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»
As light relief from watching the great AGW crash-and-burn spectacular over at Bolta’s, I re-read a favourite children’s book – ‘The Hawk’, by Ronald Welch. Great, swashbuckling stuff, heroic English versus perfidious Spain, set in the C16th, and including a well-delivered encounter with HM Elizabeth I. I’d almost forgotten what an excellent story-teller Welch was. Is strong story-telling a lost art, I wonder?
I remember as a child reading, and re-reading, several times, Welch’s book Knight Crusader. It was my introduction to the crusades.
This weekend I’ve been covering school books, and weeding the garden, and snatching every spare moment I could to read Kim Stanley Robinson’s new book, Galileo’s Dream.
Knight Crusader was perhaps his very best, Deborah. And a quite sympathetic depiction of Islam,as well, together with annoying Christian rednecks. But that was then, of course….
Quiet weekend. I spent most of it reading and note-taking from Hugh Thomas’s The Slave Trade. The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870.
Carted my 81yo diabetic mother-in-law off to the local hospital by ambulance after 2+ hours of vomiting and diarrhea. Extraordinarily enough, she has been discharged looking less than well imo, after an injection in the thigh and a few sips of water.
Even when you’re a very senior citizen, you’re slung out of hospital with embarrassing speed, no matter what!
After the excitement, am continuing to read Things I’ve Been Silent About by Azar Nafisi.
I spent yesterday shopping in rainy Fukuoka, and drinking at an English pub. Today was crashing about, sleeping in till midday and watching an episode of Being Human. Now it’s computer games ’til dawn…
Saw the wonderful Georgia Fields on Saturday night. Supported by Sui Zhen and also Rainbow Chan, it was a great night.
I spent the day over-engineering a shutter for the window of my mate’s guitar amp workshop – solid jarrah from my old bedframe. We decided security, aesthetics and overengineering (for its own sake) warranted the 30kg+ weight of the thing. I’m sure we’ll be able to find hinges and bolts to handle it.
Jane @5 I spent time with CERT..community emergency response.. and it seemed to me that paramedics are very capable people whose diagnosis should carry more weight than accepted in emergency wards. In country areas their skills are often superior to those exhibited in local hospitals that are sadly undermanned on weekends and holidays.
If anyone’s having a relatively lazy Tuesday, or for the next Lazy Sunday, or a lazy Thursday after that… I recommend this:
I guess you heard this good news, Helen, though it received little publicity.
http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2010/01/30/124821_todays-news.html
No, I didn’t, Joe – thanks. That’s a great piece of news. Due to the doggy drama (Saturday thread) my attention to the news has been patchy.
Just staggered out from the feverish post-apocalyptic Puritan world of Cormack McCarthy’s book now film “The Road”. Nothing new in the film – just the usual manicheanism that characterises McCarthy within a westerns trope of “good guys ‘n bad guys”. The take home messages are that humans are social beings, love is the essential value and that the US will not fare well in the event of a significant natural/political disaster because neoliberal individualism poorly equips the citizens for survival. Useful tips from the movie include that gunpowder goes stale over time so you are better off with a bow and arrow (which is also a silent weapon) and that cannibals do quite well as they are able to organise themselves into extended hunter-family groupings. This should be heartening news for fundamentalists and Republicans alike. Oh yeah, wtach out for an old guy called Eli.
@13
So did you like it? I’m reading Blood Meridian, the first novel I’ve read in about 5 years and the first by McCarthy. It is a brilliant piece of work. It has the voice of the Odyssey. It is Steinbeck and Hemingway but without the jokes.
It may be the case that Cormack’s book of “The Road” is a bit more bearable than the film of same. I enjoyed immensely the Cohen bros “No Place for Old Men” (bast on another of Cormack’s books) but have to say that I found the film “The Road” revolting. Possibly the worst film I’ve ever seen and that is not in terms of style and technical askill or acting but in terms of the moral/ethical intent of the film.
The key to understanding the film appears to be the role of Eli (the character with a name in the film) who in the Old Testament was a patriarch who caused considerable trouble for the world with God by failing to discipline his sons adequately. In so far as it is possible to respond to the film it seems reasonable to claim that Cormack reaches for the Old Testament not so much as a parable for the current state of US culture as for genuine understanding as to what has gone wrong.
Doing that, reaching for the Old Testament as a measure of human failing, is proff positive that Cormack is nuts and he apparently thinks that apocalypse will be justified because humans have failed in their duty to god which is, among other things, to order our existence around patriarchal family authority. The US is in real trouble if this film is regarded as a moral masterpiece. The rest of the world is as well because the US doesn’t distinguish between themselves and the rest of us.