December 2006 Archives
the spring onions here are so potent they make me cry.
last year at this time i was in gondor, ethiopia listening to women warble and pluck weird instruments while i danced around a small smoky room like an idiot.
it's been a long year.
tonight i'm hitting the town with si and the galaverse. perhaps we will survive.
this new years i resolve to find someone geeky to help me upgrade my movable type installation on this blog. it's years over due. could this be you? it don't look so hard... just hard for me.
in return for this gift of geek love i resolve to mail the step-upee the very first wallaby i hit with my ute. or a mystery gift of australian orgin yet to be determined.
happy new year.
happy holidays and all.
in celebration, of new years and growing older and zombie films:
for a limited time here you go:
have you ever watched your great grandmother dance the lambada?
no?
do you know why? it's because she is either a) dead; or b) smart enough to know when to move on.
this is a lesson sylvester stallone has not learned.
i watched Rocky Balboa. it was, at best, a zombie movie. a movie about what happens when you die but your body keeps moving anyway.
the best part of it was the four second flashback from the original Rocky in which lamentably dead Burgess Meredith spits some encouragement from his twisted lips (zombies!). the worst part was being reminded that Burgess Meredith died and Sly continues to make movies in which he plays a boxing hero.
give me a fucking break. he's sixty. he looks sixty. in the numerous scenes in which he squares off -- jokingly or not -- with his son, some local hooligan, and the world champion you don't think, "uh oh. (fill in the blank) is gonna get whupped." you think, "my grandma broke a hip that way." but does sly back down? does sly age with grace? no.
which is all especially sad as the movie as about aging with grace. rocky mumbles meat-headed platitudes to his son:
...it ain't how hard you hit; it's about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. How much you can take, and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done.
which means what, exactly, in the context of this film and sly's career? that you should make a complete stinker of a picture as if you were still a young man and if they make fun of you, keep moving forward?
listen rock. that's not good advise. you need burgess meredith around to instruct you. he'd say something like, "you ain't a kid no more! you wanna get killed? wrestle a train. you wanna act a man? find some young kid and train 'im!"
but burgess meredith is dead. and so is sly's career because he's too unimaginative to picture himself as anything but what he used to be.
that's why this is a zombie movie. what do zombies want? brains! why do they want them? brains! i honestly feel kinda bad for sly. he's decided to go out there and fight even though people are gonna make fun of him (just like in the movie), but it's a humiliating disaster. in the film rocky manages -- against all odds, reason, and laws of physics -- to go ten rounds with the champ who is FORTY YEARS YOUNGER and just barely misses being handed the win in a split decision.
the real sylvester stallone doesn't have movie magic in his life. he's gonna go ten rounds with Deja Vu and The Good Shepherd and Letters From Iwo Jima. except no one is rooting for him to knock these young upstarts (if you can call Clint Eastwood a young upstart...) off their pedestal. he's just going to get knocked out cold and probably break his hip.
when you grow older, it's traditional to grow up.
william shatner did it right. if he tried to play captain kirk now he'd be just as big a joke as sly is. instead he recorded an album called Has Been. if you haven't given it a listen, i highly recommend it. in it he admits that he's come and gone, but he takes an older man's pride in the fact that he made it at all.
it's a bad news day for the horn.
the horn of africa, that is.
things are kicking off in somalia again. i know, i know, you're saying, "somalia? isn't that a kind of girl scout cookie? i want one!"
you're wrong, though. it's not a cookie. somalia is a country that's not really a country. somalia is the national equivalent of a pre-op transvestite in rural alabama. we're just calling it a country because it makes everyone else more comfortable. it's really a hodge-podge of armed teenagers with a passion to change in competing directions, but little resembling a plan to do so.
that's nothing new for somalia. what's new is that in this latest battle between the islamists and the puppet government, ethiopian troops have proved to be the deciding factor in routing the islamic attack.
which will piss six kinds of hell out of the islamists. they've already been threatening ethiopia with war unless they butt out. and now not only has ethiopia not removed its troops, its troops have kicked ass.
so why do you care?
maybe you had to be there? maybe you had to have wandered the streets of addis ababa. suffered through the bus rides and watched the fields full of rocks not grow. 'cause having done that, and thinking about what happens to ethiopia if the islamic somalis decide to join the never-ending ethiopia-eritrea war, well... it's depressing.
that's a whole corner of the world that is turning, literally, to dust. things are bad in lots of places. but in zimbabwe the land is fertile. niger and sudan have oil. there's nothing in ethiopia but qat, tef, and the ark of the covenant.
and you don't know what qat and tef are, probably, and no one is allowed to see the ark.
writing this now, what occurs to me is this:
it is absolutely unbelievable that today, in 2006, what we're looking at for our future is a worldwide religious war.
people who believe in god A vs. people who believe in gods B and C.
what a waste.
how did everyone get so confused?
everyone loves a crusade. some things never go out of style.
i just got a gig!
rewriting a corporate website. editing/rewriting 50 pages of roughly 100 words each. due january 4th.
pay is $2000.
that fucking rocks.
we have been in australia for two months now.
my visa has cleared, bartlebee's fellowship is approved, and today i'm getting a new driver's license. goodbye california. hello victoria.
we've managed to hang our laotian fabrics on our brick walls, plant some lettuces, sweep the cobwebs off the porch light and hang some new, non-stainy curtains. they're botanical.
despite earlier reservations, the neighbourhood is growing on me. i'm getting used to the tram ride into town. found a friendly cafe or two. made friends with the lebanese guys who run the veggie market.
the big hole is the lack of work. or lack of clear direction on what i should be looking for. i've applied for full-time writer, editor, communications jobs. i've applied for part-time assistant jobs. i've pitched myself for contract and freelance gigs.
so far i've had one meeting, but that was with a couple who didn't have any work for me. i got a letter today and an email last week confirming receipt of my resume from two places i applied, but that's it outside of google writing back to say "thanks but no thanks."
it's december so i'm sure that's a big part of the lack of opportunity. still, i'm home fried. trying to stay busy and productive but floundering.
big achievements for the week include vacuuming and returning library books. i know i oughta start up on some big project but i'm having a hard time figuring out what that could be.
so i suppose this isn't the cheeriest blogpost.
if anyone knows anyone at lonely planet, they have a job opening i'm going to push hard on. i've got one connection there already, but more couldn't hurt.
Hello XXXXX,
I write to you on behalf of Will Shortz. Thank you for your crossword about switching chemical elements to make new phrases.
The new phrases have no particular point or punch to them, sorry to say. And several other entries are iffy (MIDRATE, PLUOT, ALECHAM and others).
If you really enjoy constructing, try, try again. I wish you the best of luck.
Nancy SXXXXXX, for
Will Shortz
yeah, well. she's right. hopefully she'll like the second one better. i just hope it doesn't take another three months to find out.
i would like to brag about my wife.
first off, the government of australia has just decided to pay her to be smart. she doesn't need to give them anything in return, she just needs to keep being smart. and become a doctor. in exchange for becoming a doctor at one of their schools, they are going to pay all fees and give her a living stipend which will cover our monthly rent and bills and also probably pay us some money to move here, even though we already did. they'll do this for three years.
when is the last time someone paid me money just for being smart? that would be two weeks ago last never.
although, now that i think about it, that would be good work if i could get it. i think i'm pretty smart, especially in the buttockal region, which i think is why they call me smart-ass? i'm not sure. i guess i'm only half-smart.
i am also proud of my wife for having a working heart. for the past month or so, we weren't so sure. we suspected it might be a lemon. the EMTs who showed up in the ambulance weren't sure. two doctors weren't sure (one, honest to god, cautioned her against dying). the heart monitor was vague. her heart was past it's warranty, so we were kind of worried.
then today she finally found a doctor who knows how to speaka english and he drew her some pictures. one had a bunny and one had a smiling can of tomatoes and the third was of her heart. he said her heart is a bit spastic, but then it's HER heart, so that fits. he said it wasn't a big issue. that we should be more concerned about that smiling can of tomatoes.
we are.
last night i got some drinks with my old boss from the symphony. he's in town for some meetings. we had a good ol' time drinking beers and talking shop. i suppose in this not-so-fun period of job hunting it's relieving to have my old boss happy to hang out with me and put in some good words on my behalf with the local symphony. it counter balances the temp agency bastardos not returning my phone calls.
i have a feeling that soon i will consider dressing up as a giant hotdog and handing out coupons a decent career move.
then i made some new friends and got to pet a doggy so all told it's a pretty good day.
up: gobs of cash, working heart, two friends, dog
down: giant hotdog future, smiling can of tomatoes
seems like we're doing okay.
Holocaust Conference in Iran Provokes Outrage - New York Times
ahmadinejad, the president of iran, has organized a conference to investigate whether or not the holocaust happened.
there are people out there who believe we never landed on the moon. there are people out there who believe something really fishy happened on september 11th, 2001. there are people out there who believe in reincarnation (his name is jesus), and that some races are genetically inferior to others, and there are even people who believe that the space bus is coming and we'll need exact change to get on it when it does.
people believe all kinds of crazy shit.
personally, it doesn't even make sense to me to discuss "believing" in the holocaust or history. either it's something that affected your life or it isn't. saying the story your life is partially built on is a lie doesn't change anything. it's the actions of the present we have control over. history is over.
ahmadinejad thinks the holocaust is a propaganda tool developed to manipulate the world into justifying israeli behavior -- in exactly the same way many people believe the iraqi incursion into kuwait was a story created to justify an american grab for oil in the first gulf war. does it make any difference now? the time to expose lies is the present. was pearl harbour expected by FDR? what difference does it make now? except maybe to say we all need to question what we're told more.
i think there's nothing wrong with questioning the stories we're told. making the questioning forbidden is counter productive. jews and gypsies and homosexuals were executed, i believe, during the second world war. it wasn't why anyone outside of the warsaw ghetto fought the war but i believe it happened. perhaps it was justification for creating the state of israel as far as jews were concerned, but it was not why britain split the land up in the first place. it was just one factor in their pre and post-war political manipulations. the holocaust is not a justification for israeli occupation of palestine. it's just one factor in a stupidly complex problem.
arguing about it is as helpful as saying, "you weren't even hungry when you ate that piece of cake, so give it back."
you can't build anything by lobbing grenades into history. ahmadinejad can dispute the holocaust if he wants, but it's not news as far as i'm concerned. if he had a conference on the american occupation of iraq, that would be news because it's happening now and we could actually do something with the information presented: question it or ridicule it. here they've gathered to question something that the opposition won't even dignify with a counter-argument. it's just a firecracker. a loud noise that will only hurt you if you're stupid enough to hold it in your hand.
you're in pain now? let's talk about that.
(text of the nyt article to follow)
sattiday night, gala, si and i went to this 80's party at a local club. there were maybe a score of people there: the corseted brunette in the leopard print dress, the pigtailed nerdgirl in her gothsuit, eddie the souse, and mr. standandnod to name a few. the djs were unspectacular in their ability to rotate forgotten dance hits with memorable floor clearers. never-the-less, we enjoyed ourselves.
it was our first real night out in melbourne. it was a scorcher of a weekend (literally: the weather report read, "smoky, 40's") and if the club wasn't crowded, the streets certainly were.
i had to leave at half one to catch my tram back to brunswick but before i found the door the dj put on a record i had not heard in ages. it was, i believe, one of the first pieces of recorded music i ever owned: steve miller band performing abracadabra.
I feel the magic in your caress
I feel magic when I touch your dress
Silk and satin, leather and lace
Black panties with an angel's face
I see magic in your eyes
I hear the magic in your sighs
Just when I think I'm gonna get away
I hear those words that you always say
Abra-abra-cadabra
I want to reach out and grab ya
genius? perhaps. although i'm unsure about the whole black panties with an angel's face thing. or how abracadabra magic relates to wanting to grab someone. generally grabbing is not a particularly magical event.
which brings me to the second subject of this blogpost. my thoughts on the film The Prestige. it is gonna be chocko with spoilers so be ye warned.
this site is pretty funny:
he or she writes as a description:
This site is a little project that lets me make fun of some things and sense of others. I use it to think a little more relationally without resorting to doing actual math.
every day there are a bunch of new index cards like the above, some funny, some astute, some astutely funny and some paper cutty.
none of them, however, help me read the newspaper. i try. but all the names in the paper here? never heard of them. the politicians? the political structure? don't get it. the sports? vaguely mystifying. the gossip? it's all about people i've never heard of.
how am i supposed to enjoy hearing about public embarrassments when i don't know the people involved?
it's frustrating. i feel like a four year old.
why? why? why?
why?
i got some email from gala today. gala is one of my new friendlyfriends here in australia. she's a kiwi (the nationality, not bird or fruit) and she moved here with si who is, like bartlebee, australian by birth but not by taste in malted beverage.
it's too bad gala emailed me. if she had called me, i might have wet my pants laughing. i might have wet 'em because my phone displays this picture of her when she calls:
see? funny! she's making the fish face and, uh, the fish face. right.
so anyway, she sent an email saying that we should all go to see a film at the rooftop cinema. good idea, eh? it's like watching a movie on top of a building downtown except you watch a movie on top of a building downtown which is slightly cooler.
gala says we should go see bladerunner. so i look through the schedule and note all the films that i think would be good to watch and write back. i clock, however, that bladerunner is not on the schedule.
except as i click send i notice i didn't write bladerunner.
i wrote blandrunner.
blandrunner.
i don't really know what to say about that.
perhaps i've seen it too many times?
or maybe i'm distracted thinking about what sort of job i'll get from this temp agency i'm interviewing with tomorrow? doing stupid errands for guys in suits? job title : blandrunner. that's me.
sigh.
my wife is covered in electrodes now. but that's another story.
somebody axed me the other day: why troublonia? why name this blog that? what does it mean?
i thought to myself, surely i've explained this on the blog at some point or other? well yes. i did. and i found it. but it seems i meant to make it into a FAQ and never got around to it. so here we go.
so here's what i wrote earlier with some additions:
Frequently Unquestioned Answers about Troublonia:
what is troublonia:
when we were young kippers, the missus and i had this joke about travelling. when you go travelling, you always go to troublonia. no matter where you're heading, you'll need to detour through it.
troublonia is lovely little place. the national dish is sand with a giardia garnish. the sandwich meat -- troubologna -- is green, but not by design. the police are corrupt and your bus is cancelled and the currency is computed in base seven and all the toilets are backed up.
all of them.
and the mosquitos! right by your ear buzzing all night except for the one which is feasting on your inner thigh. or is that the desk clerk? hard to tell.
so you go there why, exactly?
troublonia is oddly what makes your destination worthwhile.
if you didn't have to go through the hell of troublonia to get to get to paradise, paradise would soon be overrun with exactly the type of people you're travelling to avoid. it's the gauntlet you run to escape.
why name the blog troublonia?
i suppose i had some reason initially. something about how this is where i want to work out ideas so i can get somewhere better. something stupid like that. an explanation thought up after i chose the name, honestly.
how do you pronounce it?
trouble-oh-knee-uh
what sort of blog is this
a personal blog for the most part. i write about whatever i think is interesting at the moment. travel, film, my life, politics, the limits of religion and science, why DRM pisses me off, and being an ex-pat. i rarely post pictures of britney spears' hoo-ha, but you might get lucky.
what's the deal with commenting?
please feel free! as long as you're not selling penis pumps i'd love to hear what you have to add.
would you like some money?
sure! thanks! you can paypal me anything you want at xz at xzackly dot com.
don't you know how to spell?
usually. i'm trying to adjust to the olde british methode since i now live in australia. if you think i've misspelled something, just assume that it's either the alternate spelling or that you're wrong, whichever is easier.
can i read this blog in an rss feed reader?
yes. i have two feeds. there is an xml feed which i recommend using because it updates when comments are added. that feed is: http://www.xzackly.com/troublonia/index.xml. there is also an rdf feed which doesn't update with comments here: http://www.xzackly.com/troublonia/index.rdf.
what blog software do you use?
i use movabletype v.3.14 because i'm too lazy to upgrade to the newest version and 3.14 is, like, pi. so that's worth something. i designed the site myself and taught myself to do the coding and i'm not that geeky so you could probably figure it out if you wanted.
as a police officer i'm concerned about the illegal things you describe doing in these posts. can you explain?
no problem, officer. i sometimes exaggerate my activities to seem "hip" to the "kids." i would never use the internets for evil. i think the war on terrorism is the best thing borat ever thought up.
what about my other questions?
what am i, psychic? ask away.
so, as sassyass sassyasks, was borat the "funniest movie of all time?"
the bartlebee and i went to see this film last night at the olde tyme mechanical carriage picture theatre in coburg-town. first off, we love the drive-in. lucky for us they still had some of those speaker-on-pole things for people like us whats ain't got working radios. we made up some popped corn and watched the sun set all pretty-like and eagerly anticipated the comic-stylings of the borat.
and then we watched the movie and went home.
[spoilers here, ye be warned]
i did not think it was the funniest movie of all time. in fact, i thought it was only approximately as funny as an average ali g show episode. sure, everyone likes to watch two unattractive naked men carrying an anal fister get into a crowded elevator. sure, we all want to stuff pamela anderson into a hand-knit sack. and when he threw his bag on the ground in frustration and it squawked? that made me snort.
but i will stand out of line here and disagree. it was funny. it wasn't that funny.
thinking about this reminds me of my vague theory of comfortable agreement. i suspect that what people really like is NOT quality material (be it films, books, radioactive isotopes) but agreeing with other people. it makes us comfortable to know that we can express an opinion and have people nod and smile and say, "oh yes, quite."
sometimes people agree on things for good reasons (the godfather : critical mass) and sometimes they agree on things for incomprehensible reasons (braveheart : uncritical mass). some studio flack makes an appealing ad campaign and a critic or two joins the chorus and then everyone decides that some vaguely average film is the bee's knees (or, conversely, the bee's testes -- such as with Ishtar, really not that bad a film).
so, in the spirit of being disagreeable, here are some films that i think are really funny that nobody gives a good god-damn about:
1) Tapeheads. young john cusack and tim robbins decide to become videographers in a send up of MTV, politics and ninja bitch fights. features the line, "teach me to read" in it's funniest incarnation and some raps about waffles.
2) Josie and the Pussycats. no really. it's funny. a crassly commercial film about the crass commercialization of media. the fact that most people who watch it miss the point and are commercialized by the film warning about commercialization? that's funny.
3) Schizopolis. i'm not going to try and describe this film. instead just mull over this bit of dialogue: "Oliver Stone? Never heard of him. Send meat." see? it's by soderburgh who directed erin broccolivich and it's JUST LIKE THAT except completely different.
4) The Arrival. sure, this isn't supposed to be a comedy but don't let that stop you. life is much better once you realize that everything Charlie Sheen is in is comedy. in this one he plays a scientist. see? funny. (for bonus points, find his book of poetry, Peace of My Mind -- it's fucking hysterical. sean has a copy if you know sean.)
5) Borat. no just kidding.
6) The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. preston sturges is one weird dude. this 1944 film about a woman who gets knocked up by a soldier is subversively bewilderingly funny. features my favorite name of all time: ignatz ratskywatsky. just try and say that with a straight face.
feel free to disagree. or add your own recommendations. those are just off the top of my head.
did you ever see something so funny it made you cry? what about something so sad it made you laugh?
well, fear not, 'cause these should do both to you simultaneously.
i present to you my brother chachi:
he's single, god knows why, so if you know any nice ladies in new york -- with or without a moustache -- i know someone who wants to make their upper lip itchy.
mmmmm.... sexy sexy moustache!
here in the land of oz i have finally completed rewriting my resume. i thought it was fine but then i was told no no no it wasn't. it seems australians want something different from the resume. instead of the whole short attention span thing so popular in america, here they want you to ramble on and on about how one time you helped dad paint the fence and tina accidentally painted that butterfly onto the post but it was okay because it was only a moth and they don't have magical butterfly powers.
so gimme a job!
tonight we're going to the drive-in to see Borat. i love me some drive-in! it would be better if the radio worked in our car, though.
