the perfect blend

another step too far

i realise that this blog can sometimes seem like a feral roller-coaster ride of [by turns] hare-brained frivolity and barely checked outrage, but bloody hell.

i wasn't going to write about it. i tried not to think about it at all, really. just like the matt newton farce, and the invasion of aboriginal australia, and the unbelievable fucking bile spewing out of witnesses at the brimble inquest - my first instinct is to rip it apart here and write my way out of the anger. then i feel exhausted just thinking about it. so i play parlour games instead.

is it that things are too awful to engage with anymore? or that there seems to be no point? oh, i know this stuff is encouraging. but what will really change with a new government? so much of what ails us is deeply entrenched within our culture - sexism, violence, misogyny, racism. john howard is a nasty piece of work, no question. but he does what he can get away with. the acceptance of these horrific abuses within australian society is not his fault - it's ours. sure, he can be charged with presiding over attitudinal shifts but howard is the symptom, not the cause. look around.

i was thinking this morning about how many novels strike me as hopelessly internal. you know, middle-class musings about the life of the mind, ruled by emotion, but only personal emotion and angst and despair. i was thinking how little i enjoy them, because they stop at the edges of a person and concentrate only on the self. they pay no attention to structure.

but maybe that's all you know for sure. maybe that's all you can change - yourself. maybe writing about structural injustice is just as indulgent because it's even more futile.

i was struck by jones and fraser's use of the phrase: this is another step too far. with each new low, we breathlessly assure ourselves 'this time. surely. this time people will see. we'll change. we'll arrest the damage.'

how many more steps "too far"?

that lame post

the problem with watching rage and video hits of a weekend is that you may spend the rest of the week singing songs about umb-a-rellas and wondering if nicole richie is slowly dying because the slightly pudgy, pampered-looking lead singer of good charlotte is eating all her food, or if that's just a patented lohan-doherty drug bloat.

that said, i'm intrigued and slightly ticked off by the name of the new good charlotte single - "dance floor anthem". you see, i love these puns, and i'm not sure i like snotty nosed bad musicians using them without my say-so. let's face it, when queens of the stone age call their song "the feelgood hit of the summer" we laugh like drains and declare it the most whimsical jape of the season. when good charlotte do it, i want to throw out all my black eyeliner, lest i ever EVER be mistaken for one of them.

now, to our task - what are all the other clever literal puntastic names? here are some i thought of:

that 70s show
date movie [et al ad infinitum]
the good bar

help me think of the rest?

oh kevin

you are skating on some very thin ice, my friend.

i'm a rocket...man

the other one

when the going gets tough, the tough play parlour games. so with precious little fanfare, allow me to introduce "the other one" for your enjoyment, distraction, and ultimate fulfilment.



we learn to play by example:


michael hutchence, kirk pengilly, the farriss brothers and ...

the other one [garry gary beers].


roger daltrey, pete townsend, keith moon and ...

the other one [john entwistle].


axl rose, slash, izzy stradlin, duff mckagan and ...

the other one [steven adler, though arguably duff mckagan is the other other one].





and my personal favourite:


kurt cobain, dave grohl and ...

perhaps the protoypical "other one" [krist novoselic].



let us play.