Geoff Kitney in the SMH:
"Brandis said the Greens were being taken over by "eco-fascists" and were introducing into Australian democracy "a new and sinister element" which had "commonalities with old-fashioned fascism and Nazism"
[...]
But a reading of the sources Brandis quoted indicates that the research shows eco-fascism is not a product of left-wing extremism but of the "new far right". What it shows is attempts by far-right groups to cloak their vicious anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic and Aryan white supremacist neo-Nazism in the respectability of environmentalism. That is where the label "eco-fascism" comes from."
4:42:00 PM

 
Bloody Brandis. Nazi's? Where?
John Hulme in the SMH: "A colleague of mine pointed out that the recent visit by Bush had all the hallmarks of Hitler's visit to Paris the day after its Fall on June 23, 1942." Ooh - and Brandis apparently isn't even elected! He was nominated by the Libs to fill a casual vacancy in 2000. If you need any more outrage, Brandis quoted some of his Greens=Nazis stuff from Andrew Bolt. Bolt is the right-wing columnist in the Herald Sun (who, like Miranda Devine in the SMH, I avoid reading for my blood pressure's sake), and who was the guy who leaked Wilkie's WMD report to try and discredit him, and apparently HE'S JEWISH!
12:19:00 AM

 
Where does the day go? The mystery of time. I currently have a Sci Am issue all about the flow-non-flow nature of time and stuff. Is quite interesting, and is good for a refresh of some of that relativistic physics from undergrad.
12:03:00 AM

 
Went out for a lovely dinner last night with all HMs except WryGuy (who has been missing for extended periods of time lately). Went to a cafe on the YuppieStrip, and then stopped for a drink at a funky bar I've been eyeing off for a while. Is so nice to have a good long conversation with them. Am sad to think of the Bavarian leaving us (Feb I think).
2:25:00 PM

 
Oh yeah - the meeting/workshop yesterday went fine. I fortunately didn't have to present anything. I'd had a last minute flurry on Friday putting some slides together, but an impromptu bbq at our house on Sunday arvo meant I neglected to formulate any kind of premeditated spiel to accompany them. And I would've been an even less scintillating speaker than usual ("how is that possible?", you ask) having gotten somewhat trashed at the bbq, and having been really sleepy on Sunday night, and having had daylight saving start, plus being really really worried about sleeping through my way-too-early alarm on Monday morning (I was picking people up before 7am), and as a result having slept very poorly (waking frequently to check the time).
9:08:00 PM

 
Ooh - maybe the book I forgot to mention (possibly because I read it *before* Whit, possibly because I was *sure* I'd already blogged it) was One hundred years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It was very very excellent. Marquez had been previously recommended to me by the notoriously SouthAmerico-phile (Latinophile?) Sam, and I'd been meaning to try him for years after reading an interesting review on literary magical realism. I meant to blog a couple of quotes which made me laugh out loud (on the train), but was precipitous and have returned it to the library already :(
8:59:00 PM

 
I *think* the nice librarian cancelled my last overdue fees! She didn't say anything about them, but I'm pretty sure I had three books overdue by 3 days, and so far (5 times!) I've always paid my fine before borrowing more. I wonder if once your record shows you've paid a few, they ease up on collecting? Or if she was just being nice.

Anyway, I really shouldn't be getting books out of the library with so many books to read from our attempted Spring clean of the backyard bungalow which I instigated a few weeks ago on news that there was a bulk rubbish collection (hrm - how come I haven't written about it already? we also found two pairs of rollerblades (one with wheels that flash with red LEDs when they're rolled), three arm chairs, a roof-rack for kayaks, two really old vacuum cleaners (they looked like they should be in a museum), two computer monitors (dodgy), a stereo system (looks slick, but doesn't work), two sets of dumbells (too light), three big bags of old clothes, a box of law textbooks labelled "do not throw out", a purple racing bike, plus many random boxes of assorted notes/kitchen stuff/house stuff, plus more...). Go here to see some of the better books I claimed. Will have to get around to registering the crapper books for immediate release (someone had a bit of a "self-help" fetish).

Recently finished Whit (Iain Banks), which was naturally very enjoyable. At one stage I was pretty up-to-date on his ouevre, but I think I've fallen behind :) Also just finished Brothers in arms (L.M. Bujold), which was also readable (space opera). I *think* I read something in between those two, but can't remember what it could've been! Hm - a quick search of previous posts indicates I haven't noted rereading Michael Scott Rohan's Winter of the world young adult fantasy trilogy, sometime during the last few months. Not entirely surprisingly, it didn't live up to my memory of its magic (from 16 years ago).
8:37:00 PM

 
Also went to bad American restaurant chain (TGI Friday) for lunch on Saturday with E&M and Barmy (they had 1/2 price voucher). Had very average sandwich, for exorbitant price (okay for 1/2 price). They could've at least used interesting bread. Afterward we did a bit of a shop down Yuppie-Strip (Borders, Body Shop, back to Borders...), then went and saw Kill Bill, which was quite cartoony. As have already mentioned today, am a wimp, but the blood (much arterial spurting) was cartoony enough for me to take. Am afraid I don't really buy Uma as a super-assassin though - there's something about her balance and the way she moves and walks and places her feet, especially in the fight scenes which isn't convincing. She's great as The Bride though. In contrast, I think Lucy was okay in the fight scenes (although she didn't get a lot of screen time, and any awkwardness could be assigned to the kimono anyway), but her acting/dialogue sometimes leaves something to be desired.
6:12:00 PM

 
Didn't buy a mobile (Siemens A55, prepaid $99 at Virgin with $29 of calls). Or a pair of jeans (the Peace cut from Pervert, $150! they'd be my most expensive jeans ever). Did splurge on some Body Shop anti-perspirant ($13.95, everyone else was buying stuff there - won't tell you how long it's been since I've had anti-perspirant - is this too intimate? I think my standards and calibration for "too intimate" are being whittled away by the four housemates). And on a birthday prez for Lauren. Hope she likes it (first saw it years ago and have always thought of her when I've seen it since), and that it doesn't up the ante on mutual prez buying.
6:05:00 PM

 
Am such a wimp. My left eye was sore on Friday and the eyelid was swollen too. Didn't know what could be wrong with it, so instead of going out to smoky pub and club, stayed in for quiet one instead. Saturday, it wasn't any better, and I even considered seeing a doctor. Then on Sunday it was mostly better. And by yesterday I was all normal again. Feel sheepish for worrying.
6:00:00 PM

 
Heh. Take that Bob! (and Kerry) :)
5:59:00 PM

 
...and a pair of jeans.
3:13:00 AM

 
Maybe I'll buy a mobile phone.
3:13:00 AM

 
-ah- the weekend! what can I do this weekend?
3:12:00 AM

 
Blah. On Wednesday Boss-o-boss (Bob) sprung possibility that I *might* want to have a presentation ready for Monday meeting, "just-in-case". Everyone else said there'd be no way there'd be time for me to say anything. Gr. Am throwing some emergency slides together. I was going to get a haircut this afternoon!
10:54:00 PM

 
Friday five
Darn - none for today - will have to do last Friday's instead...

1. Name five things in your refrigerator.
Banana mango dream, white miso paste, lime juice, cheddar, shrooms.

2. Name five things in your freezer.
Bottle of vodka, another bottle of vodka, short crust pastry, peas, ice cubes.

3. Name five things under your kitchen sink.
Drain pipes, mixing bowls, muffin trays, flan tin, springform.

4. Name five things around your computer.
Mini glass dolphin, rubber lizard, cd folder, sunglasses, me.

5. Name five things in your medicine cabinet.
We don't actually have a medicine cabinet, but in my little first aid kit are: Bandaids, antiseptic cream, paracetamol, antihistamines, pseudoephedrine.
10:42:00 PM

 
Oops - am missing the last environment group meeting for the year! crap, it's half over - should I go? I think they might be having beer...
8:28:00 PM

 
That's quite a downpour - Hey! Where're all those frogs coming from?
7:16:00 PM

 
Ooh! Thunder :) -ah- Melbourne weather...
7:15:00 PM

 
hey! who turned the sun off?
7:12:00 PM

 
mmm.... first coffee of the day. May be drinking too much again. At least it'll make me more fertile.

Where'd all that sun come from? Nice!

Feel like I should do something tonight.
6:09:00 PM

 
Yesterday I spent too much of the day trying to condense all the arguments against the Aust-US Free Trade Agreement into a pithy non-boring leaflet for today's action. My friend The OrganoMetallicist (almost the only person I know in the department who isn't in this particular subsection) organized a stall in the campus centre about it. We also had little vouchers for people to "trade-in" their health benefits, clean environment, or democratic rights for aspirin, M&M's, or peanuts. It was... um... interesting... accosting random people and having a good talk with them about the issues... Sometimes managed to have really good conversations, sometimes people would just glaze over, sometimes people were actually interested, sometimes people appeared to be on drugs and physically unable to focus.
10:04:00 PM

 
This last Friday I took Loud with me and caught up with E&M at the pub. They'd also invited D&K (who I found out they've been seeing behind my back! scandal!), plus some of their other friends. Loud bumped into some other people she knew and split with them. The rest of us headed back to E&M's for a few too many cocktails. Including an intense Ginger Jaegermeister.

On Saturday I slept in, then headed to Fed Square and sat in the beautiful sun with D&K and B&S and watched the Bollywood dancers before going to see a movie doco called Dances of Ecstasy at the Aust Centre for Moving Images (ACMI). It tried to explore the role of dance in cultures around the world - from the Turkish Whirling Dervishes to the Kalahari Bushmen to the Namibian people to a New York dance class to Australian Forest Doofers plus a few more. It kind of touched on the trance state some dancers reach and how it makes them feel, and was generally a bit New-Agey and spiritualish. It was a little amateurish I thought. There were some distracting and unnecessary computer graphics. There didn't seem to be a clear story or hypothesis or theme. At the end, one of the film-makers took questions and said things about how she tried to avoid the question of drug use as it was a whole different topic and would've complicated things immensely. I could sympathise, except that she'd left in a quote from a raver about how drugs was a big part of the dance experience for him, and had also shown various other cultures smoking it up, or preparing plants in suspicious ways during their experiences, AND used "ecstasy" in the title! There was little info in the actual film - which she'd disclaimed at the start as not actually a doco, but more an art experience, and they had a dvd for sale which had lots of the additional actual info which didn't make it into the film. But it was still a bit silly.

Went for a boogie till 11am Sunday. Was good. Had a nap till 15:30, then went and saw the actual Turkish/Ottoman Empire Whirling Dervishes at the Concert Hall. Went with D, who was worried our nose-bleed seats would be crap, but they actually gave us the angle which is always shown in clips of the dervishes. The front row may have provided a view of what was worn under the robes (am sure I glimpsed some bar leg), but I was quite happy with our seats. However. Tickets were really expensive ($70 for our seats). The intro - Turkish music and chanting which was ok, some jarring poetry in English spoken by a young woman - was interminable. It went for 45 mins while the dervishes sat off to one side and occasionally swayed, often out of time with each other and with the music. The production values were rather poor. I understand someone probably thought if it was too slick it might detract from the earnest genuine rustic original nature of this traditional ritualistic dance. But the lighting was terrible - the superfluous spotlight work was jerky (and unlikely to be traditional). The setup didn't look like they'd practised with it. There were kneeling mats laid out in a neat 'J' shape, but the dervishes were haphazardly sitting all over the place. Their robes didn't appear to have been tailored to them and fit very differently on each, dragging or not, showing different lengths of underrobe or none at all. The actual whirling was reasonably mesmerising. And it was very impressive that during the occasional pauses and regroupings they were able to walk upright and get where they were meant to go. Four of the seven dervishes were nicely synchronized, and their robes spun out in seemingly solid consistently tri-lateral shapes, one of the others had a consistent four spokes, another seemed to alternate between four and five spokes, but the last guy was just messy. I'm kind of non-plussed that the reviews I read beforehand weren't less favourable. Need to go to a proper performance like Underland to overwrite I think...
5:08:00 PM

 
How in hell can it be 16:30 already?
11:30:00 PM

 
Oh yeah- met up with Scoobicat for dinner on Friday night at GrooveTrain, a restaurant I haven't tried before in an area I haven't frequented much as yet. She had a huge posse of friends together. They all seemed really nice, but I hardly got a chance to talk to them. Was good to meet the very amiable bf too.

Went to Mike's birthday party afterward (bloody blognyms - how am I going to keep them straight? started a list, but haven't kept it up to date...). Where I was a bit antisocial also - at least, didn't really talk to anyone new. Had a good time though, and drank too much.

Saturday kind of disappeared. Didn't buy a mobile phone again. In the evening I went and saw a Fringe Festival performance, Albatross, which was by "The Westside Circus", some of whom are friends of Loud's. Not strikingly athletic (being extracurricular for all the performers), but I think partly as a result of working against this obstacle, had some very creative physical expression.

Was supposed to go dancing at two things after - another Fringe event (Robotic) and the club night Unify, produced by one of Mike's friends. But slept instead :P

Up early on Sunday and went to the Zoo with E&M. Mostly the usual (although a very cool sail-backed lizard), but saw a binturong, which I've read about but never seen before. And then had a lovely picnic in the beautiful sunny weather on the lawns.
6:35:00 PM

 
Hm - just noticed I didn't blog last weekend - have trouble remembering what I even did... um.
6:35:00 PM

 
Bloody bloodsucking libraries! They're making a killing off my overdue fines! sheesh... (had carefully noted when my books were due (today), but i just logged on to renew them and found I apparently still have one book from my previous stack...)
9:47:00 PM

 
Dammit - left my lunch sitting on the kitchen table...
4:42:00 PM

 
BordeauxBelle: Tonight she is expecting you in your dancing outfit for tango.
Planeterry: A tango outfit? But which one?
BB: The black one - you know...
PT: But the red one matches my bloodshot eyes so beautifully.
BB: Ok.... the red one then, but your butt looks big in the red one.
PT: *gasp* You heartless bastard! I slave away for you in this sham of a marriage, and how do you repay me? With insults! Next thing you'll be saying my ankles look fat! And another thing... the way you keep bringing up my faults - I think we need to see a counselor.
BB: I will take a break and then we can sort things out after my break.
[*short bathroom break*]
BB: I'm leaving you and the kids at the end of the week
PT: Ok, but you're taking that damn poodle - and I get to keep the ferrari.
BB: The damn poodle is going to die in Alice Springs!!!
PT: FINE! if that's the way you're going to be - the kids are going to die in Adelaide.
9:25:00 PM

 
Sunday I slept in a bit. Our yuppie strip was closed off for the day for a kind of street festival. About lunchtime I went for a wander with Loud and Muso. It was very family oriented. They had like lots of stalls with sunglasses (beautiful sunny weather) and general accessories. A few food stalls. Some farm animals. A stage with singers. A fashion parade. Didn't get very packed actually. We were actually on a mission to get Muso a mobbly phone. If I'd been him, I prob woulda got the same one, which had a pretty good deal with it (prepaid Nokia 2100 with so many free phone calls a month, cd vouchers, yada yada yada). But now I can't get that one cos he got it already. For me, the most impressive feature of the entire street event thing was that you could buy shampoo in the middle of the street. Like, I mean, *wow*!
9:32:00 PM

 
Saturday I had agreed to go jeans shopping with The Bavarian. So we did that in the morning. Then because it was glorious sunny weather we went to the pub around the corner from us with a sunny beergarden and had lunch with Loud and watched the yuppie crowds walking the strip. Afterward, TB went and got her eyelashes tinted, while I went and bought a washing machine with Loud's assistance. A Whirlpool front loading 5kg model. No one seems to sell second hand front loaders, hopefully that's a good sign. I hope it works out okay (is being delivered this afternoon - right now actually! Loud is there for it), the salesman convinced me I didn't need quite the power I initially thought (rpm's). He better not have been having me on :P
10:09:00 PM

 
Thursday night Loud cooked me a delish dinner of salmon steaks with stir fried veggies and brown rice ostensibly to thank me for stuff I did during her recent travails - hardly did anything, but enjoyed the dinner anyway and made those choc brownies for dessert. We also fed Hyper and made him sit down and drink (too much!) wine with us. Then we played X-Box (my first time - I was crap), and Scrabble, and Trivial Pursuit.

Friday evening I went to an Eng. beer club which was a nice change. Afterward I got to catch up with E&M and we went to dinner down the street from me. Afterward, I thought we were going to go hang out at a pub, but instead E led us to a ravewear shop which I've spotted a number of nice items at but never bought anything from, and it was still open (at 10pm). Past the racks of cool clothes and giant biomechanical humanoid sculpture and through the unassuming back door which opened directly onto a dancefloor with some frenetic ravers going off to some old skoolish toons. E&M's housemates Q&B were there already and having a boogie. There was even a table of nibbles and alcohol. It was a one year anniversary of the opening of the store. Had a boogie. Talked some. Had a break from the noise and motion and went with E and looked through the racks in the front and found out it was also 30% off, and ended up buying two pairs of very nicely kut'n'kuhl rave pants for a terribly reasonable price. I met the owners/managers/proprieters (am pretty sure), a very nice cool brother and sister. I think the purchase put a rosy glow over the whole weekend. Went and danced some more.
9:52:00 PM

 
Hm - quite a lot to post about today.
6:36:00 PM

 
Think I have Mondayitis - is a bit unusual. Am pretty sure I don't get it. Was feeling unusually happy last night, considering the slightly bizarre vibe in the house. The Bavarian and the Oenologist were having a few problems on the weekend, resulting in a mild eruption which also involved me and Loud and a bra.

And then last night there was a car accident involving new housemate (ummmm.... nym... "The Military Buff"? actually I think "Hyper" might be better) and the Oenologist. He backed out of our driveway and clipped the end of The Oenologists ute which was sticking across it. There was responsibility for it on both sides, but stressed Oenologist couldn't deal with it just then (studying for exams, doing assignments, relationship tension, feeling partly to blame for it) and did a slightly weird run-off-to-the-backyard-bungalow-and-zone-out-staring-at-the-wall, which left Hyper (who's been burning candle at both ends with Army Reserve stuff, new part-time job with long hours, uni stuff, new house, moving his stuff over from country town) bouncing off the walls wondering how to deal with things. And then Hyper had to leave to meet his sister, and he left for work this morning before The Oenologist got up (and who has now gone home which is actually in another town), so they haven't talked about it. Feel sorry for both of them. Hope I don't have to mediate. Everyone else has disavowed any possibility of getting involved. Actually, I know they'll both be mature and sensible about it. Although they seemed very freaked out considering what I would've said was a tiny amount of damage. Hm... guys and their cars :P
6:17:00 PM

 
Had a chocolate brownie for breakfast. Again. Got an excellent, tres easy recipe from a friend last weekend, and have made two batches since (and one was a double batch). Have eaten SO many (and so have the housemates). Am almost over them even (still have half a plate left). Until I eat another one. Think I've practically memorized the recipe it's so easy: 1 1/3 cp flour, 2/3 cp cocoa, 1/2 tsp baking powder, 2 cp sugar, 250 gm melted butter, 4 eggs. Mix together. Bake at 170 degrees C for 50 mins. Well, recipe said 50 mins, but mine needed way longer - say 30 mins longer, but I guess it'd depend on how thick you made them, and how moist or dry you like them. They're so good. Make them today!
6:06:00 PM