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April 30, 2004

MLX 2002

An article i wrote after the 2002 MLX. 2003 saw the third mlx, and many of the observations i make in this article were realised last year. i did not participate in mlx 2003 as a volunteer.

What is an exchange?
The exchange is a long-standing tradition in the international lindy scene, with the basic principle being that a particular city ‘hosts’ an exchange, inviting dancers from all over the world and country to descend en masse to dance with the locals. The locals usually host visitors in their own homes, with the implication being, of course, that when they visit their guest’s home town they will be hosted in exchange. The exchanges are almost exclusively based on social dancing events, and usually last a weekend. The overall intention is to showcase the local lindy scene, and to dance like crazy things, sleeping only the bare minimum.

It’s all about social dancing, and the schedules are pretty bloody demanding. Dancing may start in the afternoon, followed by an evening dance til, say, midnight, and then late night dancing continuing on til the wee hours. And it’s not all lindy. There’s plenty of room for blues dancing (which makes sense when you’ve been dancing for nigh on ten hours a little close-up leaning into your partner provides breathing room maybe), shag and all those other lindy-associated dances.

In the states (where domestic travel is cheaper than here in Australia), dancers will gather in possies and truck on over to the host city. Carpooling is another tradition, especially between closer cities. It is a mark of honour to have spent far more hours dancing than sleeping or eating or anything else at exchanges, but it’s not unheard of for the host city to organise local sight seeing trips, or daytime, non-dancing events. The organisers usually produce a t-shirt commemorating the exchange, and these are quite often a mark of the seasoned swinger - a little in-house reference to how far a dancer will travel for an exchange. Online resources are an essential part of organising exchanges, with websites devote either to advertising exchanges generally (such as www.lindyexchange.com), or to a specific exchange. Exchanges are discussed at length online on bulletin boards (perhaps the most well-known of which is yehoodi), chatrooms and so on. If you’ve still no idea as to what an exchange entails, just type ‘lindy exchange’ into google and you’ll get a million responses. The Americans in particular really dig this stuff. Probably because there’s so many of them. But there are European and Asian exchanges. And an Australian one.

The MLX
2002 saw the second Melbourne Lindy Exchange, funded by Matthew Riddle’s Swingshift company, and organised and run by a host of volunteer and some paid labour. Unlike the international exchanges, the MLX has in both years been run with workshops, although 2002 saw a reduction in the number of classes and an emphasis on social events. While this is not strictly in accordance with the ‘true’ spirit of lindy, in the Australian context geography, a smallish lindy scene and inexperience make workshops an important aspect of the MLX.

The Australian Exchange: Geographical and cultural context
Australia is geographically huge - it’s an hour and a half flight from Melbourne to Sydney, an hour from Hobart to Melbourne, a couple of hours from Brisbane to Melbourne and five hours from Melbourne to Perth. And there’s very little in between (well, sure, there are all those little country towns, but Melbourne, the second biggest city only has 3 million residents. The whole country only has about 15 billion people living here). Flights are expensive. You’ll pay at least AUS200 between Melbourne and Sydney. If you book ahead. And driving is prohibitively long and tiring. You’ll take a couple of days to drive from Melbourne to Sydney. Or one loooong day.

Melbourne has the biggest lindy scene in the country, with between 4 and 5 thousand dancers registered on the books of the four major swing schools. There are maybe 500 regular social dancers, though you’d see perhaps a 100 of those more than once during a month. There are perhaps 50 hardcore, more than once a week social dancers. These are of course guesstimate figures, based on my own experiences in the last couple of years. There are far fewer lindy dancers in the other major cities, with schools and societies in Perth, Sydney, Brisbane, Hobart and Adelaide.

The lindy scene in Australia is relatively young. We have had lindy classes in Melbourne since the mid eighties, though the biggest schools have only been running classes since 1998 or so. We do not receive many international teaching guests. A year would see perhaps three or four ‘celebrity’ teaching couples visit the country. And they don’t visit every city. The MLX in 2001 was the first Australian exchange, though there are some traditionally annual dancing events (such as the Lismore lindy camp). The Australian swing scene, particularly in Melbourne, is dominated by the dance schools, with the majority of dancers devoting their dancing time solely to classes, with perhaps an irregular amount of social dancing. In Melbourne, the events devoted to social lindy dancing are run almost exclusively by schools, or are in some way affiliated with the schools (with a class being taught at the beginning of the night). I can think of only four or five events run in the past year devoted to social dancing and without school affiliation. There is some social dancing to live bands (and Melbourne does have a vibrant jazz scene), but this is irregular, and often difficult to discover without insider knowledge or extensive research. There are no clubs devoted solely to lindy hop.

The Australian Exchange: MLX as a fore-runner
It makes sense, then to involve workshops in the MLX. Inter-state visitors can combine classes taught by international celebrity and local teachers with social dancing and sightseeing. This makes the exchange more expensive in one hit, if dancers wish to do both workshops and social dancing, but there of course the option to do only social dancing.
As far as negatives go, regarding the MLX, the timing can be a problem - November in Melbourne can be bloody hot, as it was this year. It’s nice to see the sun in a city which at times seems perpetually overcast, but it did make airconditioning a necessity. The growth of the MLX since the previous year also meant that a more comprehensive organisational structure was necessary, although this is a factor that would not have affected the punters. The sheer scale of the 2002 MLX, with the implication that 2003 will be even bigger, demands a highly organised team of workers, and while many of us who were involved in both now have some fairly serious experience and skills under our belts, I would argue that future MLXs will demand increasing levels of commitment, practical skills and problem solving abilities. Running an exchange for so many people from such diverse dancing backgrounds and from so many different places is demanding work, and not to be undertaken lightly. As an org aniser, it’s best not to imagine yourself having a carefree, easy weekend of dancing leisure. It’s unlikely you’ll get more than a few dances, and you’ll probably not get enough sleep. And it’s also likely that you’ll not have the time you’d like to catch up with visiting friends.

Despite the importance of workshops, it was possible to have a healthy (or excessive) amount of dancing doing only social dancing at MLX. I would hope for the MLX to eventually become a purely social dancing exchange, yet this might not be possible with such a young scene, with so many dancers who aren’t experienced social dancers. The success of the MLX - measured in the positive feedback from punters - might serve as encouragement for those brave enough to hold their own Australian exchange. I know I’d very much like to attend an exchange devoted solely to social dancing, in another city where I have no commitments as organiser or volunteer.

There have not been so many international visitors to MLX. This is in large part a result of Australia’s distance from the other high profile dancing countries. The 2002 MLX saw an increase in international and interstate dancers, a decrease in the number of workshops and an increase in the number of social dancing events. And if we’re talking success, perhaps one of the nicest parts of MLX was meeting new people from all over the place. We could argue that the MLX helps to develop a national lindy hop community. Hosting inter-state guests has made me feel that there are people I can comfortably visit and stay with in other cities, and I’ve made some good friends during the MLX in 2001 and 2002. It was nice to put faces to the names I know on the swingtalk board, which is my only real way of keeping in contact with lindy dancers in the rest of the country.

Despite my comments about the difficult aspects of organising an exchange, I would argue unequivocally, that exchanges are to the benefit to the lindy scene in Australia, a tradition we should take up with all the enthusiasm we bring to our dancing. Exchanges, with their emphasis on social dancing, provide hosts and guests with an opportunity not only to dance like nuts, but to make contact with other dancers in a community that is divided by geography and internal politics.

"MLX 2002" was posted by dogpossum on April 30, 2004 8:23 PM in the category

rent parties

spaces and places for lindy hop - a useful reference.

The American Library of Congress have a site called 'American Memory - Historical Collections for the National Digital Library'. A quick search for 'lindy' and 'hop' gives you the option of scanned images of the original typed written pages discussing rent parties in Harlem in New York.

This article is really worth reading if you have any history in lindy hop, or in afro-american urban communities of the time. This rent parties article provides a nice complement to my brief history of lindy hop as an afro-american vernacular dance.

"rent parties" was posted by dogpossum on April 30, 2004 7:18 PM in the category lindy hop & other dances i have known

Freeswing II

Australian Variations: Lindy Hop as a Contemporary Australian Vernacular Dance?

From the 1930s, lindy experienced a leap in popularity, living on social dance floors across the world, recorded in film and print for future generations. The 1950s brought rock n roll to the social dance floors of the world, and new directions for Afro-American artists. Soul, R n B, rock n roll, Motown, Funk, hip hop, rap, R n B again jazz shifted from the vernacular to the realm of aficionados and musicians. Until the 1980s, when white dancers went searching for the forebears of swing. Contemporary lindy scenes are fond of the story of Frankie Manning’s rediscovery, his return from postal worker to international dancing celebrity. But despite its roots, its history as an Afro-American dance, lindy hop is now, primarily (particularly in Australia), an Anglo-European dance culture. Can lindy still be read as Afro-American vernacular dance, when it is danced in Sweden and New Zealand and Singapore? When the dancers are English and Australian and Korean? When the danc ers are, in Australia, primarily white, middle class youth learning in schools and academies, rather than on the social floors of dance halls?

Jacqui Malone makes the point in her book Steppin’ on the Blues that vernacular dance is the expression in music and movement of everyday, ordinary life experiences. It could be argued, then, that lindy today, is no longer the vernacular dance of the 1930s Afro-American communities. It might be read more as the vernacular dance of mostly white, mostly middle class, mostly youth cultures around the globe, who come to lindy without the entrenched tradition of social partner dancing of their parents and grandparents. They are having to learn social partner dancing etiquette from scratch. They bring with them their day-to-day experiences with a vast universe of media - television, radio, internet, newspapers, magazines. They have come to lindy with personal histories with disco, rock n roll, hip hop, techno, reggae

The lindy hop communities of Australia - of Melbourne in particular - are barely ten years old. They are, in effect, having to remake a social dance culture along the lines of 1930s Harlem, but in a contemporary context, with the politics and ideologies of the21st century. Lindy hop, while it might be becoming a new type of vernacular dance - a vernacular dance that is globally lindy, but locally Australian, New Zealand, European, Asian - and is in the largest part, a product of the leisure industry. Students buy classes in lindy. They learn to dance lindy from teachers, in class-settings, in their carefully apportioned leisure time, wearing their use-specific dance shoes, dance to recordings which are the product of multinational recording companies.

Malone writes that in Afro-American communities, “black youth and adults generally don’t take classes to learn social dance - their academies are dance halls, house parties, social clubs, and the streets. In fact, formal dance studios are usually years behind the real source of America’s social dances: the black community”(28). That is the tradition of Afro-American dance. Learning to dance, to develop ‘style’ as an individual, rather than working to ‘perfect’ a specific ‘brand’ of dance.

It seems, then, that the tradition of lindy hop - as vernacular dance - sits uncomfortably with the ethos of schools and institutionalised, structured learning in Melbourne. But perhaps this is the truest expression of contemporary Australian culture. Dance becomes a product to be bought, dancing is to be mastered, to paid for by the class and accumulated as capitol. In Melbourne, this seems to increasingly be the case, as the emphasis shifts from social dancing and teaching social dancing etiquette (in itself an oddly Anglo-European concept) to promoting competitions in the ballroom dancing and VRDA tradition, teaching choreographed performance dancing increases, and ‘Balls’ become forums for the display of product, the ‘branding’ of dance and the commodification of knowledge.

And while all this is depressing when the history of lindy is revisited, perhaps lindy hop culture and lindy hop communities in Australia are a pathway to more satisfying, inclusive cultural practice? Writing with the fervour of an idealist in the throes of passion, could lindy hop - social dancing, social lindy - not hold the potential for undoing the worst nastiness of contemporary capitalist culture? If vernacular dance can serve as resistance to oppression, if derision can be empowering, if the ecstatic state of bodies in motion can lift the spirit of the enslaved, could not a few turns on the social dance floor in down-town Melbourne not serve as a raised fist to the ever-tightening grasp of homogenising dance-factories?

Malone, Jaqui. Steppin' on the Blues: The Visible Rhythms of African American Dance. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996.

"Freeswing II" was posted by dogpossum on April 30, 2004 7:08 PM in the category lindy hop & other dances i have known

Freeswing I

The People’s Movement: A Brief History of Lindy Hop as an Afro-American Dance of Resistance and Liberation

Lindy hop is an American vernacular dance, a jazz dance credited to the dancers of the Savoy Ballroom in the 1930s. Yet it has its roots in Africa, in the many cultures and traditions of the people taken in slavery to America. The Afro-American slaves blended the ancient traditions of their ancestors’ homelands with their day-to-day experiences as slaves and pioneers. And they were pioneers, as much as the whites - they worked the crops that founded the communities of the Americas, raising children and living their day to day lives in a land that was as foreign to their forebears as it was to the Europeans.

The traditions of worship through dance and song were taken into the churches of the new-made Christian congregations. The Ring Shouts of the 1800s, so shocking to white observers, with their emphasis on charismatic, sensual dance and performance, are echoed in the Big Apples and Jams of the current day. The ‘derision dances’ of Africa, where dancers mocked their enemies and rivals through imitating and exaggerating their movements, were remade in dances such as the Cake Walk of the plantation slaves. The Cake Walk was a competitive imitation of white owners: an exaggerated parody of genteel, European manners and posture. The derision dance - in much the same tradition as jokes and comedic theatre - were a space of resistance for the oppressed.

In the early 20th century, emigrating Afro-Americans, pushed north by the failing crops and increasing lynchings of the south, came to New York, drawn by WWI promises of work in the cities. New York greeted thousands of new residents with some trepidation, but the dances and music of the travellers, already made famous in the travelling minstrel shows, the vaudeville of the previous - 19th century - were welcomed with open arms. The shift from travelling show to the theatre stage was facilitated by white society’s passion for Afro-American dances. In 1913, the Lafayette Theatre produced the show Darktown Follies from which dancers such as Josephine Baker made their way to international fame. These dancers and shows brought the dances of the Afro-American community to the white public.

The Stroll, the Blackbottom, the Cake Walk, Ball the Jack, the Texas Tommy, the Charleston, the Jitterbug, Shag, Suxi-Q, Camel Walk, Truckin’ and so on, through to the lindy hop. All were originally social dances of the dance halls, ballrooms and jook houses of the Afro-American community, brought with the emigrants, or developed on the dance floors of the Savoy, the Rennaisance, the Alhambra - the ballrooms of New York. Many of these dances were brought to wider audiences Afro-American performers on the stages of clubs such as the Cotton Club.

On March 12th, 1926, the Savoy opened for business. The Savoy is credited as the birthplace for many American dance crazes, one of which was the lindy hop. Lindy hop, developed in dance halls, to live bands, was primarily a social dance, influenced - and influencing - the live bands of the day to which it was performed. Shorty George Snowden, hired by the Savoy’s manager Charles Buchanan to ‘perform’ for his clientele, is credited as one of the progenitors of lindy. The Savoy was important not only as a social dance space, but also as a space for couple to practice their dancing during the day. The lindy hop revolutionised American dance, in part because of its use of the ‘breakaway’, where partners moved out of the closed position, to allow for individual improvisation. With the Charleston as a key influence, lindy is characterised by it’s ‘swing’ - its syncopated two step, with the accent on the offbeat. Lindy dancers were described by observers of the time as bodies in motion: their feet appeared to fly, while their bodies seemed, in contrast, suspended in a calm stillness. Lindy’s horizontal smoothness is a characteristic feature of the dance. This is often described today as bouncing down, into the ground, rather than bouncing, up in time to the music.

Frankie Manning and his partner Frieda Washington were dancers and choreographers with Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers, a group of dancers organized by the Savoy’s floor manager Herbert White. Manning and Washington performed the first air step, or arials in a competition between this group and Shorty Snowden’s Lindy Hoppers. From this point, the air steps (look here to find footage of Manning and Will Mae Ricker performing the 'over the back' air step) became a characteristic feature of lindy hop, perfected by Manning and Washington. Lindy Hop soared in popularity, with the Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers (with Manning as a key choreographer) touring with the big swing bands, including those of Duke Ellington and count Basie. The dance teams travelled as far afield as New Zealand, Europe, Australia and South America, appearing in numerous films and winning many dance competition titles. The group was disbanded after Manning and other dancers were drafted in WWII. While Manning and other members of the Whitey's Lindy Hoppers continued to perform as The Congaroo Dancers after the war, the decline of swing in the face of bebop and other new music led to their eventual disbanding in 1954.

To be Afro-American in the early 20th century - indeed, until much later in the century (and even, it can be argued, in the current day) - was to experience racial segregation, discrimination and oppression. Lindy hop, as an Afro-American vernacular dance, was developed in the social spaces of the Harlem community. Harlem - crowded, mistrusted by the white establishment as a hotbed of licentious, illicit and illegal behaviour - was at times a difficult place to live. The dances of this time and place - as with American vernacular dance throughout history - was not only a response to these experiences, but an expression of individual and community day-to-day living.

References:
"Archives of Early Lindy Hop." Savoy Style. Savoy Style. United States. April 2004.

Malone, Jaqui. Steppin' on the Blues: The Visible Rhythms of African American Dance. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996.

"Freeswing I" was posted by dogpossum on April 30, 2004 7:00 PM in the category lindy hop & other dances i have known

just stop reading it, girl

ok, so i read another of that foul wench's entries. i am so on crack. why am i punishing myself? she is such a horrid, clueless dog. man, i'd like to kick her. why such sudden angst? aaagh. the pgrad cultural studies grapevine bore fruit this afternoon and i heard Gossip (which shall not be repeated in print, only polished in private). got me thinking about her. so i read her blog.
end verdict?
she sucks.

not only for her own stupid brain, but also because she writes more frequently than i can be bothered to.
here is an excerpt to illustrate her stupidity...
i am not going to reference her properly. google some of this and you'll find her. but don't you dare go re-visiting her site.... damn. conflicted - should i publicise this rot or drown it? hmmm. no, go look, mock, deride and depart.

oh, the title of this post was 'What makes me uneasy about independent media?'.
she's going straight to hell for doubting independent media (or minority media, or community media or whichever term you prefer).
i goddamn LOVE this shit. i am all about indepedent media. and socialists.

here's the quote:

Anyway, so I left early. And I was flicking through the actual magazine when I was in bed, and I started to feel uneasy, in that nagging, non-specific way that I do whenever I come up against any of those things like Indymedia, zines, The Paper, This Is Not Art, and student newspapers in the days when they didn't look like government-issued 'yoof' pamphlets. Like, I admire what Spinach7 is trying to do, which I interpret as creating a space for subjects that don't get coverage elsewhere, while still making it sexy, self-sustaining, and, dare I say it, 'cutting edge'. Unlike, say, Vice, which people seem to love and I don't know why, because it's so smarmy and written from the perspective of being better than everyone else.

But my feeling of unease just wouldn't go away. I realised that one of the editorial team was this prick who was flaming me on the Contemporary Cultural Studies discussion list in 2000, when I first vaunted the idea of studying bogans. And I recognised a number of other names, like Eve Vincent and Jacob "The Human Shield" Nowakowski. And some of the articles really gave me the shits, like this nasty, contemptuous, sarcastic rant from Philip Brophy about how far ahead he is of the rest of Australian society.

It bothers me that all these people seem to know each other from Express Media or doing Creative Arts or from festivals and zine fairs and 'workshops'. It's all about grassroots art and media, and DIY fashion, and carefully ritualised forms of subversion and culture jamming, and meeting like-minded people with tropes like "I thought I was the only one who liked [insert bottom-up form of cultural production here]." I don't know what makes me more uneasy: the fact that I also like doing these things but think and go about them in a completely different way that only draws people's ire; or the fact that despite the rhetoric of accessibility, it's all so clubby and everyone seems to know each other.

Perhaps it's because these people make me feel that because I'm not constantly trying to counter global injustice with grassroots protest and cultural production, there's some part of me 'missing' and I'm a bad person. I once tried to provoke The Boy by telling him that I had no politics. His face didn't change and he didn't take the bait, so I never found out what he thought. It wasn't strictly true, though - I constantly wrestle with why I believe what I do, and agonise over the discursive constitution of those beliefs. Perhaps another reason why independent media make me uneasy is that I wish I could find some of my own ambivalence reflected in their pages, rather than the ideological certainties I find instead.

and don't you go comparing my writing style to hers. i'm not having any of that. i'm Right On, and she's duh.

needless to say, she sucks.

specifically:
why she won't Get this guy she's keen on.
so she's trying to provoke the object of her erstwhile affections (called 'the boy') with declarations of her dummy-ness? yeah. you go girl.

why she's stupid, in general terms.
these sorts of comments are extra-worrying when you actually take into account her area of research. read around on her blog to find out what it is. cringe at her stupidity. her public stupidity. sure, i'm probably digging my own little hole with such a scathing attack/criticism, but heck. i'm a seat-of-my-pants type of girl. and it's not like i've not already burnt some bridges over at unimelb (oh, don't study there - the only people who like it are ex-unimelb undergrads).

why she hates indypress people:
they won't let her be in their 'clubs' because she's the annoying dumb kid who can't figure out when to shut up.

at the end of the day, though
when all my anger has worn away, i just feel sorry for her. i don't like the angriness of this post of mine, but heck, i was provoked (ahahahah). and i do feel sorry for her. if she was just a little less desperate, tried a little less harder to be liked, she'd actually have a chance at being likeable.

...

or perhaps not. that 'no politics thing' gets right up my crack. is she completely stupid? can she not see how that might be a bit of a silly thing to announce when once is a cultural studies researcher?

kick her arse, i say. and kick it good.

"just stop reading it, girl" was posted by dogpossum on April 30, 2004 2:27 PM in the category

what a lot of meanness

weren't those last two entries mean?
i will shape up.

insert some thesis work cheer to get rid of that sour taste...

the chapter went off to the supes this week, we met yesterday and she was happy. i was happy. it was a happy meeting. we agreed that i am both clever and somewhat random-and-spasmodic.

random and spasmodic in that i know a lot about my topic, i'm saying a lot, i've got too much to say, even, and i need some unifying theme.
so we bashed one out.
it wasn't that difficult - there are some things that keep coming up, some ideas i can't shake. and they're the ones you keep.
so now i'm all about fan studies, still, and i'm looking at how swingers - as fans - perform their fandom. fandom, for swingers (and most other fans) is necessarily communitarian, or consensual, in that you don't do it alone. you do it with others. so all their fan activities, their media use, is - at some point - focussed on interacting with other people. can't swing alone, baby.
i'm also interested in the way this 'performance' of fandom is necessarily transitory - the fan experiences is intangible, and so a moment in time that can't be captured. so you have to keep doing it, over and over again, to be a swinger. can't be a swinger if you don't dance.
so swingers are not only about performance, they're also all about reperformance. which i like. i like thinking about how swingers will get together and dance the same damn routine over and over, will listen to the same songs, over and over - and still get bucketsfull of pleasure. in fact, it's the actual repetition that swingers get off on. participating in this reperformance - repetition - is a good way of signalling your community membership, and also your fan-knowledge.
"oh, i know this stroll - i'll jump in".

i also like the notion of reperformance, because of the way it applies to things like a/v media - swingers will watch a video/sequence of clips/film over and over again, and as they do so, the narrative ceases to have meaning, and the text becomes a combination of little pieces of texts, or event texts in themselves. lucky swingers aren't big on narrative anyway (unlike buffy fans, etc). then swingers take these little bits of text and share them with other people, recombine them with other texts, learn the steps/routine and dance those little texts - performa those little bits - themselves. for their own pleasure, but also for those dancers watching, who recognise the little text (from their own obsessive viewing) and get pleasure out of not only the aesthetics of it, but also out of their own knowledge. like getting the joke, or figuring out who did it in a crime novel. this knowledge - fan knowledge - is what gives swingers status. or from which they gain communi ty status.

there.
that's my new thing.

so my thesis will now (tentatively) be ordered around the notion of performance. my chapters are all illustrations of the ways in which swingers are into performance. or perform their fandom:
- the dance act
- costume and fashion
- music/djing
- film and visual clips
- camps and exchanges.

there.

the paper goes ok - i've written it twice now, and am getting closer. will spend some of it talking about my thesis overall - my big ideas - then talk about how djing (or more specifically, gender and identity in djing) illustrate these big ideas.

it's all good.

"what a lot of meanness" was posted by dogpossum on April 30, 2004 2:02 PM in the category

who let this dog on the internet?

pass the slap and don't hold the bitch. i'm taking this one in hand.

There's this chick that i loathe from unimelb who writes a blog (she shall remain nameless, but there will be Obvious Clues as to her identity from now on). i hate this chick for many reasons, most of them petty, some incidental, many political. my favourite reason is 'she's a dog'. at any rate, she writes a blog. and i've now looked at it about 3 times. each time i read about half an entry and think 'you are a fukking deadshit', furiously, and close that window. tonight i'm reading her horrid (pretentious, wanky, DUMB) blog and find this gem where she's bitching (with mucho misinformationo) about public transport, gives the line about not having any politics (yeah, only aspiring elitist scum politics), but being a fare evader. for all these ridiculous reasons - just face it wench, you're into fare evasion because you're a selfish tightarse. quit lying to yourself, the one friend you have and this sole masochist who read this drivel you're throwing at the universe. you're a tightarse. and no amount of bullshit reasoning will justify what is, effectively, dishonesty. (fyi, i have been known to fare evade on occasion. but now i'm 90% bike girl i pay for tickets. seems fair, i guess).
so this mole craps on for waaaay too long about pt, then closes with a little preach about why she doesn't ride a bike. fashion issues (of course). in the space of about four posts (each devoted to her wardrobe at some point), she uses the phrase 'fashion malfunction' without irony. or rather, with 'oh, i'm being ironic' irony.
with bullshit more like.

pass the slap and don't hold the bitch. i'm taking this one in hand.

"who let this dog on the internet?" was posted by dogpossum on April 30, 2004 1:48 PM in the category clicky

April 23, 2004

oh, art

two things, really.
first, they've got this interesting exhibition on at the tate modern in london - that picture is taken inside the turbine hall, where "The Weather Project", by olafur eliasson has proved extra popular with londoners.
basically, they set up that huge space to look like a room with the sun in it. seems brits went nuts over it - just get crazy for the big warm looking ness of it...

the other thing - one of the guys working in the gallery kept a diary in the Guardian, where he talks about the exhibition.
it's interesting stuff.

i've cut-and-pasted the entries into this entry so it doesn't get lost. but make sure you go to the site - i'm sure i've contravened copyright doing this. it's best to go to the site, really - nicer to read.

i loved the the tate mod. it's facinating. i love old factories that have been made into public spaces - the power house in bris (look here for a truly horrible website that almost gives you an idea of the thing. goddamn hack IT designer people. or here for a photo by john linkins from the site) is another fave. i was utterly stunned by the tate mod in london - it's so BIG.

and it sounds like this 'weather' exhibition is making interesting use of all that space. and of the brits' weirdo weather obsession... which can be understood. they don't see the sun in england, in winter. well, they do a bit, but it's pale and far away. and not really sunny.

Secret diary of an art gallery attendant

They came in Santa outfits, with picnics - even a canoe. On the eve of its removal, Adrian Hardwicke recalls how people reacted to The Weather Project

Thursday March 18, 2004
The Guardian

Unearthly: Olafur Eliasson's Weather Project at Tate Modern. Photo: Dan Chung

October 9 2003

One week left until the opening of the next installation in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. Olafur Eliasson's Weather Project seems to be going well, although it's not without its hiccups: suspending a mirrored ceiling more than 100ft above the floor is proving tricky. I've been involved in blacking out the Turbine Hall's huge windows. We did various trials; in one, tape and vinyl were applied directly to the glass. Next morning, I arrived at the gallery - and found the tape was already peeling off. A bit of a panic ensued before the decision was made to use vinyl and paint. It's amazing how if even the tiniest bit of window is missed, it has a profound effect inside the Turbine Hall. I feel like an air-raid warden in the Blitz looking for chinks of light.

October 13

Eliasson wants his project to remain absolutely secret, and so fencing has been installed to prevent anybody seeing into the area. Of course, this just encourages the intrepid visitor to try to find a way in, to see what's going on. I even saw someone getting a lift on another person's shoulders and holding up their camera. The fencing that has been used is fairly basic and I can't quite believe that I have allowed the place to be turned into such a building site. First-time visitors must be bewildered by what is going on.

October 16

Yesterday's opening party was very successful, if bizarre. A few hundred people, enveloped in a theatrical haze, stood sipping cocktails, eating canapes and staring at a giant artificial sun and at themselves in the mirrored ceiling. The light was drained from their features, making it hard to recognise them. A strange experience.

October 20

The commission has attracted a massive amount of media interest, and, as a result, thousands of people are flocking to Tate Modern. The most extraordinary things are happening, things I'm sure no one, least of all the artist, ever envisaged. Visitors are making their way to the end of the Turbine Hall and lying on the floor, using their bodies to make shapes and form words - some predictably obscene - which they can then see in the mirror above them. They are even spelling out website addresses. It has resulted in the most extraordinary social interaction taking place between complete strangers.

October 24

I can't quite believe the droves and droves of people that are coming into the Turbine Hall. It is very unusual for this level of interest to be sustained beyond the initial publicity drive. The work is having all sorts of effects on people - not least a disgruntled member of staff, who decided to write to the newspapers saying that the theatrical haze included a hallucinogenic drug and that we were poisoning everyone. This sort of thing is mildly irritating, to say the least. In fact, the haze is made of just sugar and water, but inevitably there will be people who believe the allegations and Dennis Ahern, the Tate's safety and security manager, has had to go into overdrive to counter that.

November 20

President Bush is due to arrive in the UK for a whirlwind visit. I got a call to go down to the Turbine Hall as we had a number of anti-Bush protesters in. There were about 30 or 40 people, accompanied by a couple of photographers, who wanted to spell out "GO HOME BUSH". At first I thought they were going to manage only "GO HO BU", which wouldn't have been quite as powerful. But eventually enough people joined in. Wild applause broke out for a few minutes and then the protesters went on to their next venue.

November 28

Just when you think you've seen everything . . . A couple are intimately engaged beyond what I would normally expect in a public space. There are passionate moments, and then there are passionate moments. I point them out to my colleague Adrian Jackson and we decide we have got to do something. We flip a coin. He loses and I have great fun watching him tap the gentleman on the shoulder and asking them to break it up. They get up and go off, rather sheepish behind their brazen smiles.

December 15

I arrive at work to be told by a colleague that he has had to cope with a delegation of 50 people dressed as Santa Claus, all descending into the Turbine Hall, ringing bells and making merry. I am convinced he is exaggerating - until I see a photograph on the local community website.

The great thing about this installation is the way in which it seems to make everybody happy. It cuts across all boundaries; young and old alike lie on the floor and gaze at their reflections in the ceiling mirror. At busy times - particularly at the weekend - it is fun to see people try to spot themselves. It seems that families have cottoned on to the fact that it makes a fabulous children's playground. Kids tear around the room having fun - and no doubt get home completely exhausted.

What's also amazing is how much litter people leave. Cleaners are forever having to sweep up discarded cans, sweet wrappers and leaflets. A visitor called me over today to show me that someone had kindly left us an apple. Was this supposed to have some meaning?

January 5 2004

The number of people who got digital cameras for Christmas must be astronomical; flashes are going off every second as people contort themselves into weird and wonderful positions to get the best possible photo. If the person being photographed stands in the right place with their arms aloft, it looks as if they are holding up the sun. That's my favourite shot.

January 12

On Friday night I was surprised to see a couple picnicking. They weren't just having a sandwich but had brought in all the essential ingredients - including a rug, a large picnic hamper, champagne and what looked like a wonderful home-baked pie. I was very tempted to ask if I could join them.

January 20

The strangest moment yet - a visitor brought in his blow-up canoe and sat there surrounded by strangers pretending to paddle towards the sun. He seemed quite an ordinary man, middle-aged and reasonably well dressed. He packed up and moved on after 15 minutes.

February 14

I was convinced people would get together and form a heart for Valentine's Day, but it wasn't to be. How disappointing.

February 23

Over two million visitors have been to Tate Modern since October 22 - the installation has resulted in the busiest November, December, January and February since the gallery opened. The sun acts as an amazing draw: people sit facing it as though it were emanating warmth on these cold winter days. The Saturday and Sunday of half-term week saw over 25,000 people visit on each day. The Turbine Hall looked like Brighton beach on a bank holiday. I'm certain we could have sold everybody ice-creams and sunblock, despite the freezing temperatures.

March 5

I'm called down to the Turbine Hall at about 7.30pm to witness a dance group who have decided to hold their class at Tate Modern. What I see is 20 people indulging in what seems to me a very strange performance. A member of staff tells me that this activity apparently originated in America and is a mixture of spirituality, exercise and dance. They are certainly enjoying themselves - and entertaining the other visitors. All their activity is improvised and they start as a group before splitting into pairs. The great thing is that they remain silent and don't spoil the experience for anybody else, so I let them carry on.

March 7

Victor Ferreiro, one of the gallery assistants, calls on the radio and asks me to meet a visitor who wants to play his didgeridoo in the gallery. I pop down to explain that although he may be very good, the noise is likely to interfere with everybody else's enjoyment so I have to refuse his request.

March 12

The installation is drawing to a close and we've decided to mark the event by keeping the Turbine Hall open until 1am on the final weekend. An opportunity to see the midnight sun. It should be a fascinating end to what has been an extraordinary work of art. In many ways I will be sad to see it go, although there is a sense in which it will be nice to have daylight flooding back into the space. I miss the wonderful way shadows fall through the lancet windows on to the Turbine Hall floor.

Each of the artists in the Unilever Series has had their own particular approach. I wonder what Bruce Nauman is planning for his October installation? Apparently he is going to use sound in some way.

· Adrian Hardwicke is the front of house manager at Tate Modern. The Weather Project is at Tate Modern, London SE1, until Sunday; on Friday and Saturday it closes at 1am. Details: 020-7887 8000.

"oh, art" was posted by dogpossum on April 23, 2004 5:53 PM in the category clicky

April 22, 2004

shop-a-docket haircuts - just desserts

I’ve just remembered this excellent story.

When I was living in the share house in Enoggera in Brisbane (with Paul and Jase), Jase was really really poor (living on Austudy at $120 a week, I’ve noted in another entry). He also had really big hair. But he was too poor to be able to afford a reasonable hair cut, and he certainly carry on with all that big hair. He was overjoyed when he found a hairdresser shop-a-docket deal after shopping one week. He went off and got his hair cut, came home and asked, somewhat mournfully, if I could help him fix it up.

Seems the hairdresser had taken one look at his shop-a-docket, entitling him to a $5 hair cut and given him exactly five dollars worth of grooming. Took her about 10 minutes, all up. And it was a work of inestimable beauty. Sort of uneven, with big chunks cut out here and there. So I tidied it up and he looked a damn site better.
And Paul yelled (because he always yelled everything, and sounded a bit like Seinfeld), “ah, you dickhead!” and then laughed his “ah-HA” highpitched laugh.

Moral of this story?
It’s better to get a household member to cut your hair than to take a punt on a $5 shop-a-docket hair cut.

"shop-a-docket haircuts - just desserts" was posted by dogpossum on April 22, 2004 5:39 PM in the category domesticity

The Squeeze is sick

he started off in bed with his lappy, with a strict one-hour limit from me, but wandered in here where i'm 'working' a little while ago, looking decidedly the worse for wear. he's been asleep now for about an hour and half, after a big 10 hour sleep last night. he's not well at all, and took the day off to rest. he's got a nasty temperature, sore throat, achey head, goobers. just like a bunch of swingers and at least one of his workmates.
i have preliminary goobs in my sinuses, but i'm pretending they're just allergies, or left-overs from pushing myself dancing last night (those whole 5 or so songs).
i will be strong.

"The Squeeze is sick" was posted by dogpossum on April 22, 2004 3:41 PM in the category domesticity

still worrying...

...about that paper. should just get over it and bloody do the thing, right?
pft. yeah, like that'll happen any time soon...

"still worrying..." was posted by dogpossum on April 22, 2004 3:38 PM in the category conferences

I’m 100% sick of stupid swinger-run events

Last night we were on our (reluctant) way to Ballyhoo to hand over some presents for people in Perth (Hullabaloo is on, so everyone’s flying over for that. Except us. :( ), and ended up ditching the swing gig for a fun band.

I rode to The Squeeze’s work in record time (20 mins - I flew) then mosied east to Brunswick Street, where we had dinner at The Standard hotel on Fitzroy Street. It reminded me of how wonderful Melbourne pubs are. We don’t have a decent local in West Brunswick (we’re not struck on the Cornish Arms - it’s got a weirdo vibe, or the Perseverence, or even the Brunswick), so we don’t pub locally very much. I adore the Town Hall in North Melbourne (my old local), and I like the Napier in Collingwood (mostly for their food), but I don’t pub it regularly much any more. So it was a pleasant reminder of Good Melbourne Stuff last night. I was totally disappointed by my steak - super tough, which was crappy for the price ($22!), but The Squeeze had a good fish and chips.

Then we rode a bit further north to park our bikes at the Retro café on Brunswick Street (where Ballyhoo is held), and then wandered down the street to buy a little present for Cheryl in Perth. We totally scored in the bookshop, and then wandered back up to Retro.
As we were wandering north, we heard jazz from somewhere. I figured it might be the Planet Café so I dragged The Squeeze over and we investigated. Upstairs we discovered The Sweet Lowdowns, a local swinging jazz 4piece who play there every Wednesday FOR FREE! The Squeeze immediately declared a pit stop for beer and cake, and I was sent over the road to deliver the Perth goods.

We spent the next few hours listening to fun jazz, eating cake and having a jolly old time. We did send an SMS to the swingers to let them know (it’s only fair), and my letting slip that we were dancers got the manager all excited (note to self: circumspection when chatting to barkeeps). He was dead keen to have swingers come in regularly to dance, even when I mentioned (as seemed only fair) that swingers are a poor crowd for making money at the bar - they don’t drink.

At any rate, the otherwise tiny crowd (maybe 10 or so of the bands’ mates) when crazy for the dancing. We were shy getting up at first (mostly because The Squeeze felt ill, but largely because it’s not really that excellent to have a crowd of people watching you dance when you’re just up for a nice bit of a toddle round the floor, full of cake and beer), but it got cooler, especially when a couple of other dancers turned up and we weren’t the only ones.

Over all, it was a fun night. I liked the band a lot - I love dixie, and there was a fair slab of it, as well as more swingingly lindy stuff. I’d like to go back regularly. I’m 100% sick of stupid swinger-run events. Too great a focus on dancing, and not enough on proper social interaction. Plus I prefer band doos that aren’t staked out as a particular swing group’s territory.

Only problem is that I’ve just teed up a tango class for Wednesday nights damn! Oh well, I’ll see what I can do

"I’m 100% sick of stupid swinger-run events" was posted by dogpossum on April 22, 2004 3:33 PM in the category lindy hop & other dances i have known

April 20, 2004

having a quiet moment of worry about the paper i have to give in three weeks time

ok.
so chapter 5 is so done. well, the first draft of chapter5 is so done. it needs work, it's 16 000 words long (despite that big 5000 cull the other week), but it's damn sexy. and off to the Supes, who assures me we will Meet Soon to discuss it. Right On!

meanwhile, i'm pissing about thinking about sewing, avoiding reading some more Jenkins, Hills or Hines, and having a quiet moment of worry about the paper i have to give in three weeks time.

the paper is for the pgrad seminar series, on the 13th of May. i'm sure it'll be fine. 3000 (half an hour) is nothing. i'm aiming for half an hour. an hour is far too long and boring. this way we have half and hour of me being clever and then half an hour of other people being clever and me answering questions (which i quite like - at least i like it more than the paper giving bit). and then we all go to the pub. instead of one hour of me-me-me and then the etcetera.

i think i might write it on djing in swing communities. seeing as how that's what the chapter is about. i'm considering wacking a copy of the draft up here for people to read (all 3 of my loyal fans). but then, i figure why not just publish some bits of the fukker in journals? that'd be cool. then even less than 3 people will read it. if i'm lucky.

oh, hark at the miseryguts. dang, aren't low-girls a drag?

at any rate, i'll whip up this paper, pop it off to the Supes for a proof-read, then deliver it to the 5 or so people (max) who come to our pgrad seminars. wack-bloody-o. as jon would say.

meanwhile, i discovered today that my grants application has once again been held up and not arrived at the faculty office. i emailed the program head, and he said it's delayed at the school level. it goes from me, to the Supes, to the head of program, to the head of school, to the grants people in the faculty. don't you just love buerocracy? and spelling?
this is why i always email to be sure my documents have actually arrived at their destination. which reminds me - i need to check on my ethics application. joy.

on a slightly different tack, i ordered two useful books for work - 'stomping the blues' and something about women, afro american feminism and jazz/blues musicians in america. the first is quoted and referred to by swingers a whole lot (well, the 5 of them, worldwide, who actually read books, that is. mean? sure was. and wonderfully so), so i figure it's time i read it. i checked the author (albert murray) in the library catalogue,and he's published some interesting looking stuff. refs to afro american cultural history and music/dance as political as well as cultural expression. timely for the next chapter (which will probably be the dance one). the feminism one is purely self-indulgence. well, it's gonna be useful too (i'm scenting some neglect of women and gender politics in all this afro-american vernacular cultural stuff). in fact, now i think about it, it's actually a top buy - i have had a Feeling about gender politics and power in jazz and blues. especially when you compare it with country and folk song from america in the 30s/40s. we definitely prefer the sassier jazz/blues to whiney country.

so i'm looking forward to those two books. they may take three months to get here, but they'll be worth it. esp as all up, including postage from the States they only cost $A30-odd. kewl.

"having a quiet moment of worry about the paper i have to give in three weeks time" was posted by dogpossum on April 20, 2004 3:12 PM in the category thesis

April 15, 2004

Purple and green bloggage*

firstly, this picture is from this page. go look there for interesting online art.

secondly...

i'm really interested in the issue of accessibility and how it relates to online media.

First off, I think we need to make it clear that the internet is not something the whole world uses. First, it's something only a relatively elite group can use - it requires time, knowledge money and inclination simply to get online, let alone actually contribute to online discourse. So right there, we've excluded a whole bunch of people.
But let's just set aside the exclusivity of the intynet (pffft. Yeah) and move on to contributing to online discourse. Specifically in terms of website design (in all its forms).

When I was first starting this blog, I came across this website, where the author goes through a range of strategies for making websites more accessible. They range from simple things like making sure hypertext links are in a distinct colour, underlined and bolded, to laying out your templates properly so that your html code presents your content first.

These are two points that have stuck with me. Sometimes it sucks, but I think about being useful. And I like to think that even blogging can be a political act. Or something useful, at the very least.

Why these two points?

Well, the second one is important for all the reasons listed on that website I’ve referenced, but it’s also important to me, as it makes me think about how I set out ‘code’ (please remember that I really know very little about computery stuff - I will and do make errors in my use of jargon. Please be patient), as well as how I actually go about using code. I want to build good habits into my online work/learning right from the beginning.

Why the first point? This one is particularly relevant to me, as The Squeeze is partially colour blind. Or as I like to think about it, he sees colours in different ways. He’s privy to a whole new world of colour (realm of the senses?) that I’m not. That most of us are not. When we go shopping for fabric to make him pants, I have to get him to look carefully at the fabric. Even though something looks blue to me, it’s quite likely to look hot pink to him. In fact, I can almost reliably expect slate blue to look hot blue to The Squeeze. Which is a bummer as blue is one of his ‘safe colours’ - he wears a lot of blue simply because it’s one colour he can reliably distinguish. Except when it’s hot pink.

But back to the website thing. Because The Squeeze sees colours in different ways to me (and a lot of other people), I had to make some decisions about my website colour scheme. While I didn’t try to choose only colours that looked ‘good’ to him (then it’d be all blues, and I don’t much care for blue), I did try to make sure he could distinguish hypertext from normal text.
So while I’m not particularly keen on the look of underlined links, I know that he can recognise them as links. Tough luck trying to discern visited from unvisited links, though - all those pinks, purples and oranges look like the same colour to him. Incidentally, The Squeeze recognises purple (a colour I’m quite fond of) as ‘the bluest blue’, or a ‘disturbing shade of blue’. And not a blue he particularly likes.

Today I was wandering around the internet, trying to get myself waked up enough to do some chapter editing (you need to be more alert to edit than to write, for obvious reasons), when I came across this site, which is - incidentally - from A List Apart. It’s discussing web accessibility and UK law (this page outlines the Australian legislation). This legislation aims to make it a legal requirement for sites which provide a public service (whether private or public - business or govt) to be ‘accessible’.
It’s interesting not only as an example of affirmative action policy, but also as an attempt to regulate the ‘internet’.

‘Affirmative action’ (in the sense of legislation and public policy), fascinates me as it can be read as an attempt to introduce particular ideological concerns into particular spheres through formal, institutionalised, powerful media. This is, of course, nothing new - take a look at Bush’s latest wonderful contribution to sexual politics - but affirmative action is interesting as it’s an attempt to codify resistant ideology. To introduce the ideology of the left (or thereabouts) into the formal institutions. And this interests me as much of the cultural literature I’ve read over my last ten years in universities situates institutions as suspect and innately oppressive. The point this raises to me, is ‘can institutions be good’? Sounds kind of dumb, I know. But I’m writing about institutions in the swinguverse at the moment in the thesis, and I’m thinking about different types of institutions. I obviously need to read up on this stuff, and if anyone can think of any particularly excellent references

Another thing I’m interested in is the way the internet is seen as this massive, anarchic collection of crap, and so must be either a) regulated, or b) defended from regulation. I personally think that the internet is hardly anarchic - it’s bounded and defined by all sorts of things, ranging from the limits of actual programming languages and technology, to social and cultural conventions (you can, for example, quite often discern an American from an Australian blog by content alone, let alone distinguishing on the basis of language). This dichotomy, focussing on the premise that the internet is ‘wild and free’ obscures the greater inequities and broader systems and structures of power and advantage at work in this intensely social space. And of course, I’m not alone in this sort of observation. There are a whole bunch of other feminists and researchers concerned with notions of identity and liberty who’ve been-there-done-that before.

Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto is the most obvious. It’s also a good place to start for a discussion of power and communications technology. I also quite like this reference from the University of Iowa’s Department of Communication Studies, which provides a few articles on the topic of gender and cyberspace. I should point out that I’m a communications person. Communications people are also often media studies people, or/and cultural studies people, and in my case that also includes being a feminist/gender studies person. I think that communication, media and culture are bound up with systems of power and identity - so feminist approaches make the most sense to me. That doesn’t necessarily mean starting with gender, though that’s the place I usually start, mostly because my experiences with culture are informe d in a major way by my sex. I’ve noticed that men and women experience culture in different ways, and that power and privilege are quite often organised along gender lines. For me, feminist analysis involves attending to power and identity as they manifest in factors other than just gender - sexuality, class, ethnicity, age, etc. For me, being a feminist means asking questions about identity in all sorts of ways, beyond just looking at genitalia (literally, and figuratively).

And how does all this relate to website design? Well, after you’ve had a look at the two references I’ve provided above, perhaps you’ll understand.

*purple and green?

"Purple and green bloggage*" was posted by dogpossum on April 15, 2004 1:17 PM in the category

April 14, 2004

Princess Shittypants

Tonight The Squeeze and I had a fight on the way home from the cinema. So I had to get all Princess Shittypants. I had to.

I’d ridden in to meet him at the Nova to see ‘Love’s Brother’ (which was rubbish by the way. Utter B-grade Aussie flick rubbish. Skip it), and we were having a great time laughing and teasing each other like irritating school kids in the cinema.
So we see this crappy film, which is ok-ish, but still crappy. And we’re loading up our bikes outside the cinema, and I decide that I don’t want to ride home with him.

Every time we ride anywhere together one of us a) gets hurt, b) gets the shits or c) pushes themselves too hard and gets really sore knees. Usually it’s me. Mostly because he's far better at being stalwart, and is generally infuriatingly even-tempered. I, however, am not.

I get shitty because he rides faster than I do. I ride really slowly (it’s stamina, I’m sure; I’m saving myself) and I really enjoy looking at things and talking while I ride. The Squeeze rides really fast and likes to make his heart pound so hard he thinks he’ll bust an artery.

So when we ride together, he has to ride really slowly. He either rides ahead and gradually picks up the pace so I start to puff and strain and get really shitty and yell at him; rides around and around me in figure eights til I get really shitty and yell at him; or hugs my tail real close, hiding in my wind shadow (no, durh, that’s not a euphemism for flatulence) and making me feel rushed, so I get really shitty and yell at him.

One of the first times we ever rode anywhere together, he was riding the Pub Bike and was still riding his motorbike, so he was a bit confused, balance-wise. Or so he said. One day we were riding home from the city and he’d had a bad stack just a few minutes ago, ripped his big pants and hurt himself. In fact, that whole ride he’d either ridden into things or fallen off his bike. Crossing the train tracks I hear this ‘scrunchy skrrunch, crash!’ and he’s ridden off the bike path and onto the tracks. Then I hear this ‘rumbley CLANG’ and he’s ridden into the metal fence around the track crossing. Later, there’s a ‘skreee boomph’ and he’s ridden into the warehouse on one side of the bike path.
At any rate, at the end of this big long Ride of Accidents, we’re on the home stretch, riding down the road, just about to turn left into my street. I’m riding straight. He decides to turn left. Into me. Much clashing of bicycles and we’re both down on the ground, gravel rash all over us, me all teary and my bike basket bent, him even more injured than before. I was so angry I wanted to blow him up. But I rode him in frosty silence, telling him he should have ‘BEEN MORE CAREFUL!’ in a crazy-girl voice before going off for a restorative hot shower. Later, I’m over it and I can’t figure out what he thought he was doing. Seemed he was turning into ‘my’ street one turn too early. I don’t know why he decided that if he just turned, I’d turn too. Some crazy swing lead bullshit mentality I guess. Strong body lead. That’ll fix her. His explanation was that he was just riding the Pub Bike like he’d ride his motorbike. Yeah. Right.*

Ok, so with this in mind, I’m not really all that keen to ruin a perfectly good movie date with a dangerous bike ride and a case of the Princess Shittypants. I say ‘why don’t you ride ahead so we don’t fight?’ He gives me a cranky face and says ‘no’. I explain my reasoning, and as I do, I get a case of the major guilts. This is a Shitty Thing to ask. I am a Shitty Girlfriend. I keep asking. He keeps saying no. I ride off. He tails me. I’m feeling so guilty my only recourse is, of course, a fierce case of the shittypants. In between moments of silence where we pass other cyclists or pedders, I explain my reasoning. I want to avoid a fight.

And then he plays the ultimate Guilt Card - ‘soon we won’t be doing anything together’.

I know that’s it, there’s nowhere we can go from here. there’s no topping this guilt card. But of course, Princess Shittypants can’t back out gracefully. Can’t apologise. No sir-ee-Bob.
So I don’t.
I take the only possible option: The Sulk.
And I sulk all the way home.

And it’s a damn shame, as it’s the perfect cycling night - warm, dry, a gentle breeze that’s always a tailwind. It's far too crap to waste with a Sulk. I try not to notice that he’s patiently tailing me home at just the right distance.
And then we get home and he makes a delicious dinner and I know that I am a shitty girlfriend. And even WORSE, he shakes off his case of the minor shits in moments of returning home, gives me a friendly pat and a squeeze as he potters off to the kitchen.

Goddamn it.

It is SO goddamn HARD to maintain righteous fury with this sort of counter-activity.

*It’s worth mentioning that a week or so after this major stack, he crashes his motorbike on the highway outside of Ballarat. Hit a kangaroo no, meatloafed a kangaroo, smangled up his hands, worried all his Primary Females half to death and was laid up for a couple of weeks. Just goes to show. Better a minor stack on a tredly than a smangle on a motorbike.

"Princess Shittypants" was posted by dogpossum on April 14, 2004 1:44 AM in the category bikes

April 13, 2004

country

i adore alt country and bluegrass and have been quietly feeding this passion. there are a few decent bands in town that i'd like to see, but i've no buddy to go with. i've tried tempting The Squeeze with potential photo ops (it's country, man, so it's bound to be good for photos, right?) but he's not buying it. it's just not cool with the young people to dig country. philistines (i know that's not really how it's spelt - i can't be arsed chasing the dictionary, ok?).

anyway, i've come across this site - cowboylyrics.com, which, while pop-up laden, is worth a peek. that link there is to a search for 'dawg'. absolute excellence. who said the internet was useless?
otherwise, i'm totally into po'girl, the be good tanyas, bonny 'prince' billy and dolly. eeeexcellent.

"country" was posted by dogpossum on April 13, 2004 6:25 PM in the category

we are all about The Squeeze, rather than all about jesus

easter was just here. eggday coincided with The Squeeze's birthday (again), so we were all about him rather than all about jesus. also meant that i forgot to do the chocolate thing for his family, who we saw over the weekend. they gave us many chocolatey things, and i later discovered a great many teeny chocolatey eggs hidden all through our house. which made the whole thing even more chagrin-laden (i know that's not a real word-combo. ease up, hey?). i also forgot to send off my package of presents to the p's in tas, despite having bought the presents well ahead of time. and i still haven't posted it. i will post the package tomorrow. on dad's actual birthday day. goddamn slack me. oh well.

"we are all about The Squeeze, rather than all about jesus" was posted by dogpossum on April 13, 2004 6:16 PM in the category

work update

right, chapter 5 is now done. all i have to do is the intro and a dumb conclusion and then i'm sending it off to the supes for her to read through. i am SO sick of it. i've also done a fair old slab of lotr work lately, which i hate. i really hate lotr.
but it made me wonder. i hate lotr, but everyone else seems to love it. so what are we researchers missing when with this 'i loove lotr' bullshit? i think i'm the useful person on the team - i'm putting my loathing to good use.

"work update" was posted by dogpossum on April 13, 2004 6:07 PM in the category

April 6, 2004

all spinning all the time

finally. a reasonable draft of the dj paper is done. it's 5000 words and i want 3500, but heck. it's done. we also have title and abstract:

Swing DJs: not all-girls and not all-spinning, all the time

The Melbourne swing dancing community is centred on music and the dance act, and the DJ plays an increasingly important role in social dancing. The swing DJ performs an example of an elite performance of swing fandom, with status and meaning developed by online swing media discourse. Various institutions within the swing community, producing online media which ranges from email newsletters to websites and electronic discussion boards, not only regulate practical DJing opportunities for DJs, but also manage the meaning and value of their ‘work’ within the community. The swing DJ identity is defined not only by the music they play and the fan knowledge they possess, but also by familiar markers of gender and identity. Melbourne swingers - as a fan community - reproduce traditional notions of gender and work and professionalism in much the same way as the wider community. This paper explores the swing DJ identity, and ends with a brief examination of the possibilities for re sistance within swing DJ discourse.

of course the only things i write about in this blog are swing, my thesis, my partner and sewing and gardening. what else is there?

"all spinning all the time" was posted by dogpossum on April 6, 2004 3:45 PM in the category

April 3, 2004

lindy hop history

i'm going to start posting some of the things i've written about swing dancing, lindy hop, swing culture, etc, here on this site.
hang tight - some are long, some are complex. they are of course copyright ME. if you want to reproduce bits make sureyou credit MEMEME.

"lindy hop history" was posted by dogpossum on April 3, 2004 7:00 PM in the category

iron chef

iron chef
he loves it. so we have to watch it.

we have to watch it now. even though they only cook eels. even though we've never seen eels in the shops here. even though i don't particularly care for it. even though The Squeeze is only new to cooking.

he loves it. so we have to watch it.

i reckon iron chef is the next logical step in cooking shows. it does away with premise of stupid programs like jamie oliver's, which like us to collude with them in this fantasy we too can cook whatever it is they're cooking (look - it's easy!), because jamie and nigella et al are real people, just like us. you can tell they're just like us because they wear groovy young people clothes, have luscious big boobies and kissy lips or use the vernacular. not our vernacular. but vernacular none the less.

but iron chef does away with all that bullshit.
we know we can never create the iron chef's recipes (mostly because of the whole eel availability thing), that we shouldn't even try, because - as everyone knows - iron stadium separates the boys from the iron chefs (should that be 'chevs'? i feel that it should). all challengers suffer humiliating defeats at the hands of chin kenichi, hiroyuki sakai, kobe masahiko and morimoto masaharu (iron chefs chinese, french, italian and japanese, respectively).

so we watch it. and iron chef brunswick brooks no disagreement.

"iron chef" was posted by dogpossum on April 3, 2004 6:52 PM in the category

big brother

saw an ad for the next season of big brother...

can we call it a season? yes, i think we can.
so, the next season of big brother is coming up.
woo-hoo. i have oscillated in my affections for the show. i got keen the last couple of episodes of the first season. i like it when the number of housemates gets low. i can't remember how many seasons there've been, or how i felt about them all. but i did like the last one, mostly for the real-time stuff late at night. i just liked coming home from dancing and joining the housemates for a little sitting about or latenight shenanigans. i love the nothingness of it - they do ordinary stuff. i could see the dumb jokes developing.

it was just like when i was an undergrad hanging out with my housemates when we were all under- or unemployed. too much time, too little to do. lots of excellently stupid jokes. like the time paul said he'd pay jase (who was living on austudy for the grand sum of $120 a week. truly. thankyou howard - you are mr generosity) $20 to run up the street naked. just cause. we were all bored, jase was poor. it sounded cool. and you know, i can't even remember if jase did it. he probably did. he didn't have terribly strong nudity taboos going on. i often wonder if the wilsons ever miss his public displays of flesh.

yeah, right. just like that. sheesh. talk about buying into the whole big brother telly bullshit thing.

but anyway - big brother.
so i'm looking forward to the latenight stuff. i quite liked the adults-only show in season... um... 1?
but The Squeeze is Not Happy. he feels that almost all reality television (except iron chef) is amoral. a badnaughtywrong. i'm not allowed to watch any reality tv when he's about - he'll leave the room. he's not happy with popstar, survivor or those ones about whingey brits coming to australia. not that i particularly want to watch any of these things (especially not the temptation island ones - they offend even me). but if i was to watch them, i'd like to watch them with company. it's not the same on your own.

browsing the bigbrotheraustralia site, i noticed an interesting thing. check out that ad for the ybblue thing. so big brother sponsors are directly sponsoring research into depression. kind of ironic (or perhaps cause-and-effect-y) considering the stories about ex-survivors/housemates having post-traumatic stress syndrome, depression, anxiety, etc etc etc.
maybe we'll discover a few decades from now that pop culture's obsession with reality tv has led to widespread mental illness. perhaps it'll be useful in developing treatments and understandings of the causes...
ah fukk. maybe The Squeeze is right, and iron chef is the only acceptable form of reality television.

"big brother" was posted by dogpossum on April 3, 2004 6:42 PM in the category

April 2, 2004

bikes on trains. bikes on bikepaths

we rode to ann's house for the first time on the 8th march. it was ok.

we took the train up to pascoe vale and then rode across. it wasn't so far. last weekend i rode the whole way. took me an hour, riding into the wind, uphill. it was really overcast and then it started to rain after i arrived. but luckily ann had homemade vegan chocolate cake (not made from vegans, she assured me) and homemade ginger biscuits, so i was ok.

i feel quite strongly about the upfield bike path (look here - it's along the edge of the train line). i like it. i like it a whole lot. it goes along the side of the train tracks, from sydney rd right up to... well, maybe batman station? there are some gaps, and it ends pretty much at the second victoria street, just before bell street (not the first victoria street below albion street), but it links up with about a million other bike paths - the cross-town route to moonee ponds, the merri creek route, the route to CERES, the capitol cities trail, the path along the side of royal park. it's so ace. but it's not very well lit, which can be scary at night. but i love it.

the other night i was riding home up the path and two trains passed me at once and blew their horns at each other. it was just all sound and light and i could feel the trains shaking my guts and the bones in my chest. then i was past them, and they were past me, the tracks hissed and hummed, and then it was back to that wonderful dark, quiet rushing up the bike path.

the trains are so much huger than trams when you're down at wheel level, and faster. you know you'd get totally squished if one flew off the tracks and onto the bike path. but you don't think those sorts of thoughts.

if you're lucky, you get a train coming along behind you as you ride down the path to the city (or the gym, or the pub, or spotlight). all the traffic has to stop and you can fly across the roads at the crossings, getting a free run as you race the train between stations. it's most excellent.

it's my favourite thing to ride up and down that path by myself - i feel like i'm going a million miles an hour, even though i know i'm slower than every other bmx bandit i know. but when i'm on my own i feel like i'm flying. or i can mosey slowly, try not to think about my sore knee as i lug home a ton of shopping when i stop off at the supermarket on the way home. i love the panniers - i can carry a million groceries. two big bottles of juice, 2 litres of milk, 12 rolls of toilet paper under the clippy thing, and cheese, ham, sliced bread, bread rolls, yoghurt sweeties, tuna, eggs, emergency garlic, sports socks (2 pr) canneloni - all the non-greengrocer stuff. makes me sweat, makes me grumble, but it also makes me about the toughest person in the whole world.

who'd drive a car in brunswick when they could ride a bike?

"bikes on trains. bikes on bikepaths" was posted by dogpossum on April 2, 2004 7:17 PM in the category

oh, this thesis is too big.

should i keep the group social dancing responses bit in the chapter? i have more than enough stuff on DJing to make the whole chapter just about DJing. should i ditch the other stuff on music? i like the bits about strolls, etc. i really do. but i think they might just work nicely in the chapter on the dance act.
oh, this thesis is too big. i have too much to say.

"oh, this thesis is too big." was posted by dogpossum on April 2, 2004 6:17 PM in the category

i love my thesis

i've gotta give a paper in may (on music stuff i guess), i'm getting the lotr stuff done today so i can write the report (go look here for a project description, you can even do the survey if you like), and i'm trying to edit my ridiculously long chapter on music and djing. which is why, of course, i'm doing bloggage.

but i love it. i love my thesis so much. it's really interesting stuff. i wish, though, that i could be a bit cleverer with the theory stuff. i just know i'm not reading enough hardcore lit. but i sure am wanking on a fair bit about swingers' use of music. djing as professional identity... i'm getting a feeling about the development of professional roles in subcultures... is it a sign of a complicating of the community? is it a sign of community development?
only if you figure go-capitalism is a marker of community growth. maybe it'd be less distressing to see it as a marker of corruption. degeneration... nah.
but it's certainly a marker for patterns of power and status.
maybe i should should wack some of my work up on here? not like anyone would read it, though, i guess.

"i love my thesis" was posted by dogpossum on April 2, 2004 12:35 PM in the category

it's not a crazy stalker thing. she's just there all the time.

Red Singlet Girl was at the gym on tuesday when i was.
i think i've got a crush. she's so cool. she was doing this thing where she was lifting her whole body up from two parallel bars (like the gymnastic ones), she was just hanging there, going up and down, up and down, her legs together, toes pointed, muscles rippling. it was so cool. so i made sure i did the very best fitball squats ever. because i reckon i could be that cool. and i'm sure even exercises with the name 'fitball squats' could be as cool as lifting your own body weight up and down, up and down, suspended between two parallel bars.

"it's not a crazy stalker thing. she's just there all the time." was posted by dogpossum on April 2, 2004 12:29 PM in the category

April 1, 2004

i just want to be clear

i was considering making my own togs.

i was going to make a swimming costume. obviously ill-fitting trousers and weirdo stripey shirts weren't enough. i was seriously thinking about full-scale public humiliation.

oh goddess, help me to restrain myself.

"i just want to be clear" was posted by dogpossum on April 1, 2004 8:16 PM in the category

surely it wouldn't be that hard to make bathers?

i had planned to write more regularly. but i got all caught up in some postgraduate angst and couldn't face the computer. so i went to the gym. i'm now very obsessed with yoga, avoiding aerobics and have bought a new pair of bathers.

the bathers thing is a big deal. a) because we say 'togs' in brisbane because 'bathers' is a wanky melbourne thing, and b) because it suggests i'll be wearing them sometime soon.

of course, as soon as i bought the things the sun disappeared. that's crappy for a couple of reasons - The Squeeze is taking some time off so he can recover from the work overload of previous weeks, and wanted to spend a fair bit of time toddling about town taking photos. he can only take photos in the afternoon (it's a light thing). and it's been rainy and overcast all week, so he's not been out to take photos once. it's been nice having him home, but i really want him to go take photos of things other than me on the couch.

the other reason it's crappy? well, i'm less keen to go swimming now. oh well. guess it's like the raincoat thig - buy one and you can be assured of endless months of sunshine. maybe i should go buy a raincoat.

but the rain is good for the garden. work has begun on the uberherb garden. one garden bed has been weeded. by The Squeeze. we have a bunch of artichoke seedlings, i've plans for lemongrass, and there's a bunch of chamomile up. we need to get organised.

but back to the bathers.
thing is, i love to swim. i love it so much. i love it more than anything. comes from growing up in fiji i guess. but i bought some proper bathers for the first time in about 10 years. just a plain black one-piece with a zip up the back (so it has really sensible no-fall-off straps). the zip is tricky. i spent about 5 minutes huffing over it, trying to get the goddamn thing up in the changing room. then i tried the next size up and it was a fair bit easier. but still not actually possible on my own. oh well - will make many new friends at the baths i guess.

i am not sure i like the whole bathers thing. it's been a long time since my cellulite saw sunlight. and even though i'm steadily toning up, i do still jiggle distractingly. and the thing is not so good for the whole generous-bust look. it's a swimming costume intended for speed, rather than posing. kewl.

going in to buy it was scary. i went to a sportswear shop, looked at the rack for a few minutes (kind of empty this time of year) and decided that a) $80 was too much and b) surely it wouldn't be that hard to make bathers? but then i rethought. home-made bathers? perhaps too much even for me. ... perhaps.
so i went and found an absurdly fit and tanned young blonde creature and asked for help: "show me the cheapest, most practical togs you have". and she did. we discussed fabric, straps and how high cut they should be. i'm voting for full-body lycra, but they only come in sizes 2 - 5. i debated over a swimshirt (i worry about cancer - justifiably), but figured $40 was enough. i reassured myself with a quick check of the refund policy, then went and tried them on.

oh my.

it was a bit confronting. mostly because i was wearing my 'full brief' nanna undies under the togs (you have to keep your knickers on for hygiene reasons), and that's not the most practical of looks. the zip thing got me all hot and flushed and sweaty, and i almost gave up then. but i persevered. i thought about the range of body shapes and personalities at the brunswick pool. i reminded myself about all the pregnant women (i've never seen so many pregnant women in such a short space of time before), all the real nannas, all the mums, all the muslim girls in their real full body bathers, all the other academics trying to get in shape.

and i was strong.

i went to find the next size up. the blonde creature helped. surely my body's not that long? but it seems that width demands length in bathers - the fabric sort of redistributes itself from the ends to the sides.

success.

and all done in less than 20 minutes, one shop.

now all i have to do is wear the goddamn thing.

"surely it wouldn't be that hard to make bathers?" was posted by dogpossum on April 1, 2004 3:24 PM in the category

urrr

ok, so i've found that broken thing again. if you go to the 'march' entries, and try to look at the comments... you can't. i've broken something. woops. will try to fix soon.

"urrr" was posted by dogpossum on April 1, 2004 3:08 PM in the category