When you don’t understand why someone you like isn’t famous

I’m rereading I Am A Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter. I wouldn’t say it’s his best work, but it’s still damn good. It’s essentially a summary of his thoughts on how a self, an ‘I’, a ‘light on inside’, a mind’s eye can come from a lump of squishy grey stuff.

I’m only a couple chapters in, but I keep feeling compelled to write notes about what he’s written, on account of it triggers so many thoughts and ideas in mine head. In fact, if I go through with this audacious, yet bodacious plan, I’ll have a book by the end of it! It could be the first ever book written entirely in response to, and while reading, another book. At least I assume so. The working title is I Know You Are But What Am I: Reflections on DRH’s I Am A Strange Loop.

Look, what I’m trying to say is I get sick and sleepy with having to all the time explain who Douglas Hofstadter is. To my way of thinking, he’s one of the clearest, most perceptive, easy to read, riveting authors out there, and he’s written about many a topic that would interest many and many a person. Yet he just isn’t up there with the Richard Dawkinses, Carl Saganses and Tim Flanneryses of this world.

Likewise in music, there are phenomenal performers who go unheard of, unrewarded, and unsullied day in, day out. I must confess I make no claims to know and like any obscure but brilliant bands (but watch this space for Looking Glass). Though they are in an overall minority, I know there are thousands of others who, like me, really dig the Mars Volta, Crash Test Dummies, Split Enz and Ween (almost certainly not this combination though).

Anyhoo, I believe that each and every person that this sentence refers to could list several awesome authors, musicians and creative whoevers that have touched their lives, delicately and deeply, but that can’t seem to get no respect, or at least general public awareness. I challenge these people to make that list.

These days the situation isn’t so bad with the internet. F’cryin’ out loud, I can now find people with a mutual interest in my newly acquired, top 10 All Time Coolest book, Codex Seraphinianus. Without the internet, I challenge anyone, anywhere to have heard of this amazing book (yes, I know the challenge was issued using the internet, a’F’eh!).

I guess this is all about information – how we get it, who controls its flow, and what it smells like. It’s also about personal differences in the kinds of things that profoundly resonate with (in?) our minds and hearts.

One last thing, it’s interesting to note that there is no analogous situation in sports. The best basketballers, sprinters and football players aren’t competing in D-Leagues, mid-week suburban track meets and lower grade Auckland comps. Aside from the scouts’ mythical undiscovered sporting geniuses tending sheep in a field somewhere, this phenomena just doesn’t happen in sport.

Alternative Lyrics - PJ Harvey's The Devil

As soon as I
turn left on a road
The Devil wanders
into my zone
And I pretend to myself...

Come, come, come here at one.
Come, come! On a day at 1pm
Because all of my being is now in Wyoming.

~~~

Welcome to lovesong dedications. This next song goes out to Jarryd in Bexley, and it's from his long time girlfriend Francene. Jarryd, Francene just wants to thank you for all the little things you do that make her life so special. This is for you Jarryd.
[ABBA's Money, Money, Money]

Not starting, finishing

In the summer of 1982 I was sent to Thistlethwaite Finishing School for Tenn-aged Males. The postage cost over 350 dollars and I bruised my coccyx repeatedly in transit.

When I arrived I was quickly ushered into the ceremonial hall, where I witnessed the graduation rites of the class of '74. I personally considered 8 years of finishing school excessive, but my future employer insisted on it. Alas since that time standards have slipped at Chicken Wizard.

During the ceremony the graduands displayed an astonishing range of grooming, etiquette and posturing. More than one lecturer was brought to tears. It was two.

I never did complete my studies, my early withdrawal necessitated by the sudden release onto the market of an exciting and fresh new salted snack called Burger Rings. Still in my finishing school garb of flippers and old newspapers, I furtively thrust a twenty cent piece on the milkbar counter. For this I received a portion of 34 Burger Rings.

It was the best day of my life, even if the law courts saw it differently.

AJ Ogilvy

Dammit! I just pour my heart and soul into talking up Patrick Mills, the Next Big Thing in Australian sport and what happens?

I decide to wet my feet and enter the strange and full on world of talent scouting men’s college basketball, and up and coming Aussies therein, and what happens?

I get slapped in the face with this. Freshman Ogilvy has Vandy poised for big season. The article's even got a bit about him wearing what I can only assume are ugg boots.


A.J. Ogilvy? C'mon! This is the kind of name I’d come up with as a joke with friends. And here is the fine specimen, fresh from the mean streets of Sydney (I wonder if I've ever walked past him, or dominated him in a game of street ball?). More than a passing resemblance to Milo Kerrigan, wouldn't you say?


There’s nothing to it but to merge the two into the single greatest dual prospects this nation is seeing at the moment. The Mills/Ogilvy Combine. They could dominate the NBA from 2010 to 2020.

It's be great if they were drafted onto the same team. I can just picture it now, the twentytens version of Stockton to Malone, in reverse colour, with a bastardised Aussie accent, making max money, wanting to play for Australia at the Olympics but not being released by their teams ...

Ah, college basketball, I love you even though I've never watched a single complete game in my whole life.

The Previous Small Nothing!

Sorry, I mean the Next Big Thing!


Of course, you know and I know that I'm talking about upstart Aussie baller Patrick "Patty" Mills. From humble beginnings at the AIS, our national monument to sporting excellence at the cost of cultural necrosis, he's now the starting point guard for the small Californian St Mary's College. The team is affectionately, and just generally known as the Gaels, after hot young Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal (no relation to Sandra).


Patty garnered some U.S. press a coupla weeks ago after he torched a higher ranked team for 37 points and was compared to a fine NBA player, Tony Parker (the dude married Eva Longoria from Desperate Housewives).


I am now on the bandwagon, and while I may be behind the the Boomers, the Deadly's and Bill Simmons, I'ma still ahead of most Aussies. And Sports Illustrated, who may have beaten this post by 8 hours, but sadly lagged days behind my initial decision to hop on.


Here's Mills, looking rather Quattoesque.



Mills is part of a fine tradition of amazing Aboriginal athletes and has a chance to be a bona fide superstar in his home country, in a way that Andrew Bogut just plain doesn't. For those who don't know, Bogut was not only drafted straight into the NBA, but taken Number 1 – the same spot as Shaq, Magic Johnson and LeBron James. He reckons he could and should be the best basketballer to ever come out of Australia, and he may be right – but not yet. He’s playing decently in his third year with the Milwaukee Bucks.

Despite his relative success in the U.S., Bogut has been unable to pique, or even vaguely arouse the interest of a lot of Aussies back home. It could take a feelgood story like Mills (about whom I know virtually nothing) to ignite the country's passion, forests and interest in basketball. It’s early, early days yet, but I for one am excited, perhaps as excited as a fat kid who’s about to eat a cake he loves deeply but previously lost and believed would never be his again.

The same person?

I was going through some papers while packing up for the big move. I came across something I'd come across a couple of years ago, probably when i was going through the same papers in a clean out. I'd kept it, but done nothing with it. Well, now I've done something with it, probably the worst thing a man can do with papers he finds while packing - publish them unedited on his brog. The mind reels at what this young (mid to late teens?) author was thinking. Best not go there.

This was on the reverse page, or alternately the first page.

~~~
AIRPORT

It was a normal day in New York. I was at the airport with a suitcase full of clothes in one hand and a one way ticket to Lamibia in the other. I was headed there on a basketball coaching clinic for their national team.

You see I used to coach for the Knicks: three Championship rings and 3 coach of the year awards in 5 years. I was on a roll, was being the operative word. 2 weeks after our last championship, 3 years ago, I got busted for using blood doping, human growth hormones, steroids, and panadol in illegal

~~~

There it ended. Who knows why, or where this tragic tale of hope ended up ending up? At the bottom of this page were the words:

boy – down – real
meets girl – goes up

On the reverse page was this, longer piece.

~~~

boy meets girl
I remember the day clearly now. 21st of February 1994, 3 days after my 23rd Birthday. The air was exceptionally cold but that was probably the air conditioning: I was in an airport. I was quite warm though, as for my birthday my brother gave me a duffelcoat and balaclava. The reason I was in an airport was another present – my parents + brother gave a plane ticket to Lamibia. It is a very serene place. Where foreigners are welcome. I was going for a holiday and was very excited. The 1st time on a plane ever and I was going overseas!
My plane left at 1:30pm and I was going through luggage, (not literally) I mean the luggage department and I had 2 carry-on bags. I never give the airline my luggage because I once won fifty million dollars in the lottery and had it in my luggage, in the form of gold bullion and it was “misplaced”. I suspect an airport employee that I didn’t tip burned the bag in vengeance. I never got a cent back.
Anyway I was passing through the metal detector when I got a beep. “That’s strange” I thought. “Please pass through machine again” the woman with the hand-metal detector said with an interesting accent. I passed through again. “Interesting accent” I said. She smiled at me, showing all her bottom teeth. “Interesting smile” I said, but just as the smile disappeared I said I was joking. She said “quit the B-S and double talk and hand over the knife. Or do you have a gun?” “I’m unarmed” I proclaimed. She ran the mini-metal detector around my body in a way that must have aroused us both. She finally pinpointed my front shirt pocket. I emptied it to which she replied “Aha! Metal nodules. I’m terribly sorry for the delay Sir, perhaps you’d like extra refreshments when it comes to afternoon tea. Here, this card entitles the bearer to 12 free peanuts. The peanut is the national food of Lamibia”
“Really?” I said, “I s’pose it’s your job to know those juicy tidbits of information”
“No – I just come from Lamibia”

~~~

Assuming I actually wrote these, they could be the finest words to have ever rolled out the ball of my pen.

The latest science headlines

Delivered fresh to your door.

A message to you, HsiDub

When your best friend jets into town unannounced and plays a sellout show on Tue 16 Oct, without telling you, and indeed without telling you that he's now the "Stone King", well let me tell you something for nothing, your head is spinning like a top. You can't comprehend how such a turn of events could ever turn around and slap you on the fannypack with a wet hammock. But it did. And this [pointing up] IS THE PROOF!




We had such good times together - together at that place. When I think Vanguard, I think a couple of things - good times, and Sime Nugent.

The only humane response to a situation like this? Inhale, exhale. Just got a mouse in the mail.

Thinking about Dean Moriarty

Many great ideas for TV shows go unrealised. So it is with werewolf tax attorney, courtesy of the bad folk at cracked.

It brings to mind well spent youthful days playing balderdash. Some fantastic movie plots and word meanings were confabulated, but perhaps none as sweet and graceful as the "1932 drama about a troupe of tap dancing grizzly bears". Ah Tasathanas, I need another dose of your humour.

ps I believe the above werewolf is the father from Teen Wolf (part one)

On the road

A week after arriving in 'complex' Istanbul, I met Hidayet. He was a friend of a friend of a friend, first one Sydney, second Sultanahmet via Hotel Empress Zoe, the last in Unkapani. I met him in a tea house in Tophane, which is where all the good tea houses are. Apple tea tastes like absolute sickly sweet shit, but if you pipe it through a nargileh, it's a light sweet smooth and not at all intoxicating.

My wife had gone to do some shopping, and judging by the length of her list she wouldn't be back for a few days. I figured that a bit of tea and nargileh couldn't hurt my throat too much, and might even help. Hidayet agreed. "Turkish apple tobacco, very good for sore throat. Cigarettes, not so much, but I don't have sore throat." You only realise how succesfully Sydney has marginalised smokers when you see them in full flight elsewhere. People blow smoke in your face here and expect you to say tessekurler.

I ordered us both an Efe, 70cl, and we knocked it back in between puffs. I ordered another round and Hedo told me about his life. He'd had a tough life, or it seemed so to me, but it wasn't any tougher than most other Istanbullu. He started working for his dad at 9, taking customers drinks and clearing up. Sometimes the customers would swear at him when he dropped things, but his dad never came to his defence. He dropped out of school at 15, unlike most of his friends, and he travelled around central Anatolya for a few years, working odd jobs for food and board. Right now he was doing some work as a travel agent, helping in the office at his friend's mannequin shop, and doing a little fishing from the Galata bridge for fun.

He knew a better place we could go, somewhere with a more diverse crowd, the drinks a bit more expensive, but i didn't mind. i hadn't bought any presents for anyone yet, so i was flush.

Fenerbahce beat Besiktas 2-1!

Can you believe it?

Today's Zaman called it a feast of fast flowing soccer, which included arguments between players as depicted pictorially.



It really was quite a game, with incredibly many chances, some taken and some missed. Besiktas hadn't lost at this stadium in seven years, and they can consider themselves hard done by, missing a last minute (figuratively speaking) equaliser due to a questionable refereeing decision. I quote former soccer player and FIFA-ranked referee turned soccer analyst Erman Toroğlu on Lig TV on Saturday night, “If you call that position a foul, then this means the end of the world.” Fenerbahce keep their nose in front on the league ladder, but the season is far from over. In fact it hasn't even started. Yes, it has.

I was strongly considering attending the game, owing to my ongoing presence in the Fenerbahce district, but I became convinced it would be too dangerous for a non-partisan supporter such as myself, and indeed myself. I later found out the game was sold out anyway. I was treated to extended highlights the next day on tv, repeated fairly well ad nauseam. On tv I also found out there was some thuggish, loutish, riotish behavious after the game, confirming my suspicion that a fellow poorly trained in rock-throwing such as myself, indeed myself, would be better off not attending. The Turkish media has a far higher attention span than in Australia, with long interviews and highlights packages. This is probably limited to football.

I have a chance to attend a basketball game, and I wonder if I'll take it.

Ever so delicately she vaporised her enemies

Father of 200, John Peterson knows what it’s like to come home to a house full of plexiglass prisms. Amazingly, all of his children share the same first name: b*ttlicker. No really, it’s Norgas Pecker.

Who would have thought that the Dalai Lama has a coke habit.

Bioaccumulation is a problem and it’s only getting worse. Arsenic is a good case in point. Used in manufacturing processes, it works its way into ecosystems where it concentrates the further up the foodchain you go (in the lingo, it bioaccumulates). By the time you get to a lion’s arse, arsenic is present at up to 35cc per litre. This has repercussions beyond the health of the lion. Dung beetles which are known to roost inside lions’ steaming turds are also at risk. And the new wave delicacy of lion ass takes on a more sinister tone given bioaccumulation (it’s not enough that the ass must be prepared extremely carefully to prevent fecal contamination of this dish). Ultimately this is a matter for the courts, but it's sad to see it so overlooked by the mainstream media.

When I was sitting in the bus I overheard the following exchange: NASDAQ.

Passenger One: How do they know?
Passenger Two: As I see it, it all comes down to runcibles.
P1: Runcibles?
P2: As far as the eye can see.
P1: Yeah, but how do they find out?
P2: Oh! Sorry, I thought you were asking something else. It’s basically a bureaucratic process. Fill in this. Stamp that. Wait 7-10 working days. Then they post it to you.
P1: What’s your sperm count?
P2: 400 parts per million.
P1: Same as -
P2 & P1: Agassi!
P2: That’s right. I’ve always felt that a man with his flair, his charisma... he should’ve produced far more children.
P1: You’ve got no right to say that.
P2: Well I just did. Deal with it... As I was saying, it grieves me to learn that he and Steffi haven’t fired up the kiln more often. I feel that what they’ve opted for instead is a relationship where they devote themselves almost exclusively to each other.
P1: Mutual masturbation?
P2: Don’t be foul. Theirs is a love that they keep to themselves. Do you understand?
P1: Eff off.
P2: No. For some people it makes perfect sense. For others the thing is kids so that’s where they go. They develop their parenthood – or not – while Agassi and Graf develop their marriage-based relationship.
P1: But they’ve got one kid. Jaden Agassi-Graf.
P2: Oh Sh*t! I forgot!!

I don't want to be your friend

I just want to be your lover
Infrastructure will collapse
Denial
etcetera etcetera
Whatever
Forget about your house of cards.

On a rainy downpouring night, on a quiet shaken day after, coming into and out of numbness, out there in the elements, visceral sadness, sadness and beauty. A cold and bleak future, a soaring silent vista, an underwater dream. The present, from the outside, or another side.

It all comes back to chicken

"We used to have one al-Qa’ida and now we have ten al-Qa’idas. It’s like Kentucky Fried Chicken."

So said Abdel Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of Al-Quds al-Arabi, a London-based Arabic daily newspaper. The quote is from a fascinating interview with him about al-Qa'ida, which you can read in full here.

High quality comics

I don't know about you, but I sometimes find all the websites I go to are merely informing me, however fascinatingly, or humouring my unjustifiable interest in professional sports. What about laughter? The world needs laughter, and so do I. Laughter is a many wondrous thing, and there's no excuse not to embrace it warmly given the opportunity.

I hereby recommend the Perry Bible Fellowship and Dinosaur Comics. Two high quality comics, with very healthy doses of bizarrity, nonsensicality and offbeatness. Do yourself two favours, and check em out.

Undercounting leads to underunderfunding

Already underfunded, it turns out that Aboriginal people are actually underunderfunded, because the census has been systematically undercounting indigenous Australians for years. This is a huge story which, unsurprisingly, our mainstream media looks to have ignored.

Who's got hand?

Did you hear the bizarre story of the little Chinese saboteur at the women’s World Cup?

You know how at major sporting events the players are often escorted onto the field hand in hand with a bunch of cute kids, selected from the host nation’s most prestigious kindergartens? They send a message of world peace and love for children.

So this little girl, God knows who’d gotten to her, had a noxious substance on the palm of her hand. If you think you know where this is going, think again. The victim wasn’t the player being escorted by the little girl. It was the other team. You see the substance was faithfully transmitted to palm of the Brasilian goal keeper, but went from there onto the palms of every single US player as the goalkeeper shook hands with them! Think of it as an en masse stinkpalm.

And it caused havoc.

Apropos of nothing, I’ve often wondered what goalkeepers are shouting to their teammates as they line up to defend a free kick. “Hey! HEEYY!!!” I’d say that’s about it.

9:22pm

They call it the witching hour. I call it El tiempo de las aceitunas - the dark bosom of the evening. That seductive, highly charged time balanced precariously between sunset and midnight. It's a time Ernest Hemingway once said showed you who your real friends are. "See who sticks around at 9:22pm", he said, "if you want find out who's true to you and who's a total asswipe."

Photoessay from APEC summit

A rare glimpse into the tightly protected
security zone. Photo by C. Bass.



Islamo-fascist radical eco-terrorists. Photo
by C. Bass.




An innocent bystander felt the full force of
the security crackdown. Photo by C. Bass.

To collect or not

Have you noticed that there's sometimes a noisy desperation to collect things? It be household items, witty sayings, computer files or loved ones and more. I think this can be traced back to the time when we were sea cows, and in order to survive against the mad dugongs, it paid to stockpile resources. Of course, in our current evolutionary environment this is preposterous, maladaptive even.

So when you find yourself having things, and wanting to keep things, or perhaps not lose them or smash them, take three steps back, inhale deeply and, after a while, exhale. It's ok. So long as you have your mind, and the people, and lots of cash, everything will be fine.

It reminds me a little of the joke about the man with everything. What do you give a man with everything? Medication, because if he has everything, he has the bubonic plague and anthrax. Kills me every time.