in fairness...

...to the author, and me, there was a good reason for reading shantaram to begin with. it's all about the first page. here 'tis:



'It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realized, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.

In my case, it’s a long story, and a crowded one. I was a revolutionary who lost his ideals in heroin, a philosopher who lost his integrity in crime, and a poet who lost his soul in a maximum-security prison. When I escaped from that prison, over the front wall, between two gun-towers, I became my country’s most wanted man. Luck ran with me and flew with me across the world to India, where I joined the Bombay mafia. I worked as a gunrunner, a smuggler, and a counterfeiter. I was chained on three continents, beaten, stabbed, and starved. I went to war. I ran into the enemy guns. And I survived, while other men around me died. They were better men than I am, most of them: better men whose lives were crunched up in mistakes, and thrown away by the wrong second of someone else’s hate, or love, or indifference. And I buried them, too many of those men, and grieved their stories and their lives into my own.

But my story doesn’t begin with them, or with the mafia: it goes back to that first day in Bombay. Fate put me in the game there. Luck dealt the cards that led me to Karla Saaranen. And I started to play it out, that hand, from the first moment I looked into her green eyes. So it begins, this story, like everything else—with a woman, and a city, and a little bit of luck.'



not bad, eh?

chapter twenty-four

'At midnight's horizon the great milky wheel of stars rose wet and shivering from the waves, and the silver yellow light of a gibbous moon settled on the sea, glistening the tinsel-crested swell.'

and that right there, ladies and gentlemen, is when i officially lost my desire to [live? keep my eyes in my head?] continue reading shantaram.

lest we forget

i attended my first dawn service in melbourne yesterday. given that the original ceremonies attracted a few hundred people and this one involved thousands, it was impossible to actually see anything. from an event-management/performance perspective, it fails dismally, but i got the vibe. there was singing and guns and that incredibly touching ode to the soliders. the service was overwhelmingly male, anglo, imperial and christian but remarkably, there were still opportunities to be genuinely moved.

i had a lot of pontificating planned today. i was going to make an argument that anzac day itself is not objectionable and that we do need a day or two a year to consider the human cost of war. i wanted to talk about keating and kokoda versus howard and gallipoli, and show that kokoda for so many reasons deserves more of our attention and reverence. it happened in our region, we were genuinely threatened, [in however fraught and patronising relationships] australian soldiers worked not only alongside americans but also the locals, and WE WON. keating thought kokoda more in tune with our engagement with asia, our alliance with the usa, and our crucial contribution to a war that was about freedom and democracy [not imperial boundaries and treaties and offings of archdukes].



then i read this article in the yesterday's age* and thought you should just look at that instead.




*as recommended to me by my tassie correspondent and finder of all things flanagan.

look what the cat dragged in

i return. i wasn't having a crisis or anything, blog-related or otherwise, i just became...disaffected? disconnected? i kept starting posts and finding the transition from thoughts to words most unsatisfactory. no biggie. just...bad reception.


things that irritated me while i was away:


bloody bush defending the 2nd amendment WITHIN 24 HOURS OF A DEADLY SHOOTING SPREE.


adam "dropped at birth" selwood cleared at the tribunal after explaining himself. he says he was 'deeply hurt, offended, and defamed by some of the accusations', and that he 'never meant to offend des and his family'. well, you did mean to, didn't you? you meant to call that woman a slut, thinking that it was more likely his partner, didn't you, adam? i'd say that qualifies as trying to 'hurt des and his family'. so you didn't mean to insult a six year old girl, just call into question the value of a woman, and by proxy all women, to distract your opponent. and you know what? in my experience, guys who get massive tattoos of somebody's face on their bodies are special kinds of guys, you know? if a man is sporting a massive tattoo of any person on their arm, and you insult that image, you're prolly gonna get your lights punched out. in this case, it was thoroughly deserved. you are weak as piss.


speaking of weak as piss/the west coast eagles/the toxic culture of the afl, ben cousins is apparently coming home after five minutes in vegas. did i say vegas? i meant rehab.


big brother gets the ratings it deserves [and i dream about].


two young women end their lives in a suicide pact, reminding us of what we all learnt once - everything feels a hundred times worse when you're a teenager. in-depth reporting of this tragedy turned to myspace for answers. for fuck's.


oh, kevin.


but i'm sure there's some good stuff going on. anyone?

vale vonnegut

the new york times has the best obituaries. they reminded me that vonnegut thought the only antidote to the cruelty and vice and madness of the world was a simple one: be sweet to each other. dinitia smith muses that...

the title character in his 1965 novel, "god bless you, mr. rosewater", summed up his philosophy:

"hello babies. welcome to earth. it's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. it's round and wet and crowded. at the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. there's only one rule that i know of, babies - 'god damn it, you've got to be kind.' "

that's it.

enforcing civility

some of you may've been following the brouhaha about bloghaviour that erupted recently, after a high profile blogger and techie, kathy sierra, received death threats in the comments section of her blog. there's a short precis here if you're interested. in the aftermath, a heated discussion has taken place online and elsewhere about the civility of bloggers, the root causes of this particular brand of misogyny, and the plausibility of a blogging 'code of conduct'.

it's not novel to ask questions about sexism in the i.t. industry, and by proxy, on the web. obviously, it's a continuum that runs from a lack of familiarity with women due to their absence, through to rampant misogyny. but isn't that the same as many industries/society as a whole? and isn't the web made by some intangible "us"?

leaving aside the charge of sexism for a moment [or rather, let's assume that sexism is as rampant on the web as anywhere], the question then becomes a more prosaic one; one that has plagued us forever and always will - why are some people such cunts?

here in "cyberspace" [i love that word as it reminds me of a time before we knew what it was*, a la total recall], the problem seems to linked to anonymity. if nobody knows who you are, you will almost certainly say things that you wouldn't ordinarily say. i know i have. i'd wager we all have. it's an almost irresistible urge to get away with something.

but i can honestly say that i've never flamed anyone. if i read something egregiously offensive, i hit the little x at the top right of my screen. think how much easier life would be if you could do that to the sleazy guy on the tram or the rude waiter from tin pot hell? if i'm offended by someone i give two craps about, i think about how to express that, and then tell them in a clear and, hopefully, respectful way. is this because i am a veritable pollyanna, with nothing but good thoughts of sweetness and light? obviously not. it's because there's no point in engaging with people when they're being cunts. or if they actually are cunts. or if they're doing a good impersonation of a cunt. honestly, who believes that solid data and reasoned argument would change andrew bolt's mind? i'm not averse to withering criticism or even invective. i can be very spiteful about john and george and keith and andrew. i just wouldn't seek someone out to give them my thoughts on how awful they are.

by contrast, i've seen bloggers unleash some fucked up shit on the world. ms fits and jessculture have had their share of unbelievably ugly abuse. audrey, petstarr, fluffy and other lovelies have also been targeted by professional arsehats. but guess what? a nasty piece of work online is just a nasty piece of work. and i've yet to meet someone who fakes an adorable, sweet, and love-filled disposition here, only to be revealed as a spiteful cow in the flesh. why would they? and why would a witty and cool and clever person get a kick out of being a shallow, bilious blogger?

i guess what i'm saying is, i don't think you can enforce civil behaviour among bloggers any more than you can in everyday life. people are sometimes very, very shit. and other times they'll make your heart sing with their kindness and warmth and way with words. but still more of the time, they pass you by with nary a glance.

you win some, you lose some. but all those in between are being very civil [without being told to].



*we still don't know what "it" is.

get this

via get up.

is there any end to their bastardry?

do please sign the petition and spread the word [make sure it won't affect your enrolment either]. if you can't be bothered, imagine another few years of this government...then gather yourself, breathe deeply, and say "no".

file this under "f" also

...FOR FUN.

the last attempt at a blogscursion was foiled by bad weather and our rapidly waning interest in seeing snakes on a motherfucking plane once the opening weekend revealed the full extent of its shitfulness. this proposition involves a bigger commitment on your part than even getting [in]to the coburg drive-in without a car. transport-wise, it may be easier to get yourself to imax tomorrow night to see 300 on the mega-enormous screen. however, the screening time of midnight may deter the responsible among us [read: lightweights], who need a full night's sleep in order to complete their thursday business.

so, that's midnight wednesday at imax - cgi carnage for all!

at this stage, we've got a smallish crew of three [which works out to a neat hundred spartans each] but if you'd like to come along, you absolutely should/are welcome.

you don't even need your parents to sign a form. and what's one thursday in a haze of no-sleep-itis? you know you wanna...


p.s. i just called imax and they are nearly sold out of tickets so get online if you wanna come.

UPDATE: also, i just discovered that we need to all get there early/together for allocation of seats, as the tickets are not seat-specific and we might get flung around in far corners of a cavernous theatre and then i might cry as i'm quite scared of the dark. so, i reckon we all book our tickets online/by phone, then we turn up for seat allocation together on the early side [maybe 10ish], and then decamp for a espresso martinis until the witching hour.

file under "f"

in a stunning display of maturity and insight, malcolm turnbull wonders aloud if this whole david-hicks-plea-bargain-bizzo isn't just a cunning plan to hurt howard's election chances.

quite so, malcolm, quite so.

i'm sure that david hicks [IF THAT IS INDEED HIS REAL NAME] has cleverly devised all manner of tactic to get the liberals voted out [and all from within the privacy of his very own cell - lots of free time to narrow his eyes and stroke his chin menacingly]. why, we know he would resort to violence if necessary, but this kind of sneaky underhanded mind-shrink is also to be expected from a terrorist mastermind.

i mean, has anyone ever listened to "major" mori's speeches played backwards?

what hour?

i was in the shower on sunday morning when i had a strange thought: 'wasn't i supposed to have a bath last night?'. i couldn't think for a minute why i had been "planning" a bath and not had one. then i remembered. oh fuck. we forgot about earth hour. i thought about how we could forget something that we'd been talking about all day and i put it down to the flu-like symptoms that beset us as the weekend commenced [house=petri dish].

but here's the punchline...guess what we were doing from 7.30 to 8.30, the exact period of earth hour, thoroughly engrossed and oblivious to all around us?


we were watching top gear.


lady, i don't think you need to worry about about me turning green.