Nations built on genocide have bloody feet

Here in my place of residence, where they were kind enough to allow me citizenship a year or so ago, the nation has just embarked on its annual frenzy of self-congratulation and denial.
If you were to risk a stroll down the main street of any Australian town on this fine Tuesday you are likely to be assaulted by the sight of cars zooming past bearing Australian flags; driven by Australian flag cap, shorts and t-shirt wearing persons; possibly with an Australian flag bikini wearing person of the opposite gender beside them. There will be flags hanging out of windows, draped around the shoulders of intoxicated youths and being worn as decoration on the obligatory thongs - and here I do mean footwear - though more intimate apparel can also come with the Australian flag design.
January 26 is Australia Day - but more properly it is Invasion day - when the first fleet arrived from mother England and the land, having been declared terra nullis, was taken over for the British Crown.
For those of you whose Latin isn't quite up to scratch terra nullis is a simple enough concept - empty earth. Despite the fact that they knew very well that people were living here, this was treated as an inconvenient but minor issue that could easily be fixed with a policy of open genocide.
All of which makes the celebration of such an event seem a little...well...racist.
Ah, the nasty 'R' word. Shane Warne - that great example of Australian manhood is off to India to help improve relations with the Indian people - who seem to be getting a disproportionate number of beatings on Melbourne's streets - not that the police think there is any racial motivation for such attacks. Warney's plan is simple - "We all like our cricket don't we? Well, there you go...". Now I know that I'm not in the same league of intellectual genius as our great international sportspeople...but there seems to be a few steps of logic that have been missed out here.
The constant denial of racism in a nation clearly constructed on it would be funny if it didn't have such serious consequences. This is after all the country that had to have Harry Connick Jr. remind it that blackface performances on national television, for laughs, were just not very funny.
So when I came across the two gnomes whose picture grace this post I had to think several times about how they should be considered. Yes, they are blacked up garden gnomes, but they also have the only representations of the aboriginal flag that I think I saw anywhere in Western Australia. Who put them there? I'd very much like to know...bad taste joke; well-meaning pcness or activists making a point - you be the judge.

And I thought I had issues...

It seems unfair to hold back the truth from the world so for your further education I supply a few more pictures of Gnomeville. I think this now puts me in the same category as those people who publish grainy photos of old boots and pretend they are sea monsters; or those who put up fuzzy pictures of curtains blowing on a dark night with captions like - "ghostly visitation? - you decide..." - cue slightly creepy music and a slow fade.
Of course the difference between me and the ghosthunters and monster watchers is that I WAS THERE!

They walk in darkness

On the whole I think these pictures of Gnomeville speak for themselves and they tell a story of not inconsiderable horror!!

There are more images...watch this space...

Gulliver in Lilliput

I have been to hell. And here I'm not talking about the 47 degrees that greeted me in the supposedly chilly Esperance. A day so hot I might add that large numbers of rare, white-tailed cockatoo fell dead from the sky. Squawk, sqwawk, sqwa...crash.

No, as Auden has observed before me, true evil wears a much more ordinary face. At least more ordinary than the hottest day on record in a southern beach resort.

You see, I've been to Gnomeville. Been and retained enough of my sanity to return and tell the tale. Even post the photos...some day soon...

Gnomeville is in the otherwise lovely Fergusson Valley. A valley which has everything to recommend it - there's a brewery, there are many wineries, some of these wineries also sell cheese. It is warm, pretty and has fabulous off-road national park countryside perfect for exploring in a small hired Hyundai.

But then there's the gnomes.

I believe that I am not alone - neither in the great big 'verse or indeed in my solid belief that garden gnomes are in fact the earthly incarnation of Beelzebub. And I have the photos to prove it.

You see, Gnomeville is a little piece of collective insanity that obly the Great Deceiver himself could have thought up. It is an otherwise pleasant little glade, just off the highway, on one side of a deceptively easy to navigate roundabout. And in this little glade, clustered under trees; huddling inside little gnomehomes; standing on bridges; hanging, somewhat macabrely from said trees and generally getting under your feet at every opportunity: is every size, shape and diabolical variety of garden gnome every put on this good green earth.

But the horror doesn't end there. Because the people who've transported these gnomes so they can gather together for their unholy sabbath, have painted them "zany" colours and patterns (Aussie flags a favourite...); gathered them into "family" groups and horror of horrors written truly bad "poetry" on little cards round there necks so that the gnomes do truly have the look of penitents on their way to the stocks.

The photos...and watch this space, they are almost ready for download, cannot truly capture the strange feeling of dread, the prickles at the back of my neck as I explored the full extent of the Evil One's work here in WA.

There is something truly disturbing about the fact that people have travelled from all over the world to visit Bunnings, buy a cut-price garden gnome, paint in a garish representation of themself and leave it standing under a tree for other people to shrink in horror from.

The only thing more disturbing is that this in in the top ten most visited tourist sites in Australia. Think about it.

And now for something completely unexpected...

Short on stature as I am, and inspiration as well of late...I have sort it where any modern denizen of the internet would...on facebook.
Among all the many, varied, and at times disturbing suggestions for things I could lend my obsessive eye to, the one I found most oddly compelling was the request for finding out why I decided to teach.
I could tell the rather sad tale of awaking with a pounding headache in a pleasant enough council flat in East London and realising that at 25 I still hadn't done anything with my life - except perhaps drink a prodigious amount of real ale.
And it would be a sad but true story.
I could talk about the fact that after seven years at University I was still completely unemployable and the only thing I'd ever done that I was good at (other than be a straight A student despite appearances)was convincing other people they could pass their exams.
Appearances are a funny thing. I slept through the most academically rigourous course in the final year of my BA. I know this because all of my notes trail off after two lines and because the lecturer told me. He also told me about his vasectomy, so perhaps he was not the most objective source of information.
I had become good at sleeping in lectures. In my first year the lovely primatologist used to stop and ask for the person next to me to shake me because my snoring was disturbing peoples learning.
But you have to sleep sometime and lectures seemed a nice quiet place for that to happen.
I could point out that for the first couple of years I was teaching and definitely through that first year of training people didn't laugh when I said I was a teacher, they looked aghast and hunted about for who they could call to complain about falling standards.
I didn't like teaching when I started. It was hard work. I had to get up early. People in the staffroom didn't like it when I suggested in a most colloquial of fashions that some time spent getting sexually acquainted with themselves would indeed be well-spent.
My first HOD tried to get me fired. If I remember correctly he had been a fairly regular receipient of my advice...My second HOD also tried for to get me fired. My third HOD broke down in tears and couldn't deliver his farewell speech...so I guess things got better over time.
15 years later I get up early and go to school. Earlier than I ever did when I was attending as a student and had to be physically removed from my bed.
I could wax lyrical about the teaching profession and its value. But it would be platitudes. And perhaps not even something I believe. I work with good people, who do a good job and I'm no gooder than any of them.
I watched another class graduate tonight. And although there weren't as many tears as when I read Euripides, there may have been a moment of watery eyes.
Its not why I decided to teach that's important. Its why I keep doing it that's the real story.

Narcissists in Tight Pants

Narcissus – the figure from classical mythology and not the charming flower named after him, was a boy so beautiful he fell in love with his own image. Now I don’t know any boys that pretty these days, but it’s a feeling that isn’t too foreign…

Aren’t we all just a little attracted to those aspects of ourselves we see in others? Or am I alone in this narcissism?

The thing is, I’ve been doing those “Which Firefly character are you?” quizzes. And 100% of tests tested brought the result…drum roll please…Captain Mal!. Yes, according to the highly scientific sciency stuff that quiz-makers do – I like to wear braces, push people into spacecraft engines and wear very tight pants. Very tight.

Shiny I say. I’m big and brave and self-sacrificing. Oh and moody, crap at relationships and with a tendency to acts of extreme violence. Apparently I’m also loyal, a great leader and pretty damn smart. The flipside – I have a thing for power, have lost my faith (in what, in what!?!) and I never clean my room.

Now while some of the above may fit and I’m prepared to wear the tight pants on this one; it got me to thinking. Its no secret that if I could swap ten years of time on Old Earth for 10 minutes with the Captain; I’d be signing up for it…so surely that would mean I’d identify with his potential love-interest? Surely…?

But what I’m identifying with instead are all the things I see in myself. And though I’ve never been faced with a horde of hungry Reavers, I reckon I can make a fair guess at what I’d do…Which leads me to the conclusion that I fancy the Captain not for the tightness of his pants but rather his psychological similarity to my own self-identified character traits.

So having self-diagnosed narcissic personality disorder, I got to thinking some more. And as so often happens when I let my mind wonder, it was slash I was thinking about.

I’ve put a lot of thought into what it is about slash that makes it so…compelling (yes, that’s the word I was looking for). And surely some sort of transferred wish-fulfilment must be right up there. So when I’m enjoying a bit of Mal/Simon or maybe even a dirty little piece of Mal/Jayne am I just being a voyeur and watching two bits of hotstuff at it? Or am I identifying with one of my BDHs? And which one?

And why, given I’m not a gay man, am I reading about acts I don’t even have the equipment to carry out?

I think the narcissism finally answers some of these age-old questions. If I identify as Mal but also want to get freaky with myMalself then it makes some sense to find him some sort of object to carry that lust out on. Because lets face it pages of the Captain self-“loving” just wouldn’t be that fun to read…though I’d be prepared to give it a go…for research purposes…

One way or another, I think the narcissic self wishes to have the experience of intimate relations with the beloved – the self as other - and one way of doing that is reading about the self/beloved getting it away in an enthusiastic manner.

And having established that, I’ll be accepting donations for the several years of therapy I clearly need.

Malcolm and Meursault – Existentialism in Space

Some might argue that the reason to watch Firefly is the substantial amount of eye-candy that Joss has kindly put in tightpants on screen for us. Others would assert that it is not so much the tight pants as the tight dialogue which is the real attraction. Or the pretty spaceship, or the great plotting.

I’d like to suggest that it is in fact two other p’s - the politics and the philosophy.

Back in the late 1970’s Terry Nation – the genius behind the best bits of Dr Who - pitched a new idea to the BBC – the Dirty Dozen in space. Bad (or at least morally ambiguous) men (and a few women, mainly in high-heeled boots), predominantly in black leather, on a mission. Blake’s 7 was born. The world’s most beautiful spaceship – the tri-hulled Liberator glided across our screens and our heroes – pretty big damn heroes if you ask me – set forth to free the universe from the tyranny of the totalitarian, mind-controlling Federation.



The eponymous Blake was no socialist revolutionary – more of a radical left democrat – but he was prepared to use whatever means necessary to unite the rebel planets and destroy the powers of evil. Hooray! Oh and he was brutal, potentially self-destructive and willing to sacrifice everything and everyone for his aims.

And like all great heroes – he had a side-kick, alter-ego, anti-hero along for the ride. Avon has an enduring appeal – from geeky tech-nerd in the second episode of the series, to gun-toting sex symbol in thigh high leather boots by the end of the four season run. It’s a Cinderella story of bad guy turned badder.



But what, you ask, has all this sci-fi nostalgia got to do with Captain Mal?

Well may you ask.

Because the first thing I thought as I watched my very first Firefly episode – was “OMG Joss is a B7 fan.” Now I cannot confirm this rumour – but I think the evidence is piling up.

There’s the real pretty boat, the real pretty girls – who range from competent to expert in the ability to kick your ass category, and the real pretty guys in tight pants. Ahhh, the tight pants.

But perhaps less superficially – there’s the bitter but committed bloke against the forces of evil in the ‘verse; the conspiracy theories; the constant running from totalitarian forces and the bleak humour.

Mal’s also no revolutionary socialist – he’s a freedom fighter, a rebel – he ends up taking the Alliance on not because of huge principles but because it becomes totally personal. Not so different from any number of contemporary national liberation struggles. And not so different from Blake.

So that’s the politics and the truly obscure references to 1980s pop culture dealt with – at least for now - but what about the philosophy? You were promised existentialism – where is the existentialism?

Never fear, the myth of Sisyphus is here.

Now I’m not going to argue that Malcolm is Meursault – that would be silly. Were Joss really channelling Camus, Mal would have been at it with Inara before the contract was even signed on the shuttle lease – Meursault was never a man for delayed gratification.

But if we consider the first line of The Outsider for a moment and imagine it in Joss’s world…and we consider the first episode of Firefly – the real first episode – Serenity – in a sense, a metaphorical one – it begins “The Browncoats died today.” Or maybe “His faith died today.” Too sentimental? Perhaps…

But there’s more. Meursault spends his last months in a tiny cell, waiting each morning for the executioner to arrive. His main pleasure, the tiny square of blue he can see through the high window. Can’t you hear him? “You can’t take the sky from me.”

Then there’s his final realisation that he was indeed happy – and what’s happiness if its not finding Serenity?

But this is pulling at straws. We all know where I’m really headed. The purposelessness of life, its lack of meaning, meaning achieved only temporarily and through the act of living and accepting the meaninglessness. Not just that, but the fact that we are indeed all islands, untouched by others except in the most superficial of ways, that we all do die alone.