armagnac'd

TV watching- an early victory

2009-07-15T13:26:00.004+10:00

One of the times we have been most relaxed about Bear and TV is the final feed- a quiet drink of milk on the couch around 6.45-7ish. I get Bear some warmed-up milk while she 'helps clean up' (often by pulling a few more things out of the shelf) then we flop together on the sofa and stare at the box.

The highlight for Bear is Wednesday nights when "Simon an' Maggie are going to put it on it"; we watch the Cook and the Chef in action and Bear interrogates me constantly about what that is or what they're doing. Beloved usually wanders down just before 7, having fed Mitts, and requests the closing moments of Neighbours. The news headlines come on, then by the time it gets to sport (about 8 minutes on ABC news these days) we're trundling up the stairs to bed. All things going well Beloved and I are standing in the kitchen 10 minutes later toasting our continued hold on sanity with a glass of red...

Recently Bear has been throwing a spanner in the works, but one I'm quite proud of. As I've offered to put on the TV she's told me in no uncertain terms that the TV won't be going on, and requests ranging from

"dum dum the mountain song" (classical music, specifically Night on Bare Mountain) to

"Mitt-Mitts' music box the beatles' one" (Baby you can drive my car, as played on her brother's new music box)

are proffered instead.

Beloved has even made the mistake of walking out and putting on the TV, only to be shouted at by an incensed 2-and-a-half year old music afficionado!

Will it continue, or will we end up dealing with the flaccid misery of TV or game addicted kids, as is being discussed at Essential Baby? Fingers crossed, and while I have to keep reminding myself not to fall into the trap of 'pushing' a particular hobby every iota of interest the kids show in music will be matched by enthusiastic facilitation at our end.

Even at risk of humiliation: last night as I put my dignity on the line to entertain with a rocking air-mike rendition of drive my car, Bear stared at me, unflinching, as if watching a 6 foot purple frog roll its eyes.

*back to the couch*

Shock News: China isn't a utopian democracy!

2009-07-14T13:45:00.005+10:00

In other news the notion that underpinned trade liberalisation through the 1990s in particular, that it should quickly lead to other forms of 'liberalisation', has yet again been exposed as half-baked apologia.

It's big news, this whole 'imprison without trial etc' thing that we've suddenly learned about China. The change is encapsulated in the headline

"Magic Dragon grows into menacing bully "

So before a single well-paid executive who chose to do business in a totalitarian state knowing the risks was imprisoned, it was just a Magic Dragon?

It would clearly be too harsh to describe the following as the actions of a bully:

Threatening Taiwan?

Banning absolutely everything?

Slaughtering minorities of various types?

Killing thousands every year after fauxtrials?

It is the government's job to lobby for Mr Hu as best it can. It should also learn lessons in terms of the lengths China will go to in the name of resource security. It is a national administration that cannot be blindly trusted, and anyone (such as myself on previous posts) who had a flippant attitude towards ownership of Australian assets by Chinese state-owned corporations will be rethinking some of their assumptions.

International relations is a discipline of constant learning and nuancing, and around the world attitudes to China may experience a bit of nuancing after this.

But let's keep perspective: businesses will not stop going there, they are not above sacrificing lives to make money. There are plenty of places on the planet businesses operate at present that put their executives at far greater risk.

If Rio had refused to do business with Chinese Government interests to begin with on the basis of ethics, then this would not have happened. Likewise for the more mundane, business-related reason of the lack of rule of law, allegedly a big factor in attracting investment. China fails both tests utterly, yet Rio incorporated political risk, made decisions, and in this rare case has stumbled across awful consequences.

Other Australians who are charged overseas can end up facing the death penalty, also without anything resembling what we would call a trial, or justice.

Powerful but politically ignorant editors should do a bit of reading up on wikipedia before drafting such mind-numbing headlines.

Political Constructivism and Biological Determinism

2009-07-09T10:49:00.003+10:00

Is it a case of ne'er the twain shall meet?

My lack of blogging in part reflects an attempt to focus on my research paper and an ongoing struggle to resolve my preferences within the existing schools of international theory. I am, as far as project 'Gnac is concerned, caught between competing ontologies (Or it is epistemologies? I find the precise demarcation of these tortuous expressions sometimes hard to pin point.).

The problem is that after years of encountering theory in an on-off way through studies in literature, psychology, law and international relations, I haven't found a home. In a nutshell, positivism seems to me extremely simplistic, and the methods of critical theory have plenty of value. However I do not share what I call automatic hypothesis-conclusion reasoning, what I see as a seamless (and in turn uncritical) shift from using critical methods to 'uncover' an alternative reading (or hypothesis) to instantly adopting that reading as a 'true' conclusion. And, to put it simply, I believe a significant portion (though far less than the total) of our personas is biologically shaped, if not quite determined.

At the political level, and even more so at the international political level, I lean towards the existing framework being constructed, something that can be re-thought and changed, while also being convinced that at least some of those constructs, and behaviours of actors within them, may be influenced from the biological level onwards.

The behaviour of supra-societal individuals like Putin, Hussein or Bush JR, for example is not always rational in a sense that fits easily within positivist doctrine. Yet while there is ample room to build theories around how national and international structures, including ideology and social pressures, may have an influence on such behaviour, there seems also to me to be room for considering how inherent factors gone wrong, perhaps even skewed by social or ideological pressures, have also played a role.

Dear blogestrians, do you have a view? And even if you disagree, if you are familiar with academic texts in the realm of post-positivist theory (as I'm sure some of you are), can you point me towards work that seeks to deal with conflicts and potential agreements between these two broad schools of thought?

Mannish Boy- the nicknames, the song...

2009-06-26T14:10:00.007+10:00

He has a short, reasonably sensible name. However he has, in less than 6 months of life, attracted the following nicknames:

- the Cub;

- Mr Man;

- Mr Magoo;

- Mr Mr Man;

- Mitta Mitta Man;

- Mitt Mitts;

- Mittsa;

- Widgery Boy;

- Chops; and

- Mannish Boy.

Cub was an attempt to find an equivalent of Bear, but a boy soon took his own path. Widgery boy has absolutely no rationale at all. And the rest all relate, one way or another, to the fact that his man-features - in particular his brow and chin which have been visibly different to Bear's since the 12 week scan - are stretching to beefcake proportions.

Chops, for example, I use because his thighs are shaped like big pork chops! Sumo Boy has also been heard.

Leading from this I often sing him variants to Mannish Boy which, for the uninitiated, is the song with the riff recycled for Bad to the Bone. Yes, the one that made the song famous. The new lyrics often go along the lines of:

I'm a mannish boy,
I made nearly half a year,
an' I tellin' ya baby,
I'm gonna nibble yo ear!

He loves it, especially the riff between each line; Dar-Dar-Doo-Dar-Dum, Da-Dum, Da-Dum... Oh I just thought I'd share! File under goofball dad keeps track of silliness.

Cat Psychosis Triggered By Stupid Novelty Card!

2009-06-26T13:59:00.006+10:00

Now and then I notice a sleeper comment on an old post, something added well after it had slipped off the radar. Occasionally they are worth giving some airtime, as with this extraordinary tale left under my post about Mao going nuts back in '06:

My cat full on tried to kill me yesterday morning. The trigger was apparently a card that when opened has pooh talking. And pooh was the absolute devil. He thought it was me and next thing I knew I was having to fight for my life. I was thankfully on my way out the door, so I had on jeans and shoes. And for a cat that has no front claws...he certainly caused a significant amount of damage to my leg. And my arm seems to have a swollen lymph node now. I have had "cat scratch fever" before, and I am thinking that I have it again.

I left him in my apartment for the bulk of the day and when I came back...he was still trying to attack me. My parents came out and wrangled him into his cat carrier and took him to there house. Last I heard he was still in it b/c he was still aggresive. They were going to try and let him out later to roam the basement. He is going to the vet tomorrow, when it opens. I hope that they are able to fix him. But at the same time, I am sufficently scared of him and don't know what to do. I am going to wait to see what the vet says. I miss him something terrible. He was my baby boy. I saved him from my apartment parking lot. After a he had taken a ride in the engine of my car.

Well, it has to be said I'd hate being carried along in the engine of the car, and as for those fucking cards/books/plastic toys that talk....

No updates on the outcome. I hope things went back to normal for this anonymous commenter the way they did for Mao and I.

Grech and the Libs- a tryst that's now public business

2009-06-24T10:03:00.004+10:00

On Lateline last night Hockey was squirming, refusing to answer relevant questions and repeating Turnbull's breathtakingly arrogant analogy between their 'special friends' (or is it 'little mates'?) in the Australian Public Service and a journalist's sources. This brings yet another dishonest ploy into the utegate fiasco. The two are clearly different and both Hockey and Turnbull know it.

If politics and journalism rely on members of the Commonwealth Senior Executive Service to breach their contracts, their code of conduct, their responsibilities to the sitting minister and ultimately the public, while being paid at least $150,000 per annum, then this sits in what might be described as a grey area of law and ethics. It is not something to simply sneer and dismiss as a concern in every case.

Whistleblowing in the face of overt concerns about breaches of ethics by others, or manifest public interest, is quite different to merely helping your ideological mates and acting as an ongoing mole. That is dishonest and unethical. For the journalist or politician who receives such information the matter may be less clear, as it is accepted that they use virtually everything they can get their hands on in the course of their work.

However this case is clearly different.

Allegations remain largely speculative and piecemeal, but with the following presently in the public sphere:

- That the email was a piece of fraud, designed as a direct attack on the holders of the two highest offices in this land;

- A strong relationship between the upper echelons of the Liberal Party and Godwin Grech going back years;

- Bucketloads of circumstantial evidence swirling around that suggests Grech may have been involved in the creating or proliferation of the email;

- Bucketloads of circumstantial evidence swirling around that suggests Grech is inconsistent with the truth, and has not met (to put it at the minimum) basic expectations that come with being a very highly paid member of the Senior Executive Service of the APS;

we deserve and are owed a full explanation of why the obvious joining of the dots should not take place.

Turnbull's patronising tone towards the reporter last night was vintage truffles: the arrogant, unrepentant spoilt brat whose contacts, blue ribbon background and sheer bullying prescence have always got him his way.

Surely he looked at that footage later, in the overall context where he is fighting for his political life, and thought: What Was I Thinking? It was as if Latham, a day after grabbing Howard's hand too hard, turned and put Brendan Nelson in a bearhug.

Rudd's decision to avoid a night of the long knives in the APS was in some ways admirable, but this affair has surely damaged the careers of those who want to be able to move between working for the political party of their choice, and working for the public service.

May a dozen words muffle your point

2009-06-19T10:25:00.004+10:00

Slap me in the face with a frozen flathead, I agree with Tony Abbott:

"Rudd's tone oscillates between injured innocence and earnest self-importance, but he never uses one word when a dozen might muffle his point," Mr Abbott wrote on News Ltd's website The Punch. Wit and brevity should be key during question time, he said.

Credit where it's due, that's a good one-liner.

It's because he's a bu-reau-crat Tony, welcome to my world and one of its plenary frustrations.

Poo - Sun Tsu's Art of Toilet Training

2009-06-18T22:28:00.004+10:00

"Let's try a bit longer luvvie, you must be close to doing a poo..."

"I want to get off the toi-yet!"

*starts dismounting*

"You sure Bearsy?"

(Voice of mum interjects...)

"She's close, really close.."

(Weak dad attempts to fix serious expression on face)

"Won't you give it a bit longer, luffiduff?"

*dismount now almost complete*

"I want to get off the TOI-YET!!"

"OK, OK, sweetie, all good, into the bath"

*picks up toddler*

*places in bath*

1 second

2 seconds

PHUTT!! A great brown cable splits in two as it hits the water, disintegrating in seconds among the various porous bath toys.

"I done a poo daddy."

.....

So after hand-scooping most of it out, and pushing the rest into the plughole, and lobbing all the toys out around the bathroom floor, Bear has her first, standing-alone-like-a-big-kid shower. She couldn't believe how funny that was!

Fear OF Security- A history of Australian Foreign/Foreigner/Other policy

2009-06-18T10:27:00.003+10:00

What I am reading: Fear of Security by Anthony Burke. I am nearly done, it has taken months between the rest of my life to navigate this single book.

Burke is a crit, and like most crits does that which he seeks to deconstruct in others- constructing a polemic narrative that deliberately illuminates the bits that suit the argument while often missing or shading over the bits that don't. That being said, he makes a litany of good points and has built a persuasive picture of Australia's history of dealing with security as something based of fear, and predicated on the removal of security from others.

This is not in itself a shocking hands-to-face revelation. Even a cursory reading of John Howard's favourite discipline, history, performed with the tightest blinkers on, cannot fail to uncover some obvious points:

* We tend to go to war in situations where we are not actually under threat...

* Against people who are not threatening us...

* Having hocked our foreign policy making to a great power somewhere.

And while a Windbag can split hairs over the means, motivations, and exact details, there is no doubt as a simple before-and-after question that this country was once populated by hundreds of tribes of indigenous people, a population now far smaller and scraping a life off the very bottom rungs of the Australian 'ladder'.

And the fact that as a nation we're hysterical over people who arrive in small numbers in boats is self-evident; provable in pure quantitative terms by comparing numbers of different types of arrivals and the reactions they inspire.

But still.

Put together, it is not hard to build an almost-unrelenting image of a nation scared to write its own foreign policy and irrationally defensive, and from that also aggressive, about issues of race and identity.

We may mewl about it now, but a century ago much of the population viewed Aboriginals as a "detested incubus" (in the observation of one Reverend John West) to be hunted down and removed from the land.

We have never learned the apparent, obvious and extraordinarily harsh lessons of World War I in respect of hocking our foreign policy to others and sending young men to die on foreign soil.

Never mind the warm-hearted humanitarian angle- this is also bad policy when viewed from almost any sophisticated analytical lens. Realism? A bright, literate realist would not trust great powers with our interests, and would never go on a venture overseas that demonstrably makes us less secure. Liberals? They aren't supposed to breach plenary principles of international law and snub multilateral fora.

All we are left with is dumb and insecure. It's a sad comment on how far we have to go to become a mature nation.

I read my first word I read it I said it I said "I"!

2009-06-17T15:18:00.011+10:00

"What's that Bear?"

*points to a capital letter 'I' on the page*

...

"Can you say that one?"

*moments tick by, a Bear wearing her problem-solving face*

...

"Ay!.... that's Ay!" she correctly states and a dad starts whooping with glee.

"Hey BELOOOVED, Bear just read her first word off the page, she said I, as in the letter 'I' which is of course a word, I'm so proud, did you hear me she READ HER FIRST WORD I AS IN "I", Beloooved...yay, WELL DONE BEAR, YAYY!!"

Beloved returns a volley of similar excitement from the other room. I sit there bouncing my feet and grinning ear-to-ear. Bear smiles, a little bemused.

Who says parents become obsessed with trivia?

At just under 2 years and 6 months my girl read something off the page and I am excited because I love and am sentimental about reading. Well, that and the usual overwhelming dad-pride.

Speaking of....

She's also into singing. This morning she sat next to Mr Man and sang for him, he stared back in awe, I got overwhelmed with the Ah-cutes. Last night she stopped as we were coming down the stairs, looking serious, and broke into a rendition of 'dancing face' by Justine Clark, complete with frowns, wiggling ears and other highlights. I cracked up laughing, but she didn't miss a beat, continuing with the song and hamming it up even more, clearly impressed with the effect she'd had.

Daughter's always on stage.

(Updated the title slightly! Bear has been talking her head off for ages, the excitement here was about her recognising a word, albeit a single letter, and reading it off the page with no clues.).

Spew, snot and rain- yay for long weekends

2009-06-09T11:12:00.002+10:00

June long weekend has always been a dead loss, I can't remember a time where, anticipating the opportunity, I've organised a holiday and taken advantage. This was no exception, with one catch-up with friends planned for the Monday, a plan cancelled due to excess snot and vomit.

There is no narrative I can unfurl; the whole weekend blends into itself as a scene, set in the lounge room, slate-grey outside with intermittent rain. We are passing Mitt-Mitts back and forth, he cries a fair bit, snotty, later throwing up a morning's worth of liquid and bringing us our closest brush with a trip to the Royal Children's. Bear is pottering around. Thankfully she got into the Angelina Ballerina puzzle book, so she was easily entertained in the one spot. Pulling out puzzles, putting them back in with approximately 1 frustrated dummy spit per puzzle. This did not lose its entertainment value after the 42nd time.

Beloved held out well, falling sick near the end. I developed a sharp pain in my lower back from constant child-handling, a pain that resulted in my legs nearly giving way while walking to get take away last night.

The cats circled, antsy, arcing in for attention whenever a gap appeared. The weather was so lousy that Mao refused to go outside at all yesterday.

We went shopping, to 'shoppo' as Lucy Tartan puts it, and were quite successful. I wheeled the kids around the ladies section of DJ's for 45 minutes, stopping by the change rooms to write off various pairs of jeans as ill-fitting. Sass & Bide, or Bidet as we say north of the Yarra, had no chance after I used the analogy of a short carrot to describe their lack of flattery. Beloved ended up with a nice pair of Diesels. The kids got PJs, Bear choosing hers with a little embroidered crab on the front. I got a mediocre coffee after a long wait at Muffin Break. That was the exciting bit over with, late Saturday morning. The rest you know.

Should I start a new tag "Cabin Fever"?

Seething Mom's Open Letter To Obama

2009-06-05T10:24:00.002+10:00

Liked, moved, wanted to share this :

My husband and I understood exactly what those horrible marriage amendments were really all about and we knew it had nothing to do with protecting the sanctity of our 27-year marriage, and everything to do with hate, ignorance and bigotry masquerading as a mandate from God. It was also the point at which we painfully realized that enough of our fellow Arizonans, possibly friends and neighbors among them, felt so strongly that our son was not worthy of the same rights they enjoyed that they could pull the lever for enshrining his second-class citizenship into our state constitution. I cannot describe the pain we felt. Saying it was excruciating just doesn't do it justice.

(Hoping my amateur attempts at HTML construction work, given the wizywigg is still down, at least at work. Is it some 'latest java update' that work might not have? 'Stration.)

Sinophobia gets a natural break - on SBS

2009-06-04T21:49:00.006+10:00

As I sit here, family asleep, flicking through my blogroll, the most blatant and frankly spurious attempt to link a bit of nationalistic business (?) lobbying to the horrific Tiananmen Square massacre just bleated out on the telly. The massacre is a good reason for opposing the Rio Tinto takeover?

This makes no sense. There is no rational link between control of Australian resource companies and human rights abuse. That is not to say human rights abuse should not be vigorously taken up with perpetrator governments, more so than at present. But this is not the context.

This ad appears to be driven by either extreme nationalism, outright anti-Asian racism, or plain business interest. After all, who stands to benefit if the deal fails? I do not know, the tangled web of relevant interests is not in front of me, but it sure isn't the human rights lobby.

The ad just got a second placement as I've been typing. SBS have no doubt sold those placements for healthy consideration, being bang in the middle of the World News and just minutes after a story going over the miseries of the massacre.

But I find that fact, the implicit sell-out of values and the unanswered questions about who would seek or fund such an ad positively creepy. Is it linked to the ad featuring Barny and Xenophobe? Or have we moved further into the catacombs of deep national phobia than even those fruitbats would care to enter?

Postcript: The deal is now off, anyway. As I noted in comments, my tone in this post probably needs a touch of context:

"It came across a bid reds under beds, not as nuanced human rights discourse, but then again let's acknowledge here that I was well into my second shiraz and getting pretty sleepy too, so the post was written in about 4 off-the-cuff minutes..."

WYSIWYG -FYSINYD! FFS!!

2009-06-04T15:08:00.000+10:00

A break in transmission. What was to be a post linking to a seminar run by a banker for lawyers on how to exploit the recession, coupled with some witty byline like 'why DOES everyone love bankers and lawyers so much?', has been shelved since I don't have any way of editing. I have lost my wizzywiggz!

My explorer has not changed in the past few days. Java is on. I have now cleared my cookies, kicked wall at the back of my workstation, and reached across to touch my corkboard, the nearest approximation of wood. All my tricks have been exhausted.

This has happened before. Has it happened to others? Is Google too busy splashing about in its wave search thingy to attend to humble blogger?

*clap*

*clap*

Nuts. Cats. Nuts. No Daddy!

2009-06-03T22:22:00.004+10:00

*Thump* *Thump*

A ribbon of cream and brown cat fur swirls past, almost fluid with speed and linear perfection. Mao and Minh at play, something beyond tracking by the mortal eye.

"Nuts"

"No not nuts daddy. Cats!"

I sit there stunned as Beloved cracks up. I am the punchline, but frankly I'm also just floored at being corrected by my 28 month old daughter.

Today the Doctor told Beloved that Bear is amazingly articulate.* They looked around the surgery, Bear pointed out the "stethoscope" and other points of interest, before asking if she could play with some toys in the corner "please, Doctor?"

Sorry to brag but I am a proud daddy, I am simply puffing up with pride. And pissing myself, what a crackup. Funny girl, my daughter.

*my emphasis, of course.

Relatives- We have one and she reads this site...

2009-06-01T16:20:00.000+10:00

And sometimes more gets published here than we choose to share with the wider family. So it is entirely possible some worry hanging over our heads for a few days might stray onto this site, but not become the subject of phone calls to the grandparents. They might then get a surprise call from someone in the family structure, let's say one of Beloved's Aunts, asking what's going on.

Aunty-Aunty, tsk tsk!

When both her sets of parents found out about the scare, they were at pains to emphasise, over and over, how Beloved must call and share such news immediately. This I found somewhat insensitive and it probably emphasised the reasons she didn't.

The last time she had such a scare, buried way back in the archives of this blog, she called a parent and instantly got a long, one-sided talk about how that parent had once had a similar health scare and all the ins and outs of their experience. She was hardly asked about her own feelings, and hung up angry and disappointed. So it's little wonder she wanted to bunk down, eat chocolate, drink shiraz, cuddle her immediate family, and wait until we had some news.

Beloved does not mind Aunty-Aunty finding out, per se. Aunty-Aunty holds a special place in Beloved's history, a de facto big sister at a time when Beloved needed all the older role models she could find. Aunty-Aunty has a good manner with the kids. Aunty-Aunty just needs to move to Melbourne and she'd be roped into all the babysitting she could handle.

Aunty-Aunty??

Message from Melbourne to prospective Indian Students

2009-06-01T11:32:00.003+10:00

I think you make an excellent contribution to the intellectual life of my city. I am deeply ashamed at the rise of violence in this city generally, which is not being taken seriously and blamed euphemistically on things like alcohol or late night clubs. But it is clear that a portion of this violence, in a redux of the horror depicted in the movie Romper Stomper, is neofascist gang violence targetting others on the basis of race. And the race they're targetting is yours.

That this great shame is overtly racist is clear. You are probably familiar with the debate in the UK, where ironically your own ethnic group are pointed to as an example of 'successful integration' by racists attempting to distance themselves from that lable. If only those Jamaicans and Muslim Asians studied harder and fitted in better, like the Indians.

Well while I reject that argument as an excuse for bigotry, it is certainly true that you fit in easily. Contrary to the garbage about loud conversations on trains (has a piece of apologia ever been so laughably ridiculous?) you do not annoy me on the train. You study, you generally obey our laws (unlike violent neofascists or people who do not offer the special needs seats to pregnant women), you respect this country and you also make a huge contribution. Not the least in paying phenomenal amounts of money that help sustain our underfunded education sector.

All the better for showing, beyond a scintilla of doubt, that you are being targeted by a pure strand of racism that cannot even hide behind the usual pathetic excuses. There is no 'Indian Cronulla' to point to, no 'clash of civilisations'.

What's to do?

Well, do understand that our police have limited capacity due to under-resourcing, and cannot be on the trains when they are needed to stop this violence. They have much more important things to do.

If you have the marks, go to ANU, it's Australia's best Uni anyway. Failing that, I'd probably stay almost anywhere except Melbourne until the problem you face is taken seriously.

Again, I'm really sorry.

Ready for solids?

2009-05-29T09:26:00.000+10:00

This morning, circa 5am, Mitt-Mitts woke up and Beloved brought him into bed with us. She lay back down in the bed with him beside her. Whereupon he reached out with both hands and grabbed her top and pulled, nay hauled, her chest in the direction of his rapacious, tooth-e-pegged maw.

Both hands! Hauled! He's not yet 5 months!

This weekend will see commencement of a few wee samples of that funny rice cereal stuff with a name like spandex, followed soon after by pulped-up pear and apple.

Meanwhile in rude grandparent land, my mother got her birthday card with kisses from 'Mitt Mitts'. She asked Beloved what that was about, was told it derived from 'Mr Mr Man', and commented that

hopefully he'll grow out of that soon.

Hope all you want just don't hope for extended visits while you're still being rude and unpleasant.

Piers Akerman: Not racist, no, not, really I'm not, no, not in the slightest, BUT....

2009-05-28T16:26:00.001+10:00

Asian jokes are funny.

Penny's Wong. Get it? No, it's a pun, see, Wong sounds like Wrong? Bah, lefties, no sense of humour and PC to the nth. They don't make Labor types like they used to.

Thank you your kind wordsmiths

2009-05-28T14:31:00.000+10:00

As Bear might put it. Thank you my milk. Thank you my bekkfast daddy. Thank you my choc-latt.

I have endeavoured to update my link list to include all visitors who left supportive comments. Regardless of our politics or anything else, you are now my online peeps. If you link to me and have been left out, let me know. Note that my list only brings up sites that have recently posted, though...

We are returning to normal life. It still feels funny. Fate swept a reminder over our eyes and everything is still too clear, like the effect when you fit new contact lenses- the clarity discombobulates.

I am really lucky. My job is a vast improvement on the last 3, and though the workload is pretty high there is room to lose concentration* for a few days and keep on track. We don't have a house yet, but we sure have enough money to get a house somewhere reasonable that would not be horrific to live in, so we're better off than millions. I have a beautiful family and, frankly, if I was working at Maccas and commuting from Werribee I still wouldn't pass a day without smiling at the antics of my cheeky kidlets and their amazing mum. And you need only hit the 'cats' tag to see the crazy love our guardcats sprinkle through the townhouse.

Anyway, such sap isn't the material of fine writing, but I'm just acknowledging before moving on. Love yooz all.

* I AM on lunchtime right now though, 7-11 junk packets still cluttering the space between chest and keyboard. No I am, dammit!

Meanwhile, as we looked the other way

2009-05-27T22:11:00.004+10:00

Mr Mr Man got his first tooth. Yes folks, without you needing to scroll back through the archive, he's just under 5 months. Bear was about 2 weeks older when she got her first, and it was but an eyelid blink and a few bleeding nipples and she had a full set of choppers.

He's been coughing and scraping and I wonder if this is it. No other symptoms that would suggest swine flu, thankfully, although his dad commutes on a busy train through the heart of Clifton Hill, ground zero for the Victorian explosion in porcine influenza.

An empathetic boy, he sensed things were awry in the past few days. Long squeezes on my shoulder, looking out, thinking, pensive. A Mitta Man has depth beyond his months- although on reflection I baulked at sending his CV to The Monthly.

When he wakes he doesn't generally cry, he talks, warbles, a simple narrative that I'm sure weaves the wonders of breast milk, giggles and constant sleep into a tale worth telling. He often kicks off at 5am; we laugh, despite the time, then bring him in for a last nap between us. He always looks pretty impressed with this achievement.

I got home for bath time, via a detour through Northcote Shopping Centre. I cuddled each in turn, got them into jarmies, handed him over for a last feed, brought a Bear down to the couch where we watched Maggie and Simon making something ridiculous and chocolaty then put her to bed.

For Beloved I had Sparkling Shiraz, Seppelt, 2005, and a bag of hastily chosen lamb cutlets. These I rolled over and over in olive oil and rosemary and grilled on the BBQ with all the love one can muster when, um, grilling on the BBQ.

We crashed in front of the Wednesday funnies, more Shiraz, ploughing through a box of el cheapo ALDI choc bikkies. No, not doing a product endorsement for those, although they are ultra cheap and we did manage to put away the entire packet.

Both girls sleep now; Beloved snoring lightly on the couch. He is fusting upstairs, perhaps waking, perhaps not yet. The cats have stopped batting the pink hair band that's entertained them half the night. Mao has taken up a post, like a sentinel, on the arm of the couch. Minh is ambling and just moments ago needed reminding that no, cats aren't allowed on the kitchen table. She threw me a glance that said I'm too cute to be angry with and pottered away.

I cannot say too many times that this, my family, is a good thing.

The best kind of news

2009-05-27T14:23:00.003+10:00

Benign.

The word says it all. I feel slight delirium as it sinks in. The imagined scenarios of absolute loss that have haunted my thoughts for several days can sink back into the shadows. The lessons we both learned about treasuring the moment, each moment, with each other and our beautiful children, can stay.

Sparkling shiraz, chocolate, a treat for dinner, my mind is whirring through possibilities as I put my happy shoes back on and start bouncing around the office.

Oh yay for benign!

The Monthly and its boy genius

2009-05-27T10:19:00.003+10:00

A bit of Melbourne, done the way Melbourne does things, best selective school, most prestigious university, editor at 23. Is it a problem?

Well, it shouldn't be fatal in itself, and given I've found The Monthly pretty turgid and uninspired to date, not the least because it is chock full of the usual suspects, a boy genius might be just what it needs. Might.

Are notions of wisdom and worldliness merely constructs used to maintain hierarchies? Possibly, certainly in the legal profession. But as editor of what aspires to be the leading journal of critical thinking in Australia there might be layers of understanding that you need to be familiar with, to unpick, reassemble, and draw on.

You might understand that most of what the left is attempting to change, and has been thus for over a century, is privilege and a class system that locks people in from early in life, to either extraordinary privilege or making do with the scraps. While we have improved on the old model whereby everything was decided at and by a person's birth (gender, race, religion et al), we have a long way to go.

The neo-Prussian model of schooling with its vigorous focus on using marks as a (fallacious) indicator of brilliance that can be used to settle castes at an early age is still part of the problem. Again- I pause here- if you are of the left. This is contested territory. Nonetheless it pays to understand your own privilege, to avoid being a Malcolm Turnbull (or his happy clapping fans) who believes his success is entirely a reflection of his own brillant perfection, if you are to steer a highly critical vessel along a path less followed.

Are we there yet?

But he is also young enough to still spruik his high school results, sending The Australian the highlights to support his appointment to The Monthly editorship.

Not there yet. Moving on, we can all identify with the compulsion to try and please the establishment in language we think it will understand. It's hard to break.

Is he wise enough to get around the politics of the old men behind the mag? Time will tell, but again an early note of caution:

"I'll be considering their advice very seriously, but they made it clear to me that I'm the editor and I'll be commissioning stories, so I don't know how that situation could come up. They're an advisory board."

If you don't know how that situation could come up, because they are an advisory board, I suggest you have a play on google. Us old farts call this due diligence.

Jonathan Green at Crikey isn't so sure either:

It’s hard not to see in this appointment the desire of Manne and Schwartz to keep control. To install another ingenue; another cypher for the literary and political ambitions of two mid-life men who apparently lack the chutzpah to do it in their own names. The Monthly, the only magazine of ideas in the world edited by the work experience kid. Maybe they could have made the editorship some sort of tie-in with year 12 english? Or convene it collectively through young Ben’s Facebook page? Or maybe not. We’ll see. Good luck Ben. Take it to them.

I agree, good luck Ben. Even if these concerns are valid, it's not his fault, he is clearly very bright, the mag was turgid and almost irrelevant, so I'll criticise no further and instead look forward to being proven wrong.

Laura also questions whether his shining star illuminates any real qualifications for this particular job, Merkel thinks his appointment might be a reaction. Pav values the knowledge of the world, acquired slowly.

60 year old male bodybuilder - what's not to love?

2009-05-26T13:41:00.000+10:00

My new body image icon, a healthy 79kg (just 2 to go for your correspondent, plus, erm, a little bit of 'toning'), well into middle age, a political career, I present the Mayor of Charters Towers.

Although the juxtaposition of his white, priest-like head on top of all that tanning lather and the classic 'double biceps' pose immortalised by Arnie makes the image look like a second-rate photoshop job.

Good on him, I'm only half taking the piss, I really do need a healthy role model like this, I just can't work out what's stopping me realising my goals?

Because it fits in with my schedule, I go to the gym at 5.30 in the morning until about 6.30...

OK. Back to tai chi.

Product Promo- Coles Fig, Honey and Ginger Ice Cream is a husband's best friend

2009-05-26T10:59:00.000+10:00

Just saying, the best thing from a home brand since ALDI nappies. Curled up on the couch after a ridiculously insane day involving multiple specialist appointments and me trying my hand at serious 1-on-2 time with the poppets, nothing could beat a couple of For the Love of Pizzas, some Sem Sav Bee from the Wine Society, then a shared bucket of this insanely decent, censorably-rich frozen decadence.

I helped out with a couple of bottle feeds; Mitt-Mitts looked at me like a trucker forced to drink beer through a straw from a pink mug.

We explored Fitzroy Gardens and found a statue in a hidden glade. 'Daddy, the little boy's in nudie time daddy', Bear observed. It's a European thing I replied, and I think I can say that answer was correct on so many levels.

We got flushed out of Fitzroy Gardens by a sudden downpour. 'Junkie dad' would have been the reaction of any casual observers as I ran, literally, pushing our old Emmalunga with Bear sitting in the rain under a red hoodie, Mitts bouncing and looking up in wide-eyed disbelief, mud splattering everywhere, panting, floundering...

A man said something like good rain, hope it rains all night as we came in under the cover and I had a sudden urge to rub a wet nappy in his face. Do men always say such stupid things around mums, is this why my gender is constantly lampooned for insensitivity and incompetence when it comes to parenting?

We sat, wet, covered in sand from an abortive attack on a wet sandpit, eating the jelly beans and generally upsetting the sophisticated decor of the specialist's waiting room.

Mitts is learning to cuddle properly, holding tight around the shoulder and squeezing as he takes life in.

They were both so patient and empathetic it was hard to escape the conclusion that they know everything is not yet ok.

Beloved slipped into sleep, legs across mine, moments after the last mouthful of ice cream.