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Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
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First.
Been watching series 1 of The Tudors. Interesting take on the young Henry VIII. And quite a chilling one on Thomas More. Well worth a look.
Is everyone else in moderation or something? Light rain this morning, looks like it might continue into tomorrow. Here’s hoping.
Some of us have had enough rain Mindy. More than enough in Charleville and St George.
Haven’t seen “The Tudors” – been revisiting childhood by watching Blakes 7, unusually it’s better than I remember. The Kerr Avon character is particularly delicious. A pity the female characters aren’t as well drawn as the male ones (Blake’s dopey heroism vs Avons cynical self interest, Vila’s conniving cowardice, Gan’s unthinking loyalty). It is sometimes disappointing to revisit these things that you liked as a kid, but not this time.
Does anyone know why Paul Kelly has lost his regular spot on Insiders? I’d also like to hear theories about why Rudd refused to go on that show for so long. Was there some sort of falling out between him and Barry Cassidy? I also noticed a catty comment Fran Kelly made recently about the PM not fronting up for her show. I’d have thought if you were going to go on National TV and espouse the view that the Government was a “oncer” you would probably get the cold shoulder treatment. Surely a seasoned pro like Kelly is not that dumb? Then again, maybe she is.
yes…endless rain. good to laurie and lou curating livid.
On rain, the CM today says we had the single day totals of 100mm or more in SW Qld over an area the size of Victoria. Never happened before, apparently.
I’m rain-bound today and might try to assemble a post on the big wet here, which will send a pulse down the Darling.
The interesting bit Brian is that the owners of Cubby Station are saying the big wet will enable them to get out of receivership. What a pity Penny Wong didn’t pull her finger out and buy the joint while they were in significant financial straits, could have saved us all a lot of money.
The Good Weekend in the SMH today has a profile of Ian Plimer. John van Tiggelen picks up on one point: Plimer reckons that scientists aren’t what they used to be. Plimer says that today’s scientists “aren’t polymaths like myself and Bob Carter.”
I’ve been too modest to mention it previously, but now I can let you all know that I am not only a polymath, but a violin virtuoso and an International Woman of Mystery.
Since its Oscar (TM) time,
http://theenvelope.latimes.com/news/la-ca-oscarkenny7-2010mar07,0,2499469.story
My pick is Bigelow for best director with The Hurt Locker, Avatar for best movie (with all that 3D stuff they can’t ignore it.) There has, incidentally been a rather nasty campaign from veterans against The Hurt Locker on the grounds it isn’t accurate and its facing a defamation suit from the soldier on whom the main character is based. (from American PBS on SBS1 the other day.)and an article in the LA Times which I’ve lost on teh intertubes somewhere, so haven’t linked to it.
Re Cuddy Station – sad to say, its no surprise.
Ute Man,
You can borrow The Tudors if you want. (Sam Neil as Wolsey steals the show.) I only have series 1, so far.
Hope everybody in Qld is okay with the floods. Been thinking of you all.
A bit of modesty would not go astray. When I met Carter we were both staying at my elder brother’s place, so we had an extended interaction, over coffee and port after his talk and an extended breakfast the following day.
I raised the issue of how sea level rise was measured in millimetres, when you think of being on the beach and the tide coming in and out. Carter said that the maths involved, though way beyond him, was relatively a piece of cake for those who understood it. So I doubt whether Carter would claim polymath status.
He’s actually picked up the reflexive self-deprecation typical of many Australians. Unlike Plimer, when I heard him years ago in an extended interview with Margaret Throsby.
Ah, The Tudors. It’s sexified history which enjoys lingering on luscious supple flesh a bit more than it ought to, but it’s got more to offer than that. It conveys a real sense of the continual swirl of intrigue in the Court.
Historically the selected intrigues presented are all woefully oversimplified even though they appear very complex to the uninitiated – it’s not really possible to understand the various plots and factions without a working knowledge of the interknotted genealogy of not just the royals but also the aristocratic families jostling for position, and the show avoids deep detail on the genealogy. This is no doubt a very sound decision for the purposes of dramatic tension, but anyone who wants to understand the intrigues of the Tudor period a bit better could do worse than pick up some of the more rigorous popular history books on the subject.
Paul @ 9, the population in the flood affected areas is not large and it is all happening in relatively slo-mo. I did hear of one bloke who spent two days up a tree when his car was swept off the road in an isolated place. He then hoofed it to a nearby station. The guy was a diabetic, so I don’t know how close to the limits he was, but that one ended well.
Hungry Beast this week on female genital cosmetic surgery technically known as labiaplasty. Whitey does FGM would be more like it. Don’t know how this show is happening at the ABC but the segment was brilliant and HB is the best damn thing the corporation has done in a decade. The thesis: australian censorship board prohibits nudie photgraphs that show details of the labia minora thereby distorting female self images among young women about what is acceptable of desirable. In turn, this is driving an upswing in young women having cosmetic surgery to remove the visible parts of their labia minora (you know, the bits that normally extend beyond the labia majora).
And this in the week that the Nowra the turd unpbraids Greer for her appearance.
My own view: cosmetic surgeons in private practice are mostly maggots.
UteMan @6: totally agree with you on wong’s failure re Cubby.
My first time in the sin bin. Check ya’ll later.
“Re Cuddy Station – sad to say, its no surprise.”
I thought they had been picking up less well known water holdings. I imagine Cubby would be a target, but that mob would still want top dollar and probably moreso when they thought the government was involved.
I doubt our Penny came down in the last shower on these matters.
Anthony @ 14, I assume it was your comment @ 13 that landed you in moderation. We have a range of trigger words in the filter which allows us to look at certain kinds of comments before release. It’s nothing personal.
Further to Cubbie, the Queensland input to the MD system is only about 5%. What happens in Cubbie is of most legitimate concern to areas immediately over the NSW border, where they got in early and over-allocated water rights.
It’s become a symbolic issue, but I think has little relevance to the water available in the lower MD system.
Anyway that’s the view from north of the border.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/sydney-uni-seeks-talent-beyond-affluent-suburbs-20100305-popd.html
Some amazing candour the University of Sydney regarding their “postcode snobbery”.
“Unveiling a green paper outlining its future, its vice-chancellor said the student intake had to be extended beyond ”the relatively affluent eastern and northern suburbs of Sydney”.”
I had to attend interviews with a collection of teachers and students when I applied for their Art School in 1981.
Just to see if I was the “right sort of chap”.
I was from the back-blocks of Liverpool, however, and they
promptly showed me the door.
St. George is under threat of indundation.
Isn’t that where is Barnaby is stationed?
Will there be a headline story
Covering the Senator in glory?
As he too becomes an action man
Following Tony’s brilliant plan.
Surely there’s a dam about to burst
Where we can see a truly National first
As a pollie pulls his finger out
And holds it where a leak has sprout.
I can see the story blazoned there,
The answer to his party’s prayer.
“Hail the local hero, Barnaby Joyce!”
Done without the need to raise his voice.
Patricia, Goondiwindi is as flat as all getout, so dams bursting is not going to be a factor, apart from on properties where some have apparently failed.
Tony was going to fly in, but thought better of it. The airport was due to go under. They are expecting 80% of the town to be subject to flooding by tonight
Haven’t heard a peep from Barnaby.
Thanks, Brian. It was just the juxtaposition of ideas – St George, Barnaby, floods, fire, pollies! All very well to have fun in one’s head with rhymes and things while they’re improbable fancies. But I’d never want to make fun of peoples’ real misfortunes. Please pull that comment if it’s really tasteless.
Brian,
You say Qld provides only 5% of MD flows.
With this flood water, what % will go past Cubby and flow down the Darling?? Any estimates to hand?
What I’m getting at, is whether Cubby takes a larger proportion of “moderate” rainfall events, and a smaller proportion of the overland flow caused by (rarer) “heavy” events?
Chookie: they say a ‘polymath’ is a person who knows more than one theorem. Do you exceed the standard-issue Pythagoras’s Theorem?
It was a particularly good segment on Hungry Beast, anthony. It would have been better, though, if they had been a bit clearer how common this kind of surgery is.
If some few women are influenced by that soft porn desirable look, I wonder how may others would prefer the hard core image where, so I am told, the dangly bits are prominent, covetable and possibly more marketable.
It just so happens to be how nature intended, as well.
I think it’s fine, Patricia WA. Actually the people of St George have had heaps of time to prepare and the town’s so flat that most, I think, will just get their feet wet. In other places there was real heartbreak for some who had possessions spoiled and businesses ruined.
Oh bugger, I see I’ve just confused St George and Goondiwindi. It should be St George, population 3,800 on the Balonne River. St George is 513km west of Brisbane. That’s where Barnaby is at home. Goondiwindi is 202km to the east of St George. I have been to both. Must be tired.
St George is almost due south of Roma. Goondiwindi is also a border town, larger at 5,000 people, on the McIntyre River and famous for “The Goondiwindi Grey” (Gunsynd) rather than for politicians.
The Murray-Darling system is iconic for sure, but there are quite a few other rivers in Northern NSW that should be getting flushed semi-regularly, but don’t. It’s marginal country made worse by by Cubbie station but that doesn’t mean it’s not important.
I can (sort of) understand why for publicity purposes the fag end of the murray darling system gets so much attention (not least because our friends in Australias most boring city perennially whinge about the colour of their tap water) but the slow death of the south west qld / north west NSW area as it is slowly subsumed by stupid water management decisions both from government and agribusiness is a tragedy.
Ambigulous @ 22, what you say about Cubbie is right, I think, and that’s where the real argument lies.
I’d say that the storages in Qld would only contain a very small proportion of the water in this event. I believe there was a large pulse go down the system from rain that extended from Dubbo to the Qld border in January so quite a lot went into Menindie Lakes. There was an interstate conference that let some through to replenish the lower parts of the system. This lot should be a pure bonus to the earlier lot, but how much is let through will not be at the discretion of Qld (we can’t take any more), rather NSW, I understand.
How much difference it would make further down is completely beyond my ken.
Ambigulous, yes.
I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical
About binomial theorem I’m teeming with a lot o’ news
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.
And did I mention that my friends say I cook like Nigella, except that I’m better-looking?
There, I think I’ve out-Plimered Plimer enough for today.
Yep, it’s NSW that’s in control of how much gets past Medindie Lakes. There a ‘trigger’, whereby if the Medindie Lakes fill to a certain level, then control is handed over to [I think] the MD commission. So it was no great surprise when NSW agreed to let water through.
Also, Adelaide is boring, tis true ..I raised an eyebrow when Deborah’s thread suggested there is a buzz around Adelaide now that wasn’t here in the late 90′s….but I’ve been to two Australia cities that are even more boring lately…and Perth has the added discomfort of a feeling of aggro everywhere you go – not to mention the obvious homelessness/poverty.
As much as I question the merits of population growth, Adelaide is a living example of a city that genuinely needs more people, and to do this we really need to be smarter with our water, we can’t absolve ourselves of responsibility for that, so there is actually very little blame being thrown across the border in relation to TAP-water in Adelaide. It should be noted that even after the desal is ‘online’, according to Labors policy doc, the draw from the Murray will be the same as before the desal – the hype about “ending our dependence on the Murray” is spin.
The concern here regarding the Murray has more to do with the lower lakes and the Coorong. And this concern does not come at the expense of caring about the natural ecosystems upstream. The system is over allocated, reducing this problem will address the needs of the entire system. And starting with industries that deliver lower economic returns for the water investment [ie: COTTON] seems to be a smart move. As far as I know 63% of MD irrigation water goes to two industries: cotton and dairy. The largest economic yields per ML come from fruit and vegetables.
BTW: my household’s water is supplied by the one reservoir that is not topped up with Murray River water and the clarity of the water is no different to anywhere else in Adelaide. I remember when I was a kid coming to visit rellies in the big smoke, when my aunt ran a bath for us I looked at the colour of it and told her the water looked dirtier than me, and refused to get in {yes, I was a brat].
@joe2
I suspect that the women having labial surgery (just like other cosmetic surgeries) are more influenced by how their sexual partners are responding to their appearance than responding to their own negative evaluations of themselves compared to the pics. So it’s how these images are influencing men’s preferences that is more to the point, surely?
Bugger again. I said @ 24 that St George was a border town. It’s not. Mungindi, 119km more or less due south, is on the border.
It’s time Fran Kelly was relieved of the ‘Breakfast’ gig at Radio National. She brings to the show shallow-witted tabloidism and a contemptible sucking up to the Coalition.
Tigtog: have a look at the HB segment. HB makes the case that it is the outdated attitudes of the censorship board that are driving the issue.
Brian and Chookie, The Age Good Weekend also ran John van Tiggelen’s Plimer piece, and, for those who haven’t yet seen it, it’s well worth a read. When I saw the piece initially, I was dreading some sort of positive profile, but van Tiggelen takes Plimer apart in a measured and reasoned fashion. It’s a pity the piece isn’t available online, as it’s essential reading, giving a good picture of the kind of simplistic climate arguments Plimer is laying on uninformed audiences.
Does Plimer really think that global warming will be solved by increased rainfall as the temperature rises (‘Nature’s air-conditioner, this rain … The hotter it gets, the more often it will turn itself on.’)?
Good to see some plain statements of fact from van Tiggelen, such as the following:
As for Plimer’s claimed ‘dumbing down’ of the education system, I’d suggest the dumbing down of the discourse is exactly why deniers have a temporary ascendancy (e.g. Abbott’s ‘Great Big Tax’ etc.). Campaigners have the constraint of science in making their own countering statements, but they, and the Government, can do much better in communicating the need for action.
Van Tiggelen also makes a killer point on Plimer’s claims about geology and climate change:
There’s a lot in that word ‘superimposed’, for there is no doubt that the climate has always changed, but the issue is that we are now rapidly changing otherwise very slow natural processes and tilting the planet towards runaway warming within human time scales.
I wonder what Plimer makes of the trend towards more frequent and severe bushfires resulting from climate change? Has he read anything from the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre, for example?
Bravo, van Tiggelen!
anthony, I saw the HB segment when it was broadcast (HB is must see TV!). I agree that their argument is that it is the censorship board who is driving the trend in the magazines themselves, but joe2′s argument was that women were responding to these representations with negative evaluations of their own body and thus seeking surgery. Surely you agree that it is the responses to these images that drive the demand for labiaplasty, not just the existence of the pictures?
My argument is that it is far more likely to be their sexual partners who are responding to these representations with negative evaluations of real women’s bodies by comparison, and it is those negative evaluations from another person that is driving women to seek surgery, in order to gain their partner’s approval. Women whose partners don’t make judgemental remarks about their body very rarely seek surgical “enhancements”, in my experience.
Chookie!
Here’s one Aussie guy
Who’d love to try
your cookies!
Then again
On second thoughts
I’ve heard reports
You’ve got a brain.
But if you guarantee
Just meat ‘n potato
No talk of Plato
Then you’ll do me.
“My own view: cosmetic surgeons in private practice are mostly maggots’
These are the same people who often do the reconstructive work on burns victims.
All that furious anger and no brain must be a complicated way for you
to get through each day.
I suggest homeopathy next time you are feeling unwell.
Here’s a weblink that you might understand.
http://www.selah.k12.wa.us/SOAR/Projects2002/KierstinW.html
@murph the surf,
I’m not sure who you’re quoting there, but it’s only specialist plastic surgeons who do reconstructive work on burns victims. Most private practise medicos performing cosmetic surgery are not specialist plastic surgeons, because most people can’t afford to get their cosmetic surgery performed by a specialist plastic surgeon. Far too many private clinics offering cosmetic surgeries don’t have a single staffer who is even a specialist general surgeon – they are all just normal MDs who have chosen to branch out into this very lucrative field.
If you term someone a surgeon they are trained as surgeons.
The comment wasn’t ” Doctors who have no extra training doing a bit of extra nip and tuck are …”.
Brian @30 and 24 are sure you are a Queenslander?
I’ve worked with reconstructive surgeons in the public system Murph. Brilliant human beings. Some work privately but rarely as cosmeticians. Most are just simply too booked up in the public system to work privately and they are deeply committed to the public system. Private cosmetic surgeons are’nt my favourite types because they prey on people’s vulnerability and often leave women looking like a dishlicker at the track as it leaves the box after the bunny.
Plastic surgeons call for shake-up of cosmetic surgery in Australia
Because cosmetic surgery is not recognised or accredited as specialty by the Australian Medical Council, in almost all of Australia any person with a medical degree can practise as a so-called “cosmetic surgeon” and perform invasive procedures.
Separating the Myths from the Facts
6. It is important to understand claims from practitioners about academic qualifications, training and experience as well as overly simplistic descriptions of procedures. Any doctor, who might not even be a specialist surgeon, is allowed to perform surgery if the patient consents to the operation.
tigtog you may be correct to suggest that partners are the real drivers of this surgery. Whatever the case, why would the dreamy soft pron ideal be more persuasive than the more ‘come as you are’ representation of full on xxx pron?
Surely the tamer more stylised material, with the labia removed, would be considered a bit backward in this day and age. And perhaps just the obsession of the kinks on the censorship board who seem compelled to render the top part of the female body well enough endowed so it will not be mistaken for an over eighteen and the vag childlike.
Hungry Beast did not mention how widespread the surgery was, if I remember correctly. It just could be that it is not done very often at all. My bet is that a good many plastic surgeons would recommend a visit to a psychologist for a female with these concerns before reaching for the scalpel.
joe2, as you say there was no indication of how common labial surgery is, although several other sources I’ve come across in recent years have suggested that it is on the rise.
As to why some people would have a fetish for what is basically a photoshopped vulva, who knows why some people have fetishes about any one thing? Some fetishes are more socially acceptable than others, otherwise we wouldn’t have suburban beauty shops offering Brazilian waxes, so presumable the ubiquity of the soft porn image would have some sort of normalising effect.
I bet at least as many would be tempted to tell a woman with such concerns to just DTMFA instead of presuming that she was was mentally ill.
Joe2@43, try remaking that post with reference to something innocuous and normal about women’s bodies and yet almost universally considered unattractive at in our culture, like leg hair. Or pubic hair, as a more recent example of something that’s become very widely reviled. The frame of reference encompassing what’s considered mainstream sexually attractive in a het female has narrowed considerably on a number of fronts over the past few decades, and the labia thing is just another manifestation of same. “Stylised” is so hot right now, and the media pieces covering this phenom in recent years very much remind me of the early coverage of topics like breast ‘enhancement’ and brazilians. Look at how common those are now.
So, one can get all sneery about the mainstream and bang on about how one’s sexual tastes are like, so much edgier and purer than those people’s if one wants, but that mostly just obscures the core of the problem behind a subtle form of bragging :/
Desperate Romantics on ABC 1 tomorrow night is a must see.
My favourite protagonists of art history, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were hippies 120 years before the Summer of Love.
CMMC, I was recently lucky enough to be asked to blog for the publishers, Tor. My first post was actually about the pre-raphaelites and their successors.
Wacky, probably wrong observation on the labial surgery / soft pr0n thing: a lot of stick magazines used to come out of the UK which had a rather peculiar set of obscenity laws in the 1950s/1960s – breasts you could show but not pubic hair otherwise the magazine in question would be restricted. So, the photographers would get the girls to shave so that they could show more of the mons (but not the cleft). There’s at least one photographer reminiscing on the web somewhere who contends that pube removal stemmed from people originally thinking the models were setting an example.
American pr0n up until the eighties was generally naturally hairy – cf Misty Beethoven, playboy of the era etc.
tigtog @ somewhere up thread:
“Women whose partners don’t make judgemental remarks about their body very rarely seek urgical
“enhancements”, in my experience.”
OK.
I’d guess as well that the censorship board’s points and terms of reference are gendered in ways that are perhaps underexamined.
Re Whitey-Does FGM:
“…australian censorship board prohibits nudie photgraphs that show details of the l@bia minora thereby distorting female self images among young women about what is acceptable or desirable…”
I doubt it. Most women seem to do a very good job of negative self-image/desire for changes in areas where the censorship board is not active (hair, skin, size of thighs*). Changes in sexual mores might have made the l@bia a newer area for obsession, that’s all.
* Thank goodness I haven’t been in one of those tedious conversations for a long time!
To combine two strands in this thread:
John Ruskin was a great proponent of the pre-raphaelites.
Ruskin’s marriage to Effie Gray remained unconsummated, according to the rejected Effie because “he told me his true reason… that he had imagined women were quite different to what he saw I was, and that the reason he did not make me his Wife was because he was disgusted with my person the first evening 10th April.”
The pre-raphaelites tended to elide the l@bia minora in their oeuvre, to Ruskin’s shock and to Effie’s cost.
That was very interesting Patrickg, I hadn’t before heard of Sime. I think one of the reasons Beardsley can be quite explicit without seeming particularly erotic is an undercurrent of humour and mockery. The Pre Raphaelites seem to be a bit deficient in the humour department. And some of Beardsley’s women are just formidable. You wouldn’t want to mess with his Messalina.
However, Effie was soon cheered up by John Everett Millais, one of the more worldly of the Pre-R’s, who knew a lot about girls and thought Effie was hawt. They got married after her marriage to Ruskin was annulled and had eight children.
The Victorians tended not to inspect each others’ bits obsessively from every angle the way the 21st century does, nor had electric light yet been invented. The prevailing view among Victorian scholars is that it was actually Effie’s public hair that did the damage. Ruskin was an eminent art historian and was familiar with a great deal more art and sculpture than just that of his time. He was, however, a virgin, like Effie. (But unlike Millais.)
Female hirsuteness was there for all to see. Indeed, female pubic hair was not unknown in renaissance and mannerist painting.
However, the l@bia were seldom represented.
It’s more likely, therefore, that Ruskin, as an enthusiastic sketcher of naked pre-pubescent “girlies” and therefore well enough acquainted with their smoothness, was distressed by Effie’s convolvulated “person”.
I admire Effie’s use of that modest yet precise enough term.
Darren @ 33, last year I put together some critiques of Plimer. As I said there, it’s time for him to crawl back under his rock and if so many clever people said those things about me, most assuredly I would.
Eat The Rich @ 39, you’re forgiven for wondering, but yes I’m a Queenslander and I’ve been to most of those places. Just misfiring this am. And I used to be good at Geography when we had it before Social Studies all those years ago.
The post on the floods is now up.
So Barrie Cassidy’s a Tiger! Well he needs to look out, Chris Uhlmann, after a shakey start, was able to get the best out of his panel that I’ve seen for a long time on Insiders. Happy 60th Barrie.
Well Zorronsky@56, in the case of Chris Uhlmann, there always was a lot of room for improvement.
As far as John Ruskin and Effie go, I wonder if they were born in our age, Effie would have moved quickly to acquire a brazilian, after that ‘shit honeymoon night’.
John might have been moving to involvement and capture in a internet pedo sting, with a headline, something like…. “Pedo Pounce Arty Critic Sprung”.
Thanks Su! It was very flattering when they asked me to contribute, I wanted agree with you wholeheartedly about Beardsley.
Zorronsky,
Yes. Uhlmann was quite a pleasant surprise. Though why on earth they had to have that failed politician JWH on the programme for even a second, I don’t know. Would be interesting to see how Uhlmann handles the excessive bad manners of Piers and Bolt, though.
Really looking forward to Desperate Romantics. Don’t think I can take any more of My Place, though. Isn’t that what ABC3 is for?
Brian@55 Thanks, I’ll certainly take a look.
Patrick@47 – thought your blog was excellent. Hope we see a lot more of similar guest appearances.
Re Cubby Station; from memory, Bob Katter explained that even if the government had bought it, the water allocation would have been handed out to other irrigators. They would not have been able to release Cubby’s water to the river system.
Although I’m not a fan of Bob Katter, I was inclined to believe him on this occasion as he wouldn’t have missed any opportunity to trash the Rudd government and that would have been a perfect chance.
Thanks for the reminder on Desperate Romantics, have shotgunned it. Thanks to that exercise, I am now watching Simon Schama’s Power of Art on ABC1. Rembrandt is the subject.
chookie
Bravo!
I hope you don’t pout and flirt with every TV camera that’s pointed at you!
If they were born in our age, Ruskin would have got his ridiculously unrealistic expectations of women’s “persons” from porn instead of from high art, but the emotional effect on all parties would have been the same.
Apart from anything else, criticising the look of women’s bits is an effective way of keeping women under control, as they rush off to the Institut de Beauté and House of Hair Removal to get genitally tortured (and then off to the doctor to get the infected ingrown hairs treated) instead of working on their applications for promotion.
Here’s some recommended reading on the subject.
And under Joe2′s counterfactual, Ruskin would not have presumed that the ideal of womanhood was serene asexuality.
On the contrary, Ruskin would have been perplexed by Effie’s reluctance to comply with any of his performative whims, irrespective of personal discomfort.
Thanks, PC, for the link to Helen Razer’s take on it. It was refreshing.
Patricia — thank you for the Pome! I am waiting for your Ode to Polymath Plimer.
Ambigulous, as an International Woman of Mystery I only flirt when the opportunity arises.
Just put on a stockpot. One very large chicken which I thought for a moment wouldn’t fit in the pot. A huge amount of mushrooms. Half a chopped celery. 2 large chopped onions. 3 monstrously large carrots.2 large tins of Italian tomatoes, diced. Should be okay. I’ve given up on the duck. It won’t fit in me stockpot.
Bi-Lo has closed in Armidale so I’m now shopping at Woolworths, which actually was cheaper than Bi-Lo and much better service. Trouble is, I have to push the full shopping trolley up a hill to the taxi rank, and it buggers me. Fortunately last week I ran into two of the nurses from the hospital,just after I left Woolies and they helped me.
I’m just very glad Kathryn Bigelow is the first woman to win a Best Director Oscar. Yes, I know it’s a fairly silly competition. But, it still feels good. And ‘The Hurt Locker’ is a pretty good film.
I’m also happy Jeff Bridges won. He’s one affable dude.
“If they were born in our age, Ruskin would have got his ridiculously unrealistic expectations of women’s “persons” from porn instead of from high art, but the emotional effect on all parties would have been the same.”
He might have done or he might have just picked up those stultifying attitudes from his society and brought them to his art critic’s eye…. chicken or the egg?
It was most interesting seeing Ruskin come to life on the screen last night on Aunty. If you went by that, you would believe his mother had planted some pretty weird ideas about the women’s role in marriage. Fortunately we were spared a view of his undoubtedly authoritarian daddy who likely helped in forming her view.
Great link @64 P.C. Helen Razer does it well. “My new pink button”…hard to believe it is serious but the comments on Amazon were nicely subversive and encouraging, at least.
Pavlov’s Cat @ 53 Yes, and wasn’t it reassuring already knowing the end of this story? Well that of Effie Ruskin and Lizzie Siddal at least.
In a way one can understand how the stuffy moral conventions of those times were a sort of defence against the fate of becoming a fallen woman with all the disgrace, poverty and suffering, even death, that could mean. As I watched Effie on the knife edge of being put away as a mad unbalanced female and Lizzie succumb to Rossetti’s seductive charm I was almost overwhelmed by the awfulness of their likely fate, even though I knew that Effie would end up happily married to Millais with lots of children and Lizzie, though doomed to depression and early death, was desperately loved by Rossetti to the end.
I still felt deep anxiety for both women and real hostility towards Ruskin and Rossetti however different their characters and motivation. It must be atavistic. Or perhaps it came from my own early inner turmoil about sex and how dangerous it could be. The fiftes pre-pill were no fun. Remember women here were still dying of backyard abortions well into the sixties.
Forget 19th century romantic pre-Raphaelites. Women were desperate and dying from love just forty or so years ago. Thank God for Contraception and St. Germaine.