One HD - Best. Station. Ever.

When one is a creature of leisure (as is your good author at present), one must be careful to avoid saturation in the inane drivel of daytime television. Cliff-like cheekbones and brick jawlines can only distract anyone for so long from the stupefying abortion of the senses that is the procession of Soaps and Talk Shows.

With all due respect to Ellen (who acquits herself with wry humour and admirable understatement considering the hoards of screaming banshees populating her audience), every time I manage to extricates myself from the vortex of daytime programming, I come away at least 9% dumber. Yet somehow, just when I thought I was out (of this terrible and intellectually corrosive habit) they pull me back in.

Well, no more my friends! The merchants of hype and hysteria and celebrity decorating tips can find a new bunny to boil! For I have One HD!

Sport, sport and more glorious sport. Hours upon hours of basketball, football and surfing by which to whittle away the daytime hours. Why, just this morning I was choking back the sick welling in my throat watching Dr Phil crucify some already-beleaguered simpleton when, during a fortuitously placed commercial break, I flicked to the replay of a 2008 ASP world surfing tour event.

The joy! The sanctuary! I could marvel at the skill and camaraderie of elite athletes sunning themselves in the South of France instead of peeling myself away from revelry in the desperation of a blinkered world.

Sure, I could read a book. I could sort out my tax. But some days are consolidation days. Getting back on top of life, mentally and physically. Now on such days I have an option for mindless entertainment that won't surreptitiously leech my moral and intellectual fibre.

Thank you One HD. Thank you for the time we will spend together.

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Do YOU know the Muffin Man?

I don’t. Not any more. He’s dead to me.

I’m not sure when it happened, but it happened in my lifetime. The humble muffin is an endangered species.

I don’t mean the flat, yeasty, fork split panacea of English afternoons. I’m talking the deliciously portable baked treat of the wholemeal or cornmeal or branmeal with chunks of fruit and nuts and bits of foliage – has become nothing more than a glorified teacake. A bland, dry, processed sugar laden, crusty-topped teacake.

If I wanted teacake, I’d grab it from the Tasteless Shit fridge. A few strategically placed blueberries or a smear of tinned apple doesn’t magically transmogrify sugary bread into the innate awesomeness of true muffin-ness. Lipstick on a pig people, lipstick on a pig.

So, all you purveyors of baked goods. No more sneakily funneling the left over cake mix into muffin tins! The people on the street know the difference!

We’re onto it!

WE’RE MAD AS HELL AND WE’RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE!

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Holiday. Celebrate.

I bluster and I huff and I puff and I practice my sardonic glare, and most of the time I have a handle on the world enough to have a point, I think. The world – this life – is ridiculous and arbitrary and comical and fierce, and going in with eyes open is the best buffer. And when the status quo of our immediate world is held, we can carry away to thinking awareness is a defence.
But the universe has a habit of spotting the sprig of hubris.

The universe loves to wield an axe.

I am supposed to be overseas right now, adding the final glaze of tan in the kiln of a Pacific island. It was to be a four week reward to myself for having busted my ass for ten months running a business – a business that in so many ways I loved but that killed my creative urge and netted me substantially less of a salary than I had managing a video store a few years back. It was a reward to myself for having the courage to let go of security and pursue my dream to write. I was thumbing my nose at the financial doom and gloom because I had a higher calling. I’d made enough false starts – now was the time for me to make a fist of the freelance life. The Pacific jaunt was symbolic of that resolve.

I’m fundamentally a disorganised person, but with the departure date looming I was more shambolic than usual. I had failed to make so many of the necessary preparations for an overseas trip. The big things were taken care of – I sent in my passport application with plenty of time, and got injected with a handful of arm-numbing vaccines against unspeakable diseases. But I hadn’t booked any accommodation let alone done any research on the place, didn’t have a backpack, and had nothing resembling an itinerary. I hadn’t even finalised who would look after my cat two days before I was due to leave.

I wasn’t ready for this trip. And, it slowly dawned on me, I wasn’t looking forward to this trip. Even to an island paradise, travelling on your own is hard work. It takes gumption and a certain optimistic, cavalier approach. I was feeling more anxious than cavalier. I didn’t want to go.

Then my passport didn’t come through. For no apparent reason the passport office fucked up my application and it hadn’t turned up a fortnight after it was due. I called to track it down and wasn’t given any explanation, just excuses. Sometimes it happens. There are no guarantees. The dog ate it. You can’t hurry it up. You can’t come and get it. Sorry. So despite the fact that 99% of the population get their passports within the time specified, due to powers beyond apparently anyone’s control my passport would not arrive until the week after I was due to fly out. I was their monkey of the month. Since the tickets were a bargain-basement once-ever-special deal I couldn’t change the booking or get a refund. I couldn’t go on holiday.

Relief swept over me like locusts on a wheat field. I was surprised at the release I felt. I had been pressuring myself so much to let go of my uncertain future and have fun no matter what.
I wasn’t anxious about travelling on my own overseas, but the trip had come to represent the line in the sand between my old life and new, and I wasn’t ready for that definitive break. I was – and am – terrified of the next stage of my life, the one where I grind away at a future that will probably never pay off, ending in poverty, depression and in all likelihood my own prostitution. The trip became symbolic, a initially supposed to be a celebration of the decision to move on and a reward for being brave enough to make it. Time will tell, but I know myself and the uncertainty over my future would’ve made the kava especially cheek sucking.

Of course I might have been anguishing over nothing. My future might be brighter than I could dared to have dreamed. Perhaps I would have touched down in Tonga and felt the weight of the world slip seamlessly off my shoulders, revelling in the local hospitality and the tranquil pace of island life. In hindsight the trip away might have been the best thing that could possibly happen to me.

Still, holidays shouldn’t be so hard, particularly before they even start. It does seem like poetic justice that while I was busy turning a relaxing holiday into a metaphor for the worst case scenario for my future, forces outside my control were conspiring to take the option away from me anyway.

Update: Crazy geological tectonic shenanigans in the Tongan archipelago – earthquakes triggering deep sea volcano eruptions sending fierce plumes of smoke and ash into the air, according to some reports totally blocking out direct sunlight across the whole chain of islands. I take it all back universe. Sometimes you know best…

My Friendz Got Mad Skillz

My friend Sam made a velociraptor. A real big one. Like, three metres tall and a thousand billion metres long. From plywood. He cut it with a laser. This is so many kinds of awesome to my grown up self, it is unspeakable the level of awesome my child self fells about it all.

The piece was part of an exhibition/collaboration of painfully hip fashion types and artists and creating people, and was a beacon of playfulness shining brightly in an ocean of cool and shimmer. The velociraptor was awesomeness in relief.

I'm pretty sure Sam wanted to create something that was visually and spatially striking, provided we were struck to remember the joy of discovery and the excitement and wonder of childhood. Or he just likes velociraptors heaps.

And you know what - even if his only motivation for spending 60+ hours cutting and sanding and slotting together a three metre tall plywood velociraptor is his irrational love of wooden dinosaur toys, I still love it. As an object and as bona fide art. Because altogether too often art gets self important and terminally earnest, and everyone forgets how fundamentally awesome velociraptors are.

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The Social Conscience Episode

I’ve been thinking for a while that this web log feels a bit – how should I put it? – grumpy? Negative? Bashing this, complaining about that, sardonically humiliating the other thing is entertaining – and enormously cathartic, believe me – but saltandcarbon has been in existence for long enough that the time has come to give back to the community.

I’m not one for grand gestures (a la gala ball), or jumping on the bandwagon for organized community wide initiatives (although Movember warms the cockles of my usually-stone-cold-heart every time).

Instead I’m going in to bat for a condition that affects hundreds of thousands of ordinary Australians every year – a secret killer, a little addressed scourge in desperate need of a higher profile.

Make no mistake; this blog post is just the start of my campaign. Posters, advertisements in print and radio, T-shirts and door knocking, I plan on going all out to give back to the society I love and treasure.

But let me get to some statistics:
An estimated public health bill (primarily from psychiatric care) in the billions.
86% of Australians suffering related trauma before the age of 16.
Profiteering pirates raking in over 6.5 million dollars a year.

The list goes on.

White Linen Pants must be stopped.

The vision of flesh coloured underwear vainly trying to remain inconspicuous under the translucent billowing of tailored white linen is enough to induce stroke. Desperation to make the horror stop induces suicidal tendencies in the most balanced and affable individuals. Liberace is veritably demure when compared to the eyesore – nay, violent offence – that is the WLP.

But there is a cure. Simple and, unbelievably, free. All we need as a society to banish this affliction to the curios of history is a collective, concerted effort. I urge everyone to join me in saving aesthetic decency and avoiding any more unnecessary spontaneous hemorrhaging.

Every time you witness the WLP, follow these four safe, simple steps.

1. Stop dead.

2. Point dramatically with one hand, cover the mouth in an expression of repulsion with the other.

3. Hold.

4. Keep holding – be strong – until the offending WLP clad creature has scurried back to whence they came.

Together, we CAN make a difference.
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Would the real Mr Eastwood please stand up?

How much could I reasonably expect from Clint Eastwood?

His directorial debut, Play Misty For Me, featured compelling performances and hideous hair, and ground down to a predictable snoozefest before half of the hundred minutes were up.

His iconic Dirty Harry performances have dated appallingly - in no small part because their rampant chauvinism is now not even ironic.

Of course his wry humour, humanist touch and political conscience give his work as a director relevance beyond the quality of each film. Nonetheless his back catalogue is liberally littered with overly earnest misfires (Blood Work, the second half of Million Dollar Baby), genre clangers (The Rookie, Firefox) and out-and-out head scratchers (Space Cowboys).

Still, he has earned his reputation as a director always worth watching and deserves the benefit of the doubt with projects that seem fraught.

Which is why I was disappointed with Gran Torino. As a film, its...fine. The wonderful acting evens out the implausibility of the story, the excellent cinematography disguises the issues in pacing, the satisfying ending halfway substitutes for real empathy while the thematic intent covers most of the distance left. The problem is that every positive of craft is undermined by a negative of storytelling - in the end everything evens out so that it becomes eminently forgettable. I'd just come to expect more from Clint. More of a visceral experience. More of an emotional kick in the guts.

Maybe because this is his last film as an actor, he was too focused on going out with the same snarl as he started with. He's earned that right I suppose. It just doesn't make for a very complex film experience.

Homework

1. Compile a playlist of the songs most under your skin at the moment. Forget cool or hip - only the ones that really do something to your mitochondria.

2. Burn CD.

3. Label with an adjective.

4. Drop in a letterbox at random.

5. Wonder. Enjoy the wonder.

[Not new, but lovely.]

So You Think You Can Beyonce?

So, I'm pretty late on this. Like most things bling and/or popular culture. But after much urging from fashion-ally knowledgeable and hip-ly pulse taking friends, I tracked down the film clip to Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It) by Beyonce on the interwebs.


It is. Mind. Boggling.


Not mind blowing - the dancing is phenomenal and the design impressive, but not totally out of the projections of mental possibility for a film clip. But what those three posterior-centric dancing girls are actually doing, as in the meaning of their bumping and grinding, makes the mind truly boggle. It borders on porno mime. Think about that. Miming pornography. What's the point? Are they trying to tell a story? Sexless titillation? Liturgical dance in the church of booty? I have no friggin idea.


In any case it was absolutely magnetic. And I felt like I needed to apologise to some women in my life afterwards. Any women. For no particular reason. Like I said, mind boggling.

Postscript: Apparently Beyonce talks with a completely straight face about her stage alter ego Sasha Fierce. Umm...okay. Sasha. Ms Fierce.


Beyonce will refer to a particularly raunchy sequence as Sasha's idea, and credits/blames Sasha for the consumerist blingbling post-feminist parts of her work. Yeah. I'm pretty sure that doesn't make it alright. Although it does make for some fascinating crazy-watch time.