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...nor am I out of it. |
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| Jul. 25th, 2008 @ 12:20 pm À propos of nothing | |||
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| Current Music: Melbourne street sounds Google news tell me time's up for Scrabulous. Does anyone use effbee for anything else? And it seems I may get to vote against Jeff Kennett! |
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| Jul. 4th, 2008 @ 10:42 am Is That You? Is That Really You? | |||
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Current Music: Underworld -- Crocodile  Summadayze: we're so there! |
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| Jun. 27th, 2008 @ 12:59 pm Number One Hundred and Fifteen Million Two Hundred and One Thousand Four Hundred and Forty Six Duck | |||
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| Current Music: Orbital -- Kein Trink Wasser As my lovely partner has already blogged (thank-you everyone for all the nice comments), we finally went to Quanjude last night, to celebrate the first anniversary of our first date. (That occasion was actually the first time I'd ever "asked someone out", which I think says something about the non-traditional nature of my lifestyle.) Quanjude, which opened in Beijing in the third year of the Tongzhi Emperor (1864), is the Peking Duck restaurant, and the Melbourne branch—the first outside China—happens to be literally around the corner and across the street from The Aerie. We've been holding off going for a special occasion, and it was indeed. I'm not sure how much of the greeters' extravagant costuming is just for the laowai, but the service was exceptional and the food faultless. I can't recall eating more tender squid, and the duck was not only fabulous, but came with its own numbered certificate of quality. (I think we were meant to pay a little more attention to the chef as he cut it up, but we hadn't done our homework; at least they were willing to demonstrate how to make the little duck-pancake parcels that are the traditional way to eat it.) It's nice to have quality like that for our "local Chinese". While I'm blogging, I may as well clear out my open tabs.
[Update: 21:41 today.] |
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| Jun. 15th, 2008 @ 04:30 pm Natural is not always Good | |||
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| Current Music: Stunned silence I've just read an April New Yorker article by Collapse's Jared Diamond. (Coincidentally, I'd heard part of a radio interview with Diamond about this very article a month ago, in Perth, without getting the gist of it.) It's about vengeance, and is mostly concerned with describing the absurd and horrifying cycle of tit-for-tat revenge killing which plagues New Guinea to this day. What I found incomprehensibly bizarre—and the reason I'm blogging this—is that Diamond concludes the article with the story of his uncle, who chose not to avenge the murder of the uncle's mother, sister and niece during WWII and, Diamond claims, regretted that decision for the rest of his life. Diamond concludes by arguing from this observation that we shouldn't define vengeful feelings as bad; that instead we should encourage the acknowledgment of those feelings, and indeed attempt as far as possible—within the confines of State control—to satisfy them. As I see it, the desire for revenge is a wholly negative emotion. Sure, it may be "natural" in that it has been bred into us by millennia as wandering barbarians, but then so are a lot of other unwelcome behavioural traits we're struggling to eliminate from our collective psyche. The lust for vengeance is a social wrong, pure and simple—and those who indulge it are acting from weakness. I'd have thought this was a fairly uncontroversial opinion, though. Isn't it? |
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| Jun. 6th, 2008 @ 12:48 am Prince Caspian microreview | |||
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| Current Music: Melbourne night sounds Surprisingly cringe-sparse, occasionally witty, competently rendered (other than the Happy Meal lion toy) and adequately acted. All in all, a significant improvement on the first one. My big concern now though is whether I'll be able to tolerate an entire movie of Stuart Little's d'Artagnan impression. |
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| May. 27th, 2008 @ 03:00 am Is that it's Art enough? | |||
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| Current Music: Whiteslug -- Fucklove I'd largely let the Bill Henson thing pass me by until tcpip brought it up tonight. I was amused (but not surprised) to discover Rudd's level of condemnation, and dismayed (but not surprised) that the ABC clearly feels less able to take a stand than The Age. Two separate polls on ninemsn apparently showed an overwhelming number of respondents didn't think the works themselves were pornographic, and I'd certainly agree. But I would question whether "the Caravaggio Defence"—that this is Art, intended for a self-selected, Art-sensible minority—remains defence enough today, when the media have gone to so much effort to alarm the public about paedophilia (and the internet is now the gallery). It seems to me that this is a bit like the Jyllands-Posten thing: we may need to make allowances for the extreme level of brain-breaking outrage our free expression might cause to our more conservative fellows, or we risk being rightly accused of crass insensitivity. Or is that a craven argument for self-censorship? I have to admit, I'm having a hard time deciding whether I stand on this one. Thoughts? |
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