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.

Number of unique visitors since June, 2006

None

apescat monkeysphere

One of the things I like about cracked.com is they sometimes sneak interesting ideas into their humour. A case in point is this article monkeysphere

It’s a rambling discourse on the shocking nature of society. The central thiessis is that humans are ill-suited to hanging out with or caring about more than 150 or so people. Writer ramblingly explores implications of this then ends with advice in the form of a total cheat acronym: TRY. T stands for you are a Total moron. R stands for undeRstand there are no supermonkeys. Y stands for don’t let anYbody simplify it for you. I think it means 1) humility 2) they’re as bad as us / we’re as bad as them 3) hurray for complexity and be suspicious of those trying to simplify.

File it under
Odd, mixed messages, refreshing read

This things I believe

So I've been inspired by some things lately, that I'm hoping will translate into some kinda action, somehow.

Reading the Shock Doctrine, a bit shocking and depressing really. I find some of Klein's arguments a bit weak and unoriginal, but she puts it all together quite well. It reminds me a bit of John Pilger, but not as harrowing and more journalistic (whatever that means). Anyway, it's still a mostly compelling read.

By the way, Pilger's compilation Tell Me No Lies is really required reading for anyone interested in, well, stuff.

I'm also reading Worldchanging, which is a coffee table book, but also a fantastic and inspiring compilation of good ideas, grouped under headings such as community, politics and business. Unlike the Shock Doctrine, it's not depressing. It contains stacks of information but does a good job in showing how it can easily be translated into action. Here's their website.

I have several awesome coffee table books, including Homework and Heaven & Earth. When we have guests, these books entertain and inform them, and reflect positively on me, their owner and displayer.

Finally, I went along to a couple of events from the TINA festival at Newcastle on the weekend. One was about post-paper publishing (omg, so self-referential!) and the other was about art and politics. We do not need to make political art. We need to make art politically! A chap in the audience commented that we need to stop talking about art and start talking about how to communicate effectively. When I pressed him afterwards for examples of effective communication, he gesticulated wildly and shouted that he was not here to deliver a doctrine, adding that personal communication beyond the bounds of corporate media was essential, a good example being F*CK APEC being written on a wall. Very direct and simple.

Came across some interesting folk at the post-paper publishing session, and I will soon be checking out litmusphere, the new critic and engagemedia.

Dem Blues

Once Wenceslas Winced

Wang Kar Wai. Isn't that the name of a director?

I smacked the hay. Got busted by ticket inspectors, tried to get off at Nod, they sent me back to Slump. When I awoke, the dinosaur had already left. That's not the shortest story ever.

Three men have been arrested trying to steal an ATM from Stanmore Plaza. One of them was armed with a hacksaw, which he was seen using to enter his PIN. When that failed, his accomplice, named Bilson, tried to lift the ATM out of its socket. He hurt his calf muscles, so a passerby alerted security, who called a medic. "Medic! I need a medic for christ's sake!" cried the security.

The third man appeared to panic, obtaining a screwdriver from his bumbag and undoing the metal casing used to enclose ATM receipts. The receipts scattered about the floor, but behind them was the real booty - gold bullion. It is not known what the highest prime number is.

~~~

Obligatory post-mortem on dogs defeat: I was telling my pops, i said, i said i knew all along earlier this year, the dogs would make the semis and bomb out, say week two. Well it happened. Already there's talk back at the Kennel that Folkesy's gotta go, that Hazem's gotta go, that Perry's gotta go, that the Dogs need to revamp their roster. I revamped my breakfast. I predict that next year they'll either really bomb out, necessitating a proper clean out and glorious resurgence in 09, or plod along and finish 6th again, followed by another semis bombing out. Bring back Ben Barba!

Prediction for the rest of the season: Melbourne will definitely win it all. Parra's looking good too. I think Manly has a chance to win it all. North Queensland could win it all.

Disaster Capitalism

Excerpt from Naomi Klein's new book. I can almost hear the pitter-patter of Australian idiocrats trying to catch up with the U.S. on this one.

Bivouac

I am reading Jack Kerouac's Mexico City Blues aloud (ich lese vor), and it is really agreeing with me. I am up to the 80th chorus (there's 242). It's a quick read, but I can see myself going back over it and reading it again. I don't have strong record of returning to books. I can see myself reading it aloud to others, with their mutual consent. I can see myself mutualise.

There's something very familiar about the writing. I recognise something of myself in there. There's parts that leave me stone motherless cold.

"I have no plans
No dates
No appointments with anybody

So I leisurely explore
Souls and Cities"
...

"F#ck is a dirty word
But it comes out clean."

Gotta get my props

Cops gonna come and snatch my crops. So sang Cypress Hill, and they were referring to devices for hiding things, police, and tomato plants respectively.

Now I am referring to Police behaviour. I had no intention of doing so, until the best and greatest blogger in the world said this. I went to a protest during APEC (Arthur Pectoralis Endosphagnum Changeling) and was struck (metaphorically writing) by the so-far-over-the-top-that-it-was-flying-through-the-air police presence.

At cw's world words have been spoken about Australia being better in terms of complaining to the police, or standing up to them, or having information about your rights. Nowadays, I'm not so confident this is always the case.

First we had the APEC Powers Act to cover said pec, and now with the upcoming Philatelists and Dramaturgs Convention at Darling Harbour the Labor Government has rushed through the Stamp Collector 'n' Playwright Act that expressly forbids anyone from looking at a policeperson, or even thinking about one. Exempted from the act are police and basshounds.