Most travellers you meet enjoy offering their opinion to you on other travellers, critising anyone from tour groups, gapsters, israelis, backpackers (generally), anyone who spends less that six months in anyone given place, someone that rides anything but local transport like colectivos or doesn`t hitch-hike their way around. The list is endless and I guess they`re all trying to me that most travellers haven`t really experienced South America; they don`t know the place; they have managed to travel for six months or so and haven`t picked up rudimentary spanish. They`ve followed what is known in the biz as the gringo trail and never left it; drinking with gringos, eating with gringos and sleeping with them, barely having left the hostel to partake in said activities.
But then surely to claim to know a place is also folly: a town, a city, a country, let alone an entire continent. By learning the language and leaving the hostel yes, I agree, you might end up having a richer more diverse and colourful experience. But what is South America? I`ve been told that on more than one occasion that Santiago and even Chile is not really part of South America. It`s too expensive and the kids wear designer clothing and their parents drive european or japanese cars on sealed roads, I am told. There are no crazy stories about riding on the roof of a petrol tanker in this country, no. One Australian,Adrian and I had the misfortune of speaking with, told us that he had felt like he had left South America as soon as the graffitti had changed from political slogans (Viva Eva Morales etc) of Bolivia to the tagging of the Chilean middle class. But what are we saying here, that South America is all chicken trucks and poverty and illiteracy and Jesus shrines in taxis. That you haven`t truly been South America until you`ve bribed a cop or had a gun pulled on you. Christ the worst that`s happen to me here is a kid threw a banana peel at me in Arequipa (it missed too). Is getting to know a gay Chileno a waste of my valuable time, since being gay is not particularly South American? How can South America have only one story? How can Santiago have only one story for that matter?
Besides all this talk about Santiago being more European than South American disguises not only the self interest of your average tourist but also the fact that Chile is expensive for Chilenos too and that the wealth here is actually concentrated in the hands of very few. According to this guy I met in San Pedro de Atacama (I know great research), Chile has the second biggest gap between rich and poor in all of South America.
All this talk about knowing a place seems to me as problematic as only leaving your hotel to visit Macchu Pichu; it ringing of colonialist adventureteering.
But what is all this about: this travelling thing? Why do we feel compelled to leave our sunny shores? Is it something noble, like the desire to expand our horizons, explore strange new lands etc? Or something more base, like the freedom to act up, drink and have sex when one feels that mummy can`t see you? Maybe it`s just about saying I did it, pointing to a map and saying I`ve been here so we can say we didn`t waste our lives.
Really when you think about it, being a tourist is kind of problematic in itself. There are extremes of course such as sex tourism, but on the whole what purpose does leaving your home to seek that of another the sole purpose of your entertainment? I mean seeking out the exotic, seriously? We are truely the direct descendents of those colonial explorers, that those in camp left deride so. Is a traveller no different, sticking our fingers into everything and ruining whatever we touch?
Is there a good way to travel?
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Friday, December 14, 2007
green-go
Maybe it is getting a little late to be having these thoughts, asking these questions and then ranting them at you all through what is likely to be some messy and drunken prose.
I`ve been in Santiago a week now and I find myself getting a little too comfortable. I`ve got friends here and I`ve met this chileno called Julio and well, I am not so sure what to make of that. I am supposed to hang out with him tomorrow and part of me hopes that he`ll end what I think is just a elongated one night stand.
I am just so used to rejection that it has become the less scary of the two paths.
He doesn`t speak very much english, in fact I speak more spanish, but this has so far proved less an obstacle and more of a source of amusement as he both ridicules and compliments my attempts, between our kissing como los peces.
He explained to me the other night the origins of the word gringo. Apparently at time of the conquest of Mexico, the spaniard conquistadores were wearing the colour green in their uniform and the word makes reference to that: GREEN-GO. Fuck off foreigner!
As Kermit the Frog said: "it`s not easy being green."
As the Clash said: "should I stay or should I go."
I`ve been in Santiago a week now and I find myself getting a little too comfortable. I`ve got friends here and I`ve met this chileno called Julio and well, I am not so sure what to make of that. I am supposed to hang out with him tomorrow and part of me hopes that he`ll end what I think is just a elongated one night stand.
I am just so used to rejection that it has become the less scary of the two paths.
He doesn`t speak very much english, in fact I speak more spanish, but this has so far proved less an obstacle and more of a source of amusement as he both ridicules and compliments my attempts, between our kissing como los peces.
He explained to me the other night the origins of the word gringo. Apparently at time of the conquest of Mexico, the spaniard conquistadores were wearing the colour green in their uniform and the word makes reference to that: GREEN-GO. Fuck off foreigner!
As Kermit the Frog said: "it`s not easy being green."
As the Clash said: "should I stay or should I go."
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
salar de uyuni
"I´d heard bad things about this Tour company, I´d been told this driver was bad and that this has happened before."
I snapped finally, "Your right Thomas, fine, you predicted this all but how does that help us? Seriously? How does this help our current situation?" The arrogant bastard finally went quiet after carrying on the entire two days with smug self satifaction, lecturing us every topic imaginable. I had clashed with him a few times, coming up against his soft fascist opinions but had generally pulled out, avoiding a front on collision. Dylan was driving the jeep now but only after Margot had confronted our driver Roberto, and we had argued between us for over half an hour in the middle of the desert 4,800 metres above sea level. Our driver was so drunk, he was swaying side to side, his eyes blood red.
Now I´d like to tell you all about the sheer desolate beauty of the Salar and the drive to the Chilean border but I am afraid the last day is likely to dominate most of my memories of it. Bolivia has such beauty and I think they are very proud of it, but what do they do with it?
"I am not getting back in there with him. I don´t care if I have to sit in the desert and wait for another jeep." She sat on the side of the road in the sand. "I am not playing with my life," she yelled at the driver in spanish. Thomas intervened, only making the situation worse as he explained how because Margot was Belgium she had higher expectations.
"You don´t like Bolivia," Roberto began to get heated and I pulled Thomas away, saying that Ruth who was Peruvian was better at talking with him.
Roberto had been up all night with several other drivers and guides drinking at Laguna Colorada, our stop for the second night. According to the guy I am sharing a room with in San Pedro de Atacama and has been travelling through South America, on and off, for more than twenty years, there has been a major problem with tour drivers for years now. He said that on one occasion an Israeli tour group fresh from military service actually tied an intoxicated driver to the roof of their jeep, taking over the driving. He is now working with one tour company to install a satellite dish and a TV in one of the major stop-offs in the hope of distracting the drivers from the drink.
"You are all stupid," he said to us, reddening in the face. I began to fear that he might actually drive off with us leaving us in the middle of nowhere with our bags still on the roof of his jeep. Now at the time I was prepared to get back in the car and risk it rather than wait in the desert, but I could understand where Margot was coming from and chose to keep my mouth shut. I was confused and totally out of my depth and my nerves were beginning to fray. Neil, the pasty redhead who burned through clothing approached me while I was standing in front of the car, hoping to disuade any drive off.
"You seem to very laid back about everything."
"Oh no," I replied, my voice shaking. "No I am not." Right then I felt like crying.
Finally another jeep arrived and that driver was able to talk Roberto down and convince him to let one of us drive. Dylan, the amiable and hyperactive Alaskan took the wheel, having some experience with mining vehicles. He actually proved best at calming Roberto, reassuring him that he liked his car and responded positively to the directions the were given between changing CDs, singing and passing in and out of consciousness.
On our way to the Chilean border we encountered another jeep, the driver knowing Roberto, agreed to take those not heading to Chile back to Uyuni. I think the reality, Roberto now awake, had started to sink in as he began to apologise to us all, his mouth full of coca and still slurring his words.
This left Dylan and myself in the jeep alone with Roberto for maybe another ten minutes to the border. Tears began to well up in his eyes as he told me that his wife was going to kill him and how his dreams of owning more jeeps and expanding were seemingly destroyed.
Now I was not angry. I actually felt sorry for him (and suppose I still do). He has a problem, a very human problem but what happened was very unprofessional and from all I hear this activity is likely to continue. The Salar de Uyuni was one of the most beautiful things I have seen since arriving here in South America and the companies in Uyuni that run these tours do a disservice to a Bolivia that hopes tourism will improve their lives.
"All it takes is an international company to come in and steal away what truely is a tourist goldmine from these small short sighted companies who do nothing but bicker amongst themselves and change nothing, improve nothing," said my room mate.
I snapped finally, "Your right Thomas, fine, you predicted this all but how does that help us? Seriously? How does this help our current situation?" The arrogant bastard finally went quiet after carrying on the entire two days with smug self satifaction, lecturing us every topic imaginable. I had clashed with him a few times, coming up against his soft fascist opinions but had generally pulled out, avoiding a front on collision. Dylan was driving the jeep now but only after Margot had confronted our driver Roberto, and we had argued between us for over half an hour in the middle of the desert 4,800 metres above sea level. Our driver was so drunk, he was swaying side to side, his eyes blood red.
Now I´d like to tell you all about the sheer desolate beauty of the Salar and the drive to the Chilean border but I am afraid the last day is likely to dominate most of my memories of it. Bolivia has such beauty and I think they are very proud of it, but what do they do with it?
"I am not getting back in there with him. I don´t care if I have to sit in the desert and wait for another jeep." She sat on the side of the road in the sand. "I am not playing with my life," she yelled at the driver in spanish. Thomas intervened, only making the situation worse as he explained how because Margot was Belgium she had higher expectations.
"You don´t like Bolivia," Roberto began to get heated and I pulled Thomas away, saying that Ruth who was Peruvian was better at talking with him.
Roberto had been up all night with several other drivers and guides drinking at Laguna Colorada, our stop for the second night. According to the guy I am sharing a room with in San Pedro de Atacama and has been travelling through South America, on and off, for more than twenty years, there has been a major problem with tour drivers for years now. He said that on one occasion an Israeli tour group fresh from military service actually tied an intoxicated driver to the roof of their jeep, taking over the driving. He is now working with one tour company to install a satellite dish and a TV in one of the major stop-offs in the hope of distracting the drivers from the drink.
"You are all stupid," he said to us, reddening in the face. I began to fear that he might actually drive off with us leaving us in the middle of nowhere with our bags still on the roof of his jeep. Now at the time I was prepared to get back in the car and risk it rather than wait in the desert, but I could understand where Margot was coming from and chose to keep my mouth shut. I was confused and totally out of my depth and my nerves were beginning to fray. Neil, the pasty redhead who burned through clothing approached me while I was standing in front of the car, hoping to disuade any drive off.
"You seem to very laid back about everything."
"Oh no," I replied, my voice shaking. "No I am not." Right then I felt like crying.
Finally another jeep arrived and that driver was able to talk Roberto down and convince him to let one of us drive. Dylan, the amiable and hyperactive Alaskan took the wheel, having some experience with mining vehicles. He actually proved best at calming Roberto, reassuring him that he liked his car and responded positively to the directions the were given between changing CDs, singing and passing in and out of consciousness.
On our way to the Chilean border we encountered another jeep, the driver knowing Roberto, agreed to take those not heading to Chile back to Uyuni. I think the reality, Roberto now awake, had started to sink in as he began to apologise to us all, his mouth full of coca and still slurring his words.
This left Dylan and myself in the jeep alone with Roberto for maybe another ten minutes to the border. Tears began to well up in his eyes as he told me that his wife was going to kill him and how his dreams of owning more jeeps and expanding were seemingly destroyed.
Now I was not angry. I actually felt sorry for him (and suppose I still do). He has a problem, a very human problem but what happened was very unprofessional and from all I hear this activity is likely to continue. The Salar de Uyuni was one of the most beautiful things I have seen since arriving here in South America and the companies in Uyuni that run these tours do a disservice to a Bolivia that hopes tourism will improve their lives.
"All it takes is an international company to come in and steal away what truely is a tourist goldmine from these small short sighted companies who do nothing but bicker amongst themselves and change nothing, improve nothing," said my room mate.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
potosí and the temple of doom (aka cerro rico)
I mean no disrespect by this title. I will admit I had misgivings about visiting the mines of Potosí, having had several discussions with travellers along my ways about the pros and cons of such turismo: ¿irresponsable o no? In hindsight I don´t think the tour was like the "watching monkeys work" that one backpacker described it. At no point did I feel like I was in a zoo, behind a glass window watching the workers perform. This was their workplace and there was no forgetting this. And what a workplace!! As I struggled to breath in the hot dust filled air, inhaling the same toxic gases, crawling through (and sometimes sliding down) the same narrow tunnels they worked their fucking arses off. And while I lent my hand at unladdening a rubber basket of rubble that contained zinc and lead (the mountain´s main offering to the cooperatives now that the silver was drying up) and I helped to clear a track to make way for one of those iron trolleys from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, so they could dump more ore. I felt like passing out. The hard work that these men and boys do now renders the term meaningless when describing anything I do in the future. I would die down there, taken away from my office and my phone and computer and climate controlled airconditioning.
But the I guess they do die down here. While Pedro, our guide, never gave us numbers, accidents did happen, which was not supprising when the technology many of the miners were using came straight from the nineteenth century. The others, well they contracted silicosis pneumonia: la pulmón negra. Our guide himself worked in the mines for five years from when he was teenager. It was only night study and luck that got him a job in tourism and his stairway out of hell. And they call it as much, with little statues of el diablo, the god of the underground, strewn through the complex of tunnels of Cerro Rico. They offer alcohol, coca leaves, cigarettes to the devil on Fridays, asking for safework and a plentiful bounty from his domain. The devil incidently looks like the whiteman.
Pedro said his father had been working down there for 30 years and his grandfather now bedridden, was dying from his life spent down there. Patting his chest, Pedro said he himself had the black lung. Tellingly there is a street, a very long steet in Potosí lined with lawyers´offices and I am told that the demand from widows to get some recompense from the mine cooperatives is quite high.
But barely any of the miners wear gas masks, too expensive, too hot and hard to breath, Pedro said, preferring to chew huge wads of coca leaf that bulge from their cheeks, working anywhere between eight to twelve hour shifts, pushing trolleys that weight several tonnes, shovelling and digging and exploding dynamite (I´ll get to that). The workmen we were talking with, were bemoaning that a trolley had broken down somewhere in the upper levels and had delayed work. They told us that they could be there until ten or even two AM to finish the job and they would still have to return the next morning at nine to begin it all again. Just another day in their six day week.
What choice did the men of Potosí have? Poorly educated, some who spoke only basic spanish (their first language being quechua), Pedro said, and with Bolivia a very poor country, employment was not plentiful and the mine is Potosí´s primer form of work. Without it the town would likely cease to exist. Tourism too was dropping, our guide saying he only took two groups down a week now, which was nowhere near peak.
The miners liked gringitos, Pedro said, getting their cut of our tour fees plus getting the gifts we brought, soft drink, dynamite, smokes and coca leaves.
The experience is not an easy one. I don´t recommend it for claustrophobes or asthmatics but the guidebooks say as much. I do think it is worth it though, for two hours down there it will be a while before you will complain about your job again.
Oh did I mention dynamite? Yes there were the explosions. Pedro at the beginning of our tour told us at the conclusion of our tour we would get to detonate some TNT. Handing different sticks of dynamite at the miners´market, he told us that in Bolivia you can buy and explode it without a license or even giving a name at point of purchase. Children buy it, certain "social groups" in Sucre buy it, pointing to the current unrest there. He laughed, asking whether any of us were married. Perfect solution! Bring your mother-in-law to Bolivia and buy some TNT. KaBOOM.
He shook my stick of dynamite, explosive powder falling down my vest onto my shirt. I winced. Bolivian miners, he said preferred the Bolivian TNT and not the powdery substandard Peruvian stick that I held. Note to anyone thinking of entering the mines of Cerro Rico to strike it rich; buy Bolivian dynamite.
But the I guess they do die down here. While Pedro, our guide, never gave us numbers, accidents did happen, which was not supprising when the technology many of the miners were using came straight from the nineteenth century. The others, well they contracted silicosis pneumonia: la pulmón negra. Our guide himself worked in the mines for five years from when he was teenager. It was only night study and luck that got him a job in tourism and his stairway out of hell. And they call it as much, with little statues of el diablo, the god of the underground, strewn through the complex of tunnels of Cerro Rico. They offer alcohol, coca leaves, cigarettes to the devil on Fridays, asking for safework and a plentiful bounty from his domain. The devil incidently looks like the whiteman.
Pedro said his father had been working down there for 30 years and his grandfather now bedridden, was dying from his life spent down there. Patting his chest, Pedro said he himself had the black lung. Tellingly there is a street, a very long steet in Potosí lined with lawyers´offices and I am told that the demand from widows to get some recompense from the mine cooperatives is quite high.
But barely any of the miners wear gas masks, too expensive, too hot and hard to breath, Pedro said, preferring to chew huge wads of coca leaf that bulge from their cheeks, working anywhere between eight to twelve hour shifts, pushing trolleys that weight several tonnes, shovelling and digging and exploding dynamite (I´ll get to that). The workmen we were talking with, were bemoaning that a trolley had broken down somewhere in the upper levels and had delayed work. They told us that they could be there until ten or even two AM to finish the job and they would still have to return the next morning at nine to begin it all again. Just another day in their six day week.
What choice did the men of Potosí have? Poorly educated, some who spoke only basic spanish (their first language being quechua), Pedro said, and with Bolivia a very poor country, employment was not plentiful and the mine is Potosí´s primer form of work. Without it the town would likely cease to exist. Tourism too was dropping, our guide saying he only took two groups down a week now, which was nowhere near peak.
The miners liked gringitos, Pedro said, getting their cut of our tour fees plus getting the gifts we brought, soft drink, dynamite, smokes and coca leaves.
The experience is not an easy one. I don´t recommend it for claustrophobes or asthmatics but the guidebooks say as much. I do think it is worth it though, for two hours down there it will be a while before you will complain about your job again.
Oh did I mention dynamite? Yes there were the explosions. Pedro at the beginning of our tour told us at the conclusion of our tour we would get to detonate some TNT. Handing different sticks of dynamite at the miners´market, he told us that in Bolivia you can buy and explode it without a license or even giving a name at point of purchase. Children buy it, certain "social groups" in Sucre buy it, pointing to the current unrest there. He laughed, asking whether any of us were married. Perfect solution! Bring your mother-in-law to Bolivia and buy some TNT. KaBOOM.
He shook my stick of dynamite, explosive powder falling down my vest onto my shirt. I winced. Bolivian miners, he said preferred the Bolivian TNT and not the powdery substandard Peruvian stick that I held. Note to anyone thinking of entering the mines of Cerro Rico to strike it rich; buy Bolivian dynamite.
Friday, November 16, 2007
The images of Jesus, the mother Mary and various saints are all over the shop in South America. You cannot ride in a taxi or a bus or walk into a corner store without the some holy visage hanging from the rear view mirror or the cash register. And I now think I know why. They need all the help they can get. A few days ago on the road between the Jungle town of Puerto Maldonado and Cuzco my bus broke down in the middle of the Andes and refused to start. It was approximately ten-to-one and pitch black and freezing cold outside. Now my spanish is bad at the best of times but at this time of morning with no coffee the only word I was understanding was "gringo" and since I was the only foreigner on the bus I guess they were talking about me.
As passing trucks stopped, passengers in small numbers gathered their things together and disappeared into the night. I attempted to have a broken conversation with the driver about the prospects of a pick up. He did not seem optimistic, at least as far as I could understand. Maybe around 3 am a man entered the bus and asked me if I was going to Cuzco. As soon as I answered yes, my backpack was flung onto the roof of a petrol tanker with the words peligro emblasoned across it, and I was invited with a helping hand to climb up. Once aboard I was handed a flimsy blanket, too small for my large gringo frame and with a few moth eaten holes in it.
I was coughing and splurting phlegm like a machine and I seriously thought I might contract pneumonia or something. As I mentioned my spanish is bad at the best of times but I must admit I was supprised at the concern the other passengers showed me. As I understood it one of the older men riding up front near the cabin, who seemed to command some sort of seniority and respect instructed one of the younger passengers, maybe in his 20s to huddle up against me to keep me warm. He then handed me a few sheets of toilet paper to wipe the snot from my face.
The sight of sunrise over the Andes might have been a little more spectacular had it not been for the bighting wind and cold but as we arrived in a small town called Urcos, perhaps 5 hours after the pickup and still a few hours out of Cuzco, the same men helped me with my bags from the tanker and escorted me to the main square to ensure I got on the right bus.
I don`t know their names or where they`re from but if there is God in the heavens above let He/She bless the fuck out of them.
As passing trucks stopped, passengers in small numbers gathered their things together and disappeared into the night. I attempted to have a broken conversation with the driver about the prospects of a pick up. He did not seem optimistic, at least as far as I could understand. Maybe around 3 am a man entered the bus and asked me if I was going to Cuzco. As soon as I answered yes, my backpack was flung onto the roof of a petrol tanker with the words peligro emblasoned across it, and I was invited with a helping hand to climb up. Once aboard I was handed a flimsy blanket, too small for my large gringo frame and with a few moth eaten holes in it.
I was coughing and splurting phlegm like a machine and I seriously thought I might contract pneumonia or something. As I mentioned my spanish is bad at the best of times but I must admit I was supprised at the concern the other passengers showed me. As I understood it one of the older men riding up front near the cabin, who seemed to command some sort of seniority and respect instructed one of the younger passengers, maybe in his 20s to huddle up against me to keep me warm. He then handed me a few sheets of toilet paper to wipe the snot from my face.
The sight of sunrise over the Andes might have been a little more spectacular had it not been for the bighting wind and cold but as we arrived in a small town called Urcos, perhaps 5 hours after the pickup and still a few hours out of Cuzco, the same men helped me with my bags from the tanker and escorted me to the main square to ensure I got on the right bus.
I don`t know their names or where they`re from but if there is God in the heavens above let He/She bless the fuck out of them.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Don`t get me wrong Cuzco is a swell town. It`s touristy yes, when every second local is trying to sell you something, yes. There is even this five-year-old-kid who wanders round Plaza de Armas at 3 am, approaching drunk grigos saying "mis amigos, ¿como estan? Buy my candy." The cusceños seem so willing to sell everything. I mean plastered over every boleto turistico (tourist ticket), a ten day pass to various cultural and archeological sites, is a warning that Peru does not support sex tourism. It may not support it but it`s there.
I was in a bar called UpTown a few days ago with a friend enjoying our free courtesy drink, watching the gringos gyrate up against local cusqueña women. It has been explained to me that these women are not there for a good night, the dancing, the music or just to meet a nice gringo man to take home to introduce to mamá. No they are there working. Called Bricheras, these women sidle up to single (well) gringo men and do almost anything and everything to get drinks out of them. You see, these women are paid commission for the drinks that get sold and some are willing even to go home with these gringos if it means a few more drinks. There is actually graffiti plastered all over the hostel that I was staying at that warns heteros to watch those "Brichera bitches" who`ll take you for everything you`re worth.
But this assumes that these poor gringos are innocent in these transactions. They know exactly what they want and all to happy to take some Peruvian chick for a ride, god forbid they should be exploited. Nothing is ever equal in love and war. And these locals are not just stupid yokels.
And I think this is why I respect the cusqeños and I suppose any population that live in a tourist trap. My friend from New Zealand, Shaun would get pretty irrate whenever some hawker approached us in mid conversation trying to sell us her wares, "you buy, yes", "massage for you hansome," but as I see things they`re just doing their job.
I think Cusco is kinda like an Apartheid state, you have the gringos on one side and the locals on the other and there is a big wall that divides them. There are gringo bars, restaurants and hospedajes and while I am getting this second hand, the local bars here have a general no gringo policy. Sort of like that infamous colonial sign "No dogs and gringos allowed."
Side note: On 31 October my hostel "The Point" hosted a Halloween party. I went dressed as "the death of free speech", with a piece of paper stuck in my hat that read "FREE PRESS" (spanish translation on the opposite side) and wore a noose around my neck. "So it`s metaphorical?" an American called Mike asked me. Yes, I guess so, I replied. "I think you`ve missed the point of halloween, my friend. Halloween isn`t supposed to be subtle or witty". Mike for his part was dressed as an indigenous woman in brightly coloured hat and dress and a baby doll strapped onto his back. There is a fine line between being funny and offensive and he was definately teetering over to the offensive side. A Canadian named Misha entered the room wearing almost exactly the same costume. I slapped my head.
The hostel was opening it`s doors to the general public and as a consequence bumped up it`s drink prices. "Fuck this, let`s go drink on the streets."
So as it transpired it there were two gringos dressed as local women wandering round the streets of Cusco, drunkenly asking kids for money and candy in bad and very loud spanish, another American called Cody dressed as GI Joe, shooting strangers and trying to handcuff them and Joseph dressed as a Robot and I standing back drinking our vodka.
At first I was worried we would be taken the wrong way (or should I say the right way). But no the locals really seemed to find us funny. They were laughing and taking photos, wolf whisting at the boys in drag. We were drawing a crowd and there was even a guy with his handy-cam filming us.
This was great. Cusco the tourist mecca of Peru were being given the opportunity to turn their cameras back on us.
I was in a bar called UpTown a few days ago with a friend enjoying our free courtesy drink, watching the gringos gyrate up against local cusqueña women. It has been explained to me that these women are not there for a good night, the dancing, the music or just to meet a nice gringo man to take home to introduce to mamá. No they are there working. Called Bricheras, these women sidle up to single (well) gringo men and do almost anything and everything to get drinks out of them. You see, these women are paid commission for the drinks that get sold and some are willing even to go home with these gringos if it means a few more drinks. There is actually graffiti plastered all over the hostel that I was staying at that warns heteros to watch those "Brichera bitches" who`ll take you for everything you`re worth.
But this assumes that these poor gringos are innocent in these transactions. They know exactly what they want and all to happy to take some Peruvian chick for a ride, god forbid they should be exploited. Nothing is ever equal in love and war. And these locals are not just stupid yokels.
And I think this is why I respect the cusqeños and I suppose any population that live in a tourist trap. My friend from New Zealand, Shaun would get pretty irrate whenever some hawker approached us in mid conversation trying to sell us her wares, "you buy, yes", "massage for you hansome," but as I see things they`re just doing their job.
I think Cusco is kinda like an Apartheid state, you have the gringos on one side and the locals on the other and there is a big wall that divides them. There are gringo bars, restaurants and hospedajes and while I am getting this second hand, the local bars here have a general no gringo policy. Sort of like that infamous colonial sign "No dogs and gringos allowed."
Side note: On 31 October my hostel "The Point" hosted a Halloween party. I went dressed as "the death of free speech", with a piece of paper stuck in my hat that read "FREE PRESS" (spanish translation on the opposite side) and wore a noose around my neck. "So it`s metaphorical?" an American called Mike asked me. Yes, I guess so, I replied. "I think you`ve missed the point of halloween, my friend. Halloween isn`t supposed to be subtle or witty". Mike for his part was dressed as an indigenous woman in brightly coloured hat and dress and a baby doll strapped onto his back. There is a fine line between being funny and offensive and he was definately teetering over to the offensive side. A Canadian named Misha entered the room wearing almost exactly the same costume. I slapped my head.
The hostel was opening it`s doors to the general public and as a consequence bumped up it`s drink prices. "Fuck this, let`s go drink on the streets."
So as it transpired it there were two gringos dressed as local women wandering round the streets of Cusco, drunkenly asking kids for money and candy in bad and very loud spanish, another American called Cody dressed as GI Joe, shooting strangers and trying to handcuff them and Joseph dressed as a Robot and I standing back drinking our vodka.
At first I was worried we would be taken the wrong way (or should I say the right way). But no the locals really seemed to find us funny. They were laughing and taking photos, wolf whisting at the boys in drag. We were drawing a crowd and there was even a guy with his handy-cam filming us.
This was great. Cusco the tourist mecca of Peru were being given the opportunity to turn their cameras back on us.
Friday, November 02, 2007
el camino Inka
Everyone has to sacrifice something to walk through the sacred valley of the Incas, and on the last day racing the daybreak to the Sun Gate, the entrance to Machu Picchu, I sacrificed a bowel movement and clean teeth in order to wake at four and had to rely on instinct to shove my shit into my backpack.
These four days of hiking through the path have possibly been the most physically exhausting thing I have ever done. Not only did we need to walk between four and eight hours a day but the altitude made me huff and puff at even the slightest exertion. As we climbed close to the summit of Abra Warmiwañuska (also dubbed Dead Woman´s Pass) on the second day we reached of around 4 200 metres above sea level. Then there was the steep climb down on narrow steps which was made increasingly dangerous as the rain was pelting down. It´s funny how such a little people the Quechua were/are (Incas) could make such big fucking steps.
The tour that I took followed the old path built by the Quechua over 500 years aho, and curved like a rainbow through a variety of ecosystems and archeological sites. Being from the great flat that is Australia, I could help but stop and just stare around me at the glacier capped mountains that just seemed to rise and rise into the clouds. When I use the word sublime, I mean it in the sense that I was belittled by nature to the point of insignificance. I can see why the old Quechua worshiped and sacrificed to these mountains or who they called Amu, the mountain gods.
Walking through dense subtropical jungle, following the path, I came across a clearing. As my eyes drew up I beheld the ruins of what was once a Incan agricultural centre, the terraced farms that rode the mountain up, topped by stone buildings with their doorways that inclined at 13 degrees. I felt like I was in some pre-adolescent boy´s adventure novel, where the hero discovered a lost city in the heart of the jungle.
And in typical colonialist fashion, while we were beaten down by rain and wind, every lunch and dinner we found our camp laid out by an army of faithful porters, 19 in number. They had our dining tent set up, with tea and coffee (with popcorn) available while they prepared our dinner, the best food that I´ve eaten in South America and possibly sometime before I left Australia.
The porters never ceased to amaze me. No more than 5foot5 they carried possible two to three times the weight I carried (they carried possibly between 20 and 30kg) yet they were able to bound up and down steps in sandles or ripoff converse allstars, passing us on their way to set up our camp. This disparity took some getting used to, as I pushed my body to exhausion each day only to reach camp and be treated like some honoured guest. We must have appeared as oddities to them. What the fuck were we doing there? Paying their wages I suppose.
As a side note, our first guide Carlos told us that their were two paths to Machu Picchu from the capital Q`osco. One was a trading route that ran supplies and messages between the capital, Machu Picchu and the various stations between. This was the short and direct way. The longer path that we were walking was the pilgramage. Carlos said that it was a way of cleansing oneself and it was the path that the Inca himself would have taken.
Addendum: I sit on a rock eating a mandarin beside a mountain lake, placing the skin and pips in a side pocket of my backpack. Being neither the fittest or the slowest of the group I`ve found myself hiking alone. Sipping water diluted gatorade I look about me. I watch the tiniest of birds flitter about the water chasing each other as cloud slowly rolls down off the moutain. All I can hear is their songs and all is good.
Further Addendum: On the last night I sat and talked with our second guide Raul as we waited dinner. I asked him about the problems facing the trail. He said that numbers on the trail had been reduced and hikers had to go with an approved tour company and that laws had been introduced to encourage responsible and sustainable conduct. He said that once a year in February the path was closed for a month so that cleaning and restoration could be carried out. Was this enough? I asked. No. Combined with natural erosion and current levels of use geologists, he said, had calculated that the Inca Trail would be gone in approximately ten years. There was a law introduced by the Peruvian government that prohibits porters from carrying more than 20 kgs. When I first heard about this law I thought it was there to protect the welfare of the porters. I was wrong, apparently the porters are happy to carry more weight, as more weight means more money in which to feed their families. No, the law is there to protect the trail. "You saw how the porters run down the mountain?" It is only one of the problems.
Closing the trail to preserve it is not an option. Fundamentally Peru needs tourism. Cusco makes a lot of money off us gringos and this wealth means education and health and public works.
The question is, had I known all of this would I have still gone on the trek? Would others? Should I have known?
These four days of hiking through the path have possibly been the most physically exhausting thing I have ever done. Not only did we need to walk between four and eight hours a day but the altitude made me huff and puff at even the slightest exertion. As we climbed close to the summit of Abra Warmiwañuska (also dubbed Dead Woman´s Pass) on the second day we reached of around 4 200 metres above sea level. Then there was the steep climb down on narrow steps which was made increasingly dangerous as the rain was pelting down. It´s funny how such a little people the Quechua were/are (Incas) could make such big fucking steps.
The tour that I took followed the old path built by the Quechua over 500 years aho, and curved like a rainbow through a variety of ecosystems and archeological sites. Being from the great flat that is Australia, I could help but stop and just stare around me at the glacier capped mountains that just seemed to rise and rise into the clouds. When I use the word sublime, I mean it in the sense that I was belittled by nature to the point of insignificance. I can see why the old Quechua worshiped and sacrificed to these mountains or who they called Amu, the mountain gods.
Walking through dense subtropical jungle, following the path, I came across a clearing. As my eyes drew up I beheld the ruins of what was once a Incan agricultural centre, the terraced farms that rode the mountain up, topped by stone buildings with their doorways that inclined at 13 degrees. I felt like I was in some pre-adolescent boy´s adventure novel, where the hero discovered a lost city in the heart of the jungle.
And in typical colonialist fashion, while we were beaten down by rain and wind, every lunch and dinner we found our camp laid out by an army of faithful porters, 19 in number. They had our dining tent set up, with tea and coffee (with popcorn) available while they prepared our dinner, the best food that I´ve eaten in South America and possibly sometime before I left Australia.
The porters never ceased to amaze me. No more than 5foot5 they carried possible two to three times the weight I carried (they carried possibly between 20 and 30kg) yet they were able to bound up and down steps in sandles or ripoff converse allstars, passing us on their way to set up our camp. This disparity took some getting used to, as I pushed my body to exhausion each day only to reach camp and be treated like some honoured guest. We must have appeared as oddities to them. What the fuck were we doing there? Paying their wages I suppose.
As a side note, our first guide Carlos told us that their were two paths to Machu Picchu from the capital Q`osco. One was a trading route that ran supplies and messages between the capital, Machu Picchu and the various stations between. This was the short and direct way. The longer path that we were walking was the pilgramage. Carlos said that it was a way of cleansing oneself and it was the path that the Inca himself would have taken.
Addendum: I sit on a rock eating a mandarin beside a mountain lake, placing the skin and pips in a side pocket of my backpack. Being neither the fittest or the slowest of the group I`ve found myself hiking alone. Sipping water diluted gatorade I look about me. I watch the tiniest of birds flitter about the water chasing each other as cloud slowly rolls down off the moutain. All I can hear is their songs and all is good.
Further Addendum: On the last night I sat and talked with our second guide Raul as we waited dinner. I asked him about the problems facing the trail. He said that numbers on the trail had been reduced and hikers had to go with an approved tour company and that laws had been introduced to encourage responsible and sustainable conduct. He said that once a year in February the path was closed for a month so that cleaning and restoration could be carried out. Was this enough? I asked. No. Combined with natural erosion and current levels of use geologists, he said, had calculated that the Inca Trail would be gone in approximately ten years. There was a law introduced by the Peruvian government that prohibits porters from carrying more than 20 kgs. When I first heard about this law I thought it was there to protect the welfare of the porters. I was wrong, apparently the porters are happy to carry more weight, as more weight means more money in which to feed their families. No, the law is there to protect the trail. "You saw how the porters run down the mountain?" It is only one of the problems.
Closing the trail to preserve it is not an option. Fundamentally Peru needs tourism. Cusco makes a lot of money off us gringos and this wealth means education and health and public works.
The question is, had I known all of this would I have still gone on the trek? Would others? Should I have known?
Thursday, October 25, 2007
I left Arequipa yesterday with Sarah, seen off my Lindsey and Wayra. The first of many farewells I suppose. Wayra, before we left to catch our bus to Cuzco, said to me that while we had only known each other a short time, he could tell we were all good and pure people. He said, as I understood it with my bad spanish, that he knew this from when we first met at Cruz del Condor, as we sat about freezing our balls off waiting for the sun to rise and the condor to fly us by. He said we were different from the other tourists that he meets in Chivay and along the Canyon, and that with my bad spanish, Lindsey`s better spanish and Sarah`s amusing mistakes, we were able to exchange jokes and laughs and eventually email addresses. He said that while we were from different cultures and beliefs, what was important that we felt, pressing his fist to his chest.
We hugged and he kissed me on the cheek saying "hasta luego mi hermano" and we saluted each other, fist to heart, fist to sky.
I think this is my first real connection here in South America, life is about feeling something I guess. I just wish I knew what that something was.
We hugged and he kissed me on the cheek saying "hasta luego mi hermano" and we saluted each other, fist to heart, fist to sky.
I think this is my first real connection here in South America, life is about feeling something I guess. I just wish I knew what that something was.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
seventy bottles of beer later
I am in Chivay, a small slightly touristy town at the mouth of the Colca Canyon (the world`s second deepest canyon. The first being located somewhere close by) is something of a ghost town as I write this entry in my moleskin slightly hungover, sitting in the shade of what is usually a bustling market. Today, the 21 Octubre 2007 is El Censo Nacional. A day where Peruvians are required to remain in their homes from 6 am to 6pm while Census Officials go door to door counting the people as police parade the streets enforcing the curfew. Tourists are exempt to this of course and I can see a few about taking photos and looking for somewhere to eat and drink while some tourist restaurants that have received excemptions from this enforced closure. Well at least this is my understanding. As I sit here in the shade however, writing, more and more locals appear from closed doors having, I assume been ticked off by officials, and the police themselves seem to have regressed to milling about outside their station chatting.
Later today Lindsay and Sarah (an American and Brit who I met in Lima) are supposed to meet up with some locals we met at Cruz del Condor yesterday, while trying to catch a glimpse of some big fucking bird with a wingspan of 4.3 metres; members of a Peruvian folk band. They invited us back to their place for a fiesta last night, which as it turned out was a small room with only a matress and a TV, out back of a souvineer shop. We drank, smoked and chewed coca leaves as they entertained us with guitar, pan flute and singing. This is one of those experiences I suppose that as a tourist you can only dream of, practicing my spanish and learning (and subsequently forgetting) words in Quechua. This night symbolised if nothing else by our passing through the curtin at the back of their shop.
I would like to claim credit for last night but truely the draw card of the night was the two girls I was with. Lindsey was quite comfortable with what can only be described as Wayra`s (one of the senior members of the band) less than subtle come-ons but Sarah was let´s say, less comfortable with the advances of Edgar, who stuck his arm around her continuously asking me how to say she was beautiful in english. Saying te quiero, te quiero (I love you, I love you). As Sarah spoke no Spanish and Edgar, no English, it was up to me to turn him down, explaining to him that she had a boyfriend.
As the beer passed around, hand to hand, and we became increasingly drunk, talk turned to sex and in particular my sexual preferences. "¿Quieres las mujeres? ¿Te gustan las peruanas?" I stumbled, unsure how to answer this question to a group of drunk men who came from clearly muchismic culture, who were already talking about having sex with beautiful curvacious women. "Sì, yeah, um sì." Fuck, why did I say that? Should I have been honest and said "no me gusta, yo prefiero hombres"? But I suppose there in lies our problem.
Apparently tonight I am to go to some discoteca with two of the younger members of the band, Chi Chi and Eduard who want to find a Peruvian lady to have sex with me... oh my. What I am I to do?
Later today Lindsay and Sarah (an American and Brit who I met in Lima) are supposed to meet up with some locals we met at Cruz del Condor yesterday, while trying to catch a glimpse of some big fucking bird with a wingspan of 4.3 metres; members of a Peruvian folk band. They invited us back to their place for a fiesta last night, which as it turned out was a small room with only a matress and a TV, out back of a souvineer shop. We drank, smoked and chewed coca leaves as they entertained us with guitar, pan flute and singing. This is one of those experiences I suppose that as a tourist you can only dream of, practicing my spanish and learning (and subsequently forgetting) words in Quechua. This night symbolised if nothing else by our passing through the curtin at the back of their shop.
I would like to claim credit for last night but truely the draw card of the night was the two girls I was with. Lindsey was quite comfortable with what can only be described as Wayra`s (one of the senior members of the band) less than subtle come-ons but Sarah was let´s say, less comfortable with the advances of Edgar, who stuck his arm around her continuously asking me how to say she was beautiful in english. Saying te quiero, te quiero (I love you, I love you). As Sarah spoke no Spanish and Edgar, no English, it was up to me to turn him down, explaining to him that she had a boyfriend.
As the beer passed around, hand to hand, and we became increasingly drunk, talk turned to sex and in particular my sexual preferences. "¿Quieres las mujeres? ¿Te gustan las peruanas?" I stumbled, unsure how to answer this question to a group of drunk men who came from clearly muchismic culture, who were already talking about having sex with beautiful curvacious women. "Sì, yeah, um sì." Fuck, why did I say that? Should I have been honest and said "no me gusta, yo prefiero hombres"? But I suppose there in lies our problem.
Apparently tonight I am to go to some discoteca with two of the younger members of the band, Chi Chi and Eduard who want to find a Peruvian lady to have sex with me... oh my. What I am I to do?
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
on the toilet in Arequipa
It was those god damn chicken empanadas that I´d ate in one of Arequipa´s main terrapuertos (bus stations). We were hungry and bored waiting for some fellow Australianos who had got the bus from Lima after us. Two hours we had to burn and while preparing a welcome sign had taken all of 2 minutes, we found this dingy cafe at the back of the bus stop. I jumped at that choice on the menu, having had such wonderful experiences with empanadas in Santiago. Those crisp pastries, wrapped over flavoursome insides of meat, tomato, mushrooms and a variety of other choices, only to find a floppy, damp, microwaved imitation slapped down in front of me.
Now I am sitting hunched over, shitting my guts out with a mild bout of food poisoning. Perhaps the gods are telling me something with their usual ironic mirth, laughing at my expense, that I should´ve stuck to my guns and stayed a vegetarian. Their joke on me is I suppose that I get food poisoning from eating chicken when all those around me (a total of seven) are all vegetarians (save one other) and my arguments for breaking fall on deaf ears, that vegetarianism was too difficult and restrictive in South America, when some of them have been on the continent for more than six months. None of them have had food poisoning by the way. Bastards!
Now I am sitting hunched over, shitting my guts out with a mild bout of food poisoning. Perhaps the gods are telling me something with their usual ironic mirth, laughing at my expense, that I should´ve stuck to my guns and stayed a vegetarian. Their joke on me is I suppose that I get food poisoning from eating chicken when all those around me (a total of seven) are all vegetarians (save one other) and my arguments for breaking fall on deaf ears, that vegetarianism was too difficult and restrictive in South America, when some of them have been on the continent for more than six months. None of them have had food poisoning by the way. Bastards!
Monday, October 15, 2007
on the road to Arequipa
It´s all class , pure 100% class riding Peru´s top line Coach service Cruz del Sur on my way to the white city Arequipa. Treated to dinner, including a detailed description of the cultural and geographical origin of each component of our dish. Swanky you say? Yes, well as swanky as any airline food is I suppose: microwaved and a little plasticy in consistency.
As we ate the hostess played a turistico video about the Southern region of Peru, around a city called Tacna, which was presented by a bikini clad Limeña, giggling as she listened to leathery old fishermen hawking tours. As the film wound on she took off more and more clothing, finishing in this g-string number that rode right up between her pert buttocks. Dios mio!
After dinner we were treated to an en route Bingo game. I could barely believe it as our hostess began handing out the game cards. My travelling partner, Lindsay couldn´t help but laughting, yelling out to a friend a few seats back, asking if we were really at a Catholic church fundraiser. The prize was a free (non-transferable) ticket between Lima and Arequipa. When a man finally yelled out BINGO, he was invited to the rear of the bus and asked to say a few words into the microphone: "Thank you señora, for your good service and the fun game." Gracias señor, gracias, she replied.
Stopping about five hours into our journey we picked up a couple elderly nuns in full penguin regalia. By this time we´d finished with the tourist video, which I was relieved about. To be honest I am not sure I could have withstood the collective shame regardless of my own sexuality. It would´ve been comparable to seeing breasts on TV as a teenager when your mum was still in the room.
As we ate the hostess played a turistico video about the Southern region of Peru, around a city called Tacna, which was presented by a bikini clad Limeña, giggling as she listened to leathery old fishermen hawking tours. As the film wound on she took off more and more clothing, finishing in this g-string number that rode right up between her pert buttocks. Dios mio!
After dinner we were treated to an en route Bingo game. I could barely believe it as our hostess began handing out the game cards. My travelling partner, Lindsay couldn´t help but laughting, yelling out to a friend a few seats back, asking if we were really at a Catholic church fundraiser. The prize was a free (non-transferable) ticket between Lima and Arequipa. When a man finally yelled out BINGO, he was invited to the rear of the bus and asked to say a few words into the microphone: "Thank you señora, for your good service and the fun game." Gracias señor, gracias, she replied.
Stopping about five hours into our journey we picked up a couple elderly nuns in full penguin regalia. By this time we´d finished with the tourist video, which I was relieved about. To be honest I am not sure I could have withstood the collective shame regardless of my own sexuality. It would´ve been comparable to seeing breasts on TV as a teenager when your mum was still in the room.
Friday, October 12, 2007
the trouble with Chilenos
Valparaiso, about an hour-and-a-half out of Santiago, is all bright colours and has an arty/bohemian vibe that makes me feel like I could settle in here quite nicely but then again it also has fifty percent unemployment and packs stray dogs mauling and fucking each other. So I guess it´s not all blue skies and sunshine.
Regardless I am convinced that there is a gay/lesbian etc scene here in Valpo. I can smell it, sense the vibrations, like the rattle of the ancensor Espiritu Santo that I climbed to see Matta´s street mural. On my wanderings through the winding colourful streets I found this small bar near Plaza Ambal Pinto that had had pro abortion poster on the door. Inside behind the bar, were two women hugging and kissing. Now I don´t wish to jump to too many conclusions here as it is infinately difficult to tell in the country the difference between simply affection between friends and romance.
On my first night I hung out with some of Adrian´s Santiago friends. We went to what was supposed to be an after party for some Mexican hip-hop crew called Molitov, with Adrian´s friend Olga, a crazy but very cool Chilena, got our names on the dorr. The club was located in the upstairs of the arthouse Cine Alameda which seemed to be hosting a gay film festival (if I get time I´ll have to go see a film). The music was great! They were playing the clash, Smiths, the Cure, Depeche Mode and heaps of other cool musica both International and South American.
Why I mention all of this is because one of Olga´s friends, I think his name is Mauricio, was very very friendly with me, almost to the point of pushing his crotch into my leg. Thing is I think this is how straight chilenos act when they are drunk. It´s very confusing, yes, as he was rubbing his face against mine and telling me that we were very good friends.
But then if I hoped to see a rainbow sticker or something or the sort I think I am going to be disappointed. If I am going to discern South America´s gay life from the background radiation thrown up the continent´s overpowering muchismo then I am going to have to retune my gaydar.
Anyway folks ciao for now.
*While I am typing this there is a techno beat on the radio repeating the words: "I want to be a cowboy/ no soy gay."
Regardless I am convinced that there is a gay/lesbian etc scene here in Valpo. I can smell it, sense the vibrations, like the rattle of the ancensor Espiritu Santo that I climbed to see Matta´s street mural. On my wanderings through the winding colourful streets I found this small bar near Plaza Ambal Pinto that had had pro abortion poster on the door. Inside behind the bar, were two women hugging and kissing. Now I don´t wish to jump to too many conclusions here as it is infinately difficult to tell in the country the difference between simply affection between friends and romance.
On my first night I hung out with some of Adrian´s Santiago friends. We went to what was supposed to be an after party for some Mexican hip-hop crew called Molitov, with Adrian´s friend Olga, a crazy but very cool Chilena, got our names on the dorr. The club was located in the upstairs of the arthouse Cine Alameda which seemed to be hosting a gay film festival (if I get time I´ll have to go see a film). The music was great! They were playing the clash, Smiths, the Cure, Depeche Mode and heaps of other cool musica both International and South American.
Why I mention all of this is because one of Olga´s friends, I think his name is Mauricio, was very very friendly with me, almost to the point of pushing his crotch into my leg. Thing is I think this is how straight chilenos act when they are drunk. It´s very confusing, yes, as he was rubbing his face against mine and telling me that we were very good friends.
But then if I hoped to see a rainbow sticker or something or the sort I think I am going to be disappointed. If I am going to discern South America´s gay life from the background radiation thrown up the continent´s overpowering muchismo then I am going to have to retune my gaydar.
Anyway folks ciao for now.
*While I am typing this there is a techno beat on the radio repeating the words: "I want to be a cowboy/ no soy gay."
Friday, September 28, 2007
I woke this morning barely able to roll out of bed. I seem to go through these cycles of intense dreaming where for a week or so the neurons in my head fire like some crazy electrical storm and I wake feeling like shit, tired, irritable, etc.
Last night I dreamt that I moved into a new place with a few friends, an old terrace apartment in some innercity suburb. While moving furniture, one of my friends called me and the other housemate over to show us what he'd found. In the centre of the living room, hidden under an ancient dustmite ridden rug was an ornate iron manhole that was covered in these geometric lines. A design that you might expect to have seen in blueprints to some 19th century timepiece.
Failing to open it, I began to beat my fist against it, and as a joke began yelling at the top of my lungs, asking if anyone was down there. We froze, silent as the sound of splashing could be distinctly heard from the bottom of whereever that hole led. Silence.
At first it was just the one voice that cried out. If you could call it a voice I suppose: high-pitched but guttural if that makes any sense, inhuman to say the least and then it was followed by more, three, five or ten frantic cries. What the fuck had we stirred up? I asked myself shitscared. What the fuck had we signed a lease to?
Returning from the supermarket that day, I walked into the living room to find a couch over the hole and my friend sitting there watching television. I tried unsuccessfully to broach the topic but no one wanted to talk about it.
Last night I dreamt that I moved into a new place with a few friends, an old terrace apartment in some innercity suburb. While moving furniture, one of my friends called me and the other housemate over to show us what he'd found. In the centre of the living room, hidden under an ancient dustmite ridden rug was an ornate iron manhole that was covered in these geometric lines. A design that you might expect to have seen in blueprints to some 19th century timepiece.
Failing to open it, I began to beat my fist against it, and as a joke began yelling at the top of my lungs, asking if anyone was down there. We froze, silent as the sound of splashing could be distinctly heard from the bottom of whereever that hole led. Silence.
At first it was just the one voice that cried out. If you could call it a voice I suppose: high-pitched but guttural if that makes any sense, inhuman to say the least and then it was followed by more, three, five or ten frantic cries. What the fuck had we stirred up? I asked myself shitscared. What the fuck had we signed a lease to?
Returning from the supermarket that day, I walked into the living room to find a couch over the hole and my friend sitting there watching television. I tried unsuccessfully to broach the topic but no one wanted to talk about it.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
What's all this hoo-har about Pol Pot winning "Britain's got Talent"? Firstly I thought he was dead and secondly I didn't know he could sing and if he could, what the hell!?! Nessun Dorma for christs-sake! And what the fuck does ITV think it is doing, having a genocidal dictator on its programme? Seriously, they're exploiting the deaths of more than 3 million Cambodians for nothing more than a few rating points! Geez! Someone should do something about this.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
fear of the werewolf
By day Wolf became Man. He would only recall this other life like one remembers nightmares. Flashes of strange and great things, of electric lights and cars and office buildings that rose so high they pierced the sky. But the traffic and noise, the flickering of his computer screen was unbearable and encroaching on his waking life. It was like the beating wings of an enourmous hornet, buzzing buzzing so loud that it became deafening. Wolf felt something dying inside of him. His senses dulled and he lost his joy in the hunt. Wolf could no longer smell their fear, hear their desperate footfalls or taste the blood, sinews of the flesh, feel the texture of broken bone. Not like he could before. It had all become bland and colourless.
Wolf feared he was becoming Man.
Wolf feared he was becoming Man.
He breathed deep as he slept, my arm interlocking beneath his, held tight as I smelt the nape of his neck, the perfume, sweat, hair and product. I drew it in as I listened to the sound he made, slightly nasal, blocked, forced and as I too began to fall into sleep swore that in it, I could hear the calls of sea birds and the rush of the ocean....
...I woke with his hands brushing gently along my arm, wishing that things would not go this way, that I could just lay against him as the daylight faded. Maybe all I wanted was to feel his warmth, hear his heart beat and hold him for just a while longer and know that I am needed and wanted and loved. But then I heard the clink clank of his belt buckle and I reached down to help him remove his jeans.
...I woke with his hands brushing gently along my arm, wishing that things would not go this way, that I could just lay against him as the daylight faded. Maybe all I wanted was to feel his warmth, hear his heart beat and hold him for just a while longer and know that I am needed and wanted and loved. But then I heard the clink clank of his belt buckle and I reached down to help him remove his jeans.
Sunday, September 02, 2007
This rather dark clip is from a film called The Adventures of Mark Twain (1985) and is a "feature-length Claymation fantasy [that] follows the adventures of Tom Sawyer, Becky Thatcher, and Huck Finn as they stowaway aboard the interplanetary balloon of Mark Twain. Twain, disgusted with the Human Race, is intent upon finding Halley's Comet and crashing into it, achieving his "destiny." It's up to Tom, Becky, and Huck to convince him hat [sic] his judgement is wrong, and that he still has much to offer humanity that might make a difference. Their efforts aren't just charitable; if they fail, they will share Twain's fate. Along the way, they use a magical time portal to get a detailed overview of the Twain philosophy, observing the "historical" events that inspired his works."
Plot summary is from IMDB
Friday, August 31, 2007
I can't help but think now that there is a cafe in Brunswick that I can no longer walk into. A cafe that when I walk past, I'll have to drop my eyes awkwardly and increase my step. There'll be no more red lentil dhal for me.
I went home with the barista on Wednesday night and he hasn't called. He said he'd call me as he left Thursday morning with a kiss and that'd we'd hang out tonight, Friday night but here I sit alone with just my second wine a little to my right, keeping me company.
He did say such nice things, oh such nice things. He told me all about what we would do on future dates, a trip to the zoo to meet his orangutans on Saturday and then waking in each others' arms and the morning sex we'd have that he so enjoyed; he bemoaned my leaving to South America in a month and talked about hooking up when I got back. He told me emphatically that this was not a one night stand and I believed him.
It seemed to go all so well, surprisingly so, well until I suppose he didn't call.
***********
There is a voice in my head that tells me that the nice things he said were all true. That he meant every word of it. That I was engaging and intelligent, that my eyes had both depth and insight beyond my years yada yada.... and then he saw me naked. There is a voice in my head that talks about the economy of beauty versus intellect, that if you are lacking in one, to attract a mate you must compensate with the other. However this voice reminds me that in all my sexual encounters no one has ever called the next day or returned that text that is doing its very best to hide its disappointment.
I went home with the barista on Wednesday night and he hasn't called. He said he'd call me as he left Thursday morning with a kiss and that'd we'd hang out tonight, Friday night but here I sit alone with just my second wine a little to my right, keeping me company.
He did say such nice things, oh such nice things. He told me all about what we would do on future dates, a trip to the zoo to meet his orangutans on Saturday and then waking in each others' arms and the morning sex we'd have that he so enjoyed; he bemoaned my leaving to South America in a month and talked about hooking up when I got back. He told me emphatically that this was not a one night stand and I believed him.
It seemed to go all so well, surprisingly so, well until I suppose he didn't call.
***********
There is a voice in my head that tells me that the nice things he said were all true. That he meant every word of it. That I was engaging and intelligent, that my eyes had both depth and insight beyond my years yada yada.... and then he saw me naked. There is a voice in my head that talks about the economy of beauty versus intellect, that if you are lacking in one, to attract a mate you must compensate with the other. However this voice reminds me that in all my sexual encounters no one has ever called the next day or returned that text that is doing its very best to hide its disappointment.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Sebastián
Cuando Sebastián era un joven, vivía en San Miguel o como es conocido mejor, Debajo de la Loma, el suburbia de los muertos en nuestra capital. Debo poner de relieve sin embargo, cuando yo digo no lo digo "vivía" porque de la costumbre, no. Como todos sabemos que nadie no viven en este lugar por decirlo así, solo los muertos andan los calles. Pues excepto Sebastián quien fue todavía en la flor de la vida.
El mundo de los muertos no es tan diferente que el mundo de los vivos. Trabajan y pagan los impuestos como nosotros que respirar. Sebastián trabajaba allí y aún jugaba en un equipo de futbol. Él fue trabajando en una empresa de contabilidad en el norte de Debajo de la Loma. Le gustaba allí aunque no estaba seguro de que quería trabajar por el resto de su vida. Le gustaba su jefe y sus colegas, y el trabajo le pagaba suficiente, con horas que podría dedicarse a las interés afuera su empleo.
Sin embargo los padres de Sebastián no le parecían con sus elecciónes. Le llamaron una noche expresar sus sensaciones exactamente, pues más o menos.
–¿Es esa chica tuyo? ¿Qué se llama?– Su madre preguntó, aunque lo conocía.
–Alejandra mamá.
–Sí Sí, eso es. ¿Le cohabitas con ella todavía?– A la madre de Sebastián el olvido fue una arma retórica.
–Sí mamá, todavía vivimos juntos.
–¿Comó puedes decir "vivimos"cuando ella no tiene un latido de corazón?– Su madre dijo por lo bajo.
–¡Mamá!– Sebastián suplicó. Entonces para Sebastián conversación con su madre hubo llegado a ser así.
Hace un año Sebastián conoció Alejandra. En aquella tiempo no sabía que Alejandra ha muerto, no. El primer tiempo clavó los ojos en ella fue en lugar que se llama El Cuervo Cabido, un bar pequeño que jugaba el jazz para los aficianados. Ya sabemos que haya unos días del año cuando los muertos estan permidado caminar con los vivos. Generalmente guardan las distancías, pues excepto cuando deben realizar sus ritos ancestrales pero eso es una vez al año. No importa, para Sebastián estuvo el amor a primera vista, pensó que hubo mirado una angel y se le acercó al lado y trabó una conversación.
Sebastián fue tratando de callarse porque Alejandra estuvo en el cuarto siguiente.
–Mamá, por favor. No quiero discutir contigo.– Él dijo en voz baja, oyendo un supiro desde su madre.
–Hable con tu padre.– Dijo bruscamente. –Aquí Jorge, hable con tu hijo.
–Hola Seb ¿comó estas?
–Hola papá, estoy bien, ¿y tu? ¿Comó va el barco? El padre de Sebastián construía los barcos modelos escalas. Estaba construyendo un galeón español. Fue el gran amor de él y Sebastián sospechó a veces que su padre lo enamoraba más que su madre.
–Va lentamente pero es mejor tener cuidado que romperlo.
Sebastián podría escuchar su madre en el fondo.
–¡Digale! Digale nuestro hijo que el sobrino de Luisa me preguntó el otro día si él fue un necrofilo. Me da vergüenza pensar lo que le digan de él. ¡Me moriré de vergüenza!
Su padre sonaba cansado. –Tu madre me pedió....
–Yo le oí.– Sebastián dijo bruscamente.
Después hubo un momento de silencio en cual Sebastián pensó que oiga un ruido, un zumbido, talvez hubo alguna humidad en la linea.
–Digale adiós a mamá y quedate bien papá.
–También Seb. Hasta luego.– Después colegó el teléfono.
El mundo de los muertos no es tan diferente que el mundo de los vivos. Trabajan y pagan los impuestos como nosotros que respirar. Sebastián trabajaba allí y aún jugaba en un equipo de futbol. Él fue trabajando en una empresa de contabilidad en el norte de Debajo de la Loma. Le gustaba allí aunque no estaba seguro de que quería trabajar por el resto de su vida. Le gustaba su jefe y sus colegas, y el trabajo le pagaba suficiente, con horas que podría dedicarse a las interés afuera su empleo.
Sin embargo los padres de Sebastián no le parecían con sus elecciónes. Le llamaron una noche expresar sus sensaciones exactamente, pues más o menos.
–¿Es esa chica tuyo? ¿Qué se llama?– Su madre preguntó, aunque lo conocía.
–Alejandra mamá.
–Sí Sí, eso es. ¿Le cohabitas con ella todavía?– A la madre de Sebastián el olvido fue una arma retórica.
–Sí mamá, todavía vivimos juntos.
–¿Comó puedes decir "vivimos"
–¡Mamá!– Sebastián suplicó. Entonces para Sebastián conversación con su madre hubo llegado a ser así.
Hace un año Sebastián conoció Alejandra. En aquella tiempo no sabía que Alejandra ha muerto, no. El primer tiempo clavó los ojos en ella fue en lugar que se llama El Cuervo Cabido, un bar pequeño que jugaba el jazz para los aficianados. Ya sabemos que haya unos días del año cuando los muertos estan permidado caminar con los vivos. Generalmente guardan las distancías, pues excepto cuando deben realizar sus ritos ancestrales pero eso es una vez al año. No importa, para Sebastián estuvo el amor a primera vista, pensó que hubo mirado una angel y se le acercó al lado y trabó una conversación.
Sebastián fue tratando de callarse porque Alejandra estuvo en el cuarto siguiente.
–Mamá, por favor. No quiero discutir contigo.– Él dijo en voz baja, oyendo un supiro desde su madre.
–Hable con tu padre.– Dijo bruscamente. –Aquí Jorge, hable con tu hijo.
–Hola Seb ¿comó estas?
–Hola papá, estoy bien, ¿y tu? ¿Comó va el barco? El padre de Sebastián construía los barcos modelos escalas. Estaba construyendo un galeón español. Fue el gran amor de él y Sebastián sospechó a veces que su padre lo enamoraba más que su madre.
–Va lentamente pero es mejor tener cuidado que romperlo.
Sebastián podría escuchar su madre en el fondo.
–¡Digale! Digale nuestro hijo que el sobrino de Luisa me preguntó el otro día si él fue un necrofilo. Me da vergüenza pensar lo que le digan de él. ¡Me moriré de vergüenza!
Su padre sonaba cansado. –Tu madre me pedió....
–Yo le oí.– Sebastián dijo bruscamente.
Después hubo un momento de silencio en cual Sebastián pensó que oiga un ruido, un zumbido, talvez hubo alguna humidad en la linea.
–Digale adiós a mamá y quedate bien papá.
–También Seb. Hasta luego.– Después colegó el teléfono.
Monday, August 27, 2007
"Twenty-six degrees and still winter," my work colleague raised his head over the partition to talk to me. "You know, I think you might be right about with what you were saying the other day."
I paused to think. "What, you mean global warming!?!" I replied with incredulity, realising only too late that he was taking the piss.
"Yup," he said, smiling mischievously.
I paused to think. "What, you mean global warming!?!" I replied with incredulity, realising only too late that he was taking the piss.
"Yup," he said, smiling mischievously.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Is it wrong to have fallen for my travel agent? It was love at first sight as they say when I sat down in Student Flights opposite him a few weeks ago as rain poured down outside. I gushed over him as he tried to sell me travel insurance, a diamond stud on his nose, just visable as it glints and gleams in the light as he tilts his head thoughtfully, to the side and back, comparing flight prices and destinations and taxes. The wooden brown-beaded necklace that is suspended amongst his fine sandy chest hair, peeping through his v-neck and open clean white shirt. I drew in his fresh smelling cologne, imagining my fingers moving, exploring through his fine fair chest hair.
However it is as they say "against the bylaws of the International Order of Travel Agents [which I assume he is a member of] to get involved with clients." Yes rules are rules, says Mr Lies.* And besides I think he's straight.
Well forget my sad attempts at flirting with a straight man, my ticket is now confirmed and my leave is approved so goddamn it, I guess I'm going to South America.
****************
Standing here, at Jewel train station, waiting for the 9:05 city loop, late for work again, I stare into the sky: a blue cloudless dome. In the distance I see a lone Qantas bird climb steadily on its way to thirty-thou.
I buckle my safety-belt and look through the plexi-glass and think: who's really leaving whom? Maybe I'm here just sitting still and the city of greater Melbourne falls away below, leaving me and I am hit with a wave of loneliness.
I turn back, fighting off the melancholy for just a while longer. Glad I suppose that something's moving, changing at least and I settle into my economy class seat, letting the g-force take hold, the jet engines roaring outside, waiting for the safety demonstration to begin or an inflight movie to come on. Soon the boosters cut in, not really a standard feature on your average seven-four-seven, and with my insides wrenching back and my face forced into some awful grimace we accelerate towards the forty thousand clicks an hour required to break orbit. My vision shakes and blurs but still I can see out the corner of my eye, blue thinning to black and more diamond studs blinking into existence.
There is a point where earth's gravity will cease to pull me down, with all my earthly problems and my earthly dreams leaving my tired little shoulders but not yet, no. As this baby continues to accelerate like this, the inertia keeps me stuck here, heavier than I was back on earth. After all it takes a lot of energy to escape and be free.
*Angels in America (HBO)
However it is as they say "against the bylaws of the International Order of Travel Agents [which I assume he is a member of] to get involved with clients." Yes rules are rules, says Mr Lies.* And besides I think he's straight.
Well forget my sad attempts at flirting with a straight man, my ticket is now confirmed and my leave is approved so goddamn it, I guess I'm going to South America.
****************
Standing here, at Jewel train station, waiting for the 9:05 city loop, late for work again, I stare into the sky: a blue cloudless dome. In the distance I see a lone Qantas bird climb steadily on its way to thirty-thou.
I buckle my safety-belt and look through the plexi-glass and think: who's really leaving whom? Maybe I'm here just sitting still and the city of greater Melbourne falls away below, leaving me and I am hit with a wave of loneliness.
I turn back, fighting off the melancholy for just a while longer. Glad I suppose that something's moving, changing at least and I settle into my economy class seat, letting the g-force take hold, the jet engines roaring outside, waiting for the safety demonstration to begin or an inflight movie to come on. Soon the boosters cut in, not really a standard feature on your average seven-four-seven, and with my insides wrenching back and my face forced into some awful grimace we accelerate towards the forty thousand clicks an hour required to break orbit. My vision shakes and blurs but still I can see out the corner of my eye, blue thinning to black and more diamond studs blinking into existence.
There is a point where earth's gravity will cease to pull me down, with all my earthly problems and my earthly dreams leaving my tired little shoulders but not yet, no. As this baby continues to accelerate like this, the inertia keeps me stuck here, heavier than I was back on earth. After all it takes a lot of energy to escape and be free.
*Angels in America (HBO)
Saturday, July 28, 2007
my friend's gay gloves
A man attacked my friend Josh last night. It was not in some dark alley in Lilydale or the backstreets of Sunshine but on the corner of Elizabeth Street and LaTrobe. He was on the way to meeting me at the Arthouse to see a local hardcore act called Identity Theft. The man dressed in a suit came up without provocation and threw my friend into the wall screaming something about the faggy green gloves he was wearing. The man who was with his one hand still holding his mobile phone remarkably talking to fuck knows who, telling them that he was going to kill Josh, was with the other trying to bash my friend's head in. In combination with this distraction and Josh's artful dodging allowed him to break free and leg it, running full pelt but it was several city blocks before his pursuant gave up on chasing him, still screaming into is mobile phone about how my faggot friend was dead.
Josh arrived at the Arthouse unsurprisingly shook up and spent the next half and hour, upstairs in the cool of the night, venting as I talked and comforted him with my arm around his shoulder. It was a gesture that drew its own undesired attention in a venue full of men pashing women, touching furtively then with flagrance as the pots emptied of draught; a man with his arm around another man was something to be stared at and commented upon. "You're in man! He'll be putting out tonight for ya!" Some dick yelled at me, wearing a black bandana under black cap tilted askew, hatebreed emblazoned on his black t-shirt. It wasn't a friendly jibe, it wasn't meant to encourage my pursuit. But then what did we expect? I hear you say. Why were we even there? you ask as my hand detectably moved an inch away from my friend's back.
The bands were good, really tight and energised, and the local hip hop crew from out of Box Hill, Ascertain and DJ Bogues were a welcome relief from screaming vocals and heavy guitar. Yet I couldn't help but feel unnerved, my friend undoubtedly ten-fold at the general verbal abuse directed (and indirected) towards faggots and poofters in the masculated atmosphere. That hat is gay, this song is gay and I heard at one point one of the rappers from Ascertain style "clear the faggots off the dance floor." Thankfully not a reference to Josh and I, who had removed ourselves to the back of the room but to Melbourne's nightlife generally I think. I found the overt and hyper-exaggerated machismo increasingly nauseating as the night drew on: the fists in the air and on the ground, the shouts of abuse, the air guitars and the hugging and groping between men that could have been easily mistook as homoerotic but we'd only an hour before been singled out for less. Half way through a song called "A Poofy Start", Josh and I chose to leave. Now apparently a member form Identity Theft is gay so maybe the song was ironic but it was an irony lost not only on me but the I think the large majority of the crowd.
I am being too sensitive I hear you say. Perhaps. This is what my straight friends tell me when I complain about their use of language. "It's only a word dude, we don't mean anything by it. Everyone uses it. We're fine with your sexuality." Oh I am sorry for not taking your feelings into consideration. Yes it really my fault for going to an overtly heterosexual club and putting my arm around a friend after some guy had tried to bash him. Get fucking real! If it's just a word then stop using it.
Josh arrived at the Arthouse unsurprisingly shook up and spent the next half and hour, upstairs in the cool of the night, venting as I talked and comforted him with my arm around his shoulder. It was a gesture that drew its own undesired attention in a venue full of men pashing women, touching furtively then with flagrance as the pots emptied of draught; a man with his arm around another man was something to be stared at and commented upon. "You're in man! He'll be putting out tonight for ya!" Some dick yelled at me, wearing a black bandana under black cap tilted askew, hatebreed emblazoned on his black t-shirt. It wasn't a friendly jibe, it wasn't meant to encourage my pursuit. But then what did we expect? I hear you say. Why were we even there? you ask as my hand detectably moved an inch away from my friend's back.
The bands were good, really tight and energised, and the local hip hop crew from out of Box Hill, Ascertain and DJ Bogues were a welcome relief from screaming vocals and heavy guitar. Yet I couldn't help but feel unnerved, my friend undoubtedly ten-fold at the general verbal abuse directed (and indirected) towards faggots and poofters in the masculated atmosphere. That hat is gay, this song is gay and I heard at one point one of the rappers from Ascertain style "clear the faggots off the dance floor." Thankfully not a reference to Josh and I, who had removed ourselves to the back of the room but to Melbourne's nightlife generally I think. I found the overt and hyper-exaggerated machismo increasingly nauseating as the night drew on: the fists in the air and on the ground, the shouts of abuse, the air guitars and the hugging and groping between men that could have been easily mistook as homoerotic but we'd only an hour before been singled out for less. Half way through a song called "A Poofy Start", Josh and I chose to leave. Now apparently a member form Identity Theft is gay so maybe the song was ironic but it was an irony lost not only on me but the I think the large majority of the crowd.
I am being too sensitive I hear you say. Perhaps. This is what my straight friends tell me when I complain about their use of language. "It's only a word dude, we don't mean anything by it. Everyone uses it. We're fine with your sexuality." Oh I am sorry for not taking your feelings into consideration. Yes it really my fault for going to an overtly heterosexual club and putting my arm around a friend after some guy had tried to bash him. Get fucking real! If it's just a word then stop using it.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
i'm barely able to drag myself out of bed this morning, a stranger stares back at me from the mirror as i shave and apply deodorant, a computer screen just flickers at me white light and fuck it's eleven-thirty already. my skull echoes with the office fluorescent hum and i wish that i could only just play some music, put my earphones on and extract myself. it must be wednesday but i keep thinking it's thursday or maybe tuesday. bins go out on thursday, that's what my housemate said to me as i stood there positioning the recycling by the curb, "yeah, figures! kinda wondered why no one else was putt'n em out," i replied. i spend lunch in the park alone eating a shitty foodcourt sandwich that was wrapped in plastic like miss palmer while a duck glides over the surface of a pond in the carlton gardens, leaving, well, a wake in its wake. i feel my head expanding and contracting and i feel dizzy and unstable, emotionally. tears well up for no good reason on the train platform as i wait. waiting for my dinner, red lentil dahl i chat to the man i have a crush on about languages and garlic and leave without getting his name, cursing like the bee gees, all the stupid things that i said. fuck i hate wednesdays.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
hometown baghdad
I've just spent the last 24 hours watching the 38 episodes of this web-doco series I found on YouTube called Hometown Baghdad. Filmed by two Iraqis, Director Ziad Turkey and Producer Fady Hadid with some camera work done by the subjects as well, Hometown Baghdad follows three young guys, Ausama, Adel and Saif, middle class Iraqis, as they just try to go about their day-to-day while their country falls further into shit. "It's a living hell but that's your home," says 23 year old Adel, engineering student and aspiring metal musician as he reflects on his life. "I only live in the present, I'm alive today so I do whatever I want to today and enjoy this moment... Could be one moment to end everything, you and your plans, and send you underground."
The first episode came online March this year and the last was posted on 17 June and it is good viewing. Each episode is mostly under five minutes and deals with an aspect of the guys' lives both maudlin and comic, from love and dating, to writing metal lyrics about the invasion and the disintegration of civil order into civil war. 
It's easy to forget when you are barraged with images of car bombings ad nauseam, and terrorist body counts piling high, you forget that there are people actually living on the ground amongst it all. About the intersecting lives that cross in and out of our two minute snatches on National Nine News, that the grandmother's house that is first raided by American forces once (no terrorists), twice (no terrorists) and then looted by the Iraqi Army, is also a place of cherished childhood memories now tainted; or the intermittent power supply that is three hours on and three hours off, cuts coverage of the football that friends have gathered to watch.
"Where's the liberation?" asks 20 year old medical student Ausama. "The American forces, they're not here to help us... I don't see anything good and it's been four years."
These guys are educated and thoughtful, moderate moslems mostly who are in far more danger from 'insurgents' and 'terrorists' (or the US forces) than we could every be, in a place where just playing music, western music can get you shot, well "... that's the reality, welcome to Baghdad."
The first episode came online March this year and the last was posted on 17 June and it is good viewing. Each episode is mostly under five minutes and deals with an aspect of the guys' lives both maudlin and comic, from love and dating, to writing metal lyrics about the invasion and the disintegration of civil order into civil war. 
It's easy to forget when you are barraged with images of car bombings ad nauseam, and terrorist body counts piling high, you forget that there are people actually living on the ground amongst it all. About the intersecting lives that cross in and out of our two minute snatches on National Nine News, that the grandmother's house that is first raided by American forces once (no terrorists), twice (no terrorists) and then looted by the Iraqi Army, is also a place of cherished childhood memories now tainted; or the intermittent power supply that is three hours on and three hours off, cuts coverage of the football that friends have gathered to watch.
"Where's the liberation?" asks 20 year old medical student Ausama. "The American forces, they're not here to help us... I don't see anything good and it's been four years."
These guys are educated and thoughtful, moderate moslems mostly who are in far more danger from 'insurgents' and 'terrorists' (or the US forces) than we could every be, in a place where just playing music, western music can get you shot, well "... that's the reality, welcome to Baghdad."Watch hometown baghdad
Sunday, July 22, 2007
It was a nice afternoon today, don't you think? The sun warming me through the glass walls of the tram-stop shelter, keepin me from the slight chill winter breeze as I waited for the 109 heading down Vic Parade for a friend's birthday lunch at Quan 88. It'd probably would've been quicker to walk but hey, I couldn't be fucked and besides it was a nice day afterall.
I glanced down at my hand, noticing that some of the light that took all of eight minutes from the sun to reach me had refracted through the glass into a beam of its composite colours. Light itself has properties of both particle and wave, if I remember year nine science class correctly, although I still don't understand it. Humans can only perceive a small fraction of light, somewhere between 380 nm to 740 nm (nanometres) of electromagnetic frequency, which includes not only these reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues and violets that I can see before me but infrared, ultra violet and goddamn fucking x-rays and gamma rays. I looked this shit up. Thing is, the colours are only an illusion. These cells in my retina like, called cone cells are sensitive to particular wavelengths of this electomagnetic spectrum and in consultation with my brain (no doubt with the assistance of millions of years of jury-rigging) choose to see 'em that way, in technicolour that is. Still, as I rotated my hand, palm up and around through the light I could feel the colour wash over my skin. Strange.
When light passes through something with a different density it refracts, from the air and through the glass, it changes speed. If it passes through, say a glass tram-stop shelter wall, wave forms with different frequencies can separate, refracting in different directions and thus through the funny little cone cells in my eye I see a rainbow.
I glanced down at my hand, noticing that some of the light that took all of eight minutes from the sun to reach me had refracted through the glass into a beam of its composite colours. Light itself has properties of both particle and wave, if I remember year nine science class correctly, although I still don't understand it. Humans can only perceive a small fraction of light, somewhere between 380 nm to 740 nm (nanometres) of electromagnetic frequency, which includes not only these reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues and violets that I can see before me but infrared, ultra violet and goddamn fucking x-rays and gamma rays. I looked this shit up. Thing is, the colours are only an illusion. These cells in my retina like, called cone cells are sensitive to particular wavelengths of this electomagnetic spectrum and in consultation with my brain (no doubt with the assistance of millions of years of jury-rigging) choose to see 'em that way, in technicolour that is. Still, as I rotated my hand, palm up and around through the light I could feel the colour wash over my skin. Strange.
When light passes through something with a different density it refracts, from the air and through the glass, it changes speed. If it passes through, say a glass tram-stop shelter wall, wave forms with different frequencies can separate, refracting in different directions and thus through the funny little cone cells in my eye I see a rainbow.
Monday, July 09, 2007
be alert and very alarmed!
Fuck Osama Bin Laden, he can have his Tora Bora cave complex and well he's already got the North Western Frontier Province but fuck him. He's just another distraction from humanity's real enemy: the cephalopods! Octopi, squids and the like: they're fast and have big fucking brains, ergo they're intelligent and well maybe they're not Mensa intelligent, more of an alien versus predator kind of intelligence, but they can shoot ink and camouflage themselves and shit! they can fit through tiny little holes that otherwise would get us vertebrates fucking trapped. These fuckers have been biding their time since the late Cambrian Period (over 500 million years ago) when they ruled this planet, top of the shitheap as it were and they're just waiting for their opportune moment and give 'em a couple more years and wham-bam-goodbye-human-fucking-race!
Watch these frightening educational videos:
Watch these frightening educational videos:
Sunday, July 08, 2007
just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...
ZOMBIES ATTACK!!!
While the risk of zombie attack on terra firma is well reported, we are largely blind to the danger that they all pose to us and god's fair creatures on and under the water.
While the risk of zombie attack on terra firma is well reported, we are largely blind to the danger that they all pose to us and god's fair creatures on and under the water.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
watch out! disco attack!
Sure this blog doesn't have the readership of the Barco Independent and sure those that do read it are mostly friends and hell, probably have heard about it from Tim already but I'm nonetheless gonna spruik it in the hope that I can enlighten just one soul to the exciting new world of disco attack!
What praytell is disco attack! you ask?
disco attack! is a must, it's what we need, it's fun and safe. It's art, it's music and it is soul. disco attack! is genetic, it's inside of you and me. disco attack! is the best form of defence and is the closest we have to a super hero. disco attack! is a deadly adversary, a bomb that explodes in your head but is still the best insurance we have against terrorism and cancer. disco attack! is action not belief. It is the liberation of the proletariat. It is treason, the absence of all restraint and is not public policy. disco attack! is the opiate of the masses and is a secret conspiracy to take over the world. disco attack! is coming. disco attack is imminent and is upon you.
disco attack! is Friday 13 July from 9pm till late. disco attack! is at 51 Gipps Street Collingwood.
Hope that cleared up any confusion.... I suppose at this point I should mention that this is not an official disco attack! media announcement.
What praytell is disco attack! you ask?
disco attack! is a must, it's what we need, it's fun and safe. It's art, it's music and it is soul. disco attack! is genetic, it's inside of you and me. disco attack! is the best form of defence and is the closest we have to a super hero. disco attack! is a deadly adversary, a bomb that explodes in your head but is still the best insurance we have against terrorism and cancer. disco attack! is action not belief. It is the liberation of the proletariat. It is treason, the absence of all restraint and is not public policy. disco attack! is the opiate of the masses and is a secret conspiracy to take over the world. disco attack! is coming. disco attack is imminent and is upon you.
disco attack! is Friday 13 July from 9pm till late. disco attack! is at 51 Gipps Street Collingwood.
Hope that cleared up any confusion.... I suppose at this point I should mention that this is not an official disco attack! media announcement.
disco attack! is really:
Monday, June 25, 2007
8 things you unlikely know about me but nonetheless might’ve guessed (or maybe I told you)
Thanks Richard for meme-ing me on this. So here you are: eight things you may not know about me (or you just might).
1. I’ve never read Milton’s “Paradise Lost” but I keep it on my bookshelf because it makes me look smart.
2. As a kid aged 12, I planned my suicide to look like a break-and-enter gone horribly wrong. Suffice to say my schemes were logistically unsound and I never carried it out.
3. At my year 7 camp some blonde haired thugs pushed me into the urinal wall while I was still pissing. The rest of the camp I tried to keep a low profile and was very secretly relieved when these same guys turned their attentions to my roommate. I felt guilty that I never said anything instead of laughing along but my god did he fucking snore.
4. I am currently downloading a porno called “Here cums the bridegroom”
5. I have a very hairy back.
6. As part of our bi-centenary celebrations my grade-three class had a fancy dress day. While most kids came dressed as convicts I insisted on coming as Captain Arthur Phillip.
7. I get far too much satisfaction out of popping pimples.
8. I have a healthy sperm count.
I am in turn tagging Strummer. Good night and good luck.
1. I’ve never read Milton’s “Paradise Lost” but I keep it on my bookshelf because it makes me look smart.
2. As a kid aged 12, I planned my suicide to look like a break-and-enter gone horribly wrong. Suffice to say my schemes were logistically unsound and I never carried it out.
3. At my year 7 camp some blonde haired thugs pushed me into the urinal wall while I was still pissing. The rest of the camp I tried to keep a low profile and was very secretly relieved when these same guys turned their attentions to my roommate. I felt guilty that I never said anything instead of laughing along but my god did he fucking snore.
4. I am currently downloading a porno called “Here cums the bridegroom”
5. I have a very hairy back.
6. As part of our bi-centenary celebrations my grade-three class had a fancy dress day. While most kids came dressed as convicts I insisted on coming as Captain Arthur Phillip.
7. I get far too much satisfaction out of popping pimples.
8. I have a healthy sperm count.
I am in turn tagging Strummer. Good night and good luck.
Admiral Arthur Phillip (1786 portrait by Francis Wheatley, National Portrait Gallery, London)
Sunday, June 24, 2007
21.10.2002
The cold steel sky filled with the black beating wings of a large flock of ravens, the sound of their calls and the clutter of thousands of wings as they beat against the wind, dominating the space between the Menzies Building and that of the Union as they circled round the twelve storey eyesore. Standing on the concrete walkway that divides the lawn, I watched as one then two and many more of the birds broke formation and began to land. Quickly I find myself surrounded by the ravens, hopping around, settling themselves and seemingly pausing to wait. Silence falls all around me, waking me decidedly unsettled.
A few days later, on the morning of Monday 21 October 2002 Huan Yun "Allen" Xiang entered his fourth year econometrics class with five loaded hand guns and opened fire, yelling "You never understand me," killing two of his classmates and wounding another five. He was supposed to be giving a class presentation.
The two students who died were Steven Chan and Xu Hui "William" Wu. In his trial it came out that Xiang believed Wu to be an agent of evil who intended to destroy him academically and it was his own destiny to kill him. This gives some insight into his mindset that day and it is not surprising that he has since been diagnosed with paranoid delusional disorder and is serving a possible twenty-five year sentence at Thomas Embling psychiatric hospital.
The class' lecturer Lee Gordon-Brown who had already sustained bullet-wounds to his arm and knee, with the assistance of a student named Alastair Boast were able to wrestle Xiang to the ground while he attempted to switch to another gun. They waited fifteen minutes for the police to arrive and by that time Gordon-Brown had already passed out of consciousness.
I was finishing up my honours in history that October at Monash University Clayton and the schools of history and archaeology shared the sixth floor where the shootings took place, with economics.
I was not at uni that day.
wikipedia - monash shooting
A few days later, on the morning of Monday 21 October 2002 Huan Yun "Allen" Xiang entered his fourth year econometrics class with five loaded hand guns and opened fire, yelling "You never understand me," killing two of his classmates and wounding another five. He was supposed to be giving a class presentation.
The two students who died were Steven Chan and Xu Hui "William" Wu. In his trial it came out that Xiang believed Wu to be an agent of evil who intended to destroy him academically and it was his own destiny to kill him. This gives some insight into his mindset that day and it is not surprising that he has since been diagnosed with paranoid delusional disorder and is serving a possible twenty-five year sentence at Thomas Embling psychiatric hospital.
The class' lecturer Lee Gordon-Brown who had already sustained bullet-wounds to his arm and knee, with the assistance of a student named Alastair Boast were able to wrestle Xiang to the ground while he attempted to switch to another gun. They waited fifteen minutes for the police to arrive and by that time Gordon-Brown had already passed out of consciousness.
I was finishing up my honours in history that October at Monash University Clayton and the schools of history and archaeology shared the sixth floor where the shootings took place, with economics.
I was not at uni that day.
wikipedia - monash shooting
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
northside / southside
I was first told about the northside/southside divide a year or so back at some friend's house party. I was drunk and so was he, some guy I'd just been introduced to, and we'd propped ourselves up on elbows talking on a housemate's bed about sex and politics and Melbourne queerdom.
Melbourne's gay world is divided in two, he tells me, by the Yarra river running between; it's cold war shit: East and West. Soft electronic music beats away in the background played by some graveyard community radio station volunteer. Nothing overt like but understated power plays go on in what is in essence a battle for cultural hegemony. You have Commercial Road, el centro del sur, switching briefly to spanish and back again, where prissied up pretty boys parade around with no shirts on, dancing to house remixes of Kylie Minogue. It's all top 40 and homogeneity.
Northside you've got overeducated art students sipping lattes on Smith Street reading Foucault's discourses on Sexuality and agreeing so emphatically about politics that you'd think they were arguing. Wankers on both sides I add. Generally speaking, he continued unfazed, the North pays more than lip-service to inclusiveness than our Southern brothers; and I do say brothers as I can't think of one lesbian bar South of the border.
Q & A has been the stalwart, a steadfast partisan in the defence against encroachment from the south, he said. Playing good music with a mixed atmosphere that allows you to be yourself but even it's creators admit that it's become increasingly coopted by a younger more vacuous crowd, crossing the border under the cover of night with their vapid requests to hear Madonna or Shakira or some shit.
......................
Yes Q & A is ending after eleven and a half years and I'll miss it but then as a comment on Richard's blog says, quoting the man himself "it'll force people to come up with something new." I wish I could say gay life in Melbourne has become pretty stagnant of late but I don't get out enough and this feeling may have more to do with me that the homo-world. There is after all Trough Faggot Party and Witness Protection Society but they are irregularly placed and I do have to say that I find the former a little too andocentric and I haven't attended Witness enough to comment.
But but but... on Sunday I went to the very first Sweaty Betty, part of the Camp Betty festival described on their site as a "radical weekend of sex and politics". A reaction to what the organises state as a certain sense of malaise or apathy within the community. I don't wish to understate my feelings about my evening but the party was fucking ace. Held in Crystal T's, a less-than-gentleman's (stripclub) on Sydney Road, it was full of all the colours of the homo-rainbow including a nice smattering of straight people ta boot. There was good music and some live performances including one woman exposing more than just her exquisit tats of jaguars adorning her torso. The tease culminated in her sim-masturbating a rather generous pink dildo that she was wearing: a definite eye-opener.
There is hope.
......................
"So which side are you?" he asked.
Melbourne's gay world is divided in two, he tells me, by the Yarra river running between; it's cold war shit: East and West. Soft electronic music beats away in the background played by some graveyard community radio station volunteer. Nothing overt like but understated power plays go on in what is in essence a battle for cultural hegemony. You have Commercial Road, el centro del sur, switching briefly to spanish and back again, where prissied up pretty boys parade around with no shirts on, dancing to house remixes of Kylie Minogue. It's all top 40 and homogeneity.
Northside you've got overeducated art students sipping lattes on Smith Street reading Foucault's discourses on Sexuality and agreeing so emphatically about politics that you'd think they were arguing. Wankers on both sides I add. Generally speaking, he continued unfazed, the North pays more than lip-service to inclusiveness than our Southern brothers; and I do say brothers as I can't think of one lesbian bar South of the border.
Q & A has been the stalwart, a steadfast partisan in the defence against encroachment from the south, he said. Playing good music with a mixed atmosphere that allows you to be yourself but even it's creators admit that it's become increasingly coopted by a younger more vacuous crowd, crossing the border under the cover of night with their vapid requests to hear Madonna or Shakira or some shit.
......................
Yes Q & A is ending after eleven and a half years and I'll miss it but then as a comment on Richard's blog says, quoting the man himself "it'll force people to come up with something new." I wish I could say gay life in Melbourne has become pretty stagnant of late but I don't get out enough and this feeling may have more to do with me that the homo-world. There is after all Trough Faggot Party and Witness Protection Society but they are irregularly placed and I do have to say that I find the former a little too andocentric and I haven't attended Witness enough to comment.
But but but... on Sunday I went to the very first Sweaty Betty, part of the Camp Betty festival described on their site as a "radical weekend of sex and politics". A reaction to what the organises state as a certain sense of malaise or apathy within the community. I don't wish to understate my feelings about my evening but the party was fucking ace. Held in Crystal T's, a less-than-gentleman's (stripclub) on Sydney Road, it was full of all the colours of the homo-rainbow including a nice smattering of straight people ta boot. There was good music and some live performances including one woman exposing more than just her exquisit tats of jaguars adorning her torso. The tease culminated in her sim-masturbating a rather generous pink dildo that she was wearing: a definite eye-opener.
There is hope.
......................
"So which side are you?" he asked.
Monday, May 28, 2007
the peel vs straights & lesbians
I am not sure I feel entirely comfortable about the Peel's exemption to the Equal Opportunity Act that was reported in the papers today. The exemption would allow staff of the Peel to refuse entry to the venue on a perception of an individual's sexuality as apparently the gay male clientele had expressed concerns about the number of heterosexuals and lesbians entering the venue, all prompting management to apply to the Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission for this exemption. Tom McFeely, owner of the nightclub was quoted in the Age as saying that the move was necessary to ensure that the gay male patron felt secure enough to express his sexuality freely. 1 Cate McKenzie deputy president of the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) who granted the exemption said that "[s]ometimes heterosexual groups and lesbian groups insult and deride and are even physically violent towards the gay male patrons" while others just came to gawk, acting as though the gay male patrons were animals in a zoo. She said, "To regard the gay male patrons of the venue as providing an entertainment or spectacle to be stared at, as one would at an animal at a zoo, devalues and dehumanises them." 2 Indeed the gay bars in Melbourne are few and far between argues McFeely, "We're the only one out of 2,000 venues in Melbourne. Those heterosexuals have other places to go to, my homosexuals do not." 3
But regardless the idea of prescribing behaviour to a person on the basis of their sexuality is blatantly discriminatory. To imply that an individual who identifies as heterosexual or as a lesbian will engage or is likely to engage in violence or verbal abuse or whose activities while inside will upset the clientele of that establishment goes wholly against my moral fibre. Could one of the 'straight bars' that McFeely refers to legitimately apply for an exemption on the basis that gay men make their patrons uncomfortable? I sincerely doubt it.
I personally feel that a gay man who is intimidated by a straight man or a woman, whether she be gay or straight, for who they are, is at best hypocritical and worst pathological. If a person's behaviour in any club, pub or bar is inappropriate surely then security have the right to eject them. As a community we should be engaging and open, not hiding in closets.
Now I do not pretend to know what evidence exactly was put forward to the Tribunal, something I believe you have to apply for, but I wonder whether this application for exemption has anything to do with the mens-only 'upstairs' section of the Peel that staff enforce with such admirable efficiency. In the decision by the Tribunal that it handed down there is no mention of the sex-on-premises above. Cate McKenzie states that men should feel safe to engage in activities such as "kissing, hugging, or expressing love, attraction or affection in a physically intimate way" that might be frowned on in a ‘straight bar’. Now unless you are ready to describe what goes on up there as expressing love and affection (and I’m not) then I would wager that engaging in sexual acts was left out of their application.4 With the Greyhound in St Kilda and an apparently "as-yet-unopened gay bar on Smith Street" both applying for sex-on-premises licences in order to attract 'punters', one wonders how much the Peel's concern for a safe and comfortable atmosphere is really there to allow gay men to have fuck and suck. 5
1 'Gay pub defends 'straight' ban,' The Age, 28 May 2007.
2 Matt Doran, 'Gay pub can out straight patrons,' Herald-Sun, 28 May 2007.
3 'Gay pub defends 'straight' ban,' op. cit.
4 Peter Rolfe, 'Sauna bid `sleazy',' Port Phillip Leader, 8 May 2007.
Danny Corvinni, 'Nightclub sex rooms and saunas,' samesame.com.au - forum, 23 May 2007.
5 Peel Hotel Pty Ltd (Anti Discrimination Exemption) [2007] VCAT 916 (24 May 2007)
But regardless the idea of prescribing behaviour to a person on the basis of their sexuality is blatantly discriminatory. To imply that an individual who identifies as heterosexual or as a lesbian will engage or is likely to engage in violence or verbal abuse or whose activities while inside will upset the clientele of that establishment goes wholly against my moral fibre. Could one of the 'straight bars' that McFeely refers to legitimately apply for an exemption on the basis that gay men make their patrons uncomfortable? I sincerely doubt it.
I personally feel that a gay man who is intimidated by a straight man or a woman, whether she be gay or straight, for who they are, is at best hypocritical and worst pathological. If a person's behaviour in any club, pub or bar is inappropriate surely then security have the right to eject them. As a community we should be engaging and open, not hiding in closets.
Now I do not pretend to know what evidence exactly was put forward to the Tribunal, something I believe you have to apply for, but I wonder whether this application for exemption has anything to do with the mens-only 'upstairs' section of the Peel that staff enforce with such admirable efficiency. In the decision by the Tribunal that it handed down there is no mention of the sex-on-premises above. Cate McKenzie states that men should feel safe to engage in activities such as "kissing, hugging, or expressing love, attraction or affection in a physically intimate way" that might be frowned on in a ‘straight bar’. Now unless you are ready to describe what goes on up there as expressing love and affection (and I’m not) then I would wager that engaging in sexual acts was left out of their application.4 With the Greyhound in St Kilda and an apparently "as-yet-unopened gay bar on Smith Street" both applying for sex-on-premises licences in order to attract 'punters', one wonders how much the Peel's concern for a safe and comfortable atmosphere is really there to allow gay men to have fuck and suck. 5
1 'Gay pub defends 'straight' ban,' The Age, 28 May 2007.
2 Matt Doran, 'Gay pub can out straight patrons,' Herald-Sun, 28 May 2007.
3 'Gay pub defends 'straight' ban,' op. cit.
4 Peter Rolfe, 'Sauna bid `sleazy',' Port Phillip Leader, 8 May 2007.
Danny Corvinni, 'Nightclub sex rooms and saunas,' samesame.com.au - forum, 23 May 2007.
5 Peel Hotel Pty Ltd (Anti Discrimination Exemption) [2007] VCAT 916 (24 May 2007)
Monday, May 14, 2007
homeline twilight - a long distance haunting
When I was fourteen Telstra or Telecom as it was called then, sent my family an international telephone bill. Not so unusual you say? Except that is that it was addressed to my father who'd been dead for two years. I know that Telstra prides itself on their wide range of products and services but I was unware communication with the dead was among them, then or now. But what if they did?
Do you have aged relatives who expect a call every Sunday without fail? Can you imagine if this chore didn't end with the grave?
If you think outsourcing call centre jobs to India is bad well picture yourself sitting down to your microwaved healthy-choice dinner (fiesta chicken by the way) when you get a call from a telemarketer selling life insurance FROM THE LAND OF THE DEAD.
Do you have aged relatives who expect a call every Sunday without fail? Can you imagine if this chore didn't end with the grave?
If you think outsourcing call centre jobs to India is bad well picture yourself sitting down to your microwaved healthy-choice dinner (fiesta chicken by the way) when you get a call from a telemarketer selling life insurance FROM THE LAND OF THE DEAD.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
bible fight - ring side seats
Ever wondered whether Moses, the jew raised an egyptian king and saviour of his people would knock down Noah, sailor and zookeeper extraordinaire a few cubits to be called the biggest baddass in the pentateuch? No you haven't? Wait, wait, please sir. Obviously you are looking for a little more titillation of the five senses than two old geezers throwning their weight around, and there's nothing like two women wrapped together in combat; there'll almost certainly be mud. Picture it Mary, Mother of G-d clawing it out, hair tooth and nail in the garden of Eden with Eve, the mother of humanity. How 'bouts it? Both in their pert prime and there's someone flinging clay and it ain't the Holy Mother I tells ya.
Ah-hem. Well.
Clearly I have here a most discerning and cultured gentleman. Well what you're no doubt looking for is some real endtime entertainment, top notch judgement day extravaganza: Jesus, son of G-d and our Saviour in the ring, in Hell opposite Satan, father of all lies in a battle for the Universe.
Oh come-on... there's simply no pleasing some. Jesus!
Sir, sir.......
play bible fight
Ah-hem. Well.
Clearly I have here a most discerning and cultured gentleman. Well what you're no doubt looking for is some real endtime entertainment, top notch judgement day extravaganza: Jesus, son of G-d and our Saviour in the ring, in Hell opposite Satan, father of all lies in a battle for the Universe.
Oh come-on... there's simply no pleasing some. Jesus!
Sir, sir.......
play bible fight
Sunday, April 22, 2007
leaning to the left hand
I had a dream last week where I found myself involved with a group of radicals pushing for a halt to growth in global population to save our much afflicted ecosphere earth. This group were committed to a most controversial public action that to be honest never sat too well with me, advocating masturbation and not procreation, staging unannounced wank-ins in select public places flying their movement's ensign, a veined engorged phallus gripped by a closed fist imposed on a picture of the globe, held aloft by members not otherwise engaged.
Never actively involved in any of these protests I stood as the group's cameraman charged with filming the demonstrations, then blurring out faces with my editing suite on the hq-computer so as to upload onto the group's website. Suffice to say I quickly became disolutioned with the whole thing, its activities, the politics and soon left, concluding that they really were a bunch of wankers and quite frankly found the whole protest thing a little strange.
Never actively involved in any of these protests I stood as the group's cameraman charged with filming the demonstrations, then blurring out faces with my editing suite on the hq-computer so as to upload onto the group's website. Suffice to say I quickly became disolutioned with the whole thing, its activities, the politics and soon left, concluding that they really were a bunch of wankers and quite frankly found the whole protest thing a little strange.
Monday, April 16, 2007
So it goes - Vonnegut dies at 84
Pehaps he has simply been caught in a chrono-synclastic infundibula set for his next corporeal appearance on earth (along with his dog - not a humanist), in another 59 days. Or perhaps not. Kurt Vonnegut died last week so it goes from a injury to the head sustained a few weeks prior.
He had fallen at the age of 84.
He was (is/will be) one of my favourite authors who might I add was recommended to me by a mad man who thought I was god, yes yes who I was visiting at St Vincent's psyche ward at that particular time maybe eight years ago. It's a true story but I digress.
"Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt" were the words written on Billy Pilgram's epitaph, the soldier/optometrist who travelled back and forward in time in his best selling Slaughterhouse five. It mightn't have been true but it did sound awfully nice.
He had fallen at the age of 84.
He was (is/will be) one of my favourite authors who might I add was recommended to me by a mad man who thought I was god, yes yes who I was visiting at St Vincent's psyche ward at that particular time maybe eight years ago. It's a true story but I digress.
"Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt" were the words written on Billy Pilgram's epitaph, the soldier/optometrist who travelled back and forward in time in his best selling Slaughterhouse five. It mightn't have been true but it did sound awfully nice.
Monday, April 02, 2007
It's been a difficult week it has. Tuesday especially hitting something of a dark spot, intense magnetic/emotional activity characterised by lower than usual temperatures... and what can I say? I lost it. And for the rest of the week I've been picking up my shattered little pieces, feeling immensely fragile as a result and snapping, huffing and puffing like a certain dragon by the seashore. I am left now with anxious butterflies that I am worried will find a way to burst out, through my stomach, my mouth and through my head.
Coming back from lunch last week circling down down in my desperate melancholy, I asked the universe what exactly was I supposed to do with all this. This mess, this noise: my head. And well it answered...
While crossing the driveway of a multilevel carpark I absent-mindedly strayed into the path of a truck pulling out. On its hood read the word COPE in bright bold lettering.
So I guess I had my answer.
Easy for it to say.
Coming back from lunch last week circling down down in my desperate melancholy, I asked the universe what exactly was I supposed to do with all this. This mess, this noise: my head. And well it answered...
While crossing the driveway of a multilevel carpark I absent-mindedly strayed into the path of a truck pulling out. On its hood read the word COPE in bright bold lettering.
So I guess I had my answer.
Easy for it to say.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
sunshine - preview @ hoyts melbourne central
Last night I attended a preview screening of Danny Boyle's Sunshine at the Melbourne Central Hoyts with a q & a featuring director and actor Rose Byrne following. What a fucking travesty!! Never in all my years have I seen a cinema fuck up a screening so badly. We were maybe a third of the way through as we cut to what I thought was an overly obtuse dream sequence: Capa the ship's physicist played by Cillian Murphy (that man has crazy blues eyes) dreaming his death in reverse, ambient music playing all through as you watched the final moments of the mission. It dragged on. And on. And on. Boyle what are you doing I asked myself? Sure Kubrick set a high standard in sci-fi incomprehensibility but this makes no sense. It's as if the film is playing backwards. Fuck it is playing backwards!I looked to my left and right searching for my friends' expressions: Mike to my left leaning in towards his boyfriend and Darren passively watching the screen. Am I not arty enough, it that it? Is this doubt a sign that I am missing the point, not getting it? No seriously the film is playing backwards, they're fucking ruining the film as I watch characters dying as the end game plays out or in or something. Whispers grew to open protests as the lights come up and there are apologies as apparently the reel was wound backwards but everything would be up and running in say five or ten, so take a toilet break or grab a snack at the candy bar or some shit.
A fucking hour we waited before they offered us the choice to watch the rest of the film or leave with a full refund. A few opted out but the vast majority stuck around to watch the rest of Doyle's much anticipated space adventure to the sun. It was three years in the making and it has been hailed by April's Empire magazine as breathing new life into a tired and banal genre of sci-fi cinema that had suffered so much after years of brainless blockbusters offered up to us by hollywood a la Armageddon. Well yes... and Hoyts fucked it up or someone did, maybe the distributor I don't know and I don't care. Call me a purist but I think a film should be watched first time straight through in its entirety and the right way round and maybe I'm a traditionalist jump-cut Jean Luc Goddard shaking your head at me but fuck you I don't care.
The film came back on without the sound and not from where we left off, missing who knows how much. I had finally settled in and began to absorb myself in the story again when they stopped the film. Apparently the reels were mislabelled and out of order and it was impossible to continue.... fuck.
The q & a continued anyway with Boyle and Byrne perfectly apologetic and friendly but it's really difficult to discuss a film that the audience hasn't seen and while they'll be mailing us out replacement tickets to see it at some later date they've destroyed the magic. And I know it sounds trite but I think there is something sacred about the movie going experience. There's something deeply freudianly mirror-stage (thanks Roland Barthes) about sitting there in the dark losing yourself in other worlds and when you consider the premium price of tickets and the five-fifty I paid for M&Ms what I lost isn't made up for by a replacement voucher.
confessions of a hypochondriac
Perhaps the hypochondriac in me that is a little concerned, a little worried about all this, I thought to myself as I lay there passively through an ultrasound on my testicles today.
"Can you hold your penis up on your stomach please," instructed my not too unattractive ultrasound technician as he pushed back my gown smearing gel on the probe and he began to move it around on my balls, first my right and then my left. I tried to think of anything that wouldn't end in me getting an erection and further complicate what was already a pretty awkward situation. This considering the week I'd gone without wanking-required for another test tomorrow- and this I suppose the most action I'd seen in nearly four months.
His name was John, my technician that is, as I made special mental note to remember it, thinking it's important to know the name of any man with his hand on my nutsack. I stare at the ceiling. Nothing like the dentist's office where there are all those calming posters of rainforests and deserts and far away places where they hope you'll be as they drill cavities and root canals. There is no noise, nor traffic or din of other doctors and patients in the room to distract me, just the hum of the machine. The room is on basement level of St Vincent's hospital and I'm the last patient of the day, just John and I and I think the receptionist somewhere about turning lights off. So I turn my attention to the machine and wonder at the different size probes next to me and what they might be used for ... he sure is spending an inordinate amount of time around my left testicle as I notice the soundless vibrations and the warmth the machine is generating.
"Do you normally feel any pain in your left testicle?" he asks me. Why? What's wrong? "No, not normally," I reply. He hums recognition without giving away anything and hands me a towel to remove the excess gel. So I thank him, get dressed and leave.
"Can you hold your penis up on your stomach please," instructed my not too unattractive ultrasound technician as he pushed back my gown smearing gel on the probe and he began to move it around on my balls, first my right and then my left. I tried to think of anything that wouldn't end in me getting an erection and further complicate what was already a pretty awkward situation. This considering the week I'd gone without wanking-required for another test tomorrow- and this I suppose the most action I'd seen in nearly four months.
His name was John, my technician that is, as I made special mental note to remember it, thinking it's important to know the name of any man with his hand on my nutsack. I stare at the ceiling. Nothing like the dentist's office where there are all those calming posters of rainforests and deserts and far away places where they hope you'll be as they drill cavities and root canals. There is no noise, nor traffic or din of other doctors and patients in the room to distract me, just the hum of the machine. The room is on basement level of St Vincent's hospital and I'm the last patient of the day, just John and I and I think the receptionist somewhere about turning lights off. So I turn my attention to the machine and wonder at the different size probes next to me and what they might be used for ... he sure is spending an inordinate amount of time around my left testicle as I notice the soundless vibrations and the warmth the machine is generating.
"Do you normally feel any pain in your left testicle?" he asks me. Why? What's wrong? "No, not normally," I reply. He hums recognition without giving away anything and hands me a towel to remove the excess gel. So I thank him, get dressed and leave.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Friday, March 09, 2007
Thursday, March 01, 2007
the point - think about your troubles
On February 1971, early evening, the American TV station ABC broadcast the 74 minute long "Movie of the Week" called The Point!; a story about Oblio the only round headed boy in the Land of Point, who feeling 'different' goes on an epic journey of the mind, body and soul, accompanied by his dog arrow, to get the bottom of it all. * It's a tale all about diversity and tolerance and a lot of other hippy crap but don't let that scare you, from what I've seen it looks kinda cool. Here's a clip from the film and I must admit it's made me feel all intuned to that deep hum the earth makes as it flies around the sun and well yes the music is by Harry Nilsson who, I'll be honest I only know because of that song from Midnight Cowboy "Everybody's Talkin'" but yeah, I'm sure I was going somewhere with this.
Anyway I think I want to track down the rest of this film. Yes yes, well enjoy.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
turn that frown upside your head
I keep forgetting to take my medication. It took me almost an entire episode of heroes, tears rolling down my cheek, to realise there was something wrong. Hey this really isn't all that heartbreaking I thought to myself and now I feel sick and I am nearly out pills, maybe a week left and I all I can do is pace this room, bouncing off all these ideas five or six at a time. So is this how it felt like before? I think this aloudly to myself as I remember I don't want to speak to a doctor about any of it and I really do wish people would stop pointing out my failings like I can't think of them on my own and so many more accelerating like some cyclotron throwing particules around a vacuum chamber.
I have a death wish maybe... I sometimes sit on the train to work imagining that I'm sitting opposite the next Sid riding the westbound Circle line as he stands up bag strapped to his back, just another number, what would it be? The Melbourne February 27 bombing, g-man body 2 or 3. Just a number, a body count where no one but the families remember the faces or the names, just the numbers as we compare, counting fingers in some macabre tally that death scratches in the dust: 52 is less than 190, which are both less than 2,974 in NY or 655,000 in Iraq.
When the end comes I sure hope I'm listening to something good on the i-pod... bopping along to "float on" by modest mouse, smile on my face as I am engulfed in flames with the last thing I hear "bad news comes don't you worry even when it lands/ good news will work its way to all them plans..." ... and we'll all float on OK.
Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000, Washington Post October 11, 2006
I have a death wish maybe... I sometimes sit on the train to work imagining that I'm sitting opposite the next Sid riding the westbound Circle line as he stands up bag strapped to his back, just another number, what would it be? The Melbourne February 27 bombing, g-man body 2 or 3. Just a number, a body count where no one but the families remember the faces or the names, just the numbers as we compare, counting fingers in some macabre tally that death scratches in the dust: 52 is less than 190, which are both less than 2,974 in NY or 655,000 in Iraq.
When the end comes I sure hope I'm listening to something good on the i-pod... bopping along to "float on" by modest mouse, smile on my face as I am engulfed in flames with the last thing I hear "bad news comes don't you worry even when it lands/ good news will work its way to all them plans..." ... and we'll all float on OK.
Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000, Washington Post October 11, 2006
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
g-man's valentines day message
To quote Phillip J. Fry "Oh crap! I forgot to get a girlfriend again," (correct that: boyfriend) and yet another lonesome Valentines Day to notch up on the belt. So how many has it been? Well to date... let me see, mumble, mumble *pencil scratching paper* ummm, carry the 5... I don't know maybe all of them... yes this day holds a special place in my heart to say the least and every year I like to prepare a little speech to commemorate this bubbly holiday of love.
I was chatting a while back with my spanish teacher on the topic of love and sex and the many things in between and this came up: "Crush? What is a crush?" I tried my best to explain, asking whether there was an equivalent concept in spanish. She seemed perplexed. To me there is a whole colour in the love spectrum dedicated to having a crush on someone; think of all the pathos and the tragedy of knowing... just knowing that they don't feel the same.
"No, I don't think there is a word for *crush* in spanish," stressing the word like one might hold soiled underwear: with as few fingers as possible. "Must be an Anglo Saxon thing," she said after a moment's consideration, laughing to herself.
Pobre de mi.
I was chatting a while back with my spanish teacher on the topic of love and sex and the many things in between and this came up: "Crush? What is a crush?" I tried my best to explain, asking whether there was an equivalent concept in spanish. She seemed perplexed. To me there is a whole colour in the love spectrum dedicated to having a crush on someone; think of all the pathos and the tragedy of knowing... just knowing that they don't feel the same.
"No, I don't think there is a word for *crush* in spanish," stressing the word like one might hold soiled underwear: with as few fingers as possible. "Must be an Anglo Saxon thing," she said after a moment's consideration, laughing to herself.
Pobre de mi.
Monday, February 12, 2007
dark lord of the australian right
A fucking ceremony? A goddamn fucking ceremony? Yes well I have sensed a great disturbance in the force padawans, it's as if a thousand voices cried out in joy only to then be silenced. Our very own Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Attorney-Generalus Phillip Ruddock, deformed by dark side powers that flow through him like electricity flows through copper wire, dark black-red viscous electricity, has used his evil Federal powers to block this new hope, the ACT's The Civil Partnerships Bill, that had it become law would've provided same-sex couples in that territory (should they have chosen) with similar rights and recognition to that of heterosexual couples. But Ruddock refused it, he says on the basis that the law required a declaration be made before a notary and witness, placing it too close, he claims to the institution of a marriage. A "ceremony" that even its patron ACT Attorney General Simon Corbell described as similar to signing a statutory declaration in the presence of say a fucking pharmacist.1
Now in June last year Ruddock struck down the ACT's Civil Unions Act based on his belief that it would "likely undermine the institution of marriage." An institution that is defined by its role of bringing children into the world, he said. The territory has since been making changes hoped at passing it through without Federal government opposition, who have the constitutional power to remove territory statutes from the books. And well Ruddock wasn't satisfied.2
So what can I say? Marriage: based on its ability to pop out children? He makes it sound like some monstrous war machine for baby production. What about all those marriages, that despite their best of intentions cannot bear fruit? An old argument I know but why can't Ruddock just admit that the real reason he struck this and the Civil Unions Act down, is the same reason he introduced the Marriage Legislation Amendment Bill, and refused Peter Kakucska a Certificate of No Impediment to Marriage and that's all because he just doesn't like gay people. Yes that's right, he doesn't like gay people and any rights we have are concessions.3 Just fucking say it without all the hooha. I mean seriously how will gay people damage an institution that heterosexuals have managed to erode nicely on their own? It's a really stupid argument trying to make homophopia sound reasonable and I am tired of it. Just like I am tired of all those Christians still making that stupid pun about how it's Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve, and then still finding it fucking funny.... seriously these people are allowed to breed?
Tomorrow the Melbourne City Community Services Committee is meeting to take a formal written submission and oral presentation from the Victorian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby about why the City of Melbourne should set up a relationship register that would allow gay couples to publicly declare their relationships. Deputy Lord Mayor and gay, Gary Singer said that while it would be largely symbolic undertaking it would nonetheless help couples by providing them with proof that they were actually in a relationship.4
Despite this being but a "largely symbolic" register a lot of groups particularly some conservative christian types are feeling threatened by it and have been voicing their consternation and the plan is actually in danger of falling on its arse.
So I think I'll go and if you or anyone you know wants to lend your support and fight the good fight then attend:
Date: Tuesday 13 February
Time: 7:30pm
Address: Melbourne City Council Meeting Room.
Access via Level 2, Town Hall Administration Building, 90 Swanston Street, Melbourne.
Note: Requests to address the committee for 3 minutes must be made to Council Secretariat on 9658 9707 by midday on 13 Feb.
Props go to Richard for pointing this out.
Govt defends block to same sex marriage, The Age, January 18, 2006.
ACT gay marriage plan rejected again, The Age, February 6, 2007.
Clay Lucas, City to open register for same-sex couples, The Age, November 18, 2006.
Kenneth Nguyen, Ceremony not for gays, says Ruddock, The Age, February 8, 2007.
Now in June last year Ruddock struck down the ACT's Civil Unions Act based on his belief that it would "likely undermine the institution of marriage." An institution that is defined by its role of bringing children into the world, he said. The territory has since been making changes hoped at passing it through without Federal government opposition, who have the constitutional power to remove territory statutes from the books. And well Ruddock wasn't satisfied.2
So what can I say? Marriage: based on its ability to pop out children? He makes it sound like some monstrous war machine for baby production. What about all those marriages, that despite their best of intentions cannot bear fruit? An old argument I know but why can't Ruddock just admit that the real reason he struck this and the Civil Unions Act down, is the same reason he introduced the Marriage Legislation Amendment Bill, and refused Peter Kakucska a Certificate of No Impediment to Marriage and that's all because he just doesn't like gay people. Yes that's right, he doesn't like gay people and any rights we have are concessions.3 Just fucking say it without all the hooha. I mean seriously how will gay people damage an institution that heterosexuals have managed to erode nicely on their own? It's a really stupid argument trying to make homophopia sound reasonable and I am tired of it. Just like I am tired of all those Christians still making that stupid pun about how it's Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve, and then still finding it fucking funny.... seriously these people are allowed to breed?
Tomorrow the Melbourne City Community Services Committee is meeting to take a formal written submission and oral presentation from the Victorian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby about why the City of Melbourne should set up a relationship register that would allow gay couples to publicly declare their relationships. Deputy Lord Mayor and gay, Gary Singer said that while it would be largely symbolic undertaking it would nonetheless help couples by providing them with proof that they were actually in a relationship.4
Despite this being but a "largely symbolic" register a lot of groups particularly some conservative christian types are feeling threatened by it and have been voicing their consternation and the plan is actually in danger of falling on its arse.
So I think I'll go and if you or anyone you know wants to lend your support and fight the good fight then attend:
Date: Tuesday 13 February
Time: 7:30pm
Address: Melbourne City Council Meeting Room.
Access via Level 2, Town Hall Administration Building, 90 Swanston Street, Melbourne.
Note: Requests to address the committee for 3 minutes must be made to Council Secretariat on 9658 9707 by midday on 13 Feb.
Props go to Richard for pointing this out.
Govt defends block to same sex marriage, The Age, January 18, 2006.
ACT gay marriage plan rejected again, The Age, February 6, 2007.
Clay Lucas, City to open register for same-sex couples, The Age, November 18, 2006.
Kenneth Nguyen, Ceremony not for gays, says Ruddock, The Age, February 8, 2007.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
c is for computed tomography
I feel like I am looking at some prehistoric fossil dusted painstakenly from a badland plains.
What we are really looking at is my spine. My spine damaged. It is only slightly damaged and this is good. Good because it should get better soon.
Monday, February 05, 2007
While on the multilingual theme…
I went down to a Blairgowrie with some friends the other weekend. There we spent two nights drinking, chatting and relaxing. A friend Mick brought down of all things a Mandarin phrase book, with which he popped out bawdy come-ons and pillow-talk in Chinese. Now this got me thinking about a mandarin bi-lingual dictionary that I’d stolen some way back while I was at uni off a friend after some falling out. It was published in 1978, two years after Mao died and makes for some interesting reading. So I thought I would offer my own brief lesson in Chinese, communist and red-book waving.
I went down to a Blairgowrie with some friends the other weekend. There we spent two nights drinking, chatting and relaxing. A friend Mick brought down of all things a Mandarin phrase book, with which he popped out bawdy come-ons and pillow-talk in Chinese. Now this got me thinking about a mandarin bi-lingual dictionary that I’d stolen some way back while I was at uni off a friend after some falling out. It was published in 1978, two years after Mao died and makes for some interesting reading. So I thought I would offer my own brief lesson in Chinese, communist and red-book waving.
fàngsōng: relax; slacken; loosen. We mustn’t slacken out efforts to remold our world outlook.
Despite not being able to drink (much) because of the medication I’m on and a minor spinal injury incurred while foolishly trying body surf at the Sorrento backbeach it was a good weekend.
liánjié: bind; tie; join. A common revolutionary goal has bound us closely together. The ties of friendship join the two peoples.
It was just the eight of us down having started at the Midsumma opening in Federation Square extending through Saturday into Sunday at Cam’s beach house. I suppose you could say it was a gay boy weekend away, free from the chains of heterosexual patriarchal oppression and the like and as you expect we approached it with shocking abandon playing party games such trivial pursuit and mastermind.
We’d been at the beach most of Saturday and back at camp, the evening began with the most expensive pizza and a game of “never ever”, a variation on the theme of “truth or dare,” which never wavered much from talk of sex despite Cam’s greatest efforts.
Oh and then there was the skinny-dipping.
qiáng zhì: force; compel; coerce. People cannot be compelled to accept one particular style of art or school of thought.
The weekend was part of Glen’s birthday celebrations and he’d been talking about swimming in the buff since Meredith, early December. Now I was not totally against the idea, some part of me wanted the experience. Maybe I wanted a bonding session which’d draw me closer to a group that I sorta feel a little on the outer and maybe there was also the rabid homosexual in me who was a little bit curious about my friend’s bits. Yes well and you see this is the problem. Glen tried to sell it as a liberating experience, that the intense sense of shame that I felt about my body would somehow be dissolved in the water, amongst the waves, naked and around a group of gay men, sizing me up, judging me…
luŏ: bare; naked; exposed; stark naked and undisguised.
I stood there without clothing, water lapping at my thighs, arms crossed. I didn’t feel particularly free. Why was no one talking to me? Was this all in my imagination? Their eyes averted? Were they trying to avoid seeing me all flabby, hairy and pale as frigid cadaver?
This is why I never felt nudism to be particularly revolutionary. Clothes are not what I need to shed, social expectations and the baggage I carry ain’t so easily hidden amongst the bracken by the shore.
Why couldn’t we do something really liberating like karaoke?
yĭncáng: hide; conceal; remain undercover. A bourgeois careerist hidden in the revolutionary ranks. A counterrevolutionary who has succeeded in staying hidden.
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