined by hereditary factors, holding simultaneously any respectful variety of cultural relativism diffuses (by definition) the spectre of racism. Neither does a mute act of discrimination based on stereotyping constitute racism, if in it there is no notion of intrinsic superiority.

Some tensions arise, however, based not only on cultural dispositions but on fundamentalist religious systems. Abu Bakar Bashir made news in March when in a speech he likened tourists in Bali to „worms, snakes, [and] maggots”, and specifically referred to the immorality of Australian infidels. He demands tourists stay out of Indonesia, or suffer retributions by the Indonesian youth, which he calls upon to „aspire to a martyrdom death”, and not to „follow human law that is in conflict with Allah’s law”. I have never been to Indonesia and I have never had a desire to go there as a tourist. Especially since the treatment of Schapelle Corby and the Bali nine, a non-Muslim (or kafir) would lack conscience to unthinkingly trespass as a tourist in that Islamic land.

2008-04-08T20:54:00.018+10:00

In spite of English football being a plutocracy it still produces marvellous narratives. Last weekend the two FA Cup semi finals were played at the new Wembley stadium. This year’s cup is notable in that of the four sides that made the semis, three were non-Premier League (West Bromwich Albion, Barnsley and Cardiff City). Moreover, the one Premier League side was Portsmouth.

Somewhat surprisingly, these clubs have previously won the cup; Barnsley in 1912, Cardiff in 1927, Portsmouth in 1939, and West Brom five times, most recently in 1968. For supporters of these clubs, playing in the cup final is a once in a lifetime event. The fact that none of the big four (Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea) made it this year is especially remarkable in that one of them has won the competition every year since 1995. Only eight clubs not playing in the top flight at the time have ever won the cup, the most recent being Sunderland in 1973, Southampton in 1976, and West Ham in 1980. In more recent times, the closest we have come to a surprise result was when Milwall – featuring Tim Cahill – made the final in 2004 (it lost 3-0 to Manchester United) and when (then Premier League) West Ham went 2-0 and then 3-2 up against Liverpool in the 2006 final before drawing 3-3 and losing on penalties.

This year many neutral supporters - including me - had chosen to plump for the Tykes (read: barrack for Barnsley) after the club unbelievably came from behind to eliminate Liverpool 2-1 at Anfield in the fifth round, then defeat Chelsea 1-0 at home in the sixth round. But Cardiff (who are 20 million £ in debt and earlier eliminated Middlesbrough) defeated Barnsley 1-0, and Portsmouth defeated West Brom 1-0, to set up what will nevertheless be an intriguing final on May 17. In Australia the match will be live on SBS. Whether those idiotic Red/Devil/s in Asia will see it is another question.

In 1989 at age 99 my great-grandfather wrote to me of looking forward to „seeing the Canaries play in the Football final at Wembley!” Norwich City made the semis in 1989 and 1992 but has never made the final; each year I follow its progress, and if it ever does make it, I hope I can be there.

2008-03-28T16:05:00.045+11:00

Recently I bought an old Sekem footy jumper. I guess the main thing about Australian Rules football jumpers is that – unlike English Football shirts for which the sponsor, or the collar, or something changes every season (or two) so as to facilitate sales of new shirts (at 40 £ a pop) – Australian Rules jumpers change little from season to season. Geelong, for example, has had the same sponsor – Ford – since the introduction of sponsor logos on jumpers in the late 1980s. My club, though, St Kilda, seems to have had a new sponsor almost every season. I’m clearly among a minority of people who think walking around with SΛMSUNG or Vodafone plastered across your front just makes you look like an imbecile. But the sponsor logo is the only thing which indicates the era of the shirt, and sometimes it can come to signify less the company than the era or playing group which it references.

Whereas in recent years the AFL has come to be known as McDonalds football (especially at the Telstra Dome, where every game is the same), I have especially good memories of football in the early nineties. I have vivid recollections from when I was eight, nine or ten years old, of driving to Waverley when the footy record was smaller than A5 and cost 1 $, then sitting on the gaudy, wet wooden slats and watching Gary Ablett wrestle (prostrate) with Danny Frawley in the goalsquare, before going home with a headache having passively inhaled cigarette smoke all afternoon. With these memories in mind I resolved to find and attach an old sponsor’s patch to my jumper, and for some reason, I have remembered Philip Morris. Probably it is because the other brands that sponsored St Kilda were not as iconic (such as Snowdeli). Then again, as a nine year old, I had no idea what DRAKE, NUBRIK, ICI or SPICERS PAPER were, but those words came to define Melbourne, Essendon, Footscray and Collingwood respectively.

Of course, nowadays it seems absurd for a cigarette company to have been the sponsor of a football club. Philip Morris – now known as Altria – is the world's largest commercial tobacco company by sales, and

according to the Center for Public Integrity, Altria spent around 101 million $ on lobbying the United States Government between 1998 and 2004, making it the second most active organization in the nation.

Altria contributes to the furthering of opinions critical of the impact of global warming and climate change, through the funding of astroturf organizations such as The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition.

The above was a few days ago properly referenced in the Wikipedia article for Altria, but has nevertheless since been removed.

In the football records of the time, pictures of St Kilda players celebrating a win in their PHILIP MORRIS jumpers can be seen next to non-smoking advertisements featuring images of players like Fitzroy’s Alastair Lynch in a QUIT jumper. How can I justify having purchased a second St Kilda jumper (which wasn’t my size), only in order to obtain the Philip Morris patch, and attach it to my own jumper, when

Philip Morris knowingly lied about a product – tobacco – that led to addiction and killed their customers. The World Health Organization estimates four million people die yearly from tobacco-related illness. No-one has been tried for this conscious infliction of terrible hurt.

Well, it appeals because it references a bygone era. But I’m also trying to suggest something else here. In football there has been sponsorship by industries such as liquor (Carlton has had CUB as a sponsor; the Saints had Tooheys in the great Stan Alves era of 1997-1998), fast food (West Coast with Hungry Jacks, Brisbane with Coca-Cola) and motor vehicles (Adelaide – who were once known as the Camry Crows – with Toyota; Geelong – who last year won a premiership wearing Ford logos) when

Ford made a car (the Pinto) that exploded on impact. It had known this could happen, but preferred not to cut into its profits by recalling the car – paying damages to the victims was cheaper (121m $ versus 50m $). No-one was ever convicted for these deaths by immolation.

What I am trying to suggest is that there is no difference between the motives of the liquor, fast food, and motor vehicle industries and those of the tobacco industry. The detriment wrought upon human health and/or the planet by use of their products is comparable. I hope that in years to come we will look upon them in the same light as that in which Philip Morris appears now.

2008-03-24T21:50:00.049+11:00

Is it possible to be part of a subculture without knowing it? Yes, of course; she is a weaker person indeed who conforms to the ordained aesthetics of a group simply so as to appear a part of that group, rather than following her instincts and later coming to realise they happen largely to coincide with the characteristics of a particular group.

While watching a Cat Power clip on youtube I came upon a discussion about ,hipsters’; a term I was not familiar with. (Incidentally, youtube comments are a fascinating forum of discussion. They're largely garbage, but occasionally, reasoned.) This one goes thus:

strizen
Classic self-involved, generation-x, hipster clone...'My life is so crazy'

honezone21
strizen, i see an "i hate hipsters" comment from you on a lot of Cat Power videos. Give it a rest! Anybody from any era who has abused alcohol and had to deal with show business would probably be saying the same things. Nobody cares about the content of your continuous thread of anti-hipster comments, we only notice the annoyingness.

strizen
I hate hipsters regardless of what song Cat Power is singing... That's why I said the same thing on both of my posts. As for 'nobody cares about the content of your thread'... Says who? You?! Speak for yourself, you have no idea what anyobdy else on youtube says.

honezone21
alright, I'm sorry for that. I just don't see how you can't be a more open minded. Some people are hipsters, so what? Granted, I'm not a fan of them either. But just because Cat Power's a hipster doesn't mean her life isn't legimitately crazy. Her emotional stress is avoidable, but who says trying to deal with it makes her self-involved? Just because people are so-called hipsters doesn't mean they don't have issues. A happy hipster is more useful in this world than a dysfunctional one.

chemicalhome
Cat Power rules... But I will say that having lived in Brooklyn for the past two years, that hipsters are definitely poisonous. There's nothing worse than waiting for the train and having to deal with all the eyes darting all over the place. It's like 'I'm just trying to get work'...Hipsters all have this high schoolish/awkward energy that is just un-bearable.I think it's because a lot of them weren't popular in high school and now the indie rock scene is THEIR high school.

,Hipster’ is an American term, which wikipedia (at 24/3/8) describes as follows:

In the 1990s, the term became a blanket description for the trend in the alternative anti-fashion fashion of middle class and upper class urban, young people moving into regentrified or soon to be regentrified neighborhoods in city centers. Often hipsters came to these poorer neighborhoods from well-to-do suburbs of major cities. In youth culture, the term hipster usually refers to young people who may have an appreciation for independent rock, a campy or ironic fashion sense, or an otherwise bohemian style.

Hipster culture is also associated with indie, independent, DIY, non commercial, and/or non profit choices of consumption in any and all aspects of life, including listening to independent rock or any form of non-mainstream music, thrift store shopping, eating organic locally grown vegetarian and/or vegan food, drinking local or brewing beer, listening to public radio, etc. Hipster scenes are associated with vintage clothing and vinyl records, and magazines like Vice, Clash, Nylon and the website Pitchfork Media.

Contemporary hipsters are largely associated with leftist or liberal social and political views and sometimes a general appreciation of intellectual pursuits, with an ironic lowbrow or lower class culture and subculture. In 2003, Robert Lanham's satirical humor book The Hipster Handbook claimed that hipsters are young people with "...mop-top haircuts, swinging retro pocketbooks, talking on cell phones, smoking European cigarettes,...strutting in platform shoes with a biography of Che [Guevara] sticking out of their bags."

The term is also used in a pejorative fashion, to assert that a person may be superficially following recently mass-produced, homogeneous, urban fashion trends, overly concerned with their image and the contradictions of their identity. Often in its negative connotation, 'hipsters' are considered apathetic, pretentious, and self-entitled by other, often marginalized sectors of society they live amongst, including previous generations of bohemian and/or "counter-culture" artists and thinkers as well as poor neighborhoods of color.

Philosophy
Hipsters are often associated with ecological and/or anti-capitalist political ideology. This could be as concrete as being a member of the Green Party or espousing socialist philosophies, or simply being an American Democratic Party or European Labour Party supporter. Socially, this means intrinsic support of women's rights and gay rights, especially since one hipster stereotype is being perceived as androgynous ! or bisexual despite one's actual lifestyle. Hipsters are not usually associated with organized religion and are usually atheist or agnostic.

The overall aesthetic has elements of a liberal ethos. The vintage clothing and thrift store appearance of hipsters in a modern liberal context reveals a wish to consume ethically; to avoid purchasing new clothes from large corporations accused of unfair working conditions such as Gap and Nike. This choice usually manifests itself in refusing to purchase items from large corporations such as clothing, but also extends preferring bands who are not signed to major labels and/or who do not offer their creative output for use by the advertising industry.

The hipster aesthetic of irony is often associated with the appropriation of elements of lowbrow or working class culture. Low-brow culture from the past, such as the 1970s sitcom Three's Company may be enjoyed in an ironic fashion. Similarly, elements associated in a clichéd sense with working class culture, such as trucker hats or moustaches, may be ironically worn by a hipster. The modern hipster culture appropriates some signifiers of working class identity in an ironic fashion, such as Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.

Now, no delineation is absolute, but I think from the above it appears I must admit I am a hipster. Except for the parts about Vice (which I dislike), Clash, Nylon and Three's Company (which I haven't heard of), and replacing trucker hats (which I abhor) with Castro caps and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer with Vita Cola or Schlitz (neither of which I have tried, mind you; they're just brands which appeal), that’s me to a T. And evidently there is some stigma attached here. I suppose I can understand why some people – probably conservative Americans who stand for values antithetical to those above – might not like hipsters. But I think most prejudice arises from misunderstanding based on failure to appreciate subtlety. ,Hipster' appears to be just another of those trendy, hysterical terms that arise from time to time – like ,champagne socialist', ,yuppie', or ,emo'.

Outward appearance is a product of inner forces we can not see; I believe that identity is determined by neurochemistry – one need only have a cup of coffee and/or read about some of the cases involving antidepressants to become convinced of this.

Now just because a person came from a privileged background does not make their dis-ease with the modern world (or, moreover, their psychoses) any less real, nor their situation in the world any less profound.

And what on earth is wrong with „listening to independent rock or any form of non-mainstream music, thrift store shopping, eating organic locally grown vegetarian and/or vegan food, drinking local or brewing beer, listening to public radio” anyway? That sounds like part of the formula for a sane world to me. One of the best ways to decrease carbon emissions is to eat and drink local – the amount of emissions produced by shipping bottled water, beer, and other beverages across the globe is phenomenal. What sort of person could „hate” somebody who espouses these values? Well, a climate change denier, for one...

2008-03-24T21:33:00.020+11:00

I’ve been looking at Pitchfork’s top 50 albums of 2007 (on my friend Seb's recommendation), and in particular the review of In Rainbows, which comes in at #4 (here). The review grabs onto the lyric „Don't get any big ideas / They're not gonna happen” – claiming that the band has had many big (musical) ideas, all of which have come to happen („in 2000, they released an album [Kid A] that subverted and warped everything that made them famous – somehow making them even more famous… this year, they decided to let fans decide [sic] how much they wanted to pay for their album” et cetera). These, understandably, are the music reviewer’s notions of „big ideas”. But this is a grave misreading. What makes all the other bands look like muppets by comparison is the complexity and intelligence of Radiohead's thesis, and the multifarious way it is communicated. To know the message you need to understand the peripheral items like the artwork, (and Stanley Donwood’s worldview), the blips, the hyperlinks, literary references „et cetera, et cetera”. (As an example, consider that the messages that appeared on Dead Air Space before the release of the album were in a cipher code: you’d need to have done first year mathematics to decode them!) All of these inform the band’s thesis, so it’s no wonder there is so much bad writing out there, bad interviews, misreadings and „I don’t get this” type comments on youtube. „Don’t get any big ideas / They’re not gonna happen” is not „soggy”: it is profound because it resigns that the things in the world which they (and I, and many of you) want changed, can not and will not change. Moreover, In Rainbows’ happy resignation („fatalistic and hopeful”, yes) is unbelievable because – impossibly – it reconciles the dystopia: the nightmare: our nightmare:

Just as you take my hand
Just as you write my number down
Just as the drinks arrive
Just as they play your favourite song…

Just as you take the mic
Just as you dance, dance, dance…

A jigsaw falling into place
So there is nothing to explain
You eye each other as you pass
She looks back and you look back
Not just once
And not just twice
Wish away your nightmare
Wish away the nightmare
You've got the light you can feel it on your back
You've got the light you can feel it on your back
Your jigsaw falling into place