Categories: Uncategorized

10 Oct 2009, Comments (6)

What’s going on with the Balcony?

Author: Helen

The Cast Iron Balcony is undergoing renovation. Although cast iron is likely to figure prominently in the future, the old lace in the header has been biffed off the Balcony and taken away in a skip to restore a nice old Victorian somewhere else. At the moment I’m using the generic template – think of it as one of those house renovations where all the studs and frames are exposed for a while with a tarp hastily tied around some bits of it.

The old look was just getting a bit beige for me. Any cast iron lacework images featuring colour and rust would be greatly appreciated if anyone has any. I’ll be doing the redesign when I get around to it – and as anyone who knows Australian amateur renovators would know, that could be a while!

4 Oct 2009, Comments (3)

Essentialism damages, even kills

Author: Helen

Is this becoming a pattern in Australian heterosexual behaviour and criminal sentencing?

1. A dysfunctional couple have a child. The dad just decides he’ll opt out of the child care role.
2. The mum is such an abominable carer that the child dies.
3. The dad continues to live in the same house without lifting a finger to help said child.
4. The dad’s legal team argue that he is less culpable than the mother, as he had less responsibility than the mother.

This has now happened twice. I wrote about the first incident here. In the first case the prosecutor threw the argument out and charged both parents equally severely. In this case, it’s succeeded; the dad has twelve years for manslaughter, the mother a life sentence for murder. Notice, also, the headline of the linked newspaper report, which refers only to the “cruel mother”.

Is there any possible reason for the unequal view of the parents’ culpability, and the dad’s assumption that it was OK for him to do nothing, apart from the extremely essentialist and determinist views of gender that are so popular at the moment? Have we gone so far down the track of dumbed-down evpsych / Women-are-from-Venus/ “hard-wired” interpretations of human behaviour, that adult court officials can actually believe this story? That an adult couple can share the same house and the same family, yet the woman must be more responsible for their folie a deux simply because she should be genetically hard-wired (or something) to be the nurturing parent? Or that men are so hard-wired not to be the nurturers that the father surely can’t have been expected to step in, or pick up a phone? (And people say feminists are disparaging towards men.)

I’m at a loss for any other explanation. It’s like magical thinking.

Gender essentialism (as well as all the other forms) is damaging. It’s not only damaging and insulting to women, but to men as well. And it keeps both of us from living as well as we could. And yes, sometimes, it kills.

 

 

Note – There are obvious disability and mental illness issues in this story, too. I’ve focused on one aspect of it here but there is really much more in it to unpack.

4 Sep 2009, Comments (2)

Friday Earworm: Pete Murray

Author: Helen

The boychild introduced me to this singer. I’d heard of Neil Murray, but not Pete Murray.



I can’t work out whether this one is my favourite, or this:



I love the way the rhythm section flies in the chorus.

That natural voice, sitting pretty in the natural range, with a bit of breath, no meslisma and pyrotechnics: Idols please note.

8 Aug 2009, Comments (9)

My Pink Half of the Drainpipe

Author: Helen

Just for the sheer hell of it.


This is about SETTING BOUNDARIES. People, take from this what you will.

29 Jun 2009, Comments (14)

Spirit of P P McGuinness, leave Razer’s body!

Author: Helen

One of the scary things about getting older is watching other people, who used to be younger and groovier than yourself, age and settle into the sclerotic patterns of unexamined privilege and rightwing attitudes.

In the 90s, as a thirtysomething, I used to listen admiringly to Helen vocalising volubly on 3-RRR Triple J with Mikey Robins. You might have noticed I have a weakness for people who write hilarious, OTT rants full of subordinate clauses, tangents, abstruse words and the occasional runon sentence – Twisty and Tiger Beatdown, Elizabeth Farrelly sometimes. That’s a clumsy attempt to describe what I liked about Helen on the radio. As a thirtysomething in the 90s, I heard her as the voice of younger and hipper people, as well.

So who took away that Helen and replaced her with Christina Hoff Sommers?

I respect Helen’s childfree status – but she doesn’t, it seems, respect others. And all that boilerplate anti-Greens shit? “Hippies”/naive/”ancient-grains”/”patchouli” – it’s a wonder there’s no reference to hemp or volvos there, but you get the incredibly original and edgy jokey references that have never been made before, don’t you?

And the idea that she once voted Green because she was perimenopausal, and therefore unable to make a rational decision, is really special. Of course, that could be taken to mean that childfree women are equally unfit for Parliament because they’re all stark raving bonkers once they reach the median age for the MPs there. That just explains why no-one should employ a woman over forty to do anything, anywhere. Good one Helen! Seems there’s really no life stage in which we can expect to share in the democratic process!

Seems the spirit of backlash antifeminism has claimed another writing soul. And it seems in the MSM as it is today, that kind of writing is well rewarded. The punters love it – so maybe Razer has just made a rational decision, despite the dreaded perimenopause. It’s sad for us fans, though.
 
 
 
Crossposted

18 Jun 2009, Comments (6)

This is what I get for trying to maintain civility in my discourse

Author: Helen

First time I’ve ever been scolded for not being sweary enough in an internet discussion thread, I think. And here I was thinking that the standards at ALR would be so lofty.

I do bristle at the idea that asshat is a mere euphemism, though. Although mild, I love it for its evocation of the location of the subject’s head relative to his arse.

(More etymology of asshat here.)

2 Apr 2009, Comments (9)

Walkin’ back to Happiness

Author: Helen

The AGE: “The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has begun distancing himself from his controversial internet censorship policy in what one internet industry engineer has dubbed “the great walkback of 2009″.
 

 

He laid aside his foolish pride, learned the truth from tears everyone he cried.

Of course, it’s another example of where a politician revises a bad decision and someone who wanted that outcome nevertheless mocks him, for doing a backflip, or a backpedal, or in this case a walkback, which is an artefact of an old software language. IT humour, hurghhh hurgh hurghhhh. Hilarious. POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT: UR DOING IT RONG. But I guess he just couldn’t resist coming out with something so side-splitting.

Helen looks very Amy Winehouse in this clip. Mess up that scary, scary beehive and apply the thick upswept kohl eye makeup and you’d have doppelgangers. The resemblance doesn’t end there, either. They’re both London girls from vaguely similar backgrounds and they both started performing very young, but while Amy’s crashing and burning, Helen only looks in danger of perishing from wholesomeness.

Never mind. The Clean Feed is dead: Let’s talk, hep cats! Work that tweed jacket.

25 Feb 2009, Comments (17)

You’re soaking in it.

Author: Helen

Another little delivery of mass-produced misogyny in our inbox. For Valentines’ day, no less. This time it isn’t anyone we know, but check the hilarity:

Valentines day… secretly guys feel left out.
There is no special holiday for the ladies to show their appreciation to the man in their life.
March 20th is now officially ‘Steak, blow job & shut the fuck up day’. Simple, effective and self explanatory.
No cards. No flowers. No fancy meal.
Just a steak, blow job and shut the fuck up for the rest of the day.
That’s it!!!
Spread the word and help men feel appreciation.

To those who will immediately come in here and opine, “Well, you know, it’s just a joke! and it’s spam!” I reply that it just gets tiring, sometimes.

I just dropped into the supermarket to get bread, which is a daily habit – there’s always something running out. Bread, fruit, milk, the perishables. By “dropped into” I mean “made a detour to get stuff, instead of sitting for half an hour drinking capuccino before my second shift.” And I see this exchange between a young cannibal and a cannibal Dad on a birthday card:
Son: Look, a woolly mammoth!
Dad: No, son, too hairy. Bleugh! We’ll find something else to eat.
Son: Look Dad, a dodo!
Dad: No, too feathery. Bleugh!
Son: Look Dad, a lovely young woman! [YW is, of course, in a paleolithic bikini. What else?]
Dad: No wait a minute Son. Don’t kill her! We’ll take her home – and we’ll eat your mother.

humourless feminist! Can’t you take a joke!

Being so hated makes you want to throw the bread away and opt for the capuccino, or better still, a stiff vodka and tonic. Or just get into the fridge and close the door. At least the men in your own family don’t think this way. At least, as far as you know.

Back to the delightful Valentine’s day “joke”. See, even on the day they should love you the most, they really do hate you. Googling it for research purposes, surprise, surprise, of course it comes up on a news.com.au “blog” thread – Kate De Brito. The agony aunt. (e.g., “We came home to find the babysitter half nude. What do we do?” errr… not hire that particular babysitter again? “Should I tell my partner about a breast enlargement?” Oh Murdoch, you’re all class.)

The comments are about what you’d expect:
“You’re very lucky if the girl makes any effort other than parting her legs at the end of the night.
SO…I hereby propose MARCH 20th to be…
“STEAK, BLOW JOB and SHUT THE F*CK UP DAY”
“It reminds me of a quote a very old man told me many years ago. “ All women are prostitutes, we all pay for sex, at least with real “working girls” one knows the cost and what one will get”
…”In purely monetary terms, hookers are actually cheaper. Depending on your personal cost structures (housing, transport, rates, flowers, movies etc) your average man would need to get sex at least 4 times a week to break even on a “normal” relationship.”
…”pity any guy if it happens to be that time of the month for his girl. It’s like putting some money in the bank with no interest on your deposit.”

Etc.

This comes shortly after another news.com.au story on Amazon.com and its extraordinary social conscience:

ONLINE retail giant Amazon has yanked from its virtual shelves a Japanese computer game that lets players simulate raping girls…

…”after it was brought to the US web firm’s attention”. Of course, it’d be too much to expect that a successful retail giant could possibly afford to vet the quality of its merchandise in the first place. While some of the commenters on that article are groping towards a realisation that all isn’t right with a “game” like this, some of them are more concerned with a perceived insult to their platform.

…news.com.au, change the thumbnail photo on the homepage. This has nothing to do with console gaming, at ALL.

…Why is there an Xbox 360 controller in the picture? This has nothing to with Xbox 360 or any other console for that matter

Touching, no? If only I were an X box. I’m feeling the love there.

Also on news.com.au:

SLEAZY men are taking advantage of Sydney’s rental crisis by placing online advertisements offering women free rooms in exchange for sex.
The zero-rent ads, targeting desperate women looking for somewhere to live, are becoming increasingly common on popular “share house” rental websites.
Although there have been numerous complaints about the ads, which some website users have dubbed “offensive”, they do not breach policy guidelines for sites such as flatmates.com.au

And oh lord, the comments thread on that one.

So what’s the point, you say? This stuff is all over the place every single day. Yes, exactly that.

13 Feb 2009, Comments (2)

Bushfire Housing: Pass it on

Author: Helen

Someone has developed a not-for-profit website to facilitate temporary housing for victims of the fires. I haven’t had time to check it out myself, but it’s via a trustworthy IRL source. He says:

A friend of mine has been involved over the past week in developing a not-for-profit website to facilitate temporary housing for victims of the fires. It’s up and running (three cheers for agile web development!) and available at:

bushfirehousing.org

They are looking for people to offer up a spare room/bed/couch through the site, and are promoting the service by word of mouth – please spread the word!

Also, John Quiggin’s donation thread is continuing through the weekend. My donation recommendations are here and here.

9 Feb 2009, Comments (17)

Hell

Author: Helen

Not saying much about anything here at the moment, because the situation in my State is too awful for words. The death toll is 131 at the time of posting. They haven’t found all the bodies.
Two towns, Kinglake and Marysville, both completely gone. Now Strathewen as well.

From the newspaper letters page today:

Australia’s real heroes don’t hit or kick or whack balls around, wear Speedos or strum guitars, all for great rewards. They drive fire trucks, wield hoses and risk their lives, for nothing.

Can I say an a-f**ckin’ men to that.

WHITTLESEA, Australia (AFP) – Huddled under a dampened blanket as Australia’s deadly bushfires roared over her head “like a jet engine”, Sonja Parkinson was convinced she and infant son Sam would die.
Instead, the flimsy shelter saved them from the inferno that claimed at least 32 lives in their town of Kinglake, one of many stories of heroism and miraculous escapes to emerge from the country’s worst fire disaster.
“I thought we were going to die,” she told the Australian newspaper, explaining how she ran for her life as her home was engulfed.
“The two front rooms were ablaze. I couldn’t see. It was black. We went down to the creek and we hid,” she said.
A shallow puddle proved their salvation, as Parkinson doused a blanket and awaited their fate.
“This little one was so brave under the blanket,” she said.
“We had a blanket over us in the creek and we huddled with the dog and two neighbours and two lyrebirds.
“It was shallow, a summer creek, but there was just enough water, a puddle. We sat in a muddy puddle under a wet blanket and the fire went through us.”
Further to the east near Healesville, teenager Rhys Sund used a tiny tractor and trailer to save his sister Rhiannon and a group of frightened women and children from an isolated farmhouse in the path of the firestorm.

“I’m so proud of the young bloke,” the 19-year-old’s father Mark told Melbourne’s Age newspaper. “He cut down the fences in his way and went in.
“Rhys hasn’t been to bed yet. He’s been fighting the fire all night.”

Christopher Harvey from Kinglake says the fire that hit the area was an “inferno”.
“There was no chance of fighting or taking care of this fire.
“Everybody’s gone. Everybody’s gone. Everybody. Their houses are gone. This is our house, this is it. They’re all dead in the houses there. Everybody’s dead.”

Red Cross – give them yer money and yer blood. As Lauredhel points out, don’t use the official DSE or CFA fire notification sites, so as to keep the traffic there down.

 
 
Update 10/2/2008:

The terrible outfall from the bushfires continues and there are lots of fantastic projects and acts of generosity going on right now. One I will mention is that on FRIDAY (13th) Coles will donate the profits of the day to bushfire relief. So everyone save up your grocery shopping and DO IT THEN. Pass the word!

(Via Eglantine’s Cake, who is in the thick of it at St Andrews.)

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