every least story mixes charm with wreckage

Chekhov's Mongoose


Dr. Chekhov was infatuated. This is the story.
Returning from the Russian prison isle of Sakhalin
where he circulated ten thousand questionnaires and noted
with his usual dispassion the appalling conditions,
he made his first foray beyond Russian soil
via the China Sea. In Ceylon he acquired a mongoose.

It was lithe, tame and affectionate. It was quick, this mongoose,
and the doctor spent the homeward voyage like a story
out of a children's adventure, laughing, mopping its soil
and the broken crockery, replacing the memories of Sakhalin
with this new-found love. Without leash or chain, without conditions
to restrict its freedom, his pet became famous, more noted

(in that shipboard idyll) than Chekhov was, more noted
than any rival souvenirs: Siamese cat, monkey. His mongoose
loved him. When it broke all the rules and conditions
of social behaviour it turned dark soulful eyes, like a Story
Book Princess, and melted him with a look. Not even Sakhalin
with all its woes and tragedy could dredge from the dark soil

of its soul such pathos. Caught in his own soil
where ardour mixed with rancour, the good doctor noted
how vulnerable he was, and relented. Sakhalin
eased gently from his mind, replaced by a mongoose
which cried when it was left alone. The story
does not end there. Life has a way of imposing conditions.

When Chekhov returned, nothing was changed. The conditions
he fled from in Moscow - a demanding family, lovers, the grim soil
he had turned into rich prose in each celebrated story -
now returned to chill him. 'When I come to visit', he noted,
'please be warned. I come with my pet mongoose
who is tamer than children, wilder than Sakhalin.'

His published report, The Island of Sakhalin,
caused a sensation, and calls to reform penal conditions.
Life became a whirlwind again and though his mongoose
was the season's novelty, on his new Estate on the dark soil
of Malikhovo, it ran off. Yes, it was found, but he noted
the broken plates, the damage, and the way every least story

mixes charm with wreckage. Some say it's Chekhov's own story,
Moscow's own Zoo was, well, provincial. It was not noted
for health or for hygiene. Until 1893 it possessed no mongoose.



Thomas Shapcott

i don't care what you think*

it's been brought to my attention [inadvertently, by dave mack] that the obvious flipside to the shit you get but don't love, is the SHIT YOU LOVE EVEN THOUGH YOU SHOULDN'T COS IT'S WRONG AND POSSIBLY FROM HELL. clearly, anyone with even a cursory interest in this blog will know that my pop culture proclivities are as wrong as they come - many of these pages attest to this inversion of logic.

so without further ado [and with no chance of being an exhaustive catalogue], let's take a look at...


stuff i love, knowing that i cannot justify that love to anyone in a sensible way:


ryan adams
r. kelly's "trapped in the closet"
nikki
the bill
the sartorialist
nathan buckley
bring it on
power ballads
love actually
cheezels



in hindsight, this post is seeming a pretty dumb idea, as bonnie will take a perverse pleasure in exposing my more embarrassing loves [there are many, many more - rodeo anyone?]. remember, be strong and own your wrongness - on this day, you don't have to justify it to anyone.


*flips the bird to all and sundry*


hope your weekend is filled with simple pleasures and wryly amusing events. mine will almost certainly feature pizza [pizza? i love pizza!] and arrested development. it will also, sadly, involve a shitload of work, the thought of which makes me wish i was an ambulance driver in beirut.**






*in homage to the delightfully petulant magpies bumper sticker that i covet desperately and laugh loudly at whenever it crosses my vision.
** tasteless. but...even though it's more topical [and more offensive] right now given the current situation, i'm gonna go ahead and say it would've been funny anyway.

i get it...

i just don't GET it. you know how there are some things you can understand on a conceptual level but you just don't feel it in your guts?

the round ball game is one of those things for me. i get the incredible history of football and its capacity for allowing tiny and/or otherwise powerless nations to punch above their weight in the international sporting arena. i expect that if you wait so long for a goal to be scored, it must be an excruciating thrill when that ball goes through to the net. i'm touched by the poignancy of so much football history - the rivalries, the commitment, the spectacle of maradona traversing the entire pitch to score a heavenly goal. i just don't FEEL it. it doesn't grab my insides and churn them around with a raw intensity. the agony and the ecstasy is lost on me. i get that i SHOULD love football - i just don't.

exhibit b: stanley kubrick movies. i've tried. i've even enjoyed parts of all those i've watched. on an intellectual level, i understand that he's one of the most significant directors ever to get behind a camera. i get his place in cinematic history, and i know why he has it. the innovation, the courage of his content, the grandeur of his aesthetic vision - check, check, check. but when i'm watching his films, i don't care. i have trouble sitting through them, without wondering what else i could be doing.

and last night, i had to add mogwai to this list of things i get but don't feel. the most amazing part of the experience was seeing a room full of diehard fans completely enthralled by music they have undoubtedly laughed and cried and danced and made love to. that is always and ever a beautiful thing [unless you happen to be living near queens park in toowoomba when they host the gospel music festival]. but whilst i know they weren't boring, i was pretty bored. i narrowed it down to a few things - the really really loud wall of sound thing? not that impressive to me. carefully monitoring the technical precision of the musicians on the stage? not interested. what if the guys on stage look a bit bored? i feel a bit bored. and this one exposes me for the lover of pop that i am - i like songs with words.

so mogwai will remain one of the best and most wonderful things to listen to when you're lazing around in bed on a rainy day, but i don't need to see them live again.

feel the love

another boozy weekend, another ordinary monday.* it started out as the kind of day where everything feels like nothing and nothing means anything. a walk through the sunshine in princes park fixed me right up. i spent the whole time walking home thinking of how different my life has been since i started this blog.

last night, i met yet another fantastic person - the dry-as-a-bone, pretty-as-a-picture, smart-as-hell rach. the sweet sweet fluffy came to the gig, followed closely by the highly amusing davethescot, and of course we were there to bear witness to the rock'n'roll goodness of tobytoby in action. as i said to both of the women, i'm prepared for the day i meet a fellow blogger and think "um, you're not as great as i thought you'd be" but it's yet to happen. in fact, quite the opposite is true. what a fucking impressive collection i've met so far!

LUCKY? ME? why yes.

we get trivial with the tantalising jess every week, where dave the scotsman and george h also take up hosting duties in the rocking of our world. there i get to play with elaine, ruby, mel, and richardwatts, who duke it out each week for my affections, which they win by providing amazing facts and truly inspiring trashtalk. i get to keep up my daily love affair with the endlessly inspiring bonnie through the magic of blogness, which is reason enough to love the whole concept [she who introduced me to blogging]. and i get to read the thoughts of incredibly smart and funny people every day, and sometimes i have the intense satisfaction of knowing that i've amused or enlightened them too. my oldest and dearest friends love coming here and meeting my newer but no less precious gems, and i feel like i work a whole lot of stuff out just by writing it up.

what could be finer? oh, that 's right. love.

so, as you can see, i couldn't possibly be more happy with my blogging experience so far. keep up the good work, excellent new friends, and i'll keep the best-intentioned drivel coming.








*massive shout-out to mick, whose going-away drinks we attended on friday night. he and his gorgeous missus [along with their bambino] are heading to kuala lumpur directly, as mick takes up a job as executive producer of the english language news on al-jazeera. the more people like him to make the leap in promoting understanding, the better. the world needs a hundred mick bunworths.

who knew?

no, seriously, did anyone know that western australia was the proposed site for a massive jewish settlement in the 1930s? this is a truly incredible story.

isaac steinberg - social revolutionary, religious jew from russia, former member of lenin's cabinet - represented the freeland league, the aim of which was to establish a colony in the kimberley region of w.a. he envisioned a community of 75 000 european jews, with complete cultural autonomy but following the laws of the nation.

the land was to be provided by the duracks, one of australia's wealthiest agricultural dynasties, and the scheme had the support of public figures like the commonweath minister for repatriation, the chairman of the abc, former premier of new south wales, supreme court judges, and the designer of the sydney harbour bridge, not to mention those on opposite sides of politics, like john cain snr and frederick eggleston. archbishop mannix even threw his weight behind it, along with his anglican counterpart in sydney, dr howard mowll. the bulletin was predictably venomous in its opposition [apparently, australia for the white man didn't include jews] and there were a few vocal anti-semites among the parliamentarians of the time who made clear their views.

obviously, this is all complicated by the fact that the aboriginal claims on the land were not considered, not to mention the likelihood that europeans could have withstood the harsh conditions of the kimberley in the 1930s.

but it's a cracking good story, no?




update:

i found this article on workers online with more information. fantastic.

folly*

you know all that stuff about sovereignty and nation states and independent actors and international law and the geneva convention and the united nations and stuff? well, you don't really need to anymore. if you never got the basics down, don't worry about it. it's kind of redundant now. israel has been "given" a week to inflict maximum damage on lebanon - oh, i'm sorry, on hezbollah. or if you prefer, they've been given a week to get hezbollah to stop doing that shit.

they've been given this "gift" by the united states. the united nations [you know, the guys who keep pinning resolutions on israel? the ones who asked the u.s. very politely not to invade iraq - they're quite effectual] don't really get a say in this one. the international community are pretty sure it's a bad idea, given that israel is a country and hezbollah are a bunch of dudes [who are pretty universally disliked in lebanon, especially beirut]. america are all like "yeah, but we sorted this in afghanistan, and it's like, fully fine". so yeah.


hang on. the united states reckon that they're not in charge at all. see, i thought that sounded a bit wacked, israel being a country on its own and all [and in no way a client state]. they should be making up their own mind [um, yep, done that] and then seeing what the rest of the world/middle east/united nations have to say about it, shouldn't they? isn't that the shit we sorted out after world war two? so, luckily...


"The US is publicly denying any role in setting a time frame for a halt to Israeli strikes. When asked whether the US was holding back diplomatically, White House spokesman Tony Snow said yesterday: "No. The insinuation there is that there is active military planning collaboration or collusion between the United States and Israel, and there isn't."




you heard the man. there isn't. active military planning collaboration or collusion between the united states and israel. none of that. at all.




but here's the real reason for this post. the most sensical thing i've read in the last week came screaming out of the age at me, at pace. it seems that when you invade a country, i mean when you really fuck some shit up, by bombing their capital and devastating their most urbanised areas, and destroying factories producing milk and food, you displace a lot of people [the u.n.h.c.r estimates 50 000 at this stage]. in a nation with an already precarious infrastructure in place after decades of civil conflict, those people will be hard pressed to get the assistance they need. so who will give them that help?


"A tour of Beirut's refugee shelters gives a revealing sketch of the power of Hezbollah. Known for its social and charity network as well as its powerhouse political party and its fighting force, the Islamist Shiite organisation has once again eclipsed Government efforts — many of the shelters are being run by Hezbollah."



really, what did they expect? how the fuck do they think that people come to support murderous terrorist networks in the first place? i remember the night i watched september 11 happen - i was awake and fixated on the television for nearly 24 hours. my most vivid memory is of a reporter on the scene, covered in silt, almost in tears, looking into the camera, aggrieved, traumatised, and saying with utter sincerity "why do they hate us so much?".

i'll never forget it.













*the title of this post refers not only to the twin offensives in lebanon and palestine but also to my decision to write about it here. i am hopelessly out of my depth when it comes to the middle east, which is why i haven't posted anything. today i was moved.

*yawn*

so it seems politicians are a pack of mongrel bastards. australians don't mind this so much.

according to a pollster from ac nielsen, voters have 'a fairly sophisticated view of politics, perhaps more than they're given credit for' and they 'want to stick with a prime minister who they see as having delivered and they're prepared to forgive a politician, i guess, behaving like a politician'.

comforting thoughts indeed. i detect shades of the tampa and children overboard - "he may have lied BUT HE DID IT FOR US" - the public chose the lying howard over the gutless beazley. and now that they're faced with the choice between a conniving, ruthless bully and a smug, two-faced sook, they say "we'll take them both!". we've come so far.


and mister costello, this is not a good look:

The poll shows voters overwhelmingly prefer Mr Howard as PM and even opposition leader Kim Beazley is preferred as prime minister over Mr Costello.


BUT THIS IS*:






suck it up, pete.






*because he looks sad.

london calling

my uk correspondent [jord] contacted me this weekend with important news. it appears that the british public have lost their collective marbles and voted to evict nikki from the big brother house. ah, nikki, we barely knew ye. we didn't really care. but we wanted more action on youtube.

some stuff i found out on the internerd:

the morning after her eviction the housemates were woken by the speakers blasting a nikki megamix,

the uk gretel [davina] had to go inside the house to drag nikki out after the announcement, as she refused to leave and was screaming repeatedly "i don't want to go! don't make me!",

this was her eviction night outfit. bless.





her thoughts on two of the male housemates...

"Richard - I love to hate him. I could kill him and actually told Big Brother that I'm going to suffocate him in the night. But I love Richard and he will always have a very big place in my heart. I will stay in contact with Rich."

"Mikey's a good mate, he's good fun and he's a good-looking boy. He's got lots of good-looking friends, he's shown me pictures of them, so I'll definitely be staying in contact with Mikey."

she also revealed, in news of the world , that the reason why she spent the entire time in the house whining and screaming was due to sexual frustration. they went with the headline "i'm ga-ga-gagging for it". you stay classy, news of the world.

so, as a token of my love and appreciation [for nikki], i offer you this and this and this to remember her by. oh, and this...

nikki, i couldn't agree more.

that's it. end of.

the morning after

she did warn me. she explicitly stated that there would be my life before 'trapped in the closet' and there would be my life after 'trapped in the closet'.




last night, all was changed utterly.




i'm only up to part 5, so if you know who rosie the nosy neighbour is banging, don't tell me. of those i've watched so far, part 4 is easily my favourite. i CANNOT stop myself from singing "oh my god, a rubber [echo: rubber rubber rubber]" repeatedly, and with gusto. i am now QUITE incapable of concentrating on the most minor tasks, as my energies are completely consumed with what the rest of r. kelly's really bad day might hold.* but i'm also scared that watching the rest of the hip-hopera will only consolidate my obsession.




i predict that rufus was the pastor at twan's prison.





and ms fits, i was only just getting over nikki...





*if you click on the wikipedia link, you will have to stop yourself from reading the chapter summaries and just hit the links to watch. really, it will be so much better if you don't know what's coming.

balance sheet*

howard, and his mates blainey and windschuttle, are very fond of the balance sheet as a device for measuring the worth of a subject. or object. or the broad sweep of australian history. they like to tot things up into two neat columns - good and bad. oh sure, it's naive and small-minded and ignorant to complexity, BUT IT WORKS. so in the spirit of objectivity and the pursuit of knowledge, i thought we might apply the balance sheet to this task. how much has howard gotten away with in the past ten years? let's weigh up the things nobody really gave a shit about against the things that have really pissed people off. we can call it the balance sheet of public outrage...


COULDN'T CARE LESS COLUMN**

refusal to sign kyoto protocol
abolition of atsic
illegal wars in two countries
no apology to stolen generations
detention of refugees and australian citizens
abuse of asio powers
loss of the siev x
the tampa
the wik ten point plan
return of "the dole"
attacks on universities, public schools, the national broadcaster
the not-so-free trade agreement with the u.s.a.
awb bribery revelations
abandonment of david hicks
attack-dog bill heffernan using parliamentary privilege to defame michael kirby
wrongheaded push for nuclear power
appointment of hollingworth as governor-general
manipulation of referendum on the republic
denial of racist dimension to cronulla riots
implementation of gst
children overboard





REALLY VERY CRANKY COLUMN


industrial rights eroded beyond recognition***
john lied and was mean to peter****



















*WARNING - THIS POST CONTAINS A RANT. don't like it? well, you should have checked down here first. actually, what are you doing here?

**i'm sure i'm forgetting something.

***bearing in mind that 200 000 marched for reconciliation and around a million protested our involvement in iraq, and then promptly forgot about it. let's hope the peeps can maintain the rage over the i.r. regressions.

****who nobody likes anyway.

there's nothin' nietzsche couldn't teach ya

in honour of the italian triumph*, my first post on thus bakes zarathustra** was the story of how i cooked authentic spaghetti carbonara. i must say, it was an excellent meal with a truly terrible photograph to remember it by. i think bonnie will be the most ashamed of my efforts but she can attest that the carbonara itself is a thing of shiny eggy goodness. honey, if you were here i'd make it for you right now. who'm i kiddin'? it'd be earl grey and almond fingers - STAT!


anyway, i hope you lot like this recipe as i invented it myself.






*did they really cheat? i know nothing about the round ball game or the pinnacle of it that was just contested. i just like their food. ghassan hage would call me......a white australian.

**thus bakes zarathustra is the [truly wonderful] name of the home-cooked food blog started by rach and rounded out by a few other apron-clad peeps with a few tricks up their culinary sleeves.

vote below the line

imagine you have woken up in an alternate reality.* a snap election has just been called - one that is not concerned with electing legislators. after this poll, the "best wrong couple who kind of creep you out but still amuse you greatly" will be sworn in as the new heads of state.** you cast your vote right here on the internerd [which, i am reliably informed, will be the future of democracy], numbering your selections from 1 to 5 [1 being the winner]. so what do you reckon of these pairs of aces?***


































once we have a consensus, i propose that we write to the losing couple and ask them to cease and desist. and before anyone who knows me really well can ask - yes, this entire exercise is indicative of the lengths i will go to in order to distract myself when i wake up to more howard in the news...






*i often feel this way on a monday morning. especially today.
**yes, this is my contribution to the republican cause. and given that no-one knows/cares who the governor-general is, i don't think anyone will notice/care if he's replaced.
***with apologies to brit-fed, the fake-whites and the de generes-rossis for their omission.

two minutes hate

had a decidedly orwellian moment last night. i was basking in the afterglow of two episodes of the west wing [after eating what i think was my body weight in indian takeaway from this fine establishment*] with the lovely bella, who is visiting from the nation's capital. we have known each other for so many years and [staying home] sitting and eating and drinking and talking is still our favourite thing to do together. we were conducting our final assessment of the west wing [perfect, brilliant, rank idealism but the best kind etc] when a strange image appeared on the television screen.

it was the australian prime minister.

on an armchair.

in a suit.

WITH BIG TED ON HIS LAP.


he gave big ted a bit of a cuddle while he extolled the virtues of play school. never mind that play school is one of the crowning achievements of an organisation that howard has repeatedly undermined and threatens with extinction every time the budget rolls around. that seems far from his mind as he tries to approximate "avuncular" as a mode of delivery. of course, he just looks creepy/of limited ability.


this morning, i asked the internet all about it and the internet said "i have no idea what you're talking about." so i am now convinced that it never happened. belle and i suspected as much.




*i've always thought that the name of this restaurant sounded like a bollywood porno. is there such a thing?




update:

i have continued the net search for evidence that this congratulatory message actually exists. you know what's really funny? wherever you include the search terms "john howard" and "abc", you find reference to howard bagging the shit out of our national broadcaster. remember play school's two mums? hilarious.

worlds colliding

last night i left work to attend the opening of a friend's exhibition. his stuff is absolutely magnificent, so if you are so inclined you could get yerself down to red gallery in north fitzroy for some of this metallic goodness. it was then a strange leap to sit down and watch the state of origin decider. for the uninitiated, state of origin is a titanic struggle between a blue team and a maroon team for annual rugby league domination. it used to be kind of fun in the old days, when there was heaps of biffo, but lately i can barely be arsed watching all three. the highlight was when they introduced john howard and THE CROWD BOOED. i'm not kidding, there was JEERING! i will now advance this as proof that rugby league crowds are more intelligent than those of other codes.*

so, needless to say, the night required me to use both the left and right sides of my brain. finished up with more firefly, which is easily the best thing i've seen in ages.**



*this is, of course, a spurious argument with no basis in fact.
**a transparent euphemism.

there, i said it

i didn't go to trivia and i'm glad. is it so wrong to have a bye if you genuinely have a better offer? what if someone offers to buy you thai food and kiss you with abandon and let you watch the bill and then firefly with pause breaks for the lovin' and they're incredibly good-looking and they pretty much spend the entire evening sexing you up real good?

what then?


i told you i was wayne carey.


though judging by my text messages lately, i could just as easily be shane warne.

hey sports fans

*

it's finally happened. i have hit the bottom of the ladder in my bloody buggery bastardy aussie rules tipping comp. the carefully considered strategy of tipping against the favourite in every match [and whoever's playing collingwood, who are now PATENTLY the favourites - grrr] has failed to spark the scrappy fighting spirit of the underdogs. perhaps i should've fired off a few emails to the crap teams during the pre-season, letting them know i was counting on their gutsy determination so that we might BOTH triumph over adversity?

and speaking of all things sports, there is talk within the brunswick massive of a bye this week [I KNOW - IT WASN'T ME, I WAS HALF ASLEEP SHAKING MY FIST, SHOUTING "STELLLLAAAAAA!"], so the east brunswick may not be graced with our presence tonight. i'm loathe to miss a week [match fitness, you know?], so if richardwatts, or tammiodo, or senorita price, or any other keen rookies want to join me, i would be completely willing to betray my team-mates and fill the massive with likely lads and lasses tonight. i have no loyalty to the other members of the massive. i am wayne carey. so you better not bring your missus...





*clearly, i included a picture of bucks in anguish so as to convey the frustration i feel at tipping exactly one from eight this round. it has absolutely nothing to do with a weird crush i have on his beaten up face and his rock-solid, er, leadership of the collingwood magpies.

i feel lightheaded

in the wake of the [feeble] australian version getting itself into [not enough] shit for the [fuckwitted] behaviour of its [gormless] housemates, i would like to reiterate my belief that bbuk has got it all over us. from what i can gather [through the magic of youtube], the sexual exploits of the uk kids are consensual and pleasingly visible for all to see, and if you didn't understand me last time - NIKKI NIKKI NIKKI, you light up my life.

i'm sure that any bbuk hounds will know that this is an old clip, but it remains one of my favourites.

strap yourselves in...