Since we don’t live by politics 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»
Ichiban!
It’s my birthday, and I’ll [insert verb of choice] if I want to.
It’s fantastically hot in Tokyo and my cat is hiding under my bed in terror, because yesterday we did a 6 hour bus-plane-bus-taxi trip from steamy Beppu to torrid Tokyo. I think he hates me. I am spending the day hanging around trying to reassure him.
My God it’s so hot here! I think the forecast was for 32, but the last time it was 32 the air temperature in Kichijoji was 38. My house is next to a bus parking area that is just a very large expanse of concrete, and I get the sun through the windows all day long. It’s also probably 95% humidity here. Grotesque! I have never experienced heat like summer in Japan and it’s not even August yet – plus I’m not meant to be using airconditioning!
Please all link to SG’s blogsite to see a very important book review of a book on the second world war.
We accept so readily on these blogs that there are bigoted and deeply-held stereotypical views (eg. Saturday Salon thread this week), without looking at their heritage. Perhaps this is not such a good example but I’m sure you’ll get the drift.
SG’s review of an important book provides much food for thought and deserves as wide an audience as it can get.
Spent a welcome quiet day for my 73rd birthday. Rain overnight and a little during the day has left the paddocks sodden. There are sheep being agisted in what can only be described as a feedlot . The ducks, long billed corellas, sulpher cresteds, galahs,pigeons, red rumps and the many finches etc rule. My Jack Russell pup, http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150236745526491&comments, finds new ways to amuse us all every day. The huge mate is a Scottish Deerhound.
Did anyone else notice that Samoa beat Australia at Rugby Union today?
Thanks for the recommendation mediatracker! I’ll be trying to get more out over the next two weeks.
happy birthday zorronsky!
I noticed the Australia loss too, linmhall, and my first thought was WTF are Oz, SA and NZ doing playing a trination series six weeks before the world cup!? And well done Samoa.
I want to watch the Japan women’s soccer team play in the world cup final tonight (vs. USA) but it’s on pay TV. Those bastards in corporate sport! I urge everyone to cheer Nadeshico Japan (<- this is a very very cool name for a sports team).
Newcastle is a beautiful amalgam of architectural eras; Gothic Revival, Art Deco, even the Baroque persists in certain buildings.
http://www.longworth.com.au/history
Got up at 6:30, looked at the rain radar, went back to bed for a sleep-in.
In the end I’m not sure whether it actually rained or not, but I didn’t need that much persuading after a crappy race on Saturday
Also watched In The Valley of Elah, which is decent, and The Life Before Her Eyes, which is well-acted but left a rather nasty taste in my mouth.
A very lazy Sunday for me.
I spent most of the day re-reading A Confederacy of Dunces and feeling nostalgic for New Orleans, I hope I get to re-visit that city sometime soon.
I had a long bath to ease some very ache-y muscles – work is really tough at the moment. Though it’s nice to be out in the bush looking at all the re-generation from a year of pretty good rain. The native grasses seem to have really benefited from the summer rains we got here in SA. Yesterday, I went for a wander through a swamp site I’ve been restoring and the frog-song was amazing. It reminded me of a post Brian made some time ago about nature-sounds, I need to try and find that again. It would be interesting to record the sounds of sites pre-restoration and then see if there is much difference through the years. The swamps definitely seem more dynamic, but the grassland sites are so fractured and isolated from each other, I would guess changes would not be very apparent with them – but I seem to recall that insect life was also recorded, so you never know – maybe there would be some changes there – last year I noticed an abundance of tiny blue moths, which I hadn’t seen before, and I’ve noticed quite a few species of ants and spiders.
Happy 73rd from me also, Zorronsky!
Round Up’d the weeds.
Happy 73rd, Zorronsky!
Had (for once) a genuinely bog-lazy Sunday after a ripper night out eating some Japanese food then seeing Henry Wagons at the Forum. What a band! They are mayhem! Catch him if you can. We bought a Wagons commemorative tea towel
Happy birthdays, Terangeree and Zorronsky! Many happy returns!
Liked SG’s article — would like to see a note on why Aussie girls were happy to date black Americans and whether this contrasted with (or changed) their attitude to dating Aboriginal men. Did the Aussie soldiers’ conflict with more-racist Americans lead to our society being more accepting of migrants post-war (when of course the Government wanted Europeans only, so there are confounding factors…)?
My weekend included: buying a 27-in. iMac with the Geek after his two-year-old iMac lost a display chip; visiting my mother-in-law in her rehab billet; church; celebrating my Dad’s 91st birthday; moving more stuff from our house for the painters. Also read a short bio of D. C. Daking, early light of the English Folk Dance Society.
ah, the Forum, what a great venue. I miss Melbourne. I also missed Wagons the last 2 times in Adders. Bah, my social life has gone to hell lately, I need to do something about that.
chookie in the backyard – 27 inches! That’s a very nice iMac…
I don’t understand the “Black American soldiers cool, Aborigines bad” phenomenon, but I don’t know anything about it really – just saw a documentary on the ABC years ago about the way that black men from America found Australia really liberating. From memory the implication was that Australian anti-aboriginal sentiment of the time was specific to that race, and many women saw black Americans as American first and black second. Or maybe Australian women had a secret complex…?
There were other examples in that documentary of Australians just not getting miscegenation laws. But maybe it’s a difference between slavery-racism and genocide-racism? After all, Australia was in the grip of a 100 year program of “breeding out the colour,” so the underlying understanding of race and racial policy was fundamentally different. I’m pretty confident that by the 40s the huge majority of Australians would have found the idea of lynching Aborigines genuinely abhorrent, for example, even while supporting legal powers for police that gave essentially the same powers to those authorities.
…listened (world listening day). And listened some more..to the whole of Biped by Gavin Bryars and marvelled at what a big and beautiful noise four people make, including good electric guitar…Bryars remains one of the few contemporary classical composers who shows the electric guitar the respect it deserves as an instrument in its own right….
http://www.gavinbryars.com/Pages/biped.html
. . . OK . . . must have dreamt all that.
Belated Happy birthdays teragaree and Zorronsky.
Spent the weekend reading and note taking from Ambrose Serle’s American Journal, 1776-1778.
Had visitors Sunday afternoon.
Not willing to bother watching Barnbaby repeats on the ABC for the umpteenth time, spent the evening reading Jan Dalley’s The Black Hole. Money, Myth and Empire.
Quite interesting.
I’d like to add 466/64 to the belated happy birthday wishes of Zorronsky and Terangeree.
Bayete Nkosi, beacon of humanity, you are a living inspiration to all of us who venture on the difficult path of change in challenging times!