The Phoenix from these ashes...

is my new blog: http://film365.wordpress.com/

I have decided that, rather than blog on anything and everything that catches my fancy, I shall find a niche in critically appraising films. I will be much more regular in my postings at this new blog (in fact, my aim is to watch and then blog about a film a day.)

So come join in the fun! Or not! Whatever you so desire surfers of the interwebz!

Why the fuck does this happen?

Well today I am disgusted to be an Australian. Again. Yep Camden council unanimously rejected the proposed Islamic school, ostensibly on planning grounds. Yeah sure, islamophobia and racism had nothing to do with it? A quick read of the Daily Telegraph's truly awful readers' comments section will tell you that most readers argue that it was rejected "just on planning grounds" and that "we are tired of people overusing the racism card" etc.

Well that view is all well and good if you discard the fact that the woman pictured above yelled out that "they (i.e. muslims, the scary other) take our welfare" and are "incompatible with our way of life". Oh, and then there were the two pig's heads on spikes, placed next to an Australian flag, that suddenly appeared at the planned site. Now all of a sudden the "racism card" doesn't seem so reactionary does it?

Consider this comment:

"Why hasn't anyone got any guts? They've got terrorists amongst 'em... They want to be here so they can go and hide in all the farm houses... This town has every nationality... but Muslims do not fit in this town. We are Aussies, OK."

Or:

"Can I just say this without being racist or political? In 1983, in the streets of London a parade by Muslims chanted incessantly 'If we can take London, we can take the world'. Don't let them take Camden."

But we live in a country where racism is, if not overtly, certainly subtly embraced, if not encouraged. Even under a supposedly progressive government such as Rudd's. Sure Johnny locked the refugees up and made that now infamous "we will decide who comes into this country..." speech. But Rudd agrees wholeheartedly with the council's decicion. Oh, but of course, he rejects the decision solely on "planning grounds".

Fuck this. The sooner I can leave this backwards country of xenophobic savages the better.


UPDATE:

I was browsing the Guardian Online and found this. Somewhat fitting, methinks.

Semi-Frequent Notes from my Life 1

So this is the first of many Semi-Frequent notes from my LifeTM. And today (really tonight, am waiting to go out in about 20 minutes or so, yay for Albury night-life) the subject is jobs.

Everybody I talk to, the first thing they ask me is "do you have a job yet?" Which after a while really annoys me greatly, as I have no real desire to get a job. I see 2008 as the one year, perhaps in a long time, when I can do whatever the fuck I want to do. No burden from uni or school or job or other such factors, just a free year doing stuff that matters to me. But this doesn't really gel with many of my companions/mothers of my companions (yes this is a small town indeed) and so I am constantly facing a sea of aghast, shocked and/or patronising faces.

So I decided, partly to appease THEM and to also appease me because hey, I AM kinda getting bored here, to write a novel. And lo-and-behold Text Publishing come up with a wonderful competition to win $10 000 against royalties for a young adult book. So that provided the incentive and now I am occupying myself with writing. Most of the time.

It's a hard business this. For one instead of two thousand words I have a minimum of twenty five thousand. And the deadline isn't a million miles away either (July 31st...Holy Fuck.) Still, it is something to aspire to, and hopefully by the end of this, if not ten thousand dollars richer, at least I will have SOMEthing with which I can say "yes, I did that."

But the money would be nice.

Because then I wouldn't have to worry about living on NOTHING ZILCH NADA next year in inner city Melbourne (God, if you're listening, I would prefer London.)

Of course, I have had this fear drilled into me that I may be wasting my Gap year away. Oh well, if wasting means not spending 9 to 5 stuck in a useless job so I can make youth allowance, so be it!

On being A Global Citizen...

I love monocle magazine. Billing itself as a "briefing on global affairs, business, culture and design" it is the perfect magazine this pretentious wannabe global citizen can't get enough of.

Sure I live in a country town, sure I am only 18, sure I'm not even at uni yet, but hey, reading this magazine makes me feel like I am staying at the Singapore Ritz Carlton sipping italian coffee whilst critically appraising the state of Europe's main international transport hubs.

It just works. And it's printed on this lovely semi newspaper semi glossy magazine paper.

I think I need to escape this town.

On one ridiculously overused adjective.

FRIEND: Did you read that some high school has been fingerprinting its students?

ME: Why yes, yes I have. How stupid.

FRIEND: It's very Orwellian isn't it?

ME: !^*%#%*&#@%&


Now before you start chastising me for swearing at somebody who is merely using the last name of an author as an adjective in a fashion that is entirely understandable, nay, expected, hear me out.

Is it just me or is the term 'Orwellian' so overused these days? What really gets to me is that any and everything is described as Orwellian:

Aforementioned fingerprinting: Orwellian.
Speed Cameras: Orwellian.
Limiting American campaign financing: Orwellian.
Hate Crime Legislation: Orwellian.
Gun Control: Orwellian.
Guantanamo Bay: Orwellian.
Google Analytics (every blogger's best friend): Orwellian.
Thinly Veiled Political Allegories Using Farm Animals Instead Of Real People And Events: Orwellian.

So this suggests either one of two things:

• Human beings are fundamentally not creative and resort to just calling anything that they view slightly impedes freedom as Orwellian
  
• Our society has reached such a totalitarian, restricted state that any and everything in our modern world is by default Orwellian.
  

Thoughts?

Pleasures, Guilty or Otherwise.

• Allen's Snakes (yes yes, the natural confectionary ones are healthier and make me feel better for eating them, but for sheer unadulterated sugary goodness, you can't go past Allen's.)
• High camp shlock horror films. You just can't beat Attack of the Mushroom People or Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster.
• Those days when it is cold, but the sun comes out and it's quite warm outside. Yeah, you know the ones.
• Writing a well constructed, somewhat pretentious sentence. And going, YES! I wrote that!
• Reading Bret Easton Ellis
• Actually standing back in a bar or club and watching the people around you.
• Writing in a diary. Diaries kick arse.
• Listening to addictive throwaway top 40 songs on your iTunes that your younger sister uploaded.

What else?

On secrets, confessions and the like.

So I was reading one of my favourite bloggers and came across this. The number of posts, some 821 of them at last count, shows just how much we all relish in unloading our problems (or how rare it is for us to do so). The fact that I can't stop reading suggests something that Ms. Fits herself explains: "we are all of us sick voyeurs at heart". True that.

They run the full gamut, from confronting sex confessions- "I fantasise about being pinned against walls and being fucked hard & rough. I develop raging crushes on other men. I never do anything about it." to the weirdly superficial- "i confess i hate kylie. It seems to be un-australian to admit this. Er, she can't sing, has a face that now resembles joan rivers and i've never once heard her speak about anything other than herself."

And then there was this:

"I am so lonely. So very fucking lonely. I buy drinks like coke and coffee and $12 packs of biscuits from David Jones for guests that I'll never have. Just tonight I bought some fancy cheese and a box of crackers, just in case.

But no one ever comes.

I'm scared that I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life."

Wow, what power! So simply said and such a weird story, but not weird enough that I cannot empathise.

Hundreds and hundreds of confessions, and I cannot lie: a couple of mine are chucked in there too.

Of course, the success of such blogs as postsecret (sample secret from this week: "In 5th Grade my student teacher was gay. We made fun of him the entire year. I'm gay too. I'm sorry") shows that we all have some fascination for the darker side to ourselves, that which was previously hidden and repressed and now, thanks to the internet, can be simultaneously released and experienced anonymously.

Then there are the surprise reunions, the unexpected encounters, the quirky coincidences! "'Katie has no friends'. When I was in 7th grade someone wrote that on my desk. Now, 12 years later...I think they may be right" someone writes. Underneath is this email: "When I was in the seventh grade, I wrote that on someone's desk. I still regret it. I'm sorry".

Secrets. They are the hidden things that we all have and that, once released, cease to be our hidden elements and start being something else entirely.