the policeman's ball

Here's anothery, since I have nothing else of great value to discuss atm. The notion here is someone stating that they crashed the policeman's ball disguised as a horse. Between you and me I went one step further into confusion here by making them actually a horse but wearing a horse mask. At least, that is what I was trying to convey. 

The subtleties of perspective have always eluded me - like a lot of things, I think a month's tuition fifty years ago (or some actually useful secondary schooling - fuck!) would have made a big fat difference to my capacities here. You will see at the very back of the room, behind the bar, there is a mirror. If I had genuine ability I might have done more with this but cram in some vague shapes (in fact, although I said 'you will see...' of course you didn't notice it until I told you and still might be having trouble figuring out what I'm talking about). But once I decided to fill in the mirror details - I had always intended it to be a mirror, but only imagined I would add in the bar staff vaguely - I realised that most of the figures I had populated the dance floor with were too short to be seen in the mirror anyway, or perhaps not even too short (though a lot of them are, possibly they are children?), but too low, because for some weird reason the floor kind of tips downward. 

I'm not saying I'm not really pleased with this drawing though, because I am. I particularly like the top part where you can see what I suppose are roof beams (I think I traced the room roughly from a picture of a big restaurant space) and some shabby streamers and a banner which I suppose says 'Balls Out'. For a split-second I was thinking, there should have been something like a DJ in the picture, and a buffet, and probably some other things besides, and then I remembered, when you go to a place, everything in the place is not instantly visible to you if you are facing in one direction, and if it was, you'd think 'this is weird'. Our faces are only made to point one way. This is how we do it. If a fish or a bird had drawn this picture, well, I suppose it would have been two pictures, facing each other, with no depiction of what was directly ahead. 

treated like crap

McGuire election paraphernalia discarded at Broady station during the week.

I must say voting today at the Blair St campus of the Hume Secondary College in the Broadmeadows by election was not a fine experience. I noted that the idea of putting the ALP last was commonly expressed in literature (most notably from an independent with a Turkish name) distributed, though the Greens to their credit simply asked to be put first and the rest didn't matter. As I said to Mia it will be interesting to see if there is a backlash considering a lot of people in our area would justifiably feel marginalised and might in this instance feel taken for granted and patronised as if they don't know the difference between Eddie McGuire and his Brightonite brother. Who will still win anyway. What a crock.

I note also that the Libs couldn't even be bothered to put up a candidate, because they are sods. Not that I would vote for them if my life depended on it so why does that bother me?

* Next day: victorious smug column by FMcG in today's Sunday Age just rubs salt into the wound, even if there was actual proof he wrote the column about what a great honour it was to win sometime yesterday evening between finding out he'd won and the paper going to print.

talk of the town

(from last week, sorry) I have enlightened beliefs on the matter of the Melbourne Storm rorts because I have no interest in whatever the kind of ball game it refers to, to the degree that I gather it’s about rugby league (I assume ‘NRL’ stands for ‘National Rugby League’ though if someone told me it was a league of Rugby Union players I would not be shocked) but what that actually is (in relation to rugby union or whatever other lemon-shaped ball games there are that aren’t AFL) I don’t know at all.

It would seem that Melbourne Storm, which is a team, found ways to pay certain players more than they should have, to keep the team successful, which it was.

The bit that most intrigues me was the suggestion that some of the people responsible for this deception and corruption might go to jail for up to five years. That is amazing. I am really torn. If I were king they probably would go to jail, but then again, I might be sending people to jail just for being interested in rugby league, or perhaps I’d be a benevolent ruler and only send them to jail for thinking it’s important (they can still be interested). Certainly I would outlaw people paying for the services of players. I would also send the woman in the seat perpendicular to mine, to jail for the crime of filing her nails in my presence. Unbearable vibes of a scratchy pink board on a fingernail and rude, too.

Anyway the idea that people might go to jail over something to do with a stupid ball game that makes no sense is very amusing. It shows to some degree that our society is simply cockamamie, though at the same time I would be totally into people who made their money out of in some way organizing the playing of stupid ball games going to jail. You see how this presents me with a moral dilemma.

As it happens I also don’t really believe sending people to jail is a solution. In jail they no doubt learn about more sports and are encouraged by their corrupt peers to take greater interest in intricacies of ball games. It is a vicious circle. Or, if you like, cycle.

***
Next vignette: Oh I used to work with a designer, this was at Attic Press, who used to call vignettes ‘vonettes’, I mean she probably spelt it vignette, but she didn’t know how to pronounce it. She always came at it as if explaining a new concept too, the vonette, something very specialized that only she had knowledge of. I can’t remember what it referred to in design and nor do I now care. I am then reminded of the woman I worked with who pronounced mural ‘muriel’ and foccaccia ‘f’couchy’. The muriel problem is, I think, fairly widespread: in this person’s case, it was as if she actually was unable not to make the ‘i’ sound between the ‘r’ and the ‘e’. The f’couchy was just laziness I think. It was a new innovation (as innovations so often are) in Sydney 20 years ago, and like Kylie Minogue and Kate Ceberano, people had a lot of trouble pronouncing the name for some time. There was the transition period when people had actually learnt how to say it, but put a kind of affectation in their voice as though only an affected person would know how to say such a word. Then people realized life was too short and just started saying the damn word.

***
Last night we watched what was probably about 2/3 of the Drew Barrymore-directed film Whip It. I have to say what we saw was pretty poor, though like a lot of these things it probably wasn’t our demographic. I have been trying to think of ways that it might have turned out to be a brilliant film following the scene where the boy and girl jump in the swimming pool with their clothes on (as far as I’ve seen it or will ever see it probably). My first impulse is always to imagine the actors turning to the camera and explaining why the film has been rubbish so far, but of course that’s a cop out. I suppose the best idea I can think of is that somehow the film moves away from its boring roller skating premise and into some kind of more character based study of the family. Also, introduction of the actual song ‘Whip It’, though I always preferred ‘Girl U Want’, myself, and ‘Snowball’, all from that album Freedom of Choice.

***
I greatly enjoyed Tony Martin’s second book A Nest of Occasionals and I suggest to you that you read it. He also writes weekly for The Scrivener’s Fancy which I have bookmarked on the right. The other writers are very fine too, on the whole.