art school pop boys steal ideas! again!

i somehow don't remember seeing this.... but they don't reinact the great card game!

a national holiday

nationalism has always been an uncomfortable idea for me, and linked most strongly in my mind with the flag waving antics of the u.s.a. it is thus with a great deal of unease that i've noticed in the last few years an incredible surge in australian nationalism, with its own brand of flag waving hysteria. there are more and more flagpoles in peoples’ houses. what is more, it is very noticeable that, say in the last five years or so, the job of finding an australian flag in a shop has become so much easier. not content with just a simple flag there are also many other random items branded with the flag: beach towns, stubbie holders, underwear, bikinis etc. etc. you only need go to a 2 dollar discount store to stock up on all your australian flag paraphernalia. there is also the scariest of all flag items branded items, the t-shirt with the catchphrase ‘if you don’t love it, leave it’. also sometimes rendered as ‘if you don’t love it, fuck off’. this t-shirt hits home the profound disquiet that nationalism, and a somewhat prominent australian brand of nationalism, stirs in me for we can immediately see the comparatively close sister phrase (no doubt often also used by the same people wearing this shirt). now, i’m sure there may be some tourists who find this amusing, if only for its ‘aussie’ sense of ‘humour’, and this is why these cheap dollar stores and tourist shops sell them. but i cannot escape the ugliness of this phrase and the ease with which it transforms into the racist taunt, ‘go home you [insert foreign derogatory word of your choice]!’ the razor edge which pronouncements of national pride seems to sit on is to put in most mildly, a major concern for me, and one of the primary reasons that i cannot buy into these discourses. too often in an australian context does this edge appear more like a sliding hole into the racist camp. in any case these discourses are flawed in that their claim to a privileged position as inheritor of australian birth right means nothing, since everyone, bar the tiny indigenous population have this ineluctable right. added to this, the symbolism that is chosen to represent australian nationalism inevitably leaves me out as well as a massive sector of the population. the citizenship teach exemplifies this , because how could knowledge of cricket possible serve as a marker of a person's attribute and ability to 'integrate' (already so much baggage attached to these words!) into australian society? so inasmuch as these discourses and the people who subscribe to them create much anxiety and fear in me, i also find them rather humorous. for invasion day (and as i have learnt this phrase is one that can't be uttered even amongst people i would except to understand the full gravity of its meaning), would like to wear a different shirt, not so as to declare a different allegiance, but so as to cut down the power of these discourses and show that they are pretty absurd. *goguenard slips into his trusty I <3 france t-shirt*

the city

french writers have an obsession with the city of paris (and filmmakers alike: truffaut). they go into lengthy accounts of the city's streets seemingly so as to flaunt their profond knowledge of the city's every main artery as well as obscur back alley way. for a balzac this might be of immediately as forming part of his realist project. yet even then we think immediately of the pension in le père goriot, and the absurdly steep hills that lead to the pension which make it impossible for horse carriages to descend the street on which it sits. the pension and the streets which surround it are completely fictional. we see the same thing in les misérables: we remember cosette and valjean's desperate escape from javert. in one moment they make their way through actual, verifiable parisian streets only to stubble into hugo's purely imagined quartier. hugo and balzac, for all their apparent attempts to cultivate a real world, finally show themselves to understand profoundly that their characters need a land of fiction to escape the world and its knowledge of the city. or perhaps more importantly, the world's love of paris.

is it simply for this reason that it would be absurd to attempt this in any other context? only the grand metropolises might succeed in attempting to replicate something of the french's obsession with mapping out their number one city. new york, london. would a tokyo work? a sydney? and how would someone familiar with these cities understand a fictional hole dug in the city? as a way to provide shelter for the characters of the novel? surely not. it would more likely be viewed as pompous, or trendy, or just plainly ridiculous and worthless since on one outside of this city would know the reference. imagine a detailed examination of street names in a novel set in cairns.

but is the author’s motive ever really to ‘examine’ the streets concerned?

P.S
in a purely parisian context, all of this is very interesting to remark given the detailed mapping of cities that certain websites have performed. take mappy.fr for example. not only are streets searchable, but you can also see buildings' facades and the view looking down the centre of the street.

more media hysteria

a few unordered comments/thoughts:

*apparently, according to a 'fred100446' on youtube, all the sea shepherd crew memebers are vegans.

*the captain of the sea shepherd says in the video that 'they've been taken on board against their will'. really!? didn't we just see them jump on board, excited like teenagers?

*there are several other nations that are involved in whaling. greenland, for example, where their hunt involves luring the whales into shallow water so as to kill them. whale meat is eaten so often that there are concerns about mercury poisoning.

*i'm just wondering why there are no protests over turtle hunting: it takes 30 years for a turtle to reach maturity, and only 1 in 1000 eggs layed reaches maturity. i.e almost one each season the turtle chooses to breed. indigenous turtle hunting occurs frequently in australian shores. comparing the maturity rates of whales: minke whales on the other hand take 5-8 years; the humpback whale: 4-8 years; the sperm whale a more impressive 20 years.

* it is interesting that greenland was allowed to increase its hunt and japan faces such opposition.

*for some more hysteria, check out john singlton's, head of the lion nathan beer company, beer/protest ad.

Best party ever!

'I suggest you go away and take a good long hard look at yourself.'

'I have, everyone has, they love it!'