I began reading newspapers – well one newspaper, The Weekend Australian about a month ago. The world is just as interesting now as it was when I stopped thinking around 1998. (Really it is, I’m loving it.)
To my joy the Australian last Saturday has begun talking to me and about me. I discovered I am one of many Calculating Women.(Calculating Women by Anna Fenech is not online – so if you want to actually know something stop reading now.)
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I can tell a kind of story that no-one else can tell.
Because I can move around I get to see the true nature of it …. like…..I was at a musician friend’s house and 3 doors away – they were having a battle against American tanks.
I was there the day the Red Cross was bombed and 6 other places were hit the same morning
This war ‘s on a massive scale…. I drove thru Fallujah the day the contractors were hung from the bridge.. yeah I saw them… and the strangest image I’ve ever seen, and all around were armed Iraqis; well dressed young guy dancing on the roof of a burning humvee; just dancing, dancing and dancing.
I was amazed by the enthusiastic comment response to Vietwrong and am equally amazed by the sheer amount of press and airtime this war attracts….. by way of another angle on……bread and circuses – while legs really are being blown off.
It is possible that such intense and widespread amateur analysis may influence public policy in a constructive way, but so much of it seems to be self-indulgent navel gazing.
I was beginning to wonder whether I could find a useful perspective on the subject with which I could engage.
I decided to look for stories about personal experience in Iraq, however, that is a hoaxing minefield. Interesting but pointless as there is no way for me to verify any of these diaries.
Enter George Gittoes. Veteran Australian war artist who ‘worms his way in’ to the personal/private spheres of war zones in the world – and has done for the past decade. He’s been in Iraq for the last year where he is making a film about music.
He spoke to Steve Cunane on JJJ’s Hack last Thursday to promote this newest project. The interview is online until Thursday April 29 (Windows Media version; Real Player version). There is no transcript. Worth a listen.
Feeling Warm and Fuzzy
“Bang”
“No!”
“bang”
“Stop”
“bangbang”
I roll up, curl up and laugh – with relief – because she did stop – and we are in a state of grace You see her ability to torment can can exactly match my objection to it.
So. Now I’m awake. – well and truly.
Maxwell Smart – ‘The old water pistol in the face Saturday morning wake-up call’.
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In an October 1999 article in the New Statesman, published before the new generation of Web logs, Andrew Brown described the anarchic nature of blogs as “the disorganized record of the voyagings of an intelligent mind,” somewhat resembling “the captain’s log on a voyage of discovery.”
To him, blogs hearken back to this image of the origins of the World Wide Web. In blogs, one can find “that educated, anarchic spirit rather as I imagine medieval universities to have been, full of wandering scholars….” And, indeed, the anarchy and the quirkiness are some of the blog’s appeal.
Yes, and which face will the prism reflect now, and now, and now. Extremely new to Web logs I find myself enthusiastically considering the possibilities of the medium entirely undaunted by the fact that what I express here is exceeedingly unlikely to say anything new.
Again Indulge me – or not.
It is the identification of persona on a blog that interests me and the extent to which communication of personal experience can provoke interest beyond itself – and the extent to which it can be a jumping off point into the unfamiliar or the uncomfortable.
This is a pretty didactic approach and relies heavily on the supposition that blogging is, among other things an educational practice. If it is, then it can only be effective when both teacher and learner have established common ground. What I’m wondering is, just how extensive that common ground can become, and how much of the unfamiliar can therefore be absorbed?
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Let me tell you about my Mr Parish. The one you have here in what you call the blogosphere is stunningly sane. Mr Parish has hit hard times and is so tired of reading his own posts, he is not quite begging passersby to contribute – but almost. So almost, that this piece of trivia may make it past his censorial academic eye – not – and have him happily thinking with his cock.
My Mr Ken Parish is basically an endearing geek who has just recently learned how to pay his own bills. You must be aware, the man has been held together body and assets by a woman who would make minced meat of ‘She who must be obeyed’ – I can imagine a supermarket scene, and a fight to the death in front of the ‘red spot special’ frozen peas.
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