The Solitude of the City

I feel I should atone, as these tones of grey punish my soul and greying sight,
Casts shadow across my belief in love.
Sitting still alone and lonely my wish for worlds above decays as the decaying station,
Binds my heat and trust thereof.

Filthy as the coughs of coughing proles as trees oft thought and often dreamt,
Fly forward amidst the wheezes.
There I stand aloft, on lofty peaks as breezes soft and softly float,
Me away from these city sleazes.

These tracks perverted, still perverting slays hope while I sit hoping,
To escape this endless, empty fray.
Where dirt and dirty thoughts give way to peaceful slopes and sloping sights,
And brightness of the dawning day.


wasteland

Farewell Matt Price

At around 7pm on the 25th of November 2007 Matt Price died from complications due to brain tumors; survived by his wife and three children. He was 45.

For as long as I can remember Matt Price has been one of only a few journalists who I can honestly say I respect. Writer of the regular column ‘The Sketch’ in The Australian Newspaper, Matt was one of the rare journalists with the courage in the 9/11 world to see the funny side of the political system. Regardless of the situation, regardless of how much it seemed the nation was being swept up in the latest story of peril or fear, Matt Price was always there on page three to be the informative, gently satirical voice of Australian reason. His articles could always be counted on to be witty, cheeky, but at the same time contain just enough serious analysis to make the reader think about their own opinions and what forces have been at play in creating them. It is a rare gift to be funny, satirical and even a little whimsical without straying into the quagmire of frivolity. And yet to do what Matt did was not so much about talent as much as it was integrity. While satire is a difficult art to master, the turn of phrase, the clever lines, the almost brutal precision of his attacks where only part of what made Matt unique and special. For me his true influence and success as a journalist was the integrity to have a daily column in Australia’s only truly national paper and write it day in day out in a manner that wasn’t just a selfish indulgent rant. Regardless of whether or not you agreed with his attitudes Matt Price at no time attempted to manufacture himself as a opinion guru like Andrew Bolt or Greg Sheridan.

Journalism, just like the world of politics it so frequently covers is often a shallow and depressing affair. Even the most reputable papers or airwaves are too often filled with smut, innuendo, hate-mongering, misinformation, deception and the appeal to the most basic of human emotions; fear. I have often heard stories from previous generations that journalism, just like law and even politics, was once an honored profession of integrity and dignity; where your local news source could be relied upon to provide the facts, the truth, and allow you the intelligent listener or reader to come to your own conclusions.

Today journalism is openly and unapologetically opinionated. People aware enough of the workings of this categorize papers by how left wing or right wing they are and then choose a news source that most adequately adheres to their own personal tastes. Even The Australian, which Matt Price worked for, which is regarded by many national and international sources as Australia’s Newspaper or Record has no quams about slanting the news to reflect the homogenised ideology of the Murdoch Machine. On the flipside many of my friends, otherwise intelligent questioning people, will nevertheless only read papers that are self professed ‘green news’; sources that are well written and have good intention which nevertheless do nothing to challenge individuals to think outside their comforts zone or consider alternative understandings. Still more Australians however are not even conscious enough of the choices they are making to realize they are being suckered into sensationalism.

In Australia ratings suggest that over one million people will get their primary daily news from either Today Tonight or A Current Affair. Until I worked at a fairly middle class café during 2006 and 2007 I assumed that the ratings of 1.1 or 1.2 million viewers nightly for these shows where simply an indication that many people compliment their ‘real’ news with relaxing non challenging fluff. However while making customers their lattes or cappuccinos many of them would casually ask “did you watch the news last night”, and proceed to tell me about the latest story of peril and fear ACA or TT. For these people tabloid shows, which alternate between stories on the latest and most fatblasteringest diet program to indiscriminate anti-gay anti-Muslim xenophobic rants masked as patriotism ARE their news. For many people, in their own conceptions of normality and common sense it is perfectly logical to embrace these shows as though they where real news, to refer to the ten minute story on the Butt Blaster 4000 they watched last night, without shame, as ‘the news’. This complimented with Alan Jones as by far the most listened to daily show on Australian radio is an unfortunate indication of the state of journalism and news in this country. Many many Australians and indeed citizens of other countries seem perfectly happy to embrace the quasi informative world of newstainment, with all its connotations of stupifying and dumbening.

In this current climate of Journalism Matt stood out as a witter who avoided appealing to the easy emotions of fear, of sensationalism. Unlike other, more widely read writers, Matt Price never seemed to descend into the “The sky is falling you are all going to die and you will worship and love me because I am so clever to have predicted it” style that seems so prevalent in many news sources. As a frequent viewer of Insiders, and weekly ABC opinion panel show that Matt was a regular guest on, I know for a fact that Matt had strong opinions on many different political issues, and yet readers of his column would never feel that he was trying to push them. In every article, in ever edition of The Australian Matt Price felt like a good mate sharing a drink and a casual chat, gently questioning your opinions and beliefs, and his articles, like this one written just before he developed cancer, where brilliant combinations of cutting analysis and genuine intellectualism. As possible as it is to comment on the character of someone I never actually met, after 5 years of reading his columns I know that Matt was one of the most decent, honest and dignified journalists of the post 9/11 world.

In the words of Oscar Wilde “The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.” Matt Price, may he rest in peace, was one of the few exceptions to this rule. He will be sorely missed.


wasteland

Bear with me- Acceptable Theft

I think I am on the money to suggest that the excusability of thieving from individuals is not a topic that regularly comes up in philosophical and social debates, even in the left of field social groups that I flit around in. It might occur, as I will detail later, but it is never really analysed. Rarely have I been sitting around at a dinner table having pleasant chats and sipping glasses of cheap cabernet-sauvignon when someone has asked, “I nicked the crockery that your all eating off from the pensioner down the road, is that wrong?” However recent events have got me thinking about the moral implication of theft amongst members of my herd, and the very indistinct line that we and indeed wider society draw between theft acceptable and inexcusable theft.

Let me take you on a journey. Recently my herd of housemates (that is the collective noun that I have patented and will henceforth use) decided that we would have a themed party to celebrate the upcoming Australian Federal Election. Being the witty, imaginative and generally left wing devils that we are we decided to take the piss and call it “The Liberal Party”, where people would dress up as members of the voting pools for Australia’s main, and currently elected federal conservative party. Amongst our guests where a white supremacist carrying a caged gollywog doll, a pregnant teenager just after the ‘baby bonus’ (a cash payment given to all new mothers in Australia) and a local hick who was just plain outraged by kids these days, muslims and the disintegration of our traditional family values.

To compliment the planned chants of “it’s a damn shame” and “no it’s not like it used to be” we decided to decorate our house with pictures of our local Liberal Candidate, doctored of course to portray them ass the social outsiders (like gays, women and those that don’t own a BMW 5 series) that they so despised. The easiest and most fun way to get lots and lots of high quality, colourful images of our local member was to collect all the Liberal support pickets placed in peoples yard throughout our suburb. And we did. This often required climbing trees, jumping fences sneaking into yards and generally executing late night commando stealth tactics to avoid being caught by pensioners in their unmentionables. I would be lying if I said that we had a good old time ripping the fuckers out of the ground and running the hell away.

However, and this is where the meat of this random diatribe comes in, after we took the pickets someone from the media got informed and decided to run a story on our escapades. Throughout the corse of his planning he contacted the local Liberal branch who where suitable not amused. Throughout the corse of the Liberal Parties planning to get back at us pesky kids they decided to refer the matter to The Law. It was only then that I, or anyone from my herd realized that some people, and indeed the police, might consider what we did to be illegal.

An herin lies the dilemma. Why did my herd and I not even conceptualise the possible illegality of our actions, and what constitutes acceptable theft?

As I thought more into this issue I realized just how non-linear our conceptions of theft as a crime are. Almost no-one in my herd would think twice about stealing from the government, and my house has been filled over the years with street signs, caution signs, and even recently one of those giant water filled interlocking road barricades you see when they close of a lane of the highway. However none of us would walk into a government department and walk out with a new office chair. Likewise big companies are pretty much considered fair game and I have one mate who spent the best part of her teenage years stuffing as much rubbish Target makeup into her oversized bra as she could. She however would never steal from the local store where the person that owns it serves you; that would be wrong. And while we might nick the political pickets from our neighbour’s lawn, we wouldn’t break in to their house and take their super sweet 28inch plasma TV. Why, isn’t all of this still theft?

And it isn’t us that have these bipolar attitudes, examples of confusion between acceptable theft and unacceptable theft are everywhere within mainstream industries. A singer can steal another artist song riffs or lyrics under the guise of ‘sampling’ and its legal, however if you download that same song for free its illegal. Blog Queens like Perez Hilton have been allowed to steal photographers pictures without royalty payments on a website that makes him money by very mildly modifying the pictures with quote bubbles and labelling it ‘parody’, however if you used Perez’s image on a T-shirt and sold it you would be breaking the law. Furthermore, almost every one of us will ‘steal’ in our everyday lives.

Take home a few surplus reams of paper from work, make up a few extra deductions for your tax return, gleefully accept the extra Diet Coke the vending machine spit out at you instead of reporting it; YOUR ALL STEALING! But no-one would even consider these acts as being in the same category as bank robbery, or stealing someone’s wallet. Why? Does size and worth really make that much difference? Does the fact that the pickets we took are free, easily replaceable and only put up by hardcore (read evil) conservative voters make the action okay? Does the fact that a company might be huge and won’t miss their Loreal Wet Shine Cherry Lip gloss really make the matter okay? All these little things add up.

A company probably looses far more money from every employee ‘harmlessly’ taking home staplers and paperclips then they do from the unlikely event that Joe in accounting might winch a photocopier out a window at three in the morning once the cleaners have gone. The lip gloss might be small but lots and lots of lost lip glosses might cost an employee somewhere their job in the long run. The Liberal Party pickets may have been free, but the act of taking them off that persons property is, if only in a small way, stealing from them the right to peacefully declare and support the political party of their choosing; perhaps the most basic and fundamental right of a progressive pluralist society. Can there really be an acceptable theft, or are we all just in a state of mutual denial?

I know I am definitely not the moral authority to answer this one, but I am interested in the dilemma. Anyway I have to run, the person whose Internet account I have been logged in as is coming back and I have been using up their entire download quota. Is that wrong?


wasteland

Who is Wasteland

Ever since i graduated from University recently i have been feeling a bit like an intellectual slug. I never really realizied just how much i would miss the process of constantly being challenged, having your opinions questioned and being forced to think outside the realms of what your find comfortable.

I am an Australian man in his early 20's who considers himself smack bang in the middle of the political spectrum. I don't identify with any political party, i don't have any really strong unwaverable beliefs and i am not the kinda person that is going to not listen just because i dislike you as a person. What i am is a fairly laidback guy who finds the working and norms of society interesting.

The purpose of this blog is for me to have an outlet to force me back into that pattern of thinking about strange and unusual things. I am fully aware from the get go that i am not the best writer. I am crap at spelling, my grammar sucks, and my ability to properly phrase things is pretty bad given i spent four years doing an arts major. Nor am i the most punctual and committed writer, and there is the real likelihood that i could leave this place for months on end without guilt or remorse!

But heck i started it and for the moment it interests me. And in a social environment as quick fix and short attentioned spanned as ours that is all anyone can really expect.


wasteland