On his blog, director Patrick Meaney has always championed emotional truth as a cardinal virtue of storytelling, and here, in partnership with Jordan Rennert, he has delivered. After all these episodes we don’t have a working knowledge of the gods’ conflict, we don’t know how Woolf resolved his angst, or if he is right about Holly’s motives. We don’t have enough information to engage in that favourite internet pastime of second-guessing both characters and authors. We have, however, seen enough to know how the characters feel about everything, and the series has been true to that.

Coming down from psychedelic episodes seven and eight, the series’ shaky camera work is complemented with post-production shakes. I’ve enjoyed the effect, or rather, the affect, of the direction since the second episode. It’s not verite, it’s expressionism, giving an extra psychological index to the characters. Yet Meaney and Rennert know when to focus on the actors and let them act. My favourite bit is the move Holly makes against Zinone in episode nine, defusing his cheesy scenario by turning her head as he homes in for a renewing kiss.

Last time I wrote about a straying into questionable territory. This continues in episode seven, where we go on a quick trip through the Kabbalah, while Morning pushes Holly to uncover the idea of herself. Philosophically I’m opposed to this essentialism. Luckily the threat of it recedes with each subsequent episode. Essence, after all, is exactly the underlying detail we are not privy to. The only surfacing of this structure occurs in the disappointing representation of Alicia and Seth, a goth look and public sex signifying their evil nature (hey, some of my best friends are goths who have sex in public).

Drugs, always a minefield, are handled carefully here. They pervade the series. Just about everyone is either doing them now or has done them in the past. Experiences like Holly’s ritual or Woolf’s vision are described in terms of drugs. Rather than gangsters on street corners or power brokers in glass towers, we get a firmly middle class, normalised view of use. It’s clear that exploration is better than recreation, without the distinction between those activities being obvious to observers, and without either state being anchored to a particular type of drug. And of course, the real outcome of Woolf’s research, driven by Seth (or is it?), remains unknown.

The image that opens Woolf’s bad trip in episode eight is particularly apposite for his behaviour until that point. A bird of prey floating on convection currents would have a vision too: a small animal, an angle of attack, relative performance envelopes: no free will, just a determined future, lunch. That’s how he’s seen himself until now, not a wolf subject to the vagaries of terrain, but a raptor. I like how this image is undermined as soon as it is introduced, his vision darkening. I understand his reversal of fortune well: the moment when you discover an unsavoury source before what you thought was your point of origin; when everything that has been sustaining you turns out to be a lie.

Somehow he makes it through and renews the commitment to his path. “The way the vision has come together these past couple of days has been extremely intense.” Get ready for a double-length episode twelve in which all our characters come together!

On 26 January 1788, the English nation invaded the Eora nation, with the intent of establishing a concentration camp for their own lower class.

On 26 January 1938, the Aboriginal peoples established a Day of Mourning to remember the events of 150 years ago and protest their subsequent treatment.

Australia Day (II)

True or false:

• We are young and free?
• We’ve golden soil?
• We’ve wealth for toil?
• We’ve boundless plains to share?

Australia Day (III)

Meme! Have you engaged with Australia’s holidays? Copy the list below and bold the ones you’ve done.

• New Year’s Day (by celebrating the changeover)
• Australia Day (by attending a citizenship ceremony or Survival Day event)
• Labour Day (by being paid by your employer for not working)
• Easter (by celebrating the Resurrection)
• Anzac Day (by attending a dawn service)
• Queen’s Birthday (by singing God Save the Queen)
• Christmas (by celebrating the birth of Christ)
• Boxing Day (by giving to the less fortunate)

For the purposes of this meme, you don’t have to have engaged every year, or plan to do it ever again, you only have to have done it once. I realise that not everyone will be able to engage with every holiday.

Australia Day (IV)

The word barbecue is from Haiti.

She’s doing well: feeding, sleeping, excreting; successfully keeping the bilirubin low and weight high. She responds positively to Daniel’s voice and touch.

(Expect little in the way of blogging, email, sms, telephone, physical presence, etc, to escape our happy bubble.)

I recently took a computer security course that included a segment on physical security. We watched a video of Barry Wels opening a lock with a piece of cardboard cut from a toilet paper roll. Unlike John, this for me was an encounter with the sublime.

To a certain mind, I realised, there are no locks, no doors or windows, no walls. There is no security.

And so we’re free.

With the birth of my son, my body surprised me with the knowledge I would do anything to protect him. My expansiveness demanded that I try on the pose of killer, so I did. It wore me down. I couldn’t wear it. I am not that. I don’t believe in it.

Only in movies are we confronted with the choice, kill this person, or your child dies. Real life is never so obvious or restricted. I wondered if there were any children aboard United Airlines Flight 93, but there weren’t. I can’t believe that my son, in danger, would be better served by me attempting to kill, rather than any other course of action. My imagination denies the utility of killing.

Stay with him. Keep him safe. No matter what. I feel it in my bones.

It is wrong to kill, and if the day comes when I do kill, I know it will still be wrong. It’s like torture, it should never be sanctioned. If it is really that imperative it should be done, then the conscience will take on that burden.

A lot of people are coming here looking for something about Monsters Inc, redback spiders, Lego bricks, Donatello’s David, Darth Vader… which is nice, because it looks like you’ve got to page through a lot of results to find my blog.

But what about the referrals that actually come from top ranking search results?

loris malaguzzi poem

I am the first result on Google, and this is my most common referrer since this blog began almost ten years ago. A semi-famous musician once emailed me requesting more information about Malaguzzi, which I helped her find. Occasionally I’ve intended to read more about Malaguzzi and Reggio Emilia, but it looks unlikely I’ll ever get around to it. About both there is a lot more information on the web now than ten years ago. I still find the poem inspirational.

baby ultrasound

I am the first result on Google (as an image, before the text results) which explains why it’s such a popular target for bizarre usage. Twice in the last six months I’ve had to write emails to religious anti-abortion websites asking them to stop using Daniel’s ultrasound photo. They kindly took it down, but I strongly feel they shouldn’t have put it up in such a context in the first place.

under the bridge interpretation

I am the second result on Google, much to the consternation of some Red Hot Chili Peppers fans. Yes, it’s a joke. And I still think of it every time I hear the song.

bourbon mixer

I am the third result on Google. I’m actually quite proud of the little bit of research me and Rob did. Sometimes I find or think of other possible mixers, but I get too much negative feedback about alcohol posts.

inflatable boy joke

I am the third result on Google. Still funny.

khe sanh lyrics meaning

I am the third result on Google. No one else has tried to elucidate the lyrics of this seminal song. I had a cabaret writer ask me if I’ve found anything else out about “she was lined”, but I haven’t. Wikipedia states Silver City refers to Broken Hill rather than the Vietnamese battle, which probably makes more sense in context.

(All placings higher on Google Australia.)

What searches do I wish would turn up my weblog? Well, I don’t know. Whatever will be, will be. This blog is optimised for me rather than search engines.

And since I’m writing about search, I’ll leave you with three thoughts.

Google doesn’t understand search. Despite this blog using a Google Site Map and rel=canonical, Google still turns up aggregate archive pages, search result pages, and non-canonical URLs. Will HTML5 help? I doubt it.

Advertisers don’t understand search. I’ve seen three campaigns in recent times that suggest, instead of visiting a url, you “search [keyword]”. Yet these keywords are generic and inevitably do not return the advertised website.

Employers don’t understand search. It wouldn’t take much to smear the reputation of an employer with no PageRank to speak of. So: a) be nice to your employees, and b) embrace the web.

And what I really want to know is: are things getting better, or are they getting worse? Can we start all over again? Stop. Pause. We’re in record.

My friend Daniel recently updated his Facebook status to say he “suspects that the world sucks less than YahooNews would like him to think it does…” His brother replied:

No, I’d say its worse, main stream media has nothing on what’s really going on with the deteriorating nature of the underlying structures that our civilisation is based upon…

Yes, I think it all—politics, art, science, business, primary industry, etc—is worse than it once was. Yet this is only an internally relative measure. The percentage of good is smaller, but the entities are larger. So more good is produced by each of these things than ever before. Things are getting better. The question everywhere today is whether the driver of growth (name it: capitalism) is sustainable? I think we all suspect not.

My resolution for this year: to always remember that things are getting better.

Perspective. Memory.

Listen:

• 26 January 2001, India. Earthquake killed 20,000.
• 09 September 2001, US. Terrorists killed 3000.
• 27 September 2002, Atlantic Ocean. Ferry sinking killed 1800.
• 21 May 2003, Algeria Earthquake killed 2000.
• August 2003, Europe. Heatwave killed 40,000.
• 26 December 2003, Iran. Earthquake killed 26,000.
• 22 April 2004, North Korea. Train crash killed 3000.
• 17 September 2004, Haiti. Cyclone killed 3000.
• 26 December 2004, Indian Ocean. Tsunami killed 230,000.
• 29 August 2005, US. Cyclone killed 1800.
• 08 October 2005, Pakistan. Earthquake killed 80,000.
• 27 May 2006, Indonesia. Earthquake killed 6000.
• 02 May 2008, Burma. Cyclone killed 150,000.
• 12 May 2008, China. Earthquake killed 70,000.
• 30 September 2009, Indonesia. Earthquake killed 1300.

(When you remember that earthquakes cause tsunamis, you’ll see that what we need is a War, not on Terror, but on Earthquakes.)

I’ve taken these figures from a wide variety of sources, using the World Disasters Timeline as a starting point. There may well be major disasters that I’ve missed.

The booby prize for disasters that have been reported hysterically but which have killed few go to three diseases: bird flu has killed less than 300, SARS has killed less than 1000, and swine flu has killed less than 13,000. That last figure may sound big, but remember that seasonal flu kills about 350,000 people each year.

• The war in Afghanistan has killed 70,000.
• The war in Iraq has killed 650,000.
• The war in Pakistan has killed 20,000.
• The war in Sri Lanka has killed 22,000 dead.
• The war in Sudan has killed 500,000.

(Over 4000 US citizens have died in Iraq, showing that George W Bush is better at killing Americans than Osama bin Laden.)

It’s hard to know the numbers for the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Mexico.

The booby prize here goes to the war in Israel, which has only killed 6000 (mostly Palestinians).

So it goes.

Everyone from 2010 will be dead in the year 3030.

Music is crap and I hear a lot of people say it’s the internet that’s responsible. I disagree. It’s also the internet (the sheer availability of music, the popularity of the internet itself) but not only.

I am a fire snake, two fish, a spider. I am not venomous, forgetful, venomous. There are non-venomous snakes, fish aren’t forgetful, and bees and ants are more dangerous than spiders.

None of this matters.

Stillness, attention, nothing.

I notice the spiders. You probably don’t. You probably think I’m creepy. I’ve always been fascinated by them. Wherever you go, there they are. A study in Britain found 131 spiders living in a meadow per square meter. Sometimes I sit on the lawn and watch them. The other day I emptied a large body of water on our grass, flooding it, and bringing dozens of spiders running onto our patio, including one mother bearing her egg sac. They sit in every crack and corner of your house. Eating insects (well, there’s always an exception). We’d notice if they were gone!

A female black house spider (how to sex this common species: females live in the same web their whole lives, so the web is bigger and dirtier; also males are smaller) was living above our backyard door. I was just starting to worry that her web was getting too large and ugly when I found her lying on her back on the ground, dead (apparently of natural causes: if you spray them, their poisoned nerves cause them to curl up; violence tends to leave them missing legs and spewing liquids). She was in such good condition that I kept her to examine. After a few days I had to get rid of her though. My brain was convinced she was moving. I guess it’s because of all those legs and other appendages. Too many lines for my vision to keep track of while my amygdala sent out fear messages.

If you can find no beauty at all in spiders, check out this golden spider silk cloth.

Happy new year! Follow your spirit animal! That is, follow your self, projected onto the world.

I have so much farther to go than I thought. “Your boundaries are your quest.”

(Cairo, G Willow Wilson)

(The quote-within-a-quote is by Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi known as Mowlana known as Rumi.)

Today is Daniel’s third birthday (he’ll always have fireworks on his birthday) and the last day of the year. It’s been a big one. We’ve taken him to Daylesford, the snow, Darwin, and so many other places. He’s grown in height (now the average height of a five-year-old) and grown in so many other ways.

I try to live up to him. For instance, every night when I read him bedtime stories, I concentrate on the pronounciation issue I grew up with and speech therapists couldn’t correct in primary school: a defect I once fought foroughly impossible to fix; a fing I’d suffer to my deaf: dreaded “th”. Now I can mostly hear the difference between “f” and “th”, mostly make the right sound amongst other sounds, and know when I don’t get it right. Perhaps by the end of next year I’ll be speaking like a native.

Next year. 2010. The future. I’ve got your rocket packs right here if you want them. The deal is, you get them, you have to give up a few things in exchange. The internet; PCs; the inability to use a slide rule. Popular culture. Most kinds of tolerance and attempts at equality. Certain kinds of people (you know the ones). Good food! Yes, you can have someone else’s childhood fantasy of the future, in exchange for the one you’re actually living in. I won’t see you there.

2010 is going to be a big year for me. Six months off from work. A new child. Going back to uni to learn to become a book editor. A new Doctor. The tenth birthday of this blog.

That’s something that’s been on my mind. This blog has always been a means to no end, an end in itself, a place to think through writing. It’s never (though I didn’t always realise this) been a stepping stone to anything else, like publication, fame, or money. This public writing has never really been written for anyone else, though in my mind I’ve always had a kind of fictionalised sympathetic audience. But recently it’s started to feel solipsistic yet impersonal. Now perhaps this thought has run its course. I am thinking about new ways of thinking. I’m thinking about giving up this blog. Yes, it is that urge, as old as any blog, to stop blogging. It’s something that I’ve got until July 26 to think about. Ten years would to my blog be—sufficient. Until then there are definitely still posts to be posted on Pah.

Let’s have a happy new year together!

Diaz:

I’m not entirely sure Oscar would have liked this designation. Fukú story. He was a hardcore sci-fi and fantasy man, believed that that was the kind of story we were all living in. He’d ask: What more sci-fi than the Santo Domingo? What more fantasy than the Antilles?

I have read 22 books in the last six months: 12 novels, 3 plays, 3 short story collections, 3 non-fiction, 1 memoir. 27% of these were by people of colour.

• Samuel R Delany (African-American)
• Junot Diaz (Dominican)
• Nam Le (Vietnamese)
• Barack Obama (African-American)
• Vikram Seth (Indian)

I’ve read 11 comics, 6 drawn by people of colour.

• Shari Chankhamma (Thai)
• Georges Jeanty (Hispanic-American)
• Rags Morales (Puerto Rican)
• MK Perker (Turkish)
• Shaun Tan (Chinese-Australian)
• Roberto Weil (Venezualan)

My statistics for reading writing by women are worse, though improved: 23%—and remarkably stable at 21% if I include comics.

• Angela Carter
• Shari Chankhamma
• Kathleen Ann Goonan
• Nicola Griffith
• Gwyneth Jones
• Ursula K Le Guin
• Rutu Modan

Must do better. These people are not a minority.

• Book I (on getting lost)
• Book II (on writing in Middle Earth)
• Book III (on what are the real two towers)
• Book IV (on the Nightmare Life-in-Death)
• Book V (oops—confuses necessary risk with suicidal despair)
• Book VI (on appendices)

Especially good is the recognition that Tolkien doesn’t write in a single style; The Lord of the Rings is a collection of written forms.

Read, reread.