Let Me Digress

Posted By kahmelb on February 6, 2010

Why are you here?

No, I haven’t gone all zen-metaphysics on you, though do feel free to indulge, we’ve all got to get our kicks somehow.  I just want to know why you come here.  To this blog.  Or, indeed, to any blog mostly personal in nature.  Why do you read this stuff?  I looked back through some of it the other day and my opinion remains the same as it ever was.  Each post an elongated ramble in desperate search of an editor.

Still, as creator of this particular blog and author of its content, my opinion remains entirely immaterial and usually quite irrelevant.  I’ve never assumed I know more about the words I string together than anybody else does; just because I write them doesn’t mean I’ve got monopoly over their interpretation or anything.  If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then meaning must surely remain the responsibility of the one who’s stuck around long enough to read more than three sentences.

So I want to know why you come here.  Why you read this, or such like it elsewhere.

(And yes, I will be deleting smart-arse comments I don’t much like, so just pack away those mischievous ideas back in the box with your other toys right now, please.  Meaning might be up to the reader, but moderating direct feedback in a public forum is entirely under my own excessive and strictly wielded control.)

Not that I get a lot of comments.  But I do get emails and the stats are up, so I know there are readers out there somewhere, and it surprises me.  Sure, I’m hardly about to start competing with whatever food or travel blog of the moment has most recently wowed the indie online magazine crowd of Melbourne or anything, but there’s enough evidence now to prove that readers do come here, and they can’t all be my real world friends.  Especially as most of my friends can’t be bothered to come here just to read the same jokes they’ve had from me in email five times already anyway.*

(What can I say, I’m not a comedian by profession, I’m not even a particularly reliable comedic writer, so when I do latch onto a funny line, I like to re-use that bugger over and over again, until it’s gone all grey and mushy and the nutrients have been sucked right out of it.)

It’s a strange and scary thing, being read.  No, really, I mean that.  Sure, readers are the point of all writing and I will do whatever is within my power to get you all over here reading every word which ever tumbles out of my keyboard, just the same as anyone else in this business would.  But unlike other written formats, a blog is a highly personal statement of opinion and thought.  The author is right at the centre of it.  So putting it out there into the world does leave one feeling a tad… vulnerable.

And hey, I’m all for feeling vulnerable when the mood is right, but it’s not like blogging comes with safewords or anything, you know?

So why do I do it, if I’m not entirely comfortable with putting my self “out there” in the form of this kind of personal blog?  Or more to the point, why didn’t I just create an online fakie – otherwise known as a pseudonym – under which I could be as cynical and smartarse as I liked but not have to worry about the consequences of others’ judgements, and just be done with it?

Well.  Let me…  oh, you know what comes next…

I began this blog because I needed somewhere to learn some Wordpress skills, and kept on with it because I actually enjoy it.  Weird, I know, but as I was going to be chucking the words together anyway, I figured I might as well put them online.  This blog is my thinking space.  My playing ground.  The little patch of online territory where I can experiment with a thought process, detail out a new argument, or just play around with the words (and oooh, don’t they just love that, the cunning little minxes.)  And I can do it all without worrying too much about weakness in narrative or structure, or caring about the minor things, such as evidence or original thought.

You know.  Elongated rambling in need of a good edit.

But I chose to do it all under my real name because I was tired of not owning up to my own words.  I’ve set up so many fake online identities over the years that I was starting to drown in my own alter-egos.  There were so many about that at some point or another life was guaranteed to go all David Lynch and see my fakies start battling it out in some kind of “there can be only one” Highlander style world-conquest thang.  Which, if I know anything about appropriate narrative causality, was destined to be won by the darkest and nastiest of them sucking all the others’ power into itself before coming after me in a kind of post-post-modern self-referential identity play and psychological thriller…

… or was that just a dream I had?

Anyway.  Whatever it was that had me come out as myself and write online under my own name – and I’m sure there must be a medication somewhere to fix it – it does get all a bit weird at times and not only because of the ex from years unexpectedly turning up in the inbox.  Identity is such a loopy and elasticised thing.  Our sense of self, our subjectivity, its all a negotiated mix of experience and emotion, memory and learning.  A personal mash up.  A muddy path trodden between how others view us in any one place and time, and the way we understand our own good selves, twisting and turning and doing the tango around again.

So where does that leave the personal blogger and her/his stranger readers, then?

And how  does one maintain the appropriate persona relevant to the readers, but still retain the authenticity needed for the personal blogging format, anyway?

I am not this blog.  (Yes, do try to contain your disappointment.)  No more than I am any of my other writing, even the stuff I do take the time to edit, or my photography, or my stupid Facebook status lines or throw-away tweets.  I am a well-rounded, complex and complicated human being, thank you very much, the same as any of you, and not merely the sum of a few unedited, poorly structured words on your computer screen.

And yet it is me, all of it.  Me in a certain mood, at a certain time of day.  Wanting to provoke a certain reaction.  Leaving little bits of online detritus behind me, out of context glimpses, individual slices taken away from the whole, which are out there and available for anyone, any stranger, any reader to accidently stumble upon and interpret, like the words, in any which way they like.

And if the meaning of the words is entirely up to the interpretation of the reader, then what about the one who writes them and puts herself “out there” in doing so…?

Or have I just gone all zen-metaphysics on you after all?

Time to do what I always do when the topic of conversation starts to look deeper than your average puddle: change the subject and move right on along.

Next week, kiddies, I promise you pictures…

Kath

*  Except for the delectable Ange, blog connoisseur extraordinaire.  If there were a Master Chef for bloggers, she’d be Matt Preston.  Only prettier.  And with even better cravats.

Category: Writing words | 2 Comments »
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Posted By kahmelb on January 28, 2010

What a week it’s been for middle-aged white men playing power games, hey?

First the Tonester declares virginity is the greatest gift a girl can give, effectively proving he’s either never done it with a virgin or else he’s dated some truly shit gift-givers in his time.  Not that I want to cast allusions on Tony Abbott’s previous sexual partners, but surely anyone over the age of twenty-five is old enough to realise that, firstly, it’s far more fun bonking someone who actually knows what they’re doing and, secondly, the worth of any woman at any level of sexual maturity can not and should not ever be reduced to the mere presence of a mostly hidden bit of skin, or lack thereof.

And if we’re talking the greatest gifts to give, I’d prefer Johnny Depp wearing only a pair of tight jeans, in need of a hug and with a case of amnesia, thank you very much.*

For all those who missed it (lucky buggers) – while I was busy assuming the greatest gift I could give anyone would be my undying loyalty or never-ending love or intellectual companionship or whole-hearted life-long devotion or even the sparkling brilliance of my wit and personality (too far?  Really?), the leader of the Opposition was telling that venerable guide to modern femininity – or, at least, guide to killing time while waiting for your fish and chips – the Australian Women’s Weekly, that the greatest gift I was born to give is an awkward, un-fun squishy evening sometime during my later teenage years, probably in the back seat of a sub-two thousand dollar car.  Who wudda thunk it?

Still, at least he was being honest, and fairly circumspect for a  committed Catholic with three daughters who has been better known for fighting his ideological battles over women’s bodies in far more aggressive terms in the past.

In other words, he could have been much worse.

Like his colleague, Senator George Brandis.

Brandis, in case you didn’t notice (and really, we all wish we hadn’t), just couldn’t help himself but declare to the world at large that, in his opinion, our country’s Deputy Prime Minister had no right to comment on the aforementioned Opposition leader’s comments, because she doesn’t have any children.  No, no other reason.  Just the fact she doesn’t have kids.  That’s all.

So I, for one, would just like to declare to the world at large, or at least those of you who stumble occasionally upon this blog, that George Brandis doesn’t have any right to comment on Julia Guillard’s right to comment, because he is a certifiable moron and a complete dickhead.

Yeah, I know, I’m just the Queen of sharp and well-paced political satire today.  Shouting “hey Brandis, you’re a dickhead!” has to be right up there with the greatest satirists of all time, or at least worthy of a Chaser sketch, doesn’t it?

Anyway, I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t tell you the fertility status of any of the men in Parliament.  I never actually think about whether our Prime Minister has children or not – though, strangely I seem to know a lot about his pets.  And while I’m aware of Joe Hockey’s parental status, it’s only because he tweets about it, otherwise I wouldn’t notice.  See, to my mind, the ability to breed does not a good political leader make.  Or vice versa.

Indeed, to me it all seems rather irrelevant.

But this must be the week of middle-aged males proving your erstwhile blog-host here wrong, because this isn’t the first time Julia Guillard has had to stare down that astonished “but you have no children!” cry, as if the sight of a woman with a career but without any kids is somehow particularly confronting and even just a wee bit scary to some of the men around about her.  Which says a lot more about those men than it does about her, really.

Of course, all this politics stuff paled away in comparison to the big announcement sometime not long after 4am this morning Aussie time.  After much tech-geek speculation, the twenty-first century’s Bill Gates – Steve Jobs – revealed just how significant the gender imbalance in Apple’s marketing departments really is.  In particular, those departments where they come up with new product names.

iPad. Yes, you heard correct.  They named the thing iPad.  With all that design genius at their geeky fingertips, the company which reshaped commercial music distribution and has cornered the smart-phone market worldwide put their collective heads together and came up with a name for their new tablet-gadget.

And the best they could do is iPad.

Oh dear.

As you can imagine, the internet was full-up with jokes about extra absorbency before the hour was out.  When I awoke this morning, I had to fight my way through a series of feminine hygiene gags before I could even get to the actual news the jokes were about.

Now kiddies, I’ve no idea on whether the, uh, iPad (no, I’m never going to be able to say that without smirking; yes, I can be really juvenile) is any good or not.  Looks just like a big iTouch to me.  Which might be fun.  Let’s wait six months and see what the early adopters say before deciding to commit any hard-earned funds, hmmm?  Fact is, the name is far more interesting, and I’m prepared to lay money – yes, my own and all – on the fact this much hyped, long-awaited, resistance-is-futile product was named by either:

a)     a series of committees made up of balding middle-aged men in suits who still can’t understand what everybody is joking about; or

b)    one lone woman with a very wicked sense of humour.

Good on her, I say.

In the end, my favourite bit of gender bollocks this week (yes, of course the pun was entirely intended, what else do you expect?), would have to be the Australian Classification Board’s decision to ban depictions of female orgasm because – and this is just wrong on so many levels you either have to laugh, or bash your head against the brick wall they call modern enlightenment – they figured female ejaculation was the same as urination.  And that it is an “abhorrent” depiction.

Speechless.

Still speechless.

No, it’s not going away, no matter how long I close my eyes.  It’s real.  Really real.  Fact.  Truth.  I am not pulling your leg, or any other part of your anatomy, about this, I swear.

And don’t even get me started on how they’re beginning to ban depictions of women with small breasts.  Yes, you heard me right.  According to the Australian Classification Board, A-cup sized women must be stopped!

Now, I can understand members of, say, the Taliban in Afghanistan being that ignorant of female physiology.  You know, if all you’ve known all your life is a culture which traditionally devalues the female and which separates the genders with ferocity, then such ignorance and bias would be pretty much expected.  But the Australian Classification Board?  The official Governmental  body responsible for dictating what you adults are allowed to see, and not see, in this country?  So totally and completely ignorance of the basic biological science behind the operation of the female body?  To peddle the kind of misogynistic attitudes towards female sexuality that we might expect from, well, the Taliban?

I tell you, I am not making this up!

And that’s not even touching – touching, ha, get it? Get it?  Huh? – the fact the censorship already involved in banning anything portraying activities even the slightest bit more adventurous than basic male-female missionary position with the lights out is already eding towards the extreme in this country.  This is the same censorship they’re planning to turn onto your internets, kiddies.  Don’t forget that, now.

Ah, what a week.  The middle-aged white men in suits must be exhausted!  They’ve been so busy, the scurrelious wee things.  They do get so excited when they think they’re winning.

So we’ll just wait till they’re asleep.  Then we’ll knock them on their shiny, balding heads and start running the country properly, hey?

Okay, meet you down the docks at midnight then…

Kath

.

* The Johnny Depp thing is not my line.  A good friend of mine came up with it and I thought it worth stealing.  Well, she doesn’t have a blog.  It’s not like she’d be using it anyway.

.

Category: Unsolicited opinion | No Comments »
Tags: Apple, Australian Classification Board, censorship, gender, internet filtering, iPad, Julia Guillard, politics, Senator Brandis, Tony Abbott

Posted By kahmelb on January 11, 2010

So, break’s over then.  Time to head back into the breach.  The words are piling up and somebody needs to do something with them or else there’ll be all sorts of havoc in the world.  Can’t have stray, unclaimed words flitting about all over the place just waiting to get into the wrong hands now, can we?  Can you imagine what sort of chaos would ensue if some kind of generic evil-dude bad guy got a hold of them? 

Or worse yet, politicians?

It’d be spin and chaos, I tell you.  Spin and chaos.

But anyway.  Holiday over.  Time to get back to work.  Which is obviously why I’m sitting here writing this entirely unpaid blog and having fun stretching awkward analogies further than they should ever be allowed to go.  Because there’s real work to do, but my brain is still well entrenched in holiday mode and some funny bugger has stuck gum in the on-switch (okay, it was me) so now it’s permanently stuck in Procrastination Mode.

Hmmm.  Yes, you’re right.  I really do need to tone down the ridiculously strained metaphors before I end up drowning in a sea of my own forced rhetoric, unable to grasp the life-saving buoy of plain language… 

…Um. 

Sorry. 

Won’t happen again, I promise.*

So, 2010.  The second decade of the twenty-first century and we still don’t have hover-cars.  But we do have a changing world facing varying degrees of social upheaval due in significant part to the rise of mass communications technologies and the globalised connections such bring and that, at least, makes for interesting times.  So, you know, I’m not disappointed much about the hover-cars.  Really.  Interesting times are far more fun.

I spent some time thinking about such weighty concerns in the dying months of last year.  Well, to be truthful, what I was actually doing was seeing out the previous year by curling up in a big armchair reading Wolf Hall, but if that doesn’t involve the pondering of interesting times amidst a changing world, I don’t know what does.  Sure, it was a book detailing a period near five hundred years into our collective pasts, but just insert your favourite “the internet = the printing press in terms of social change” reference here and then you draw the parallels. 

You know, it’s not every day that me and the judges of the Man-Booker prize actually agree on what should be The Book of the Year, but I do have to say that 2009 was one of those years when they got it sooo right.  Hilary Mantel’s magnificent novel kicked the literary butts that was everything else I read last year.  Yes, up to and including that hysterical little pamphlet by Senator Stephen “Watch out or I’ll filter you next” Conroy, Measures to improve safety of the internet for families, which just made me laugh and laugh and laugh.  Until I realised he actually meant it.  Then I just couldn’t stop crying.

So you should all go read it.  (Wolf Hall, I mean, not the Government’s blueprint for censoring the internet and imposing restrictions on your freedom of speech and access to information, all according to someone else’s morality.)  And not only because the novel is a page-turning masterpiece written in a delicious present-tense and delectable language which never puts a foot wrong and makes the past both immediate and fascinating. 

You all know Henry 8 and the six doomed wives (really, ladies; you’d think by about wifey three or four you might have started to detect a pattern, don’t you?)   While the odd historian or two might have tried to point out that the world as those knew it then was one of intense change and social upheaval, what with the break from the Church, the realignment of political power structures and the first signs of a recognisably modern social organisation slotting into place – we all know none of that stuff is ever quite as interesting as the affairs and divorces and general cutting off of heads, don’t we?

Except along has come Hilary Mantel to remind us that power and politics are always, always far sexier than any mere tale of bulging codpieces and heaving bosoms and the odd sharp axe.

So go read Wolf Hall.  It is magnificent and it blew my mind with its brilliant detail and sharp cunning and, if nothing else, reading about the interesting times half a millennia ago might just distract you from the interesting times going on right now.

Or not.  But what the hey, worth a try.

Anyway, I’m back, I’m here and I’m procrastinating.  And in a world of Spin and Chaos, when our rulers no longer burn heretics in the street for their dangerous political opinions but instead use words – as Thomas Cromwell at the heart of Henry’s court once showed them how – in their attempts to manipulate how they are perceived and control how you will perceive them, then we’ve all got to think as smart as the wordsmiths.  For only those who understand the spin will ever be able to navigate the chaos, you know.

2010 is set to be an interesting year amidst interesting times.  An election year (well probably), where in the one corner we have an ultra-conservative Christian who wants to impose his personal moral worldview upon the whole country, and in the other corner we have… an ultra-conservative Christian who wants to impose his personal worldview upon the whole country.  A year in which the media moguls of the past will no doubt ratchet up their attempts to cling on desperately to that past, threatening to scuttle public broadcasting, free press and quality journalism along the way.  A year in which we will hear a lot from many but be told far less, and it will be entirely up to us to take responsibility for our own understanding.

So, you know, it’ll be a year of building on more of the same.  And I, for one, am totally looking forward to it.

So let’s get cracking, peoples.  Onwards, into the fray…

Kath

* Actually, that’s a lie.  It will happen again.  Lots.  Heh, sorry.

Category: Stuff read, Unsolicited opinion | 1 Comment »
Tags: 2009, 2010, Booker, censorship, Hilary Mantel, New Year, no clean feed, open internet, Wolf Hall

Posted By kahmelb on December 26, 2009

Ho, ho, berloody ho.

Well, it’s December 26.  And you know what that means, don’t you.  Yes, that’s right, it’s time to say…

Happy Boxing Day everyone!

Yes, once again we reach that time of year when we all try to recover from too much eating, too much drinking and too little success in avoiding old Uncle “Groper” Jim at the family Christmas Party.  This also means it is time for me to send you my traditional Boxing Day indigestible greetings and alcoholic wishes.

As this is such a reflective, spiritual, peace-love-and-mungbeans-baby time of year, obviously the first thing to do when meeting and greeting one another the day after Christmas is to compare gifts.  So, did you all get good pressies yesterday, or just the same old crap from maiden aunts’ who misspell your name even after three decades of giving you the same pair of socks every bloody year?

(I’m a little pissed off, actually.  According to my meticulously kept wall chart, I have in fact been nice on exactly 2.3 more occasions this year than I have been nasty, so Santa’s totally ripped me off, the fat old bastard.)

Anyway.  Boxing Day.  We all know about Christmas, that whole pagan festival to Coca-Cola merchandising thing (apparently there’s even some kind of religious significance, so I’m told.  Go figure.)  Very little is known, however, about Boxing Day itself.  So in the interests of being a know-it-all-sod, I’ve compiled a few simple facts:

One: it’s a British-Commonwealthy type of thing, so therefore all of you in the rest of the world, like America and tiny places such as that, will have absolutely no clue what I’m talking about.

Two: besides being well loved and rigorously defended as a natural born right, that is, it’s an extra public holiday, nobody in the British-Commonwelathy type countries seems to know what it’s all about either.

Three: it’s actually derived from the tradition of giving the, *ahem*, “lower classes” gifts (read: charity) the day after Christmas.

Hey, I’m serious here.  I’ve done some real research, and all.  (Okay, so maybe I just checked out Snopes and their Boxing Day research, but it’s more than you did, I bet.  And always remember – this is the internet.  When you can’t be bothered doing something yourself, there’ll always be someone else who’s done it for you.)

Presents to equals were always given on or before Christmas and the poor got the left-overs the day later.  I can see the logic, of course.  Imagine you’re a feudal lord.  You’ve just received a truck load (well, a medieval horse-drawn cart load) of unwanted socks from some aunt who’s always spelt your name wrong and now you don’t know what to do with them.  At the same time, the peasants on your land have been getting a bit tetchy lately and tend to glower darkly at you whenever you run over one of their children whilst driving past in your carriage on your way to have sex with the local virgin, as befits your lordly feudal rights.  For some reason, they seem to have been spending a lot of time sharpening those sickles and pitchforks recently, and it’s not even harvest season yet.  Hmmm…

So what do you do?  The solution should be obvious.  You can take the opportunity to appear the philanthropic and generous lordship, plus solving your sock-overload problems all at the same time.  Perfect.

Of course, you may still have to knock off the heads of a few peasant-revolt ringleaders, not to mention sending your troops in for a bit of rape and pillage just to teach them a lesson afterwards, but I’m sure the socks will make them all feel that bit better about the whole oppression thing.

Just an aside, Boxing Day is also known as St. Stephens Day in Britain, so obviously Stephen is the patron saint of middle-class guilt.  Hey, somebody’s got to do it.

So with that in mind, I now have to depart in a flurry of well-wishes, expensive Christmas gifts and general good-will to all mankind…

… hehe, okay, okay, my little joke.  I’ll just bugger off with my usual mumbled “yeah, merry whatever, catch you round sometime then, I guess” instead.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and most importantly of all, a rollicking Boxing Day to all.

Kath

<<insert Christmas picture of your choice here… or, alternatively, this being Boxing Day, a picture of a Box>>

Category: Unsolicited opinion | No Comments »
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Posted By kahmelb on December 16, 2009

… is another angry, opinionated online comment decrying the mandatory internet filtering everybody’s most un-favourite communications minister announced yesterday would go ahead in this country.

And far be it from me to deny the internet just what it needs.

Yet while I desperately want to make some intelligent and original comment which changes the course of what may be to come and has a real impact on all those powers-that-be (yeah, I know, and I’d also like to give Sen. Conroy a right smack across the face until he sees sense too, but it’s not going to happen either – still, doesn’t hurt to dream), I’ve a wee problem.  I’m not actually sure what to say.

Yes, I’m at a loss for words, which is something I’ve only ever heard other people say.

Okay, you can get up off the floor now.  I know the idea that I might struggle to find something to say is as surprising as, well, a major political party in this country not feeling the need to pander to the extremist Christian-right, but that’s just the mood I’m in this morning.  The fact is, it doesn’t matter what I say, or what I do, or what I believe.  It doesn’t even really matter what I vote.  I can blog to my heart’s content, but it still won’t make any difference.

Yeah, I’m just one big disillusioned cynic today.  Next thing you know, I’ll be handing in a donkey vote.

<<cue joke about all the donkeys on the ballot here>>

The Australian Government’s trial of its proposed mandatory filtering system has come to a close and the results were announced yesterday in the kind of online flurry that shut down the Dept’s own website.  Which is kind of ironic, when you think about it.  And sure, I know we shouldn’t be surprised, I know we all were on some level aware that the Government were so hot on this issue that it didn’t matter what the results of the trial were it was going to be declared a success anyway.  And I know, because I’ve been following the issue, that the trial itself was inherently flawed.

I know this move was inevitable, because it has nothing to do with common sense and everything to do with politics and political manoeuvring, but I guess I still had some kind of hope that a rational decision would be taken.

Yeah, that’s me, one big ball of political naivety.

See, there are so many things wrong with this mandatory internet filtering scheme that I’m at a loss to know where to start.  Morally, ethically, technically, the implications of this upon Australia are vast, and really bloody scary.  So instead of me ranting on and repeating only what’s been said by greater experts elsewhere, I’m going to link to said experts, or at least the knowledgeable types I’ve been reading in the last hour or so and thus still have their links to hand, and I command you all to go read them.

You need to pay attention here, because this is really freakin’ important:

www.nocleanfeed.com

www.somebodythinkofthechildren.com

http://www.inquisitr.com/52298/australia-confirms-censorship-plans-tells-fibs-on-the-filtering-trial/

http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/12/16/net-filtering-wont-work-so-what-is-conroy-up-to/

http://www.efa.org.au/

http://www.google.com.au/ – hey, you’ve got fingers, you know how to type, and there’s a massive amount of info out there,  just search for your own stuff, whydoncha?

Right, finished all your reading?  Because you’re not getting any dessert until you do, you know.

See, illegal material in this country is already that – illegal.  It doesn’t matter if it’s online or printed on a bit of sliced tree – it’s still illegal, and the law can already be used against it.  It’s part of our justice system right now.  And that being the case, it seems this internet filtering scheme has little to do with stopping access to or distribution of illegal material, because we already have laws in place to do that, and lots to do with blocking material which is perfectly legal, just deemed somehow “unsuitable” by prevailing powers of the day.  We’re talking about the imposition of someone else’s moral worldview upon the entire country.  About censorship and controlling access to opposing arguments.  About freedom of speech, and the removal of it, and the ways in which democracy is diminished.

And frankly, if it comes down to blocking material which is legal but just not to the tastes of whichever politicians happen to be in power, then yeah, I get worried.  Let’s face it, the vast majority of pollies in this country, no matter from which side of politics, are: (a) old, (b) male, (c) Christian, and (d) conservative.  So forgive me if I seriously doubt that their moral worldview is going to in any way coincide with mine.

Anyway, upon the announcement I immediately did what any active, concerned Australian citizen with a net presence must do when confronted by such a threat to the democratic processes of her country.  I added a “No Clean Feed” ‘twibbon’ to my Twitter avatar, then blocked @KevinRuddPm from my feed.

Yeah, that’ll show ‘em.

Early in this blog I shot off a smartarse comment (I know, me being sarcastic, who wudda thunk it?) about it not mattering what I do or what I vote, because it wouldn’t change anything.  Sure, I was being deliberately cynical so as to get a cheap laugh (not to mention find a way to slip in that donkeys-on-the-ballot joke; yeah, I just crack me up at times, too), but as an individual who is confronted by a united front of ultra-conservatism right across the political spectrum, it certainly can feel that way.

But.

That’s no excuse not to tell ‘em what you think anyway.  And who knows, maybe if every one of us all so cynical individuals concerned about this actually took the time to write to their MP, then we’d no longer be mere single voices flailing in the wind, but actually become one great big bloody shout.

Hmmm, so maybe I’m not the totally jaded cynic I otherwise contrive to appear.  Regardless of that, the EFA’s No Clean Feed site has a good list of the guys you really want to send your letters of complaint to, if you are so inclined.

Go here and write lots, my budding little activists:  http://nocleanfeed.com/action.html

And while you’re at it, go sign that GetUp campaign.

But most of all, just go read.  Inform yourselves.  Don’t take my word for any of this, go use those Googling fingers of yours and find out for yourselves,  Check out the links above.  Go find others.  Actually read the results of the trial.  And don’t just read all this stuff, read it sceptically.  Think about it.  Question it.  Ask yourselves what are the implications which are unsaid.

Make up your own minds.  While you still have access to an internet where you can still go find multiple  viewpoints.

Catch you next time…  unless the Government add me to the blacklist in the meantime…

Kath.

Category: Unsolicited opinion | 1 Comment »
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Posted By kahmelb on December 12, 2009

Tits. Yes, I’ve seen a few recently, out in public and openly bared in all their natural glory, and I’m not talking about breast-feeding mothers here. I’m not even talking about down at that nude beach those friends of mine keep trying to get me to (and no, they’ll not succeed; there are enough beached whales already in this world, the animal rights people really do not need to be confused by further false alarms.) Hell, I’m not even talking about that enviro-festival up on the border where all the hippie-types strip down and commune with nature, so the rest of us don’t have to.

I’m talking about rock gigs. Feminist, lesbian, punk rock gigs, what more.

Ended up at Ladyfest the other week. No, don’t bother asking how a thirty-something ex-punk-rocker like myself found herself trying not to look too old amongst the young ’uns loitering down the front while bands kitted up and tore down. I was there to work and so stuck to the sidelines, only able to look on with an envious sigh as the more youthful music lovers lingered in between sets to make sure they were in a good possie for the next mosh. Yes, it used to be me, loitering away up front and securing my place, reading to slam into my fellows with a wilful glee the moment the first chord ripped out. (Actually, come to think of it, a week or so later down at the Espy, it was me. Heh.) This night, though, I was stuck babysitting an overly expensive moving-images camera and so was forced to actually act my age, for once. Which was a shame, because it looked like a damn good mosh pit, too.

Now, I referred to the gig as a feminist, lesbian rock gig because the four day festival of which it was a part was (a) feminist, and (b) queer-themed. Which is obviously not to say everybody in the bands or audience were there for that purpose, or indeedy, were themselves either (a) feminist, or (b) queer-themed. But that still does not explain why my dearest straight-as-an-arrow blokey bloke of a man who doesn’t even like punk much spent half the night being hit on, while I didn’t even turn a single eye. He got chatted up, I didn’t even get a wink.

 Ladies, please. Humph.

Anyway, I’ve climbed up the tangent tree again, and found myself stuck there with the meowing kittehs. So where was I? Oh, that’s right…

The wilful displaying of female chests in public.

It was, I am happy to say, all in the age-old punk tradition of sticking a finger up at convention, with the young gals taking a good, blunt metaphorical hatchet to concepts as silly as ‘ladylike’ and ‘appropriate female behaviour’. When the brilliantly loud and mohawked bass player in the very excellent screaming band on stage called out for “all you [deleted in case the kids read this – ed] down the front, show us your tits!”, they did. Boobs everywhere, empowered and unashamed, but all certainly within context, while the one old(er) chick in the room who had seen it all before – i.e. me – nodded approvingly, if with something of a world-weary sigh.

Ah, to be young and radical once again, before pragmatism and an appreciation for the complexity of human beings and their social organisation starts to cloud your worldview. Okay, so I don’t particularly see this world as in any way altered now that a couple more sets of breasts have been flashed about at what was ultimately a rather small gig, nor do I believe it can be ultimately construed as a feminist act. Or even a punk act, come to think of it. But to the young punk rockers down the front, it did have meaning, even if only as shock value. To them, it was all about refusing to do what was expected, refusing to be meek or mild, modest or innocent girls, and instead screaming out at the world and not giving a damn. A way of saying ‘fuck you’ to everyone, bless them.

What can I say, it was punk rock, and the ghost of Johnny Rotten (yes, he is dead, and I don’t care that John Lydon is still breathing, Mr. Rotten has long since left the building) would no doubt entirely approve.

Or at least be getting in a good perve.

Because the intent might have been the polar opposite, but it really didn’t look much different from a Girls Gone Wild set up there, I have to say. Well, okay, maybe the fake tans weren’t quite as orange and the lack of obvious implants were made up for by the size of the Mohawks in attendance, but aside from that… Let’s just say, the question has been asked – no, not by me, but by those within my acquaintance who for some idiotic reason think I know something of substance about this stuff, more fool them - as to what is the actual difference? You know, when it comes to flashing your -

Let me just stop you right here. Not to hijack the subject of my own blog post or anything, but to be drawn into a theoretical compare and contrast between feminist punk gigs and raunch culture is just delving back into a useless argument.

I’ve written on raunch culture and my conflicted relationship to it in the past. You all know I’ve no fondness for the cult of spinning around poles and depending upon someone else’s levels of desire to feel good about yourself. Yet I’ve also known a good many who do spin about poles and, I have to say, they’re generally a good bunch. Sure, we rarely see ocular cavity-to-ocular cavity when it comes to realistic representations of female sexuality, but I wouldn’t under-estimate those fluttery-eyelash, string bikini chicks either. Not in the least because I’m as much a guilty-as-charged part of the raunch production process as they are.

Look, if you want to pay me to photograph you, then I’ll take whatever pictures you want. I don’t care if you’re wearing nothing but a fake tan and CFM twinkle in the eye, or if you’re kitted up in full deep-sea diving gear complete with flippers and big metal helmet. If it needs me to photoshop the life out of it, with all the electronic tucks, tweaks and airbrushing available to the modern photographer, then I’ll do that too. Whatever you want, girls. Your choice, you choose. Because I know you will anyway.

(Only don’t tell me it’s empowering. And don’t tell me that pole stuff is for health and fitness reasons, either. Nothing involving the wearing of six inch stilettos can be good for your health, and anything which is wholly dependent upon the desire or approval of an entire other gender is empowering. And oh, while we’re at it, if you’re going to kiss another girl, then do it because you find her hot and sexy and you just want to smack lips with the honey. Do not do it just because you think the boys will like it or cheer you on or approve of you if you do. That is not a good reason to kiss anybody. Really. Please understand that, because sometimes I really start to despair about any progress made in the last thirty years, at all.)

Um. Sorry. Got a bit distracted there. So, kittehs, where were we again? Up the tree and awaiting the fireman? Well, lets hope he has a really long ladder, because I’ve no idea how to get out of this one…

Thing is, I don’t care if you get your boobs out in the name of feminism or the name of FHM. It’s neither going to change the world nor destroy it, whichever it is you do. My sympathies happen to lie with the punk chicks, but if yours are different, then how is that a problem? Just because we’re the same gender, and just because we each class ourselves as modern, independent, intelligent, thinking women, does that mean we have to agree on what we like, how we like it, or our preferred ways of telling that to the world?

The idea that we can split the world into two homogenous groups labelled male and female and then debate the norms of human societal interaction based upon them is entirely old school, my freaky friends of the internet. And it’s ridiculous. Any ‘gender’ which is supposed to encompass both the likes of me and my fellow punk rock chicks, and also include the pretty little blondes with the fake boobs up on the poles, is never going to be a workable category upon which to base intricate social theory. 

Gender is a sliding scale of individual human difference and it’s about time we celebrated that, instead of viewing the world as one of two halves. And the girls on the poles can be as feminist as I am, even as I slam about in the mosh.

‘Till next folks…

Kath

Category: Unsolicited opinion | 2 Comments »
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Posted By kahmelb on December 4, 2009

 I’m human capital, I’ll have you know.  My employer’s most valuable asset.  Weeelll, me and everyone else in the organisation, obviously.  I certainly do not mean to suggest that I, and I alone, as I sit over there at my desk in the darkest corner of the open-plan clicking quietly about the interwebs (researching, I swear) then typing really fast, am somehow solely responsible for any happy-balance-sheet moments of company success.

Indeed, I suspect that if there were some kind of individual influence ranking of direct-impact-on-company-success from top to bottom, I’d probably be strong competition for the position of hanging off the final rung by the fingertips.  I know I probably shouldn’t say that out loud in a public forum just in case somebody from said workplace is cyber-loitering nearby hunting for reasons to ‘rightsize’, but what can I say, I’m not much of a corporate ladder climber these days.  Used to be, then came to my senses and gave it up in a fit of “oh, who gives a toss, it’s not like it’s actually important.”  As my nearest and dearest will no doubt go to all lengths to explain to you, my ego does not need the status of a fancy job title to inflate itself beyond all reasonable proportions.

(Note to any colleagues and fellow employed persons who share my primary employer: I clearly didn’t mean any of that.  It is what’s known in technical circles as “a joke”.  Obviously what I do for the company is vitally important, if in its own wee, unique way, and you really do need to keep paying me.  Please.)

Anyway, back to the whole human cattle – oh, sorry, I meant human capital – thing.  Or should I say, Human Capital.  (‘Tis important to upper case these things, so that we cogs in the big Human Capital wheel can feel all worthwhile.)  It’s a common enough phrase here in the Land of the Corporates.  Up there with Stakeholders (anyone who might become pissed off and scuttle your project, so who needs to be kept favourable throughout); Communications Management Strategies (a list of all the things you are going to do so the aforementioned Stakeholders don’t suffer any shocks, allowing them to retain that favourable warm glow, not get pissed off or scuttle your project); or my old favourite, Knowledge Management (the job description I somehow keep ending up with, but still don’t understand what in the hell it’s actually meant to mean.)

Still, there have been far, far greater talents than mine who have documented the rise of weasel-words in our workplaces and government and their insidious impact.  So lets not get caught up in all that right here and now, kiddies, because I’ll only come off looking second-rate (and you really don’t need further proof of that, I’m sure.)  There’s only one phrase I’m particularly concerned with today, and that’s the one heading up this elongated ramble, inevitably accompanied by the tag-line big organisations love to utter when trying to prove why you should work for them. 

You know.  “Our employees are our greatest asset.”

Nice.  Don’t know about you, but I’m not sure I like being ranked alongside the computers and the office chairs.  (Hey, this one can swivel!  That one can tilt back!  Here’s one which needs re-gassing.  Oh.)  Assets can be sold off.  Depreciated.  Trashed without thought or concern when their worn-out, burnt-out, empty-vessel carcasses can no longer provide any worth to the organisation which sapped them of all energy and enthusiasm in the first place, back when they were all brand new and shiny.  Assets are there for one purpose only – to be used to the full extent of all they can provide by the organisation which bought them and then be chucked out and replaced when they no longer have anything left worth giving. 

You see why I start to get worried when organisations refer to the human beings working for them as assets, hmmm?

Now, before I go any further and suddenly find myself on the unemployment queue, I want to point out that my current primary employer is decidedly not one of those organisations.  Okay, so they have a few terminology issues from time to time, but it stays entirely with the terminology, and in practice we employees are actually treated like human beings with something valuable to contribute.  You know, as opposed to office furniture.  And no, I’m not just saying that because I’m somewhat more net-savvy than that guy who boasted about faking a sickie on Facebook for his boss to see, either. 

Fact is, I spent a lot of years at university when I was a young ‘un, and one of the by-products of that experience – and I’m talking aside from a hangover lasting as long as my undergraduate degree and a tendency these days to wax lyrical when drunk about long-forgotten cultural theorists I barely understood as a third year and certainly don’t remember with any accuracy now – is a decidedly picky attitude when it comes to where I’ll work and who I’ll work for.  Sure, I might have an over-developed sense of my own worth, but at least it translates into a very clear outcome (and we like clear outcomes here in Corporateworld). 

If your company doesn’t cut the mustard in regards to people policies, positive culture and supportive working environment, then I’m outta there, baby.  See, I got me some choices, lads, and I ain’t afraid to make ‘em.  Being miserable in the place you spend most of your days is a pretty darn, well, miserable way to spend most of your days, so there’s no way I’m hanging around to work for anyone who doesn’t treat me nice. 

And yet even while I watch those words appear on the screen before me as I type, I’m very aware of just how lucky I am to be able to carry on like that.  So before you start making like an inspirational poster and throwing random aphorisms at me about how we all make our own luck and the harder we work the luckier we are and all that, let me quickly inject some complicated reality into your life-by-cliché worldview.

I have, yes, and do, yes, and always will, of course, work bloody hard so as to ensure I do have said choices, even the tough ones, and that I can live my life the way I want to live it.  Yay to all that, and so on and so forth.  But it would be entirely remiss of me not to acknowledge that I’ve been able to get myself to such a place because I had the good fortune – you know, luck – to be born into a nice, white, middle-class, educated, Melbourne suburban family which was completely obsessed with learning and education, and who raised me to understand that the only limitations on what I can do in my life are the ones I place upon it myself.

And that, my friends and fellow cyber-citizens, was nothing to do with me, and everything to do with chance of birth.  As the late, great, Bill Hicks once said: “ever notice how people who believe in creationism look really unevolved?” 

… oh, sorry, wrong quote.  I meant this one, when he was asked if he were proud to be American:  “I didn’t have a lot to do with it, you know.  My parents fucked here, that’s about all.”

(Heh, okay, so I’ll leave it to you draw the tenuous links between that quote and today’s subject.  I just wanted an excuse to quote Hicks.)

I know that there are a great many people who do not have the choices I have and who never had the chance to learn how to create them.  I know there those who were never taught how to learn – because learning stuff is just about approach, and naught to do with any inherent or natural ability – or who never got through high school, let alone had a family support them through six years of university.  Who might have been told all sorts of things, but never that they could do anything, so long as they worked to make it happen themselves, and that nothing was stopping them doing that.

I know there are so many who really don’t give a damn about “Employer of Choice” when going for a job, who really just want the chance to work hard, on anything, for anyone.  Who just want a job.  Any job.  And who never get it.

And I know that there, but for the grace of god…

But anyway.  Back to the innuendo and cheap sarcasm.  Me and the computers and the desk chairs are working hard to keep the company’s owners in the lifestyle to which they are accustomed, and that’s okay, because they treat me nice, even if they do have a few taxonomic issues as to how they group their corporate assets. 

So remind me, next time we’re standing by the bar discussing half-forgotten cultural theorists, to have a word in the ear of someone higher up that ladder of influence about altering the terminology of the workplace.  I mean any workplace.  All workplaces.  The human beings who work for you are not assets, or capital, or a mere input line on the balance sheet.  They are human beings providing a contribution they want to know is valued.

Treat them as such and they’ll never show up as red on the P&L, that I can guarantee you.

‘Till next…

Kath

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Posted By kahmelb on December 1, 2009

I hate to admit it, but I kind of, uh, missed the spill this morning. 

I know, I know, I utterly failed in my role of politics nerd and all round news junkie.  It pains me, but what could I do?  Some bugger at my place of principle employment insisted upon holding a meeting right when the Libs were holed up sans-iPhones (who was the lucky bugger who got to frisk the shadow front bench then?) and voting upon which century they wanted to remain in.  (Answer: not this one.  Indeed,not even the last one.)  It turns out – and I know this might come as a shock to you, but I learnt this lesson the hard way this morning – that not everyone is obsessed with the Canberra circus and how its reported in the medias.  Go figure.

Anyway, I couldn’t get the meeting rescheduled, so I missed it all.  Yes, even the live stream on Crikey.  Bah!

Still, I was glad to find my dark and delightfully dreadful co-conspirators of the online world were well ahead of the game.  I returned from aforementioned meeting to a flurry of emails trailing out the bottom of the inbox, all bursting with tantalising subject-bar excitement such as “OMG”, “Sit down first” and “End of Days”.  So before even glancing at any one of the myriad of favoured news media selections, all I had to do was open even just one of my awaiting emails to know all I needed to know.

I clicked on an email at random.  It simply said:  “Noooooooooooo!!!!!”

I knew immediately:  it was Abbott.

At which point ensued much hilarity and general giggling in fits of hysterical disbelief, followed by great deals of cyber-bandwidth expended upon electronic conversations with the like-minded and similarly gobsmacked.  Six or so hours later and I’m only just now calming down enough to blog about it.

Now, I’m not going to go into any kind of detailed analysis as to what this lurch back to the conservative end of the medieval era means for the Libs, the Government, potential election triggers, urban-rural party splits, stray republican hopes or democracy in general across this wide brown land girt by sea, because let’s face it, there’s been a hell of a lot of words already written on this subject today, and most of them have been strung together by far greater political minds than my own. 

Rather, I will aim to avoid all possibility of my actually doing any original thinking today, or, you know, work of any kind, by linking to a few of my favourite commentaries of the day instead.

Some reading matter for you, children.  Pay attention now:

Alister Drysdale in Business Spectator

Annabel Crabb on ABC Online

Andrew Bartlett in Crikey’s politics blog

Bernard Keane in Crikey

Ah, you gotta love these interwebs.  If you can’t be bothered to do it yourself, you’ll always be able to find someone who will. 

Anyway, as I was coming down from my “I can’t believe it’s not Minchin” hysteria, and trying to come to terms with the fact that somehow or another I’m going to have to take Tony Abbott and his speedos seriously now he’s leader of the Opposition (oh gods, oh gods, how am I ever going to manage?), I just happened to wander past the kitchen here in the office.  It’s where the older types like to settle for a nice cup of tea and a flick through the quaint old papers, as if this makes them business ready, or something. 

So I can accurately report that as of around midday today, the sliced tree media were loudly proclaiming, in Big Bold News Font no less, headlines such as “Libs in Climate Showdown” (AFR) and “Hockey gambles on leadership: plans for a conscience vote on climate” (The Age).  They were just the two I looked at, before the threat of instant coffee and newsprint had me running back to the electronic tendrils of up-to-date instant media gratification at my desk.

And they wonder why newspapers are dying?

Enough.  It’s been a long day.  A startling day.  A highly amusing one, and a somewhat scary one too, especially now that the utterly absurd is settling into its role as the new reality. 

Because the albino mega-fauna sitting in the corner of the room is trying to get my attention, and I think it’s trying to say that while I might be laughing at the political absurdities of today, I won’t be so giggly if such absurdities kick the sand back in my face come election time…

Oh dear.  No, don’t even think it.  Don’t even think it.

Anyway, go read your homework, kiddies.  I want a detailed report complete with speedos jokes in my in-box by morning.

And until then, just let me sign off with the words of my electronic co-conspirator.  The words of my own gut reaction.  The words, indeed, of the silly pratt who voted informal (if hilarious):

Nooooooooooooo………!!!!

Kath

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Posted By kahmelb on November 16, 2009

There is an eight year old boy on my train reading the Herald Sun, starting at the back page.

And they say newspapers won’t last. 

He’s calling out some kind of sports scores to his dad.  No, don’t ask me which sport.  It’s probably something to do with two teams chasing some kind of ball-like object in a field of some sort – or is that a court? – and one of the teams is better at it than the other.  Look, it’s not like I could tell you the difference anyway.  You know I only look at the sports pages for the photography.

Entirely the wrong person to ask, my dears.  Entirely the wrong person.

Anyway, the tabloid physically in the boy’s hands seems to mean much to the child and his father, so who knows, maybe dottery old uncle Rupert is right and his loyal band of followers will pay for entry into the inner sanctum of his media empire.  If so, good luck to him, and them, and I hope it’s a nice utopia.

Out here in the world beyond Murdoch’s mooted pay-wall, though, new and innovative things are going on.  You know, like public broadcasters able to remain independent solely because they don’t actually have to worry about profit from advertising.  Or really out-there concepts such as twenty-four hour access to news and information (yes, while it’s still current and everything!) Yup, ain’t it amazing what this new-fangled interweb thing can do these days?

You do realise that inside his own head Rupe’s already erected his electronic fortress and is onto shoring up the canons to blow away any threatening outsiders by now, don’t you?

But I am not going to be drawn into another sarky rant at Mr. Murdoch’s expense, despite the fact a major media baron crying poor and laying curses upon search engines and public broadcasters does seem just too wide a target to avoid even if you wanted to.  (Though while I’m at it:  http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=News+Corp+vs+Google  Yes, the link is work safe.  Well, just so long as you don’t work for News Corp.) 

Fact is, I’m talking about newspapers today because I had a particularly weird anti-nostalgia moment on the weekend, my freaky friends of the internet: 

I read a newspaper. 

Yes, a real one.  Trusies.  It was a big broadsheet covered in newsprint and it contained yesterday’s news.  Somebody had left it on the table at the café where dearly beloved and I were breakfasting.  There it was, just sitting there, waiting to be read while I waited for my eggs.  So I did what any modern, self-avowed news junkie of today’s world might do in such a circumstance – I stared at it with mild dislike for a while, and then I reached tentatively out and turned a page.  You know, I read it.

Look, I know this whole post just seems like an excuse for me to delve back into sarcasm’s vast black pits of fun and frivolity (if you haven’t noticed, I’ve been taking a break from the cheap sarcasm of late, and this post constitutes me as having officially fallen off the wagon.  Phew.  I’d been worrying myself there for a while, what with all that writing-with-serious-intent bollocks.  Ewww.)  But reading through that paper in the café did have an actual and significant impact upon yours truly here.  No, that’s not a joke.  No, you can’t twist any crude sexual reference out of it.  I am being serious. 

(Oh, get up off the floor. You are entirely over-reacting and people are starting to stare.)

If nothing else, the whole actually reading a real newspaper thing did make me realise that it’s been years since I’ve, well, actually read a real newspaper.

It’s not like I don’t read the news every day.  Several times every day, in fact.  You all know I’m a news-junkie of the most pathetic kind.  I’ve banged on about this before, consuming news and media is my bright-and-shiny object of choice when the procrastination sirens are singing and the words won’t write themselves, or when I just want to appear more knowledgeable than I actually am.  Sometimes it’s even because I have a vague interest in what’s going on in the world about me.  Yeah, I know, go figure.  The reasons for media consumption are just so myriad and varied.

It’s just what I don’t do is sit down every morning for an hour or so with a single newspaper on the table before me, then read it from front page through to back page.  (Or vice-versa, depending on your bent.)  Indeed, the last time I remember religiously doing that was, oh, summer break the year I did honours.  You know, the mid-90s.  Remember them?

Oh, I see you do.  Yes, um, an interesting time, to say the least.

Now, join me, if you will, in climbing up the wild tangent tree.  Hands up who saw the Russell Crowe flick earlier this year, State of Play?  You know the one, old (male) grizzled journo type takes young (female) online blogger type under his paternalistic wing and teaches her her place?  Okay, so I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, I won’t say otherwise – all that dashing around to meet print deadlines, yes, very thrilling and good fun all round – but it did take a certain approach to news media of which Rupert might even be proud. 

No, I’m not talking it’s focus on investigative journalism.  Now you’re just being silly.

I’m talking the whole online = superficial and vapid, not to mention young and female, vs. print = depth and importance, and oh, that’s right, older and male.  (Hmmm.  Think I’ve made my point on that gender thang there yet, or does it need more?  No?  You sure I wasn’t too subtle?)  My favourite line of the entire movie – and I’m quoting from memory here, so do forgive me minor details not all that important when quoting something anyway, like actually getting the words right – the young chicky babe blogger declares this story so important that “readers deserve to feel newsprint on their fingers when reading it in the morning.”

Do they?  Really?

Why?

Newsprint feels really freakin’ yuck, you know.  Maybe others like it, there’s no accounting for some kinks in this world, but for me, it just left my hands feeling dirty and wishing for a nice, clean keyboard (not to mention an actual choice of comparative news sources, as opposed to the single option on the table before me.)  Frankly, kids, if I’m going to engage in an activity which leaves my fingers all black and claggy, then it’s got to be in the cause of something far more exciting than news which is already twenty four hours old.

In the end, I just got out the bit of portable technology I’ve most recently adopted and logged into my favourite news sites of choice that way.  At least the news was up to date and I wasn’t stuck with a single version of any one story, but could compare and contrast and flick about different providers.

(And yes, Rupert, some of those providers I even pay to access.  Because, you know, they have content which is worth paying for.  Consider that for a moment, won’t you, before you next get stuck into undermining public broadcasting and battling global search engines.)

There are issues which the fragmentation of news and media in the digital age will bring us, not the least of which being the multitude of opinion and contrasting information, all available to freely ignore while in pursuit of only that one actually wishes to hear.  There are real considerations about what the changes going on in our world about us will mean about how we interact, communicate and live as a global society. 

But one thing I know.  I won’t be paying Rupert for access to analysis or reportage of them.

And I won’t be reading about them in a print-based newspaper again, either.

‘Till next folks…

Kath

Category: Unsolicited opinion | 1 Comment »
Tags: death of newspapers, murdoch, newspapers, paywall

Posted By kahmelb on November 10, 2009

…OR – this freakin’ copyright thing doesn’t make much sense when we’re on the internets, does it?

 It would be “cultural self-suicide”, according to a tautology-wielding Peter Carey.  The Productivity Commission – that independent research and advisory body with the brief, for good or ill, to “help governments make better policies in the long term interest of the Australian community” – thought otherwise.   

In the literary establishment v. economic rationalists grudge match of the year (two walk in, one walk out?  No?  Too far?), the debate over Australia’s Parallel Import Restrictions – you know, whether to retain Australian publishing’s territorial copyright and existing industry protections, or alternatively jemmy the market open to all comers – has been one of the more, well, emotive of 2009.  The Productivity Commission won the battle when it recommended PIR’s been removed entirely, but the war is far from over and current sounds out of cabinet suggest the situation might be leaning in favour of the publishing industry after all.  Everyone is now busy watching this space. 

Beyond our land girt by sea, other battles were shaping up into Big Copyright Moments.  The Google Book Settlement hit the ground running, after US authors and publishers took on the world’s biggest search engine and brokered a deal which came into play this year, the impact of which may well be felt around the world.  Google’s up for more than $125 million USD in payments to individual rights-holders of books already digitised under its Library Program, though the rights-holders in question have to go chasing it to get their cut.  In return, Google gets to sell online access, advertising rights and, best of all, keeps its massive mega-database of electronic literary copy.  Since 2004, the global search engine has been digitising its way through the Big Libraries of the World (well, of the US, mostly, such as Harvard University’s Library and the New York Public Library) and currently has more than seven million books in its digital stacks.

This three year copyright stoush between the publishing industry and the global information giant determined to create the world’s biggest online library has never been about the distribution or electronic publication of copyrighted works.  It is the digitisation and storage in Google’s databanks that rights-holders have objected to.  Google never planned to release copyrighted works out into the world; it wanted to provide a searchable database which would show less than a sentence of the material, and then provide a link to where the interested party could go legitimately purchase the tome. Indeed, some (okay, me) have previously argued that for authors in smaller regions and markets (like, um, Australia), getting the kind of global reach Google can offer is simply good marketing.  But that’s a debate still being waged.  Another copyright wait-and-see situation.

In other realms, meanwhile, J.K. Rowling won a battle against one of her own fans, who wanted to publish the book of his website – an encyclopaedic catalogue of the Harry Potter world.  In many ways, this was a case of hierarchy of format, a reminder of the significant value still placed upon the printed form.  It wasn’t the online fandom Rowling objected to, by all accounts she’d used the website herself, but when the chap behind it wanted to move it out of the realms of digital fanboy enthusiasm and turn it into a hard-bound, real-world, published encyclopaedia (and, not insignificantly, one that had the potential to earn serious cash), that crossed a significant line.  A website is one thing, but an actual printed, published book?  That was going too far.

In one way or another, the literary copyright battles of the year have all been about coping with a world gone digital.  Even the Australian market split over industry protections, with the publishers and writers on one side and the big book chains backing the Productivity Commission on the other, boils down to the issues created by a globalised world where, increasingly, traditional geographical boundaries no longer matter.  Copyright legislation is still based in a print world, as are the arguments and debates.  Books are too expensive here compared to overseas, say the Commission and the book retailers (who, incidentally, have had a horror half-decade themselves, what with Collins Booksellers struggling with administration a few years back and Angus & Robertson barely hanging on thanks to a dubious strategy of increasing market share by buying out Borders Australia.)  Opening up the market to global publishers able to dump cheap foreign editions in our wide brown land will threaten the very viability of Australian specific publishing and writing, say the publishers.

But while they’re fighting it out, consumers are increasingly buying their books online and by-passing the whole issue anyway.  The internet may not be the most significant sales channel for books yet, but it is thought to be the fastest growing, both here and overseas.  Market research from PubTrack estimates that in the UK the internet will be the major retail channel for books within three years and last year in the US internet sales outweighed all other book retail channels.  Here in Australia, some estimates put online books sales already at $100m annually, and growing.  The figures are rubbery, depending upon who is doing the talking, but there is one sure fact: online sales are increasingly significant and consumers buying online don’t think twice about the geographical territories being crossed when doing so. 

The digital world is already opening up the market, if haphazardly.  Indeed, 2009 might even be remembered as the year Amazon’s Kindle e-Book reader became available in Australia – though considering the Kindle itself is already looking uninspiring in Oz, what with Amazon trying to force serious discounts from publishers for inclusion of their work to the point where publisher’s don’t want to play anymore, it’s probably not going to be the e-book reader which takes Australia by storm.  Sony’s e-Reader has received some better reviews, and there’s talk from Kindle-competitors about finding ways for readers to swap e-books or share them with friends, or even just “borrow” e-Books from their local library.  That’s if the world’s publishers will agree to all this lending business (they haven’t yet).  But it’s the not-so-humble iPhone already making it’s way into everyone’s back pocket which offers a variety of e-book applications, complete with a large catalogue of e-books, which could just be the sleeper reader with the potential to really take-off.   The e-book is coming, one way or another, and books as downloadable files have the capacity to change everything. 

Now, it’s easy to be sceptical about the e-Book, but tell that to those who like listening to their music on vinyl.  And if there’s anything the music industry can teach the world’s book publishers, it’s that prohibitive digital rights which disallow consumers effective use of their own electronic purchases does the industry itself no favours.  The black market of piracy so prevalent in the music industry does not consist of organised crime operations skilfully flouting copyright so as to make illegal profit – it’s made up of everyday music lovers, those consumers who just want to easily access, listen, share, swap and enjoy the music they love.  No legal action, expensive copyright suit or “piracy is theft!” education campaign has ever been shown to decrease the amount of illegal copying online, but that hasn’t stopped the music industry trying.  Unfortunately, the only impact of the industry’s strict adherence to copyright legislation better suited to a non-digital era – not to mention their ‘sue everyone’ approach when it’s breached – is to criminalise its very own audience. 

The literary world of publishers and authors and booksellers and printers and everyone else in-between needs to adapt to the electronic era, rather than cling on to the old ways.  When the Statute of Anne was enacted in 1709 England to effectively become the world’s first copyright law, it was said to necessary for “the encouragement of learned men to compose and write useful books.”  In fact, the Statute of Anne was driven by the publishers who, needing to recoup their publishing costs and pay their authors, were trying to ward off booksellers flooding the market with cheaper editions of their books.  The eighteenth century debates sound startlingly familiar to those of us following such issues three hundred years later.

This is an old argument.  But now it’s a new world.  And we’re only just at the beginning, standing on the precipice and waiting to see what challenges this new age of electronic reproduction will bring.

Later…

Kath

P.S.   Apologies for the complete lack of jokes in this posting, kiddies.  I had to take ‘em all out so I could use this piece elsewhere (yes, I do like to make the words multi-task, on occasion.) 

Do feel free to supply your own, though, won’t you.  I’ll even offer prizes for best smart-arse comment able to be tacked on to any above sentence.  Points will be deducted for comments containing actual substance, of course, so don’t say you weren’t warned.

Category: Stuff read, Unsolicited opinion, Writing words | 1 Comment »
Tags: copyright, literature, Parallel Import Restrictions, Productivity Commission, publishing, Writing words