To simplify the task of lifting a meat loaf from the pan,
one housewife places a strip of waxed paper in the pan
so that both ends extend over the edges.

The annoyance of having her silk stockings dry
with streaks in them led
one housewife to hang them between damp towels.

Read the whole thing.

I thought I’d try it for myself. The subject is confronting.

It’s a thought provoking contrast with a pretty palomino, something little girls dream about. Of course, the title was taken straight from the found text.

This is from the February 27, 2010 Auction Report, Tofield, Alberta, Canada.
 
Pretty Palomino

Black Quarter Horse two year old no white
Run in scared but pretty, good weight
Two-fifty meat buyer
Chestnut Quarter Horse two year filly
Run in star marking good weight pretty
Two-sixty meat buyer

Paint mare palomino pretty
Four year old Quarter Horse cut on knee
Not bad registered a little thin
Two seventy meat buyer straight to slaughter
Pretty palomino yearling filly
Run through one forty meat buyer

The found text didn’t have anything which made a good ending, so my “found poem” just stops abruptly.

The text is from Fugly Horse of the Day, a legendary blog which has done a lot to showcase the problems of continuing to breed companion animals which end up surplus to human needs and wants. Something we all need to think about in these financially shaky times.

And that’s probably as close to poetry writing as I will ever get.

In an essay to mark The Female Eunuch’s 40th anniversary, Nowra lambasts the book as “hopelessly middle class” and Greer’s depiction of women as misogynistic. The playwright and novelist writes: “She wanted women to undergo a profound change in the way they viewed themselves and their relationships with men. If you look at how Greer thought this could happen and what actually did, then our contemporary world must come as a disappointment to her.”
In the essay, published in The Monthly, a current affairs magazine, Nowra not only attacks Greer’s work, but criticises her appearance, her character and even her sanity. “She will do anything to get noticed,” he says, adding that when Greer appeared on the reality TV show Celebrity Big Brother, she looked like “a befuddled and exhausted old woman” who reminded him of “my demented grandmother”.

Sayer’s piece is another example of an bad editorial decision, I think – publishing a piece dashed off in anger by the partner of a public intellectual in the heat of the moment, while the argument’s still unfolding. Would “too close to the action” be a reasonable description? But it sells newspapers, I guess.

It’s wearying how every time feminists write something disagreeing with anyone, the verb used will be “attacked”. You’re writers, people, find another one. Another example of people not practicing what they preach about playing the argument and not the arguer (“play the man and not the ball”). I haven’t noticed Sayer take to the stage to denounce people like Devine, Bolt and Albrechtsen, although “attack” would be a more accurate description of their writing. And “attack” wouldn’t be so out of place describing a piece where one public intellectual attacks another public intellectual (and by extension their dead grandmother) by condemning her based on her perceived unf**kability as a woman and comparing her to his “demented” grandmother.

The whole of Sayer’s argument rests on the idea that because Nowra is such a great guy in her world, and does something to help poor and oppressed people, then there can’t possibly be anything wrong with the Monthly article. I blame the remnants of what a misty-eyed John Howard used to refer to as “our Judeo-Christian culture”. Nowra contributes to charity for marginalised peoples’ education, washes dishes and buys groceries, and respects Sayer’s personal space (all excellent things, I agree), therefore, he is allowed a hateful piece of character asassination in a national magazine, because he’s racked up so many credits in the niceness bank. In other words, he’s purchased an indulgence.

I’d hope that in the twenty-first century we would no longer believe in the Medieval practice of buying indulgences to offset things that we do. If I give a certain amount of money to social justice causes and do a wonderful job of the housework and my paid work and treat everyone around me with respect, it doesn’t allow me to go out and glass someone at the pub, for instance. It’s not a balance sheet. The rest of the world is perfectly within its rights to approve heartily of Nowra’s charitable contributions and domestic virtue, while soundly criticising his hateful article. That is what addressing the argument and not the person means.
 
 
 
 
*I haven’t read it because I agree that the publication of this article is a massive troll by the Monthly to boost its circulation, but I did go to the local library this morning in an attempt to get my hands on the library copy. Unfortunately the “librarian” on duty at the desk, and I use those scare quotes advisedly, wasn’t aware of the periodical’s existence and was unwilling to ask any staff member to help me locate it, although Computer Said Yes, it was in and available.

Labour day is a bit of a dog’s breakfast in Melbourne because the proper Labour day is the first of May, but we celebrate it – or rather ignore it – on the second monday in March, when the government goes apeshit with bread and circuses (“Moomba”) to deflect any unseemly focus on those nasty unions and their dreadful preoccupation with working conditions.

Me, I’m still hoping that the green shoots I’ve seen where I work – as in, young dads with young children taking days off or leaving early for childcare and school commitments – continue to grow. As a feminist, I’m not interested in work vs. stay-home arguments which are predicated on the model of women being overwhelmingly responsible for child wrangling and domestic work. There’s always the accusation that feminists would deny mothers that “choice”. I wouldn’t deny it to anyone, but I’m not satisfied that in the present cultural climate (still) it’s really a choice. I’d rather see the domestic load being spread more and more evenly between parents as the years pass, and the notion of the Perfect Employee pass into history. That’s where more rubber will hit the road, for a better and more humane work world.

Maybe.

And if I’m wrong (and even if I’m not) some people of that future time will still be bad-mouthing the ber-loody feminists.

A FORMER AFL footballer is the nation’s first “respect” minister after being appointed by the Victorian government to tackle the growing racism and alcohol fuelled violence problems in the state.
Premier John Brumby announced Justin Madden would be the minister for the “respect agenda” as part of his election year cabinet reshuffle following the shock resignation of embattled Transport Minister Lynne Kosky this week.

I mean… Madden! Not only does he come from the background of Australian Rules football – a milieu which is trying with limited success to shake off its reputation for a lack of respect when it comes to women and people of other races and cultures. He’s also the minister least likely to be associated with the word “respect” by the long suffering inhabitants of Victoria. He has a long history of showing respect to developers and money, and none to architecturally significant buildings, grasslands, coastal communities or the planning rules set up to make our city livable. This leaked email about setting up a false public consultation process for a development has shown just how much respect Madden and the Vic Government have for the people of his State and the iconic buildings and places which they love.

Really, I’m not under any illusion that the Victorian government has our best interests at heart – let alone those of international students – but you’d think with all the money from developers pouring into the party coffers, they’d be able to come up with a more sophisticated PR response to the problem.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T – Find out what it means, before you create a ministry of it.
 
 
 
Crossposted at Larvatus Prodeo, with bonus Bernice

The Head tune is from Quincy Jones’ Soul Bossa Nova (Roland Kirk is the flautist).

Here’s a thought experiment: What do you think the Dream Warriors’ homage to / quotation of Soul Bossa Nova would have done for this recording’s sales, given that it’s obscure back catalogue which previously would have to have been hunted down by afictionados who knew of its existence in the first place (barring the odd brilliant remainder bin accident, and we’ve all had ‘em.)

Probably the bump would have been small, but it would have advanced the original artists a bit among a demographic which wouldn’t have discovered them otherwise. Even if in a small way. Discuss.

Let’s hope the Dream Warriors avoid the notice of rent seeking parasites.

More here and here.

Now, sure, I’m predisposed to like the guy. But let it be known I’m not particularly keen to fight Garrett’s corner as a minister in the Labor government. I’m the Voter who Cannot Love*, after all. He, like Julia, has broken my heart over environmental and Arts policies. No, I don’t think parachute-in celebrity politicians are necessarily a good thing, and I also think he’s overfaced. He was given too much responsibility, too quickly. The fact that every right wing hack was automatically programmed to hate him was just icing on the cake.

Should he move aside into a less demanding portfolio to gain more experience? Should he sit down and have a big think about whether the realpolitik of the Labor tent has negated his entire life’s work on environmental issues? Yes and yes. Should he stand aside because his position has become completely untenable and he’s electoral poison? Or because, in some quaint and symbolic way, in the Westminster system a Minister is required to fall on his or her sword for the actions of other people? Probably. But should he stand aside, or be sacked, because he bears some kind of moral responsibility for the four workplace deaths that have happened since the inception of the insulation scheme? That is such a pack of horse hockey I’m unable to contain my rage.

Gosh, it’s touching that the Liberal party has suddenly discovered workplace deaths in the building industry. When they were in power, those despised Unions were constantly trying to tell them. About forty people a year, more or less, die in Australia every year. Are the other thirty-six people who died in Australia in the last year chopped liver, just because they don’t come with a Ministerial scalp? I don’t hear any outrage in doorstop interviews about them.

The four people (some of them boys) died for the usual reason: because their employers ignored occupational health and safety practice (as well as ordinary common sense). The employer of the worker who died in October could possibly claim ignorance about the metal fasteners used with metal foil insulation close to wiring. The others couldn’t, because Garrett didn’t do nothing: he moved to ban the fasteners in November. Two more workers died as a direct result of the employer ignoring a new regulation which Garrett himself had put in place, as well as one from heat stroke, again the employer’s responsibility. To quote one commenter, the responsibility to run a safe workplace lies with the employers.

Now we have the Liberals shouting that Peter Garrett should have micromanaged the scheme to the point of overseeing every employer, perhaps, I don’t know, climbing into every roof space himself. This is the same Liberal party mainly composed of people who see every government regulation as a slippery slope to socialism. This is the Liberal party whose constituency is business groups which oppose industry regulation as “anti-business”.

These are the people who claim to espouse a doctrine of individual responsibility, but because it suits them at the moment, they’re willing to abandon that. “If you don’t like my principles, I have others”, I guess? See Also, the invisible hand of the Market sorting things out? When push comes to shove, this incident has shown that they really know it’s a crock.

So, Libs, if you want to claim your prize Ministerial Scalp at the prize desk, I think you should have to fess up that the despised unions were right all along and that government oversight of private industry is totes necessary (and that at the moment you’re calling for government micromanagement on a scale hardly known except in command economies). Also, that conservatives are for Individual Responsibility, except where you can blame something on someone you don’t like.

Also, that your arses are on fire.
 
 
 
 
*Just like Chilly, the Elf who Cannot Love.

Well, we can settle in for an entertaining year in which the hairy and hilarious leader of the opposition competes with his shadow cabinet for Tool of the Week. It’s got to the stage where HAT has an ongoing Obligatory Tony Abbott said What Now? thread.

For those outside the country, his latest effort was:

“What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing, is that if they get it done commercially, it’s gonna go up in price, and their own power bills as they switch the iron on are gonna go up every year, I mean…”

Which immediately, of course, brought on some hilarious tweets and comments. The winner was Zoe, prize: One medium sized internet.

@crazybrave: I would like to iron Tony Abbot’s budgie smugglers. While he was in them.
@tobiasziegler: “We respect women’s right to wear the burqa, but it’s just one more thing they have to iron.”
@jeanburgess: I can only understand national policy through examples of how it might affect my daily life as an ordinary housewife. Thanks, Tony Abbott!
@tammois I know, let’s hook Abbott up with Palin to go rule Planet Stupid and Offensive.
And
I DON’T IRON, TONY ABBOTT. I DON’T IRON & I VOTE, YOU IDIOT
@antipodeankate: I’m not ironing because I am busy crocheting my husband a pipe, shaking up a litre of martini and organising his ties.
I leave the house for half an hour and Tony Abbott says something guaranteed to annoy me… I’m a wife, I’m in my house, I’m not ironing.
@TimDunlop What conservative pols of Aust have to think about when they are fantasising about housewives doing ironing is that it’s best not to share

And from the bloggiverse, some wise advice for young Tones from Paul Burns commenting on LP:

…(S)tay away from wimminz ishoos. They already know you are a turd. You don’t have to prove it over and over again day after day.

Some people think he just has to be on the ALP payroll. It does make a kind of sense.

The image above represents my vision of life under a Liberal government with Abbott as PM; I stole it from Antipodean Kate.

I’ll tell this story all arse about, otherwise it might scare you if you’re one of the people who read here and love the Ollmeister. So, ending first: Ollie is here, alive and undamaged, with his cheery, rather bumptious personality intact. We’ve just been snuggling on the couch with a DVD, after he’s circled the park at normal warp speed, played bitey-face with Maggie and scoffed his dinner.

Last Saturday, it was a warm-to-hot day. It was a mild morning. Ollie came out with me in the car to get his annual injection – Parvovirus, distemper and such. We drove home. He was so quiet and good on the way, I forgot he was there. I got home, I locked the car. I went inside. I did housework. The day warmed up.

I had forgotten he was there.

If a friend hadn’t come to visit, he would be dead. “Where’s Ollie?” She had her dog with her and if Ollie wasn’t bursting out of his current napping place to greet them then something was awry. Then the awful realisation and the mad scramble to find the keys, open the car, would have used a brick if the keys hadn’t been in an obvious place. Poor Ollie was huddled into the back seat trying to get away from the sun, drifting into a stupor, panting way too fast, leaking with saliva, and hot…I pulled him out and carried him like a baby to the hose. His legs bicycled, disoriented. Oh Ollie, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. We ran a hose on him, got some drops of water into his mouth and rushed him to the vet. A different vet who’s closer.

The vet nurse hustled us into the back and put Ollie in the hydrobath. Ollie hates water but he wasn’t in a position to complain. His legs were flat out as the vet nurse washed him and washed him with the cold water. The Boy was there, calm and collected but starting to be a little pink around the eyes and nose, which is how you know he’s upset. Please be OK Ollie! Please be OK! Oh I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.

After about five minutes the vet came in and asked me to put Ollie down to see how his legs were working. He stood! He asked me to walk Ollie up and down their little back courtyard. He walked! He had a bit of a run! He hopped up the step!

He was home in half an hour. Vet wasn’t in the least interested in keeping him, which was an auspicious sign. By the end of the day he’d had a good rest, lots of water, a little mini-walk on the leash, and … er.. all the bodily functions were working properly. More importantly, he came back. He was himself. Undamaged. No thanks to me.

Waking nightmares have followed me all this week of what I did to this little guy and how it could have ended. I could help him recover, but I can never take away what I put him through, something he never deserved. There is no excuse. Domestic animals depend on us so much. We have so much power over them.

Dogs die in hot cars. Pass it on. I don’t care if people think they know. I thought I knew. Tell them again! I thought I was vigilant, but obviously not vigilant enough. And I can never apologise to that dog enough.

Looks like I won’t be going at all, though. The convention’s already sold out, and it’s sold out as an indirect consequence of the Australian government favouring religious events over secular ones (with some notable exceptions, see below.)

Last year, the Parliament of the Worlds Religions received $2 million in funding from the Federal government, plus half a mil from the City Council, while the Atheist convention received nothing from any level of government. Some people (see the Pharyngula thread I linked to in the first paragraph) would say that it’s not the Government’s place to fund any particular event. I could go along with that, except that it seems to be their place to fund religious conferences.

Oh, but, you’ll say, the Victorian State government gives plenty of money to secular events. Yeah, the ones which are elevated to quasi-religions: AFL football celebrations and the Grand Prix, Festival of the Great God Car, which is costing us around $40 – $50 million this year.

I’m glad that the convention sold out, but disappointed to miss out on P.Z. And I’m disappointed that religious events can attract Government sponsorship (while many religions are awash with followers’ money) and a secular event is given the thumbs down. I would expect that in the US, but not here.

Murphy's law states that if you post a scornful article bagging someone else's web site, there will be a great big dog's balls of a HTML error just below the byline.

OK, now my heart is thoroughly broken and trampled on. I’ve become the voter who cannot love. The infamous My School database/website has been released today (and very buggy it is, too), and what do we see as the very first headline on the dead-tree Herald Sun? OUR SCHOOLS SHAME. The banner on the online version? HOW DID YOUR SCHOOL RATE? So predictable. Don’t ask me how the Boy’s school rates (The Girl has just left the public system with an excellent VCE score and as yet no crack habit – the Boy starts year 7 on Monday. Serial only children, I haz them.) The website hasn’t worked successfully for me yet. And yes, I am aware of most internet traditions and able to work most simple interfaces, so I don’t think it’s me.

Back to Julia, who on assuming the Deputy PMship announced that she would bring on an Education Revolution. Well, since “revolution” can mean doing a complete 360 and ending up facing the same way as when you started, then OK, technically correct, Julia.

Trevor Cobbold in his article, The Free market and the Social divide in Education (PDF), points out that the My School website is a continuation of the commodification of education which features the establishment of “quasi-markets” in schools.

The publication of the results of each school is seen as a central component of quasi-markets because it is supposed to inform parent choice…
The Rudd government has maintained and extended the focus on markets and competition in education… It has not reversed any of the key measures of the Howard government.
…It is paradoxical that a government which calls itself progressive is implementing the policies of its erstwhile conservative predecessor.

Progressive? They’re starting to make the previous government look more progressive:

…(A)s far as education policy is concerned, the Rudd Government has given John Howard and David Kemp another term in office…(The PM) says that schools that fail to improve will be subject to “tough action”, including firing principals and senior staff and closing schools. This is something that Kemp could only dream of.

And a Labor government that can actually introduce policies that aren’t the previous government’s leftovers plus spin from a personable pollie – that’s something that I can only dream of.

Robert Merkel at LP has more on the nuts and bolts behind the My School website.