Category Archives: dogpossum

Right now I have some pretty nasty anxiety.
Got a sore neck and an achey head. And even some stomach churning.
Why?
I’m trying to finish the editing on an article for an important journal I’ve had accepted. It’s neat, but the pressure, the pressure! I’m out of academic practice and I can’t remember how to think, let alone make articles wonderful.
Plus, what do you do when one referee says “perfect – change nothing” and the other says “this sounds like a rough draft”? I vote with doing the latter’s changes – no article is ever perfect. But at least it makes me sound like my ideas are clever, even if I can’t seem to use the English language properly.
Other anxiety issue? The MLX is coming a bit slowly – we are a bit behind schedule and it’s causing me anxiety. We don’t have our logo done yet (argh! we got on it too late!), we haven’t started operation PR Snowstorm yet, we have some decisions to make about venues and bands, I have to do the website (www.mlx-7.com btw) and…
Now I write about it, it’s actually not very important stuff. Certainly nothing that can’t be solved quite simply. We have a meeting on Friday night where we’ll make new decisions. I want to write about our new MLX apprentice/handover scheme, but I don’t really have time now (The Squeeze is patiently waiting for me to come back to the last half of a West Wing episode while I send of a freaky email), nor am I sure it’s appropriate.
But it’s making me think more about a paper I wanted to write about labour and administrative management in events management in swing dance culture. Whatsit who writes about girls and raves in the UK (Birmingham school – can never remember her name… Mcsomething?) talks about cottage industries and rave culture. I have some stuff I’ve written about volunteer labour and exploitation of volunteers by for-profit bodies and individuals in swing, and how that’s justified by the communitarian bullshit that gets around… I also want to write some stuff about gender and volunteering and event management – is it any surprise that there are only 2 men on the 8/6 person MLX committee?
…and I need to start sending off emails getting some serious facts about women DJs in Australia in swing culture – I need to do some follow up research stuff (I think there’s been some serious changes lately). How come Melbourne has a zillion female DJs, but nationally there are about 4 who are well known? How come Perth has so few DJs? I suspect it’s because Melbourne has so many social DJing opportunities – DJing has become lower status/more accessible. There’s also a strong network of new women DJs. And all that illicit file-sharing and music swapping? It’s definitely an important counter measure for high-priced and inaccessible CDs and the ‘high art’ ‘professional knowledge’ ‘heirarchy of knowledge’ thing in swing DJ culture. No one’s bothered to tell these Melbourne chicks that you have to know every major song by Artie Shaw before you can DJ, or that you have to have been dancing for 5 years or have 60 thousand CDs. So they’re just getting on in there and learning on the job. Often in pairs or buddies – all-girl buddy partnerships.
Ok, CJ calls….

The other night we were standing outside a bar saying goodbye to some friends, when one declared “What’s this rain? This sucks!” And I thought, as he was uniformly rounded on and told off, ‘This would never have happened a few years ago – we’re in Melbourne. We’re supposed to complain about rain.’

Sorry I haven’t written anything interesting lately. I’ve just been busy with other things. I am reading your blogs, though – just not commenting. If I owe you an email – sorry!
What have I been doing?

Going to yoga twice a week or so. The class I did on Saturday really kicked my arse. I’ve been having more trouble with my right hip (as I get older and less fit I find my minor niggles getting more niggley), so we did a lot of stuff to help the sartorius and whatsit get it together. We did a lot of standing poses, which I quite like, and lots of work on the sixty zillion muscles in our lower torsoes and around our hips. So today I am really sore and achey. My adductors (you can see a map of the adductor gang here) are talking to me. But at least I’m not getting grizzle from my Tensor fasciae whatsit – which is usually especially achey (it might not be called the Tf – I am crap with names). My lower back is achey, there’s some grumbling from various abs and my shoulders are aching – shoulders meaning everything across my back from my neck to the bottom of my shoulder blades. I also have achey ankles. These are all good aches, because it means that I’ve actually been using these buggers.
I <3 yoga, but yoga is not for babies. Reading about blues music, the record industry and radio in the 1920s. I am working on a paper in a very loose way (I discussed the stuff I was reading here, ages ago), but mostly just reading where my interest takes me. I’m fascinated by the social, political, industrial and economic forces colliding in the blues music of that period. Blues music was incredibly, crazily popular in the 20s. Yet segregation was still seriously in place throughout the US, so black artists couldn’t work in the control booth with whites, were un- or underpaid by record labels, or dismissed as ‘low’.
‘Coon songs’ were also very popular – and very disturbing. A Coon song was basically a song performed by a white artist in black face, or otherwise ‘pretending’ to be black (and many of these were Jewish, which is weird stuff). They were pretty dang offensive. Minstrelsy generally was still very hip. But the blues music being sung and performed (often by women) was politically quite hardcore – the example I discuss in that earlier post (linked to above) is just one of a series of songs dealing explicitly with racist violence, domestic violence, poverty, sexuality and sex and so on. And it didn’t pull punches.
In addition, the Great Migration was happening – thousands of African Americans were moving north to escape lynching, Jim Crow laws and unemployment in the south. They ended up in cities like New York, LA and Chicago. So there were thousands of people from all sorts of different regions coming together and sharing music and dance in new, urban communities. Like Harlem. Race riots happened in most cities.
In terms of the music industry generally, radio turned up in the mid 20s, and within a six month period the phonograph industry was completely gutted. Prior to that moment it had been incredibly successful. But radio – with ‘free music’ – just killed it. So the race record labels (like Black Swan (NB I think the dates are wrong in that article) – labels run by African Americans and recording African American artists) were killed off. And their positive social work was cut off as well.
Then I’ve also been reading about the shift from blues to jazz in the late 20s, and the effect this might have had on black participation in the music industry. What was the impact of the formalisation and regulation of American radio on the independent black stations pushed off the dial by white business interests? What did it mean that radio stations wouldn’t record black artists in many cities? What’s significant about white artists pretending to be black (and vice versa) when they sang on the radio? When you keep in mind the fact that black artists and live music was very, very popular, what does it mean that white radio stations were ignoring black artists? And then, even more interesting, what is the import of each major regional centre/city having its own radio stations and radio legislation? And how does the American Federation of Musicians fit into all this – what with their recording bans in the 40s and racially segregated ranks during the 10s, 20s, 30s…? Surely there’s some sort of labour/union/race/class thing to be ferretted out there…
So I’ve been distracted by all that lovely stuff (who knows what was happening in Australia in the 1920s, music industry wise). But eventually I’ll get to the (interesting) point where I’m discussing how contemporary swing dancers – largely white, middle class urban youth – get into this type of music.
I’ve read a lot, but I need to stew it for a while before I can write cleverly about it.

Going to the Astor Cinema. To see the Fountain and Eragorn in a Friday night double. Nice date night action. The Fountain was dull, Eragorn was dumb (and if you’ve ever read any sf ever, 100% derivative… but not bad for a teenager). The Astor rocks, it’s nice to be able to go see a double feature on a Friday night for $13. The seats are uncomfortable, but they have nice cakes for the intermission. And it’s a nice art deco cinema (not as posh as the Westgarthe, but still lovely). We catch our tram down to the Domain interchange (about 30 minutes), then a tram down to the Dandenong Rd/Chapel St intersection (about 15 minutes). 45 minutes to get so far south is pretty good stuff, really. And they’ve extended the tram hours on Friday nights, so we can get home comfortably as well. All up it costs about $20 each for tram tickets, two films and snacks. Not bad at all for a nice date night. We have started eating dinner down there as well before the films, but have yet to find a cheap restaurant that’s not serving greaser food. Suggestions welcome.
Watching lots of West Wing and other telly on DVD. WW rocks the world. Yesterday I got Commander in Chief‘s first four episodes out on DVD. Dumb. It simply can’t compete with the fabulousness of WW. It’s poorly acted, poorly written, scarily simplistic and politically naive (it’s a soap, really), and all this does no favours to the concept of a woman president. Maybe I’d have dug it if I’d never seen WW. But not now.
I’ve also been working my way through House, which is much better than I thought it would be (admittedly, I’d thought it’d be shit). I’m really interested in the way they deal with ‘ethics’. The assumption is that Dr House doesn’t pay attention to formal medical ethics – he ignores ‘DNR’ (do not revive) orders, he bosses patients around and is rude, he does as he likes. With this in mind, how does this sort of bloke handle relationships with women, and more importantly, how does an American soap deal with an ethically dodgy protagonist? Is he going to get ‘reformed’ (I have my suspicions), is it going to be normalised? In addition to House’s own dodginess, his best friend (whose name I can’t ever remember – they guy from Dead Poets’ Society) seems always on the brink of adultery; one of House’s ‘assistant’ doctors (residents?) worked to undermine House by spying on him for the temporary boss-of-hospitality, all in order to save his own job; House’s lady resident is smitten with him and has been signed as ‘damaged’ in some way. It’s all a bit suss. But that’s what makes it interesting. Not interesting in a WW way, but interesting in a ‘what will this pop TV do with these issues?’ way.
While I’m on this tack, I have to say I have some minor niggles with the way WW handles gender. CJ seems to get quite different treatment (narratively, as well as by other characters) than the men. I don’t know if this is the program being ‘realist’, or some ‘unnoticed’ sexism sneaking in. Either way, it’s interesting enough to keep me watching.
DJing a bit, dancing a bit. Nothing to report. It’s kind of boring, actually, and I’m much more interested in yoga at the moment. There are plenty of CDs I want, and books I want to buy and read. But not much to talk about, really.
Reading a stack of crime fiction. I’ve finally made my way through a massive stack of sf from the Mother, and have started hoeing through a stack of crime fiction from the Supes (she reviews crime novels for a newspaper so has lots and lots of good things to borrow). I’m selective with my crime reading – I don’t like true crime, and I don’t like those voyeuristic and scupulously detailed discusssions of brutal rapes and murders. But I do like figuring out who did it and why. Right now I’m reading a Michael Connolly called the Lincoln Lawyers, and I’ve just finished one called The Winter of Frankie Machine by Don Winslow, which is apparently going to be a film in 2008. I’d really like a nice slab of sf, though, as the crime is kind of coming to an end. I think I’ll pop into the book shop in the city (called swords and something or other, or to Rendezvous Romance – because they sell really cheap new novels) and burn a hole in The Squeeze’s credit card.

I like to go home via Sydney Road late at night. I avoid the road during the day because it’s so busy, but I like being driven up it at night because it’s interesting. I ride up it late Thursday night (if you watch out you might see me riding up it tonight at some point between 11pm and 12.30am), but that’s getting increasingly scary. It used to be empty and ‘safe’ but now it’s full of wanker ‘I’m so cool’ kids spilling out of The Spot and The R… pub that starts with R whose name I always forget and the grotty bars full of old furniture. I don’t like those sorts of people.
But I do like riding straight up Sydney Road, having gone up Queen Street, through the Vic Markets car park, along William Street and then through the roundabout of death.
When we’re riding east from Sydney Road The Squeeze always asks if we can take this one particular side street. I once saw a giant bunny looking out at the road through the gate of a house on that street, and The Squeeze has only seen it once. So we ride down that road hoping to see it again. We haven’t.
I like to ride down through the parking lot at the Vic Markets on my way to dancing on Thursday nights. I come down William Street, past the top of the markets and then down through the carpark. There are usually millions of seagulls hanging about in there and I love riding my bike down through the crowd of them, yelling. It’s slightly downhill, and a big, empty space. There’s never anyone around and it’s dark and empty. It’s a bit scary because I could hit something and fly off my bike, or the seagulls could decide to pull a Hitchcock on me, but those thoughts just make the whole thing more fun.
I like riding to the Laundry (a venue) on Saturday afternoons to see local jazz band called Virus. The band’s made up of a raggle taggle of younger doods and older doods who really know their shit. There’s no sheet music, they share the solos around during the song, and visiting musicians from out of town drop in to do a guest song or two. This is proper jazz – sometimes they check the sheet music before the song, but not always. The decide what to play on the spot – there are no set lists. They take requests. They wear scrappy clothes (shorts and thongs, dress pants and tshirts, ill fitting suit coats with jeans), drink a lot of beer and make crude jokes. The music is fricking fast, fricking hot and fricking good – it kicks your arse if you’re dancing.
The venue is narrow and loud and crowded and smokey. We dance sometimes, but mostly we drink beer. That’s how jazz should be – loud and fun and crowded and with lots of heckling (between the band and the audience). Not with rules about not talking and turning off your mobile phone. Heck, you’re lucky if you can hear your mobile ring at the Laundry. This gig is on every single Saturday afternoon between 4 and 7 and is free. After we’ve seen the band, we usually go to eat somewhere. It’s lots of fun, but it makes you stink like a dirty old pub floor.
Go to the cinema on my own during the day to see lady films and art house films. Long, boring things with no action scenes. I like to get a chilli chocolate ice cream if I’m at the Nova or a bag of joobs if I’m at the Westgarthe.
I like to go to the Astor for a double session on the weekend, though I haven’t done that many times.
I like going to fabric shops and spending hours and hours in there choosing fabric.
I like doing the same at the video shop.
And in music shops.
I like riding down through Royal Park from Royal Parade, down the path past the stadium and giant play ground to the cemetary and then down to Lygon Street. It’s all a bit brown and dry and crispy these days, but it’s still a nice ride.
I like it that bikes and trams get a green light on Swanston Street at the intersection of Swanston and… LaTrobe? Where Melbourne Central is. I like being able to zoom off at the lights while the cars are left at the lights, cranky.
I like riding my bike through the Edinborough Gardens, past the giant possums at night and around the fountain during the day. Even though you’re not allowed to. I ride carefully so I don’t hit anyone.
I like going to Brunetti’s and having an Italian hot chocolate with a tiny biscuit and reading my book.

So I’ve made the transition to MT3.3 and with far less fussing than all you wordpress babies. There will be improved comment filtering coming along soonish (once The Squeeze finishes fixing some crap plugins).
Best thing about this version of MT? The ability to resize the little box you write entries in. I’m sure there are other good things, but I’ve yet to discover them.
To celebrate, here’s a nice photo for The Squeeze (and the frighteningly large number of submariner types in my peer group):
This picture is from this site (c/o baris-tah!)

Because I’ll be sitting about on my clack for the next week (I hope) in between spurts of walking and outside-ing, I have plans to redesign this site.
Right now I’m not happy with the amount of scrolling it takes for me to get to my links in the left column there – I use this site as an oldfashioned home page, where I keep links I use regularly (speaking of which, some need sorting out).
I don’t like the stark black/white contrast of the starry background with the white words and I think I need to find a smaller font so the individual entries take up less space. I think there’s a bit broken in my template too – I suspect every entry since the last time I fiddled with this site is being kept on this front page (which makes for all sorts of annoying page-opening issues).
I am generally not keen on blogs where I have to click through to the invidual entry to read the whole entry – I like to just read straight down from top to bottom (I’m like this with newspapers too, though). Nor do I like writing to accomodate this break.
I think I need a clearer menu across the top, pointing to things like an about page, a page of links, etc etc.
But there are a few things that kind of have to stay with a blog (with my blog):

• a big lot of white space to put the entries in
• a big column to the side where I can put my links so they’re quick-to-access (I don’t want to click through to them)
• a search box on the front page (I’ve shrunk that down to make it less space-consuming)
• a nice fat dogpossum logo. This needn’t be a big banner across the top, but that’s the most practical solution (I know a lot of designers think it’s naff, but dang, it’s been working for newspapers for zillions of years for a reason). I could choose a more squarish logo, perhaps put it over to the side in a wider side bar where I keep the list of things in two columns
• I like to be accessible, so:
  • I like a page that’s a fixed width (and I work on a scale that suits the size monitor most people use to look at my site)
  • I do things like underline links in a contrasting colour (if I neglect the underline colour blind people can’t see the links)
  • I use a pale background/dark text contrast (because, as with newspapers, that combination (rather than the opposite), has worked forever, and it’s the easiest to read), I test all my code to be sure it works on Internet Exploder (if you’re using that to look at this site – CHANGE NOW). This quite often makes me cry, but I deal with it. Even though IE is a piece of shit.
• I want a nice, clean layout like Barista’s, with small headings and without big space-wasting images
• I want a simple background that makes it easier to read the entries (the words are where it’s at – function over form, baby
• even though things like this look awesome, I want to have right-justified text
• I want to use the simple fonts I use now (which look better on safari than on IE, but that’s not my problem
• I haven’t decided whether I want 2 columns (as I have now) or 3 columns (as < ahref="http://www.duesentrieb.org/">here). I know I don’t want that thing that’s a bit chic at the moment where you have a chunk of info either at the very top, under your banner, or at the bottom of your page. The old-school 2-column/3-column option is most practical when you’re dealing with masses of words (as I, and newspapers, do)

My main priorities are: useability; nice clear text; a design that says ‘me’.
I’ve been looking through the usual sorts of web design pages for inspiration (including this one), trying to remember to style it up on the laptop screen, not my giant desk top monitor or The Squeeze’s even huger desk top, and trying (and failing) not to fall for bright-colours-and-white-backgrounds again. I style like I dress – playschool presenter all the way.
I suspect that this site will be gradually morphed into the new deal… because I just can’t be arsed starting from scratch to make something beautiful that works well. As per usual, I’m too busy writing words to think about the layout of this site.
PS any ideas? Tips? I am a CSS stooge and can html a bit. I say no to javascript because I can’t speak it.

Things look a little crap around here. I’m just doing a bit of tinkering.

It has come to my attention that having email details on this site would be useful.
I am also a bit over this site’s design. Am looking at a long period of (blissful) unemployment in new year. Will do things then. In the meantime, if you’re after me, I can be reached at dogpossum [at] this domain.
:)

I had time to blog about procrastinating.
But I’m settling for:
a) very short entries
or
b) very odd and stream-of-consciousness entries.
I write my entries straight into movabletype and then click ‘save’. Sometimes I proof-read.
I wish I had more discipline. But not too much.

Today in this book* I read about hypergraphia and hyperlogia.
I wondered (for a little moment) if I was a hypergraph**, then came to my senses.
But really, imagine that – being a compulsive writer. They’re the sorts of people who produce hundreds of novels or pieces of music or …other written down things. I think you have to be using a pen/pencil and paper rather than a keyboard to qualify, though.
It kind of reminds me of the story about Donald Friend on the 7.30 Report last night. Apparently he was a talented writer and artist. According to Lou Klepac,

Donald was given all these gifts, you know, writer, painter, draughtsman, could do anything, and he didn’t squander his talents but he went in each direction a bit.

I’d like to think that’s me – tremendous talents, but unrealised because I’m going just a bit in each direction, rather than actually getting my head down and going for it in one field. ahahhaha.
..ah. Uh. Well, that’s what I’m going to think, so I don’t get all low self esteemy.
But I wonder if part of Friend’s problem was that he was a bit hyper…something. Couldn’t settle and not do something. Had to be writing. Or painting. Or something.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this – I know nothing about Donald Friend (I didn’t even watch the telly when the 7.30 Report was on, I just listened).
But I think my attention’s been caught by all this obsessive-compulsive overwork type stuff in the air.
The university was in holiday mode today – the average age of people eating lunch had doubled, and people looked tired. Staff and postgrads were wandering the halls talking about being tired. And also (sneakily, I’m sure), in the midst of a writing-binge euphoria. On the parts of the postgrads at least.
Me, I feel on the edge of being hyper-productive. If I had a thesis to write, I’d be whipping off chapters by the dozen. But I don’t. I just have papers to mark (I’m 7 short, which means I’ll have to go in again to collect some… or get them mailed to me. Good thing I’ve been investing all that office-lady-kissingup, huh?). And an exchange to run. But they’re very low-brain things. Lots of nittygritty detail, no real creative work or highbrain work. When I say ‘lowbrain’ I mean that it doesn’t involve much serious thinking. Dancing is necessarily lowbrain (well, the way I do it, it is). Thesising is highbrain because it involves seriously complicated thinking over a long period of time. And you combine tasks – reading, writing, thinking. You plan ideas out over a long period of time, and have to keep all that stuff in your head without losing any. Careful, don’t jostle – it’ll spill.
…and right now, all this stressy overwork stuff is making me feel like I should be being creative. Writing interesting things. Solving difficult sewing problems.
But I’m talking crap on the internet instead. And wishing my latest CDs would arrive.
*you know, I couldn’t remember who wrote this or what it was called – I had to go find it and see. It’s because I read so many of these sorts of sort-of-SF and seriously-SF books whose names all sound the same. I don’t really care about the authors either (unless it’s MZB or other doods who I re-read religiously). I don’t even buy these books – I borrow them from my ps.
You know, why is it that music nerds are freakishly anal about copying and borrowing music (ie they think it’s a bad-naughty-wrong), but book lovers (who’ve been around for far far longer than recorded-music-lovers) are all over that shit?
I’m rapidly losing interest in the precious ‘don’t copy!’ music argument. I have yet to hear a thorougly convincing case for never copying music.
So I’m taking a leaf (tee hee) out of my book-brain and being ok with borrowing. Though just with books, I’d really rather have my own copy of something really great.
**ahahahhahahhahahahah