Total Score.

This is me.
(Brisbane here I come!)

Doris, you put a spring in my step

...and shake my cares away.
Or was that blues?

The political power of the mundane, or; the revolution in the 'ordinary'

(Methinks there may be a journal article in this, or at least a little more than a blog post... let's see how it goes...)

There is something so very satisfying in the very fact of the ordinary.
The quotidienne, the everyday... call it what you will.
The fact of the matter is that it is the very familiarity of objects and events that creates the regularity of lives, the very steady measure of the beat of our days.
But at that same moment, they become banal, the stuff of boredom, the measure of the end of our interest and focus - these things have always been there, they will remain in our sight... Could we not see another thing? Might there not be more than that before us?

And this is where the revolutionary can become.

For these things before us were once the new puppy, the gifted birthday toy, all things shiny and new.
They were once the revolutionary, the hopeful, the difficult to encompass, the impossible to understand.

And now they lie beside us, asides of the fascinating, and the cast-offs of the things we call 'news', resigned to the mundane and the 'ordinary'.
But this in itself is politically powerful.
For the very everydayness of these things that once challenged and made heads shift to encompass them is proof of its power.
Surely we need no more proof of the old maxim that old revolutionaries become new conservatives when the revolution happens?

Which is why, when friends refuse to go to see Drag Kings perform because they're not sure how those performances do anything anymore - they're stale, old, boring... surely they could find a way to be more challenging, more political?
Why then, I smile, and go to watch the ordinary occur.
The revolution has happened.

extradition

Question of the day:
Will you be extradited for a crime should the action not be considered a crime in the country from which you are to be extradited?

This train of thought started with an amusing customer-waitress banter with a mother of three, who had arrived for lunch sans children.
"Sold the kids for scientific experiments, then?"
- "No, no, if I'd done that, I wouldn't be here. I'd be off, far away, on a plane probably... on my way to a country with no extradition treaty."
"Any particular one? The Bahamas? Is that even one of them?"
- "Perhaps China? Would that work?"

And so the ponder began?
Without including China, and its 'One Child Policy' in a kind of strange Orientalist hand-waving in which all countries in a block of the 'exotic other' become capable of all kinds of 'savagery', such as the abuse or slavery of small children, and can therefore be utilised by the Occidental evader of just punishment as imposed by their own nation and its citizens, who simply attempt to impose the trappings of their self-determined semblance of 'the good life'...
If we were to consider that it is possible that there may be a country in which the selling off of children for experimentation, scientific or otherwise, is not contrary to any law in that sovereignty.
Then, and only then, might we consider the above question that commenced this train of thought.

Would this mother still be likely to be extradited, should that imaginary country - regardless of judgements of the relative (de)merits of her mothering - have an extradition treaty with the nation to which she 'belongs', for the crime which is only a crime in one of the two nations...?


While I am aware that, with a few key pieces of mailing, or even a decent web search, I might resolve this dilemma once and for all. I can't help but also become aware that this is in fact, more of an intrigue, more of a piece of wondering about the working of the social world with its open-endedness intact. Don't find out the answer for me, world. The seeking to know, the awareness of the possibility of discovery... that's the more valuable of the options for me.

Break my heart

There's just no way of explaining how much this particular rendition of this particular song has the capacity to break me apart, and put me back together again in just a few minutes of Ms Frances Gumm.

Why don't you watch it, maybe you'll get it too.



Creeps up on the inside, huh?

Necrophilic

So my question of the moment:
Is it still necrophilia if it is two dead who are making sweet, sweet love?

The general response to this astute, and somewhat confronting question (oh yes, let us unravel those deep, dark, desires you uncovered while watching Buffy) has bewildered and confused at many a social gathering.
Why spoil the moment with such ponderings of such things dark and - well, let's face it - unsanitary? (Clearly, this particular train of response has very little of use to add, considering that sexual acts in general tend towards the leaking of various bodily fluids to much pleasure, and has very little to do with the sanitary.)

So I have put this very question to a number of people and the responses seem to lie in one of two categories, namely:

a) No, of course not! If two dead people are getting it on, they can't possibly be indulging in such an illicit act - it's consensual! Why, just remind yourself of zombie love subplots the film-world over - such sweet undead commitment, such undying passion!

and then there's (and this response I myself tend to favour):

b) Well, of course it is. Just think of the etymology of the word itself - Necro-, the greek prefix meaning death; and philia, to love or a lover of. Why all this word requires is that one loves or is the lover of one who is dead (undead being simply a subcategory of the dead) - anyone in that position, dead, living, human, or otherwise... all of these are Necrophiliacs, and well they should be, haven't you too felt a little (gay) zombie lust boil up within you after watching a Bruce LaBruce film?

And this train of thought returns us to Buffy - she who has been twice in love with a vampire - and her sexual proclivities. (Although, to be more precise, her tendencies only include actual consummation with one vampire - the other being eternally denied his moment of bliss.)

Which makes one ponder further*:
Is it still Peadophilia if two kids are doing the loving?
Is it Bestiality if two animals are going for it?

Food for thought.



*thanks due to Tim Williams for bringing these further items to my attention.

i'm sorry i'll read that again, again*

Often it comes to me to wonder what it is that happens in a persons head when they read the wrong** thing.
Sometimes it feels like a variation on the Freudian slip - innermost desires blurting out of mouths with very little mediation in between. The (over)hearing of this moment being a (un)confessional act, a place of some small embarrassment, an almost miraculous insight into the other. And a place of rawness, of exposure.
And I suppose this could be extended to the moment in which the words coming out of one's mouth are utterly incongruous with the words running though one's head - leaving out the 'soy' in the 'soy latte', ordering a muffin when I wanted beans... and the less banal, also. What of the moments when you thought 'Miss ~' (your teacher), and instead said 'Mum', to general mirth?
What do these moments mean? Did that child in fact want to ask for their mother? Was that the moment that the teacher stepped in as a maternal figure? Or is this random coincidence? A conjunction of connected mental processes that pronounces odd words at odd moments? A kind of illness or symptom of a greater ill - the result of, say, an oxygen-deprived brain?
How about the moment when the reader switches pronouns, skips a sentence, changes ''tis' to 'it is', reads an accidentally doubled word as one, or doubles a single word? What can be read into that? Ought we to read into it? And what is the mental process that happens when these various 'mishaps' occur?
Perhaps in these moments we reveal surprising and inconsequential things about ourselves - our self-consciousness about taking on the written linguistic style of an enlightenment philosopher, put in the light of our eagerness to imitate present-day accents; our glib introduction of a new synonym, as a refusal to stumble over a word with unknown intonations. Inconsequential, but not of no import. These pieces make you. And break you apart.

* being also the title of an exceptionally funny BBC radio comedy program, starring such items as the Gibbon Stuffing Song
** 'wrong' being an exceedingly relative term, let us suspend disbelief for a moment, and admit that though this reading may be in fact right-oh-so-right for the moment, this may but be a momentary lapse, and one may in fact desire to know what is actually on the page in front (or at least the relation of that to the read)

shine on

It's warm and glows, and makes me think of happy childhood nights snuggled in blankets reading 'Where the Wild Things Are'.
Mine now! (Yes, please)

so goddamn hospitable

For a long time now, I've held a theory close to my heart. It's not been especially formed, or well-articulated, but I am reminded of it every weekend, in every restaurant and cafe.

Hospitality experience should be a crucial part of every person's life experience.

Yes, you - the middle-aged white man who pushes his chair and his elbows out into the walkways, across other people's tables - you too should be a busboy. Yes, you - the mother of two under the age of 3 who you allow to run riot and ignore for long and involved chats about their deficits in their hearing, forcing the staff to become your babysitters on top of all the other jobs they do, and all the while complaining that your extra hot skinny cappuccino without chocolate is taking too long to arrive - you too should try running the floor in that manner, and dealing with the screaming and the mess that both the customers and the kitchen staff thrust upon your already groaning shoulders. Oh the list goes on.
But I require no divine retribution for your multitudinous sins, oh no. My prescription: a year spent in continuous hospitality employ.
Good luck.
Really.

sometimes

...I make the mistake of forgetting how pleasurable just 'wasting' time in the company of people can be. With the endless self-inflicted pressure to get productive, and the intense and vivid imaginary world I hold inside of me, the very necessary time of 'nothing' with others can slip by, un-valued.
Yesterday, I almost let that slip past me.
Then, I pulled out the last resource I had to make it, and the world threw sustenance at me from everywhere.
Thank you.

That is all.