Sunday, July 19, 2009

you shall never be mine

not all that long ago, a friend of mine and i decided upon the makings of an esoteric club
(we thought that perhaps Foucault would have been proud)

the idea of this club is that it has a fluctuating membership based upon the establishment of working groups,
none of whom have any idea of what the general premise of membership is,
and all of whom have a name for the group - none being permitted to disclose that aforementioned name to any of the other members of the group
the main organising premise being the inability or refusal of the 'grown-up'
and the guiding principle being non-disclosure.
oh, damn!

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

why i love what i do

initial email:

Hello all,
sorry for the tardy mail out.
Tomorrow we're going to be doing Rousseau's Social Contract.
Please get one of the many Penguin classic copies that's available in the Baillieu. Not sure which section we'll do, I'll do a bit of research between now and tomorrow.
NB, if anyone's read Montesquieu and knows which bit of the mammoth, mammoth Spirit of the Laws we should do for next week, I'd be grateful.
see some of you tomorrow, AO, 1700/1730, BYO milk of human kindness
P
PS Did you see/hear about Lockes' ghostly mansion?
http://www.theage.com.au/executive-style/luxury/palatial-spreads-kept-empty-thats-rich-20090713-disw.html
Article not nearly as cool as the headline I saw on the street outside the milk bar: Toorak's Ghostly Mansions


to whit, i respond (a mercenary contribution):

Hi All,
Anyone want to buy a spare copy of Hobbes' Leviathan off me?
$20 ono.
g******@yahoo.com
x


responses to my email:


Very Lockean and enterprising of you!
Morrisey and his band of brigands say otherwise:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zNsEvwyXwE


also:

Ha!
In the words of a friend's former tutor/lover:
"Next week we will be looking at the ideas of operaismo and autonomia. Your homework for this week is to fucking steal something and bring it to next week's tute."

and my retort:

a story in my defense:

once, when i was five, my family went to an English stately home
for some reason i became strangely fixated on a commemorative pen
my mother dismissed this as a ludicrous gift
i stole it.
then, upon returning home, stricken by guilt, i buried it in the backyard
i've never stolen anything since. ever.

the book was a purchase to replace the one i lent to a friend, and despaired of ever seeing again.
it came back to me.
i have an extra copy, that someone might like to own.



too much to do, too many conferences, too much writing (aka The Galaxy Song)


Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown
And things seem hard or tough
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft
And you feel that you've had quite eno-o-o-o-o-ough


Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
and revolving at 900 miles an hour.
It's orbiting at 19 miles a second,
so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
Now the sun,
and you and me,
and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day,
In an outer spiral arm,
at 40,000 miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars;
It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side;
It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick,
But out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide.
We're thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point,
We go 'round every two hundred million years;
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
In all of the directions it can whizz;
As fast as it can go,
at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute
and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Stress, I thrive upon thee

...or at least some semblance of this.
As much as the chaotic and unsettling might allow one little ease and comfort, it's turns out that the unheimlich (thanks, Freud) is the place I feel most at home. Ah, what sweeping irony, what restless and uncomfy a place as a home you are.
And yet.
Feed me discord*, feed me discontent, feed me the unsettling of routine, of ritual and tradition. That is where I sit best.
It is in these times that I find the bottom of what I really am. And it startles and amazes me.

*smile*




*okay, maybe a little of an exaggeration, but what else might a blog be for!?