Since we don’t live by politix alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!
Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
Larvatus Prodeo was an Australian group blog which discussed politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
Quite dull. Worked on my thesis and spent too much time on Facebook.
Introduced some overgrown greenery to the concept of the whipper-snipper! That’s probably TM, so I’ll change that to “rotary trimmer”.
Also rotary whipped. Judged some business awards. Watched a bit of the golf. *Yawn*
I spent yesterday at the pub, reading and listening to music.
Today was for the mundane things: cleaning, laundering, replacing lightbulbs.
But there is a roast in the oven and the chores are out of the way, so the evening will be nice.
Mowing, mowing & spud digging. Smallish crop of news, the rest have revived with the recent rain & mist.
Swimming in Port Philip bay, glorious, mid-twenties but warm water.
I buried my beautiful cat, Fiddle, in the back garden. She was hit by a car last night.
Saturday: Finished reading and note-taking from book on Boston Tea Party. Dipped into John Buchanan’s Road to Guildford Courthouse. Reading and taking notes from Jeremy Black’s Crisis of Empire. Night, watched ABC TV.
Sunday, watched Insiders, on line, watched National Day of Mourning. Caught up on phone calls with friends, agreed to be on Socialist Alliance State Exec phone hook-up on Monday night. ON LP. Kept on working on Jeremy Black book. Watched ABC, especially Cranford. On line.
I dunno what I would do if my pet died suddenly.
Cry I suppose.
Chin up Nick.
So sorry about your beautiful cat Nick. Such sadness in the brevity of your sentence. I hope it gets better soon.
Hmmm Grade 5 obedience lesson. then go to the Grade One plebs since I am now TRAINEE INSTRUCTOR!
Quick meeting of us pleb instructors in training, dash to Farmers Market and home.
A duck roasting nicely! Hmmm smells good!
I am going to watch a clash of the titans: Fulham v West Bromwich Albion. COYW!
BBB
Nick, I’m so sorry about Fiddle. I had a beautiful big black and white cat called M’ster who suffered the same fate, so I can appreciate how sad you must be.
Thanks HD, Casey, Jane.
Fiddle was special to me for lots of reasons. She was also quite unique, in that she’s the only cat I’ve ever seen with a ring-tail. Pat it straight and it’d spring right back into a coil. Very, very cute.
I’m going to miss her a lot.
Yesterday, spent a while listening to a CD someone I know at 2SER has put together (if anyone here is into the more esoteric and underground side of modern folk, and if no one objects to me plugging it, they can find out more about it here). It was oddly perfect music for a heavily overcast Saturday afternoon. At night, off to a friend’s birthday drinks then to another friend’s club.
Today, mostly spent pissfarting about on the Net, being disgusted by the behaviour of some people online who you’d think would at least be old enough if not actually smart enough to know better, listening to some kind of obnoxious music (Totem by Nazxul), and watching that doco on Compass about the Universal Brotherhood, which I was totally fascinated by.
Listened to cricket on the radio and Qld’s incredible win over the Vics (again) in the one-day final after batting first and being 4 for 28.
Vic skipper Cameron White:
Nick,
I was devastated for months when my chihuahua died several years ago, even though he was old and ready to go. It’s terrible to lose a pet, especially suddenly.
Nick, sorry didn’t notice your post re your cat.
As with Paul, we had to have our chihuahua put down just before Christmass 2006. We walked out the animal hospital and cried on each others’ shoulders. We had to wait six months before feeling up to acquiring another dog, the terrier bitch I have written about. Thankfully, this one very different in all ways to the chihuahua.
I watched Se7en which I’d managed to avoid doing for 14 years. Everyone has always told me it’s a great movie, and they were right.
Nick, I am so sorry about Fiddle. Was she Fiddle as in the Cat and the Fiddle? In my experience the line about having loved and lost is even more accurate about pets than it is about people.
Sorry for your loss Nick. Our almost 6 year old still talks about our cat who ‘went on the road by himself and got kill-ded, so we had to get a new cat’ (about six months later). I hope the hurt starts to fade soon.
Now I’ve come over all sad. Sorry to hear it Nick.
Also, much less cross about the whole rodent-in-the-washing-machine caper. Fortunately Tina has a pathological fear of leaving our front gate, unless someone she knows is out there already.
OK, how about some etiquette advice, especially from you parentally-inclined commenters?
I was at a barbecue on Saturday, unpacking things from a car. While carrying a big liquid gas cylinder, one of the small children—about four years old, AFAICT—from the next group of people came up to me, laughing and playful, so I did that ‘running in slow motion away from a small child’. Of course, he caught up with me and he started poking me in the legs and whacking me with a little stick he had.
Then the little f*&ker bit me on the forearm, hard enough to leave a big red mark. I uttered a few choice cuss words and he was called back over by his parents who suddenly left the park, but didn’t discipline him.
What the?
Maybe they left to get away from the angry bitten man and disciplined him later?
I believe you were owed an apology Liam.
First from the parents, then one of those long, drawn-out badger-the-little-snot-to-say-sorry-himself scenes.
It’s your democratic right!
“I watched Se7en which I’d managed to avoid doing for 14 years.”
Snap! Bloody snap! So did I last night. I’d seen it when it first came but not since. It’s held up very well. Despite its rep, it’s not that gory or explicit, especially these days. More the power suggestion. “Get this thing off me!”, “John Doe has the upper hand!”. Beautiful art direction, great slow-burning direction and Somerset and John Doe perfectly cast. Even Brad made his then callowness work for his part.
Also watched again last night for the first time since its release ‘Max’.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0290210/
which has one of the most inimitable lines in screen history.
“C’mon Hitler, let me buy you a lemonade.”
Sorry hear about Fiddle, Nick. No doubt she’s in cat heaven now, underneath a car, checking the brake cable.
“Then the little f*&ker bit me on the forearm, hard enough to leave a big red mark. I uttered a few choice cuss words and he was called back over by his parents who suddenly left the park, but didn’t discipline him.
What the?”
I find in such situations (eg: seven year old godson accidently whacks your balls with a bat during beach cricket) to say in a booming (or soprano depending on the circumstances) voice:
“Pick on someone your own size, you little —–.”
O noes! A big red mark! Was it a Big Red “1″?
No?
Then HTFU, you Druish princess.
Liam, I hope you had a tetanus shot. If the little f*&ker is a biter, his parents almost certainly know by now, and I seem to remember hearing or reading somewhere that parents in general will go to extraordinary lengths to cover for biters, usually at the expense of said little f*&kers’ unfortunate siblings.
I used to think that “biters” were the perfect example of poor parenting. Neither of our older kids were ever biters or hair pullers. Third time, however, is a charm. She’s a biter and hair puller. We did nothing different, it’s just how she is. My advice is to assume all strange children (like strange dogs) are biters and avoid them, do not encourage them with offers of gurning hilarity or comic Benny Hill style running away.
I wish I could say I had an exciting sunday like that, but it wasn’t. Started out great with a long morning bunch bike ride, turned out to be hard work on my old steel framed steed compared to the new (broken) one. Feeling it in the quads today.
Took our biter to the shops on an errand and suddenly, half way through the supermarket, noticed lots of disapproving stares. Turned out I am so inured to the biter yelling at top of lungs about whatever has caught her fancy, that I can walk for three or for aisles without worrying about it. Either that or I’m stone deaf in my right ear.
She must be the only 2 year old on the planet that sings 80% of the words to Kansas’ Carry On, Wayward Son and that has to count for something.
Also, what Behemoth said about Se7en, especially the art direction (which truly was glorious, and incredibly careful and precise and deliberate right down at the shot-by-shot level) and the suggestive, indirect dialogue pointing to unspeakable things. And Morgan Freeman, of course.
As for Brad, I dunno, I don’t think Brad is bad (though I deplore his taste in women). Last 2 things I saw him in were Burn After Reading, in which I thought he was hilarious, and the wonderful Babel in which he did not disgrace himself in the company of Our Cate and the lovely Gael Garcia Bernal.
I did say Brad was bad in Se7en rather that his then rather screen callow screen persona was put to work well in that movie.
As for Burn After Reading, he was brilliant along with everyone else in a film which I saw as a deadpan Pinteresque almost fractal farce about the kinda of second and third level players in a decadent imperial capital that keeps spawning ludicrous adventures, both foreign and domestic.
“didn’t” not “did”.
See, one tiny grammatical error by someone distracted by GetLaidInDCTonite.com and the US could have invaded Iran.
Indeed. And what I actually meant anyway was ‘Brad is not bad’ as in ‘Q: How is Brad? A: Not bad.’
Which is hard to explain clearly.
The callow persona as exploited in Se7en provides some nice background to the Burn After Reading performance, I thought.
And what I actually meant anyway was ‘Brad is not bad’ as in ‘Q: How is Brad? A: Not bad.’
Which is hard to explain clearly.
Unless you’re Dr Seuss, of course.
Nick, my condolences about Fiddle. It’s tragic to lose an animal, even more so when it’s sudden. It’s one of the sad things bout the bushfires – all the animals that would have died.
As for the little fucker. Well Liam, it’s partly your fault for encouraging children. Keep away from them. They’re dangerous. I would have given the little fucker a slap around the chops and I bet that’d break his bad habit. I have no time for parents who let kids behave like barbarians.
I have no time for kids who allow their parents to behave like barbarians (though sometimes the kids are asleep and not available to supervise).
Playing with a stranger may have been the first mistake, Liam. Condolences nonetheless. Seems like some kids are as rabid dogs and should be spurned. I would hesitate to play with a stranger’s dog in a park. Never been bitten by a kid, but.
Oh isn’t life a bugger? You try to share some innocent and spontaneous humour with a kiddie and he savages you. Little creep.
I got bit by a mouse once, while I was getting it out of an empty bath tub (about three flats back). Had to get a tetanus shot for that. The hardest thing was explaining to the doctor and nurses in casualty at two in the morning how I had managed to get bitten by a mouse. Happened on a Sunday, too.
Mark, viz Bourdieu Politial Interventions
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Finally found it. Squizzed it. At $64.50 it was just too much. I can get Czelaw Milosz or Christopher Hitchens for half the price. Sorry it’s just not worth it.
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Interesting tho’ for various reasons I’m sure. But the first thing that came to mind is this over-influence of French intellectuals (yeah here we go again). I’m a big fan of Bourdieu. He was the main theorist behind my thesis (on life experience) and I reckon Distinction would register in the top ten of Cult. Studies contributions.
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But that book is not concerned with political agency the way even PJ O’Rourke’s is.
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There’s just too much of a tendency, those bits I read, to be abstract. I’m reading him go on about his proposed letter with Foucault viz Solidarity and I have to plow into it to find out where he even stands. And most of it is about the stale old Intellectuals join with the Workers fantasy.
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It’s all from the Theory Room. My idea of a an intellectual involving themselves in political agency is Hitchens or Susan Sontag flying to the battleground. Orwell sleeping rough in Barcelona to avoid the death list. O’Rourke doesn’t quite earn a place in this company. But Bourdieu, at least insofar as Political Interventions appears to show, doesn’t even belong with Umberto Eco’s articles, columns and lectures as an actual engagement with actual practice.
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And in that the Czechs have it all over the rest of us.