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Friday, March 27th, 2009
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9:45 am - My Dreamboat.
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I know the provenance is shaky, but I want to believe ... he's dishy.
current mood: hey nonny-nonny no.
current music: Were Thine That Special Face, from "Kiss me Kate" -Porter
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| Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
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9:35 am
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I have my first cold for about 4 years ... it had been so long since I had one, that I'd forgotten how miserable they make you feel.
I saw "Watchmen" on Wednesday ... after that lengthy ordeal, I watched "Nights of Cabiria" next day just to remind myself about films where people behave like recognisable human beings with human-scale joys and disasters ... a perfect antidote.
current mood: Sniffly
current music: Film Scores - Nino Rota
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| Sunday, March 15th, 2009
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9:40 am - Books
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Among other things, I got my first cold in years for my birthday.
Some of my favourite books read this year:
1) "The Yiddish Policeman's Union", by Michael Chabon.
In a parallel universe where the Jews of Europe weren't nearly exterminated, but were settled in Alaska, this novel has a mystery about potential messiahs, orthodox thuggery, an oy-vey noir detective and much grim humour.
2) The Bernie Gunther Novels of Phillip Kerr:
A private eye in pre and post-war Germany, with a coda in Argentina.
"March Violets"; "The Pale Criminal"; "A German Requiem"; "The One From The Other" and best of all, "A Quiet Flame", which is not only a great detective story, but a great book in any genre.
3) "A Lion Among Men" by Gregory MaGuire.
This, the third book in the "Wicked series, is a return to form after the disappointment of "Son of a Witch", funny, rueful and slightly depressing, but in a good way.
4) "Porterhouse Blue" & "Grantchester Grind" by Tom Sharpe ... two nasty, hilariously funny satires on English University life.
5) "The Victorians", by A.N.Wilson ... what an interesting bunch they were.
6) "Red Harvest"; "The Dain Curse"; "The Maltese Falcon" and "The Thin Man", by Dashiel Hammett.
What a terse, exciting writer he was, the inventor of hard-boiled crime fiction ... "Red Harvest" was the stand-out for me.
7) "Have Mercy On Us All" and other mysteries by French author Fred Vargas. Her eccentric mysteries have such interesting characters, the mystery becomes a secondary consideration.
8)"Double Indemnity', "The Postman Always Rings Twice" "Mildred Pierce" by James M. Cain.
The master of sleaze until the advent of James Ellroy... and still well worth reading.
9) Shakespeare's Complete Works.
OK, I admit "Timon of Athens" and "Love's Labours Lost", (must have been hilarious in 1596), were a little hard-going. but Old Will is still my dream-boat ... and have you seen the scrummy re-discovered portrait?
10)"Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie.
Rushdie's tragi-comic epic masterpiece amply rewards re-reading. If you haven't already read it, do yourself a favour ... and persevere, it takes a bit of getting used to.
current mood: nasty coldish
current music: "I Scare Myself"- Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks
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| Monday, February 23rd, 2009
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8:49 am
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"The Last Picture Show" has made me think of other beautiful black and white films:
Some Like It Hot
Swing Time
The Big Sleep
The Magnificent Ambersons
Out of the Past
The Bride of Frankenstein
Manhattan
Metropolis
Casablanca
Laura
The Seventh Seal
Woman of the Dunes
Psycho
The Seven Samurai
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane
The Man Who Wasn't There
Rebecca
Wings of Desire
The Elephant Man
Les Enfants du Paradis
Pride and Prejudice
la Dolce Vita
Sunrise
Zorba the Greek
The Great Dictator
Strangers on a Train
Great Expectations
Citizen Kane
A Streetcar Named Desire
King Kong
The Innocents
I do wish today's directors would make more use of beautiful black and white's special qualities.
current mood: monochromatic
current music: Black and White Rag - Winfred Atwell
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| Sunday, February 22nd, 2009
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4:49 pm - Summer Glory
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Eucalyptus "Summer Glory" is doing its spectacular thing again.
I saw "The Last Picture Show" last night. This Bogdanovitch film is one of the few major movies from the seventies which, for some odd reason, I had never seen. It was very touching, with beautiful black and white cinematography, (for some reason, so much less tiring to the eyes than colour), a great cast and a soundtrack that instantly transported me to my fifties childhood. A fine film.
On another note, the memorial service for the Victorian bushfire victims was very well handled in all departments.
current music: Wheel of Fortune - Kay Starr
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| Monday, February 16th, 2009
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12:49 pm - Condensed "Gone with the Wind"
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Part of an occasional feature:
Tarlton Twins: Marry me, Miss Scawlett!
Scarlett: Fiddle-de-dee!
Mr O'Hara: It looks like War!
Mammy: Yowzah! Yowzah! Yowzah!
Scarlett: Ashley! Ashley!
Ashley: Scahlett ...we mustn't
The North: Bang! Sizzle! crash!
Scarlett: Rhett! Ashley! Rhett! Ashley! Melanie! Rhett!
Rhett: Frankly my dear, I don't GIVE a damn!
THE END
... now you don't ever have to see this lush turkey ever again...(well, maybe occasionally for the red dress and Clark's impudent moustache).
current mood: undecided
current music: Tara's theme
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| Monday, February 9th, 2009
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2:59 pm - The beauty and the terror.
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Our beautiful backyard
"I love her far horizons,
I love her jewelled sea,
Her beauty and her terror,
The wide, brown land for me.
This weekend, the people of Victoria have experienced this country's terror in full measure.
The whole country is transfixed with shock and sympathy for the poor people who have experienced the terrifying fire disaster of last week-end. The death-toll at present is 128 and excpected to rise.
In addition, the enormous state of Queensland is simultaneously 60 percent flood-disaster declared.
Vulnerability to these terrifying natural forces is the trade-off we make for living in the midst of jaw-dropping natural beauty.
If you wish to help in any way, I urge you to contribute to the Australian Red Cross Appeal.
current mood: Appalled
current music: "Give a Little Bit". - Supertramp
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| Sunday, February 1st, 2009
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1:26 pm - The big hill at Imbil
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This is the big jungle-y hill near our place
( The big hill out back. )
Disappointing to hear that things are going backwards under the new conservative Canadian regime. The Prime Minister has fired his Science Advisor and abolished the post, and has appointed a creationist chiropractor/acupuncturist as his science minister ...as a result, many valuable research programmes are facing the chop. A creationist as science minister? ... yep, sounds like progress to me.
Meanwhile, our own health system gets daily more dysfunctional, while the Prime Minister hesitates to grasp the nettle and take over, as he promised to do.
We had to replace the air-conditioning at enormous cost, (I know, but it's essential to life here) and I had a system-crash ... it's been a very expensive few months, initiating our very own mini- International Financial Crisis ... thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster we own the house.
current mood:  anxious
current music: Blame Canada - Trey Parker
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| Sunday, January 25th, 2009
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9:09 am - Nazi Pope Lives Up to His Murky Past.
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For those that are convinced that the present Pope is not tainted by his Nazi past, I quote this BBC News item in full:
The Pope has lifted the excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church of four bishops appointed by a breakaway archbishop more than 20 years ago.
One of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre's appointees, Briton Richard Williamson, outraged Jews by saying the Nazi gas chambers did not exist.
Two of the other three appointees are French while the fourth is Argentinean.
Israel's envoy to the Vatican said the papal decision would "cast a shadow on relations with Jews".
"We have no intention of interfering in the internal workings of the Catholic Church, however, the eagerness to bring a Holocaust denier back into the Church will cast a shadow on relations between Jews and the Catholic Church," Mordechai Lewy told Reuters news agency.
Lefebvre, who died in 1991, rebelled against liberal reforms in the Church, such as the end of the Latin Mass.
He opposed replacing the traditional Mass with services in national languages.
The Vatican said the excommunications had been lifted after the bishops affirmed their willingness to accept Church teachings and papal authority.
'No gas chambers'
Relations between the Vatican and representatives of the Jewish faith have been strained throughout much of the Church's recent history, especially because of Pope Pius's passive stance towards the Holocaust in World War II, the BBC's Greg Morsbach reports.
The latest move by Pope Benedict is likely to add to those strains.
Bishop Richard Williamson recently told Swedish TV: "I believe there were no gas chambers. I think that two to three hundred thousand Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps but none of them by gas chambers."
The Vatican has distanced itself from those remarks.
But its spokesman, Rev Federico Lombardi, still stood by the decision to rehabilitate Bishop Williamson and the others.
"This act regards the lifting of the excommunications, period," he told reporters.
"It has nothing to do with the personal opinions of a person, which are open to criticism, but are not pertinent to this decree."
Just how disgusting does this creature have to get before he is repudiated by his idolatrous followers?
current mood: disdainful
current music: "Ah, Yes, I Remember it Well" - Lerner & Leowe
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| Friday, January 16th, 2009
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7:41 pm - Bridge, disappointment and a resolve.
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Yesterday i went down to the railway bridge over the river and took some pics to make a panorama.
( The Railway bridge - a big pic. )
I had a bit of a disappointment when the doc told me my diabetes control had worsened, because I have been so careful with my diet lately.
I think it’s time to re-start our excursions to Brisbane ... I practically walk my feet off on those trips.
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| Monday, January 12th, 2009
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11:56 am - Logical theology.
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“If God didn’t want us to be cannibals, he wouldn’t have made us out of meat.”
from: “I Don’t Eat People” - Flanders and Swann
current mood: Peckish
current music: Flanders & Swann
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| Tuesday, December 30th, 2008
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10:08 am - Mmmmm? ...OKAY.
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... with a quote from Christian Logic:
So, do I believe that a cosmic zombie (who was his own father), born from a ‘virgin’, can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in all humans because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree and thereby pissing off an invisible wizard who lives in the sky?
Well, I did try for a long time, but in the long run I just couldn’t make that final leap of faith.
current mood: Sceptical
current music: "I Believe" - The Platters
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| Friday, December 26th, 2008
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9:23 am - Vale Eartha Kitt.
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... and now to someone much more life-enhancing. The delicious, talented, witty Eartha Kitt has died on Christmas Day. She came from a background of unspeakable poverty, shot to stardom when discovered appearing with the Katherine Dunham dance troupe by Orson Welles. He immediately signed her to play Helen of Troy in his production of "Doctor Faustus", then Lady Macbeth in his voodoo-inspired, all black production of "Macbeth". it was he who labelled her "the most exciting woman in the world", (he should know).
She delighted audiences for decades with her funny sex-bomb interpretations of charm songs such as "Old Fashioned Girl" written for her unique persona ... but she was also a great straight interpreter of American Classics like "Smoke gets in Your Eyes" and French chansons and also such exotica as Turkish songs.
I wrote to her a couple of years ago telling her how much I had enjoyed her albums on listening to them again, and received a very gracious reply. Sydney had been good to her... she deserved it.
She was beautiful, very, very funny and unique.
current mood: remembering
current music: "I Want to be Evil" - Eartha Kitt
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| Thursday, December 25th, 2008
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10:55 am - A Creep in Ermine - A Response to Benedict XVI's Christmas Message.
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What an evil old shit Maledict XVI is. From his early days as a Nazi, to the time he was lurking in the background gritting his teeth while John XXIII tried to drag the Roman Catholic Church kicking and screaming into at least the early twentieth century,he was a shit.. He emerged as a power to be reckoned with when Jon Paul I kicked the bucket under controversial circumstances, (he was far too liberal) and stalked the Vatican corridors even as cardinals cowered in the Vatican trying to avoid arrest over the P2 and Banco Ambrosiano scandals, with their juicy mafia associations.
He increased his power under the charismatic but monomaniacal John Paul II, for whom anything was OK as long as it protected the prestige of the church and/or damaged communism. Maledict encouraged him in attacks on modernist ideas and homosexuals and in winding back the Vatican II reforms made under John XXIII. He also encouraged JPII to endorse the activities of the evil personality cults within the Church: Focolare; Neocatechumenate Way; Communion and Liberation and good ole Opus Dei.
Covering up priestly pedophile scandals and protecting the offenders next took up a lot of his time.
Last week the Vatican refused to sign a UN document condemning the execution of homosexuals in countries ruled by fundamentalist Islamic regimes.
Now we have his latest hateful Christmas offering, in which he condemns homosexuals as a greater threat to life on Earth than global warming or ecological collapse. This follows hard on the heels of his last unlovely anti-Muslim outburst ... Peace on Earth, Good Will to All men indeed.
He is truly infallible ..infallibly nasty, infallibly irrelevant in the modern world and infallibly selective in his interpretation of Christian scripture.
A pox on him and his delusional supporters.
Apart from all that ... I'm feeling rather jolly.
current mood: Jolly
current music: Christmas oratorio - Bach
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| Saturday, December 20th, 2008
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10:22 am - Alan Jones and Evelyn Waugh.
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Alan Jones, the powerful, rabid right-wing, payola-grabbing Sydney radio shock-jock has had a benign tumour removed. I am reminded of what Evelyn Waugh said of Randolph Churchill when Churchill underwent a similar procedure. He said:
"It is typical of the miracles of modern medicine that they should find the only part of Randolph that isn't malignant, and remove it."
current mood: Acid
current music: "I've got you under my skin" - Johnny Mercer.
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| Thursday, December 18th, 2008
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5:39 pm - The Chops Are Off.
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The chops had to go for the more efficient functioning of my new CPAP machine, to which I am quite easily adjusting. I have also put us on the Bodytrim dietary regime, which is not a fad diet, but a nutrition and activity re-education programme which apparently is very appropriate for type 2 diabetics such as myself, and good for overweight non-diabetics like Ian as well.
I just got back from a weekend trip to see my elderly Mum and my sister and her family for Christmas which, as usual was very nice for a couple of days, but i was also, as usual, glad to get back from the noise, crowds, aggressively mentally disturbed people, dirty air, chlorinated water and hard walking surfaces ... ah! ... dear little Imbil.
current mood:  optimistic
current music: "Don't Fence Me In" - Cole Porter
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| Monday, November 17th, 2008
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11:26 am - In the Golden Afternoon.
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Some of the native tree plantings in the back-yard.
Do the clicky thing for two more pics:
( A goose, and me )
In other developments ... Ian had to have root canal therapy ... ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching
I have to have a CPAP machine ... Ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching
The driveway and the pump and plumbing need overhauls ... ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching.
Our own little international financial crisis is looming.
current mood: Wot, me worry?
current music: "When You're a Dentist" - "Little Shop of Horrors"
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| Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
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3:28 pm - One last jacaranda pic. and the exciting news From the USA>
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By the river.
How exciting ... a black president of the United States ... a president elect who understands and uses the the potential of the English language ... a president with an IQ ... a president open to new approaches and new ideas in solving problems ... a president whose wife looks like an actual human being ...it leads me to abandon cynicism for now and hope that things may go better for that amazing country the USA and, word-wide, for all of us.
To the Americans, I wish for them that their new hope for their country,and their faith in this young man is justified.
Inevitably, the image of that brilliant human being, Martin Luther King comes into my mind and I give a sigh of intense satisfaction.
...and it's goodbye to Bush and the neo-con nightmare ... a "New American Century", maybe, but not the way they thought.
current mood: Hopeful
current music: "We Shall Overcome"
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| Tuesday, November 4th, 2008
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9:36 am - Afternoon pic and a momentous day ... perhaps.
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The pond, yesterday afternoon..
Well, I guess we’ll see today what America comes up with ....from the reports I saw I fear the “Bradley Effect” may be greater than expected. There seemed to be a lot of people saying, when you read between the lines, “I’m not voting for that arab / n.....r”. Race has been the elephant in the room throughout this campaign in my opinion. I hope my fears in this direction are not realised.
Although he probably would act more against Australia’s interests in terms of trade protectionism, the majority of people here seem strongly in favour of Obama, largely because of the contempt in which the Bush administration is held, and the spectre of a Palin vice-presidency ... her influential husband is known to hold extremist right-wing views and was formerly an advocate of Alaskan secession. Her brand of muscular evangelical Christianity and bellicose, simple minded views on foreign policy are dangerous in a person in high office.
In the long run, however, probably it will be the military and intelligence agencies, Wall St. plutocrats, media magnates and the Washington DC. bureaucracy, as usual, who will determine the direction the US. takes in the years to come.
current mood: Tentative.
current music: "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps" - sung by Doris Day
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| Saturday, November 1st, 2008
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3:24 pm - A Morning Pic. and Aesthete Monty.
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This morning, early, in the back-yard.
We have been watching Mozart's "Cosi Fan Tutti" on the telly and Monty came in and sat above me on the arm chair and purred loudly through the first act ... then he got down and positioned himself midway between the two speakers and listened for an extraordinarily long time with his ears pricked up watching the screen. We have noticed that he is fond of music many times, and seems to prefer Mozart opera above all other kinds of music, though he is also very fond of violin music. He has better taste than many people I know.
...but then "Cosi" does have the trio "Soave S'ia a il Vento", possibly the loveliest thing ever fashioned for ears in the history of the world.
current mood: musical
current music: "Soave s'ia a il vento" - Mozart
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