Brave Creatures

It would seem that we are simply not satisfied with the deadly and venomous that we have here in Australia, we need go searching for more.  Some recent research discovered that, against traditional wisdom, lizards do actually have venom. It appears that even the little bearded dragon lizards we have in most suburban back yards carry a version of the classic rattlesnake venom.

Holy shit, I used to catch those things as a kid.

Its amazing the things that we discover, unexpectedly and in places we thought we had looked so thoroughly. Every time I turn around, I am discovering new things about myself. New details that some how fit into the blurry, crowded seemly shifting jigsaw that is my self image.

Some years, it has all been so clear and so certain while others, like 2005,it has not been. This year, this dreadful 2005, I have felt lost and adrift. Unable to even see a sign to tell me what street or avenue I am on, or which way I should go.

But somehow luck keeps on finding me and delivering chances to my door. Not always the things I wish for,but apparently that's not the name of the game. One thing that has been delivered this year, is the friendship of some very special people and through them I have made an amazing discovery.

Against the conventional wisdom, and my own fears, it appears that I am NOT actually venomous. And that's a nice thing to know.

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Australiais a land of many contrasts and, as Bill Bryson is so ready to pointout (in a somewhat high and quavering voice), it is also the place withalmost all of the number one most deadly animals on the planet - snake,sea snake, jellyfish, spider, just about anything that creeps, crawls,bites and kills. We don't have the most deadly frog, but there is arelationship-killing toad here but since he is an import, I guess itdoesn't count.

In stark contrast, we are pretty tame on boththe weather and geology fronts. It really is pretty much all sunshineand mild weather, apart from the occasional (ok, semi-constant)drought. I guess all this mild and gentle weather has lulled ourgovernment into a sense of security on the whole global warming issuebecause it has decided, in its parental wisdom, that we don't need todo any of that silly signing of the Kyoto Accords on climate control.

Butsurprise, surprise the other day on the news I stumbled across a littlelocal weather disaster - that's right, Australia had its first recordedtwister, or twisters, in of all places - Broken Hill. This is a small mining town in western New South Wales made famous by the Australian mining giant BHP (aka Broken Hill Proprietary company, now BHP Billiton) and the movie Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

BrokenHill is a quaint, Victoria era town, with many local artist inresidence as well as the miners. Construction is mostly brick, wood;and here comes the problem; corrugated iron. Now as just about anyAustralian will tell you, that stuff is sharp and nasty when its new,when its old and corroded, its a killer. Examine any of us closelyenough you will most likely find a scar from childhood where we triedto tangle with the garden shed or the roof of the primary schooltoilets. Corrugated iron is sharp, nasty, vindictive and usually rusty,which means the slightest scratch sent you to the school nurse for atetanus shot.

Now while the anglo population is busyputting up charming iron and stone buildings, its important to consideranother, more native part of the population. They are black, furry anddeadly - namely the funnel web spider. Now this little bugger is anative of Australia and just happens to be one of the most toxicspiders in the world, and they have the charming habit of jumping outof wood piles at people. Get that, an incredibly toxic spider that youdon't have to find, it comes and finds you.

Now how exciting is THAT.

It gets better.

Whena strangely unseasonal tornado blows through town, what you get is anair bourne concoction of super-deadly spiders and shredding, tetanusladen pieces of iron.

Who said climate change wasn't dangerous?

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Its Saturday night, its late and I have been up getting some more of my site up and working, but before I head to bed I thought I would put down my impressions of this weeks movie - Flight Plan with Jodie Foster. The so try goes that after the accidental death of her husband in Berlin, Klye (Jodie Foster), an aircraft engineer, is returning to New York with her 6 year old daughter, Julia (Marlene Lawston).

Three hours into the flight, Julia disappears and Kyle desperately tries to find her while facing increasing skepticism from the crew and the on board air marshall, Carson (Peter Sarsgaard). No one remembers seeing the little girl and she cannot be found, then when word reaches the aircraft from Berlin that both Kyle husband and Julia had been killed in the same accident it appears that Kyle is delusional. Frightened and determined, she uses her knowledge of the aircraft she helped design to carry out a frantic and disrupting search for her daughter.

 I quite enjoyed this movie. I found it suspenseful and I felt that Kyle's fear, both for her daughter and the her own sanity, were really quite moving. Jodie Fosters performance was good without being great, a little monotonous given the extremes the character was going through.

Like a lot of hollywood features at the moment its well paced, well crafted and extremely high in production values, without necessarily being a fantastic story, so its enjoyable without being life altering. I suspect this is a result of having a budget so big, they need to reach an enormous audience, and its hard to create something extremely moving for a large number of people. Its an exciting story with with suspense of it all being added to by Kyle admitting that she has "seen" her husband since his death. This makes the existence of Julia all the more doubtful, adding to the suspense.

Interestingly enough, my movie partner (hi Richard) commented that the feel of the movie was actually enhanced by seeing it in cinema seating, giving us as audience members a greater feeling that I was actually there (cinema seating being a little like aircraft seating).

All up it was a pretty good film for an easy Saturday night, but don't feel you have to rush to see in on the big screen.

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Nothing hugely insightful today as I have been working on getting the photo album from the shared James and Robert site back online here at Brave Creatures.

It is all from 2001 or earlier and the little I have read sounds a little naive to me now. After 3 years of fighting depression, its hard to see back to a time when it wasn't part of my life, but there it all is. And don't I sound happy?

Its been a rough couple of years but from the looks of things, I think I am heading back to being that happy again.

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It seems that the Anglican Church in Melbourne is getting a little desperate for money to complete the refurb on St Paul’s Cathedral in the city because while the building is poorly located as a church, it is a GREAT place for advertising.

According to The Age newspaper, it was a close vote that kept the scaffolding on the partially renovated spire from being used as a billboard for the soon to be released blockbuster - King Kong.

Classy!

The interesting thing is that this seems to be indicative of a more progressive and realistic view pf the world being held by the Anglican Church in Australia. In the recent industrial relations debate, I had the disturbing experience of finding myself; my left leading, socially progressive and slightly socialist gay self; agreeing with the Anglican Archbishop of Australia.

Spooky.

The Archbishop’s position, lets call his Arch, since it sounds more cuddly. Arch’s position on the new IR reform is that by reducing the minimum employment requirements and removing some workers (i.e. those that are not irreplaceable), Australian parents will need to work harder to keep their jobs and then have less time for their families. He made the point that there is more to life than work and more to a strong Australian society - and funny, I couldn’t agree more.

I have worked 100 hour weeks, in high pressure corporate roles, earning a LOT of money and I have to say it didn’t make me happy. There is more to life than work and if we want to make this country not just strong, but happy, may we need to focus on THAT as well as the economy.

I listened to an interesting radio show a little while ago - and ok that tells you right there that I had WAY too much time on my hands - any how, the radio show was about
happiness, and they discussed a concept of GNH - Gross National Happiness, or the amount of happiness there is in a country or region. How happy the population is and how much they enjoy their lives.

Maybe this is the sort of thing we need to be focusing on, because I tell you, even when I am poor if I am happy, I don’t care that I am
poor.

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The last 12 months has been really exciting and challenging.

Going back to school, changing career path and living on my own have been great. But one thing about all of this has really blown - no money. With champagne tastes, this beer bottle pocket boy has been a little sad.

Not to complain too much, the truth is I have actually not felt like I missed anything. That came as a little bit of a surprise, but I guess you need less when you are doing things you love.

Thanks to the governments kind support, in the form of Centrelink "AusStudy" payments, and the occasional bit of work here and there I have managed to get by. But now that school is about done, that's all going to change.

I have been job hunting for the last couple of months and while I have seen a lot of recruitment agents, I haven't had a face to face with an actual employer. Today changed that and after a year of comfy shoes I had to get back into the suit and tie. Of course this was the day that ANOTHER recruiter called with another interview with another employer - at the same time. Heaven forbid this be easy.

All of this though of returning to the workforce has really caused me to pay more attention to the Australian Federal governments new industrial relations reform than perhaps I would have otherwise. Work Choices, as they like to call it, seems to be more about giving employERS choices rather than workers.

The gist of the changes seems to be a streamlining of the current Industrial Relations law which is (apparently) unwieldy and complex with both state and federal governments having a range overlapping legislation that confuses workplace relations, puts too much power into the hands of the unions, stifles the economy and generally gets the Treasurer, Peter Costello's panties in a bunch.

I am not a lawyer and I certainly haven't read all of the existing industrial relations legislation. I have however read the Media Arts and Entertainment Alliance award and its complicated enough to require a couple of reading session, a gin and tonic and a nice cold towel on the forehead. If they are going to streamline things, I guess I am all for that - right? But with the new legislation running to over 700 pages, I am a little hard pressed to see that this reform is going to simpler.

On top of the concern such a weighty tome gives me, there are a few issues in the behavior of the government that's been giving me some pause. Now remember at this time, the Liberal Party holds a majority of both upper and lower houses. For those people unaware of Australia's political climate the short it is that the Liberal Party is about as liberal as the Catholic Church is catholic. So with control of the government, you would the Prime Minister could afford a little grace, to implement this reform in something resembling a collaborative fashion.

Apparently not.

The sorts of things that have disturbed me about the governments approach without even looking at the legislation include:

• The government originally planned to release the legislation on Melbourne Cup day -the day all of Australia stops for a horse race. And they planned to give only one day of review time to the House of Representatives.
• Over AU$50M has been spent on advertising this reform. That's over $2.50 for each Australian
• Of that budget, AU$152,000 was spent RE-printing a government booklet to insert a single word on the cover page - Fairer. This was done before the legislation was released to the public. The government was in overdrive promoting the legislation well before it was made public

All of this seems to say that the Government either is too arrogant to care what people think, or they are afraid of the reaction if there is time for some serious debate on the issue of industrial reform. Or a bit of both.

I don't deny that given the pressures of a global economy mean that Australia needs to find new ways to be competitive, but I am worried what this is going to mean to the people in Australian society who are only just living on the money they earn now. Do we really need to create jobs at any cost? Even if the cost is widening the rift between haves and have nots?

Having lived in the US, I have seen how the worlds richest country treats its poor, and its not pretty. The aftermath of Katrina showed the world how vast the division really is. Is that sort of division really necessary for continued prosperity?

And is Australia heading in the same direction?

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I figured this would be a good forum for me to give my opinion, valuable or not on a range of things from books to films to computer games and other technology.

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With all the hoo-haa around about blogging, I figured it was time that I joined the movement and gave it a try. School pretty is much wrapped up for the year and with what looks like a glorious summer beginning, it feels like a good time to at least try and start writing regularly.I also thought I would start experimenting with the camera in my phone. I have a GREAT digital SLR,but its really bulky so I don't carry it that much, so I thought I would see what sort of quality I could get out of the phone. So far, not too bad.Together these are going work alongside my regular newsletter emails. In truth, my mother is probably going to be the only person who reads this on a regular basis, but you never know.I might be the next Dan Savage or Carrie Bradshaw. Here's hoping.

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