Category Archives: Uncategorized

I suck. Those last two posts are really painful.
Urk.

Meaning in Motion – Jane Desmond 306.484MEAN -B-
Human Action Signs in Cultural Context – Farnell 306.4HUMA -B/E-
Looking Out – David Gere – 792.82LOOK -B/E-
Moving Words – Gay Morris – 780.7MOVI -E-
Dance in the City – Helen Thomas – 306.484 DANC -B-

I used to make this amazing fish salad in Brisbane, and hadn’t made it in FIVE years til last night. It uses a lot of South-East Asian fresh herbs (which can be harder to grow here in Melbourne), and involves a bit of preparation. It is WORTH the wait – and must be eaten on the day immediately as it doesn’t keep so well. Note the dressing ingredients: that is some seriously awesome shit.
Most people shudder at the thought of smoked cod, but this is not your ordinary mashed potatoes and white sauce cod dish. It’s faaaancy. We made it with many herbs from our garden, which only added to the lovely freshness of the dish.
Fish and Herb Salad
(serves 4-6)
500g (1 lb) smoked cod
3 tbsps lime juice
1/2 cup (30g/1oz) flaked cocount
1 cup (200g/6 1/2 oz) jasmine rice, cooked and cooled.
1/2 cup (25g/ 3/4 oz) hcopped fresh Vietnamese mint
3 tbsp chopped fresh mint
1/2 cup (25g/ 3/4 oz) chopped fresh coriander leaves
8 kaffir lime leaves, very finely shredded
Dressing:
1 tbsp chopped fresh coriander root
2cm (3/4inch) piece of fresh ginger, finely grated
1 red chilli, finely chopped
1 tbsp chopped lemon grass (white part only)
3 tbsp chopped fresh Thai basil
1 avocado, chopped
1/3 cup (80ml/2 3/4 fl oz) lime juice
2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tsp soft brown sugar
1/2 cup (125ml/4 fl oz) peanut oil (i use macadamia oil because it’s AMAZING)
1. Place the cod in a large frying pan and cover with water. Add the lime juice and simmer for 15 minutes, or until the fish flakes when tested with a fork. Drain and set aside to cool slightly before removing all skin and bones and breaking into bite-sized pieces.
2. Dry fry the coconut in a frying pan until golden. Discard if burns. Remove from pan and cool.
3. Place the coconut, rice, fish, Vietnamese mint, mint, coriander and kaffir lime leaves in a large bowl and mix to combine.
4. To make Dressing: place the coriander root, ginger, chilli, lemon grass and basil in a food processor and process until combined. Add the avocado, lime juice, fish sauce, sugar and oil and process until creamy. (we don’t process this as we can’t face the washing up, but it would be good to get the herbs smooth in a dish that is eventually (as The Squeeze declared), ‘rice with leaves’).
5. Pour the dressing over the salad and toss to coat the rice and fish (I usually do this part by hand to avoid smashing the fish). Serve immediately.

I’ve been thinking about why I’m watching so much telly lately, and what it all means. Because, you see, I’ve not been a regular tv viewer for aaages – I’m simply too busy out dancing or doing other things in the evenings to watch telly (let’s not talk about daytime tv – I ignore it). But lately I’ve been catching up on my tv viewing with some dvd versions of telly programs. Now, I know that I’m not watching these programs as they were intended (ie once a week over 12 weeks or so), I’m bingeing, and this is changing the ways I think about these programs – as texts and narratives, but…
Well, look, it’s an interesting point, isn’t it? I read an interesting point on the Firefly fan site (yes, it’s sad – deride me. I deserve it) about the idea of ‘time’ in telly series. Someone noted that Whedon had to use 9 characters on Firefly and Angel because two or three simply can’t sustain interest and complexity over 12 weeks. You need more people because you can offer more story lines over a long period of time (what, 12 hours worth?). It’s kind of the soap opera rule, I guess. And that’s kind of a cereal thing.
So, ok, you’ve got 9 characters and 12 hours to use in developing a narrative.
With a film, you have 2 hours max. So 9 characters can get crowded (which is one of the justifications for [Serenity spoiler approaches] killing off Wash and Book in Serenity. One I’m not too sure I’m buying – Wash!).
So what happens when I watch 12 episodes of Dead Like Me in a row? Or 4 or 5 on one Sunday afternoon?
When I do these binges, I tend to feel a bit crowded inside. Lots of characters, lots of events, lots of stuff to absorb. I miss out on the slow assimilation of information. I don’t do the between-episode thinking and digesting. I kind of feel like I’m also not doing the adding-in part of viewing to the same extent. You know the way a program and characters live in your mind between viewings? The way you think about them, talk about them, read about them online, see parallels and homages to them in other programs… When you binge, you miss that stuff. So am I making these programs less interesting for myself?
Thing is, programs like Firefly and Twin Peaks and Buffy and Angel and Battlestar Galactica can handle being watched in binges – they’re interesting. Dumb shows with less going on, narrative-wise, character-wise, plot-wise, brain-wise (or discursively-wise) tend to get really tedious in big binges. You need to watch them weekly.
Now I’m thinking: does this explain why these shows get such hardcore fan bases?
And then I think ‘nah’. Because dumb shows like 90210 or Friends get hardcore fan bases. And I suspect that weekly screenings help – esp if you’re watching with friends. I think about queer readings of Friends: you add stuff in to make it interesting. So you view with a bent eye to add in interesting stuff. You do more work, watching, to make the two guys (whose names I can’t remember) who live together into a couple. Could you do this if you were bingeing? Would you have time – brain time – to re-read these doods as queer?
Hm. I’m not convinced. I think about the way I love chick flicks: I’m adding in stuff when I view, and I don’t need ‘more time’ to do it…
Well, either way, binge-viewing certainly changes my experience of the program. I do repeat viewings in different ways too – I binge, then I go back and revisit particular episodes to catch favourite moments, explore issues, etc. I rewatch the whole lot (another binge) to pick up the bits I missed the first time. I rewatch with friends for added pleasure. These extra bits don’t include the names of episodes – I can never remember them. I don’t much care, either: I tend to think of the seperate episodes as chapters in the whole story. So they could be ‘1’ or ‘3rd’.
All this is similar to the way I read books. Binge and then re-read.
I remember watching Twin Peaks weekly in a proper ‘fannish’ way. Lunchtime analysis and deconstruction. Scanning magazines for articles about characters/actors. Chasing down the director and actors’ past work. All this added to my weekly viewing.
With my binge viewing, I supplement my binges with online read-ups (though I’m not that keen for that stuff). We didn’t have access to that in 1990 (or whenever it was), so we made do with magazines.
The Squeeze goes to regular screenings of BSG with his BSG nerd mates. As one of them said in response to my ‘oh man, I couldn’t handle wasting a whole day watching telly – I’d rather be talking or playing games or eating or something’ , it’s not about the watching, really. It’s about the getting-together. You might be talking about BSG, you might be talking about uni or work or flirting or whatever. It’s the social interaction that’s important.
I’m not that keen on bingeing socially, though… hm. Well, I like watching with The Squeeze (though I’m just as happy watching alone)…
This reminds me of a point in my research where I was thinking about swing dancers as fans. While you can watch telly alone and never speak of your passion for Firefly with anyone else, you have to swing dance with other people. It’s absolutely, and inevitably and undeniably about social interaction. It’s also about physical, embodied social interaction with lots of physical contact and body-thinking and talking. Being a swing dancer is about community. Being a telly fan isn’t necessarily about sharing the experience. But it can help.
hm…
It’s all interesting.
And of course, all my supes’ fault: it was that paper she gave on teen telly. And possibly there’s some link to my crazy Firefly/DLM/BSG viewing….

this entry is pretty much just a test.
i’m fiddling with dogpossum again, mostly because i’m having thesis blockage issue. but a meeting with the supes on wednesday will fix that right up.
goddamn this blockage – of course it would happen NOW when i’m right near the end and cruising along comfortably with the mlx prep… i can never do anything when i don’t have a deadline hanging over me1

i’m home again.
early morning arrival yesterday, though the plane was delayed in heathrow for 3 hours we made incredible time and were only about an hour late in to melbourne.
the flight was ok: quite empty as the delay had stuffed up people’s connecting with us. i scored a three seater to myself on the second leg from singapore, and slept a bit.
melbourne was a chilly, wet shock. we retired to bed as soon as we got home and though we’d only intended a quick nap, i slept until 5pm. then up for a couple of hours and back to bed by 9pm.
i don’t mind this jetlag thing: i beat it with hardcore sleeping.
today i was awake by 6am. i hassled The Squeeze until he sent me off to get some stuff for breakfast.
i am much less tired than he is, i think.
today we rode to smith street where i purchased replacement dance shoes. $25 for fancy arse keds. new, improved padding and support. a wider toe. rockin’. then dropped them in at the shoe man for sueding. he’s upped his prices from $20 to $35, but that still works out at $55 for brand new dance shoes. not bad, considering they hardly last a year (and the last ones only lasted 9 months).
priorities, huh? ah well. we also had a lovely lunch at a cafe on brunswick street. hoorah for excellent sandwiches.

i think i’m over my jetlag, now. i don’t mind those massive flights, either. it made it heaps better to have a less-full plane.
i’m really glad to be back in the land of good food. i couldn’t hack that english cuisine much longer. The Squeeze is certainly iron wok brunswick: how lovely to be presented with gorgeous stir fry last night.

in my absense the university has gone insane. i have about a million irritating forms to fill out. seems the rgso couldn’t figure out that my ‘o’ form really did mean that i was away on field work and wouldn’t be able to do my progress report. despite my follow up emails to the uni, there was still a little drama. gotta sort that out tomorrow. and i have to add up all my receipts from my trip.
sigh.

it was certainly worth it, though. i will write more about that later…

and i didn’t have time or opportunity to blog much while i was away. certainly not while i was in herrang. tooo busy. tooo tired.

it’s good to be home, but i really liked travelling. and i like travelling on my own, as well. though it’s certainly good to be back.

now i need to chase down a phsyio/podiatrist. my poor feet….

how goes it?
oh, same old.

Continue reading “work?”

p>why yes, that is a broken template you see before you.
seems i’m not happy with a blog unless it’s goddamn BROKEN.

i am fiddling with dogpossum. it may or may not ever get fixed.
fukked if i know what happened.

and the comments on the recent entry have made me think perhaps i should respond in greater detail.

and then i got to making pumpkin bread and putting up dj profiles on FSP – check them out there on the right hand column.
this interests me for a number of reasons. i think it’s important to promote live swinging jazz to swing dancers in melbourne as part of an effort to Keep It Real, to keep us connected to the musicians. but i also think it’s important to hang on to the vast wealth of music produced in the 30s and 40s and beyond and before these decades. i mean, you could dj every night for a year and never ever play all the amazing swing danceable music recorded. this stuff was KILLER good (i almost typed killer-diller, but held myself back).
despite this cornucopia of goodness available, there’s an awfully big load of shit being djed in melbourne these days.
i am a purist when it comes to my lindy hopping music. if i’m going out to dance ‘swing’ dances – to lindy hop or whatever – i like the music to swing. sure, it’s fun to dance to other stuff, but i can hear that shit anywhere. there are so few places available for me to go hear some good swinging jazz and dance some good swinging dance on a decent floor with a crowd of fellow devotees.
i do also believe that the music you dance to informs the way you dance. so if you’re dancing to un-swing, your dancing won’t swing. etc etc.

i think that we need not only to teach new dancers ‘moves’ and body stuff and the history of the dance (i think we need to remember the afro-american history of this dance. it’s the scariest type of appropriation otherwise), but also about the music. swinging jazz isn’t popular music any more. young people especially don’t hear it much any more. they don’t know artists or styles or song names. they don’t know the difference between ‘cool’ and ‘hot’ jazz, they don’t know who count basie was and how important he was not only to jazz but also to jazz dancers.
so i think teachers should play swinging jazz in dance classes.
this helps dancers develop not only a knowledge about swinging jazz and ‘dance’ music, but also their own particular tastes.
this is important because one of the defences i’ve heard for playing bullshit unswing carp music at dance nights, is that the ‘new’ dancers want to hear stuff they ‘know’.

man. and these people call themselves a business? do they know nothing about creating markets for products?

so, i think – as well as playing decent music in classes – we also need to publicly discuss and demonstrate the importance of music and musical discourse through our attention to djs and djing practice. we should ask questions about how djs work, the music they play, their working conditions and levels of ‘professionalism’. we should value our djs and the work they do, encourage them to explore music and how to play it, value their own contribution and take their role in the community seriously.
and we should do this by talking about djing.

i also think it’s important for dancers to get critical about the music they listen to. they should start asking for djs to research music and seek out new material, to get historical relevency up them, as well as exploring contemporary works.

so i’m doing my bit through promoting local melbourne djs on my website. maybe providing a list of djs in melbourne as i do bands and venues.

i also have lots of ideas about fostering new djing talent in the community. about how to encourage women into djing, and how to make djing accessible for people without the funds to buy big on cds.
just ask me.

Thanks so much for making me read this, zot. sure, it’s a good looking site, but…

“I’m glad,” I told him, “that people like you and Bob Santamaria were around to fight against communism.”

Now, i wouldn’t mock this young man’s love for his grandfather, and i empathise with his loss, but this comment is laughable for so many reasons.

And it’s followed by:

A few months earlier weÂ’d had another conversation, where I told him how IÂ’d changed my mind about socialism, that IÂ’d realised how its proponents didnÂ’t tolerate dissent. He was so weakened by illness that our conversation couldnÂ’t last long enough for me to tell him that it was also because I finally realised that government interference in economic matters was inconsistent with my uncompromising insistence on maximum personal freedom (provided that oneÂ’s actions do not infringe anotherÂ’s right to self-determination). I didnÂ’t get to tell him how a colleagueÂ’s argument that to achieve socialism (a thing this colleague desires) we would have to abolish individual subjectivity, fills me with horror.

Again, not to mock his obvious grief for his grandfather, or his love for this man. But hell, i am mocking his politics. And i’m certainly mocking his turn of phrase, his knowledge of cultural studies and ‘knowledge’ of film. In the stupidest blog entry ever he writes in a review of the film japanese story (which i didn’t much care for either, but that’s not really the point):

The rest of the film, which is about an encounter between an East Asian man and an Australian woman, has little to recommend it. My first grievance, which I commonly hold against Australian films, is that it indulges in a view of Australia that is dominated by the outback. Since the majority of our population lives in state capital cities and their suburbs, this prevents such films from accurately representing Australian life even as they use farms or ‘the red centre’ to visually signify their Australian-ness.

This imbecile is teaching at unimelb?
Check his IQ: top zillion percentile. Says so right there, under ‘skills’ in his resume. I want to marry this guy.

No wonder unimelb shat me. I have only this to say:

Australian films which do not feature the outback (that i can remember):
‘Death in Brunswick’
‘strictly ballroom’
‘dark city’
‘ghosts of the civil dead’
‘children of the revolution’

i could go on and on and on… and i’d like to say to this misinformed fool: you need to get some australian cinema up you, cultural studies boy.