tops weekend

On Saturday I drove to Sydney, for the engagement party of some friends of mine [just to clarify that I wasn't just crashing the party of some strangers?]. Unfortunately I couldn't work the dates to have some more time up there, so it was just an overnight visit, which is always a bit of a gamble - sometimes when I do the flying visit I end up being so tired that although it is lovely to see people, I can't quite form intelligible sentences, and so just perform the conversational equivalent of beating someone around the head with a large, dead fish. Happily this time was not like that, it was, in fact, tops. Naturally I started with a spot of research, as is my wont, at the State Library of NSW. I'm currently on a bit of a mission to find out everything that I can about the East Sydney Technical College/National Art School c.1956-1960 (should you have any info.... ) so I was chasing up a few bits and pieces in the collection there. Which, incidentally has some hilarious photos of people at the college in the 1950s, often wearing Buddy Holly glasses and enormous chefs hats. Admittedly that's possibly one of those things that's only truly amusing to someone compelled to research by wading through endless catalogue entries and is thus in search of any diversion. Unfortunately I didn't find anything of any real relevance to what I was looking for, but at least I can tick a few things of the list of what I need to look at. Then we repaired to my friend's house to prepare, via the Neutral Bay PS so she could vote. Which hilariously seems to have the school motto "Be a Player" - rare to find such honesty on the North Shore. Should, quel horreur, Malcolm Turnbull ever end up PM there will be a nice resonance for those casting their vote for him there. Because I know I always like to check the school mottos of whatever polling booth I may be entering... a connection that doesn't really offer any explanation for how the PS I attended had the motto "Learn Wisely Live Proudly" - and yet that electorate keeps sending Phillip Ruddock to parliament with resounding victories. The "Live Proudly" bit is particularly puzzling as they keep sending a member of the undead to parliament. So anyway....

We decided in view of our somewhat all-tuckered-out condition that we needed Redbull to get through the evening, which meant that we needed vodka, and I thought cranberry would also be a good idea. Which meant that we ended up drinking something that recreated the flavour sensation that is raspberry cough syrup. mmm. But did serve it's purpose of gearing us up while chilling us out.

Anyway, we eventually got ourselves off the sofa, and away to the party, where we walked in the door to the news that Howard had lost Bennelong. Much screeching ensued! I had already made the announcement that "I will probably get quite intoxicated tonight. If labor win, there will be champagne, if they lose, then there will be scotch. Lots of scotch." So corks began popping, and kept on popping all night. Despite the fact that channel 9 had called Bennelong about a week earlier than anyone else was prepared to. Nice to be in a crowd of people that seemed uniformly happy about the result (certainly provided a nice buffer zone for my kilowatt-level gloating), and it made for a great night. This was the first election that I've been old enough to vote for in which election night has been a positive experience, normally they've been a galling, horrifying "THREE MORE YEARS... !?" then weakly: "pass the scotch please". I had a profound sense of relief that labor did win, partly because I really didn't want to have to move to New Zealand, but I really would have been desparately sad for the state of this country if John Howard had been re-elected. Now one just hopes that the Labor party keep it together. [tip: try and remember that the opposition is across the aisle, not within the party.] It was great to be sharing such a happy event in the context of another happy event, with great friends.

The following day we went for breakfast in Darlinghurst, then I made my way back to Canberra for a Hen's afternoon, followed by the movies (Death at a funeral: don't rush to see it, but there are some funny bits). It was a great weekend of seeing people.

This week has been so strange; seeing the "Howard Government" in past tense gives me a buzz everytime, and the liberal party being in such a state of collapse is something I just can't find it within myself to be sympathetic towards considering the hubris they have demonstrated for so long. The sense of transformation is remarkable. And although it has obviously been coming for a long time, and the result wasn't a surprise, I was never prepared to let myself believe it, lest the depression of loss be entirely crushing, and so the change does seem quite sudden and fast. I really hope the new government are able to get some legislation up and running quickly so they don't lose that momentum. Not to mention finally, finally, apologising to Indigenous people!

Now all we need is for the liberal party to select Tony Abbott as their next leader and Labor should be guaranteed at least a couple of terms....

a question, gentle reader

Should I place a bet on the Coalition to win on Saturday, on the premise that that way there will at least be some consolation?

more about the 'head. And some other stuff because I get distracted midway.

I started writing a response to my previous post in the comments area, and realised I was, in effect, talking to myself online, which which is surely taking the narcissism of blogging to that level with which I'm not comfortable.

On the prices people are paying for the Radiohead album - I saw something in the SMH website the other day that said about 1/3 of people are paying the adminstration fee of 49p but nothing for the album, and another third at least are paying four pounds or so (about half of the price of an album downloaded from itunes). Cutting out all the middlepersons means that they are absolutely raking it in. So it will be interesting to see record companies response to bands doing this - as it seems that it is those bands that are longterm successes that finance the money that goes into supporting promotion of newer bands, and offsets the ones that don't obtain that kind of success. If bands with the stature of Radiohead, that has been built through the promotion and support of record companies, can move away from those businesses and release an album online and mean that the longterm cashcow relationship is even less certain, I wonder if the companies will change their approach to how they find new talant to promote? They seem to be fairly woeful at catching up with the changing nature of the consumption of music - their obsession with grinding out illegal distribution rather than finding out what people are prepared to pay for music online and letting market forces determine it seems wrongheaded to me.

I really like that Radiohead have found their own way of doing it too. They refuse to let their music be sold through itunes because they don't want people to be able to buy one song at a time, as they see their albums as a unified work, rather than something to pick at. And the alternative they've set up seems to work really well, particularly as you don't have to download any software, as you do with itunes, and particularly any software that then proceeds to annoy the crap out of you. (In itunes case only superseded by the monumental irritation caused by iphoto. Oh the ranting! It annoys me even more than the inappropriate use of brush script fonts, and that has been consistently annoying me since the mid-1990s. I kid you not! Although not as annoying as the Howard government, also consistently annoying since the mid-1990s.) (oh, and you should take out your frustation on that matter here.) (on reflection, that's a really dumb scale of how annoying something is - between font use and political frustrations? Like giving something a rating as somewhere between how much I would enjoy a glass of creme de menthe sitting in an airport terminal versus a fine glass of red sitting in the south of France. ) (must stop stream of consciousness parenthesizing. To coin a verb.) I like that they've stood up for their work as unified albums, and surely anyone would agree who's ever sat back after a couple of shandies and listened to one in the dark.

Regarding the contents of the album, I love it, I've become slightly obsessed. Particularly hearing Thom Yorke sing "I don't want to be your friend, I just want to be your lover" is bizarre, because it harks back to odd Spice Girls memories, that do linger long unwelcome.

My office seems to be slowly filling with moths and spiders; I think nature is trying to take back the ANU.

Or I could just shut the window.

Or even, just shut up...