Mysterbey

Some more thinks I dislike (which everyone else seems to like):

1. the beach
   
2. Arrested Development
3. hot weather
4. Microsoft Windows

Why is the Yellow Pages not considered junk mail? It's just advertising, after all.

If I were given the choice, I wouldn't have the Yellow Pages. It takes up too much room in our small house, and with our broadband access, we never "let our fingers do the walking" anymore. But it arrives once a year on our doorstep all the same. In my opinion, the 'No Junk Mail' sticker on our letterbox should apply to the Yellow Pages.

Things I dislike (that everyone else seems to like) (part 1);

1. Pixies
2. Family Guy
3. Zoolander
4. sport
   

Some LJ-related links:

• Tools to Spiff Up Your LJ Browsing Experience. And Part 2
• Signs you might not be from LJ originally. 
• The Compleat (sic) Guide to LiveJournal Stardome And Fame. (a few years old now).
  

A meme. Taken from mckeekee 

1. Pick 15 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDb or Wikiquote and find one a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Strike it out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it correctly and the name of the movie.
5. No Googling/using IMDb/Wikiquote search functions.

1. I can't relate to 99% of humanity.
2. These are my children, and I will protect them from myself even if I have to.
3. The secret, I don't know... I guess you've just gotta find something you love to do and then... do it for the rest of your life. For me, it's going to Rushmore.
4. Ordinary life is pretty complex stuff.
5. I want to be swept off my feet, you know? I want my children to have magical powers. I am prepared for amazing things to happen. I can handle it.
6. I didn't think so much of him at first. But now I get it, he's everything that I'm not.
7. Maybe it was a dream, you know, a very weird, bizarre, vivid, erotic, wet, detailed dream. Maybe we have malaria.
8. There was abuse in my family, but it was mostly musical in nature.
9. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go on an overnight drunk, and in 10 days I'm going to set out to find the shark that ate my friend and destroy it. Anyone who wants to tag along is more than welcome.
10. I can't believe I gave my panties to a geek.
11. Just because I like ballet doesn't mean I'm a poof, you know.
12. Some people are just born with tragedy in their blood.
13. I wonder if the three of us would've been friends in real life. Not as brothers, but as people.
14. I loved it when you nuked Las Vegas. Suitably biblical ending to the place, don't you think?
15. I'm being postmodern, before it's fashionable.

The 32nd International Committee of the History of Art is currently being held in Melbourne. There are around 700 attendees, including museum directors, curators, academics, and art historians from all over the world. The Herald Sun asked 15 of them for their opinions on Melbourne. The response seems to be fairly mixed. The fact that quite a few make comparisons to Berlin, Paris, and London implies that the Herald Sun asked them that as a direct question - "How would you compare Melbourne's culture with that of Berlin, Paris, or London?". Of course, Melbourne doesn't compare favourably with those cities - it's too small - it's not a fair comparison to make in the first place. The article is then given the headline "Critics blast city as art wasteland" which prompts the usual angry comments from readers.

• Melbourne is an awesome city to live. I dont care about the art s@#$.
• What would those fake-stuck-up snobs know about life, seriously look at how stuck up and UGLY they are and there cloths are circa 2005 how lame
• WHAT A LOAD OF ELITIST CLAP TRAP. PROBABLY NEVER WORKED A DAY IN THEIR LIVES ANY ONE OF THEM. WHO CARES? I'M HAPPY.
• to all you art critics....if you dont like our beloved city then get out!!!
• What can you say to these so-called Art Academics, other than "Get a real job"?
• Thankfully such tossers live overseas, they can stay there too in their cultural elitist society.
• What a bunch of up-themselves twats! Here is my artistic advice to you - B****r off and go home. We do not want or need a bunch of supposed-intellectual tossers telling us anything about our city.

The Herald Sun sets it up, and the readers knock it down.

We will soon be visiting Sydney for a few days (I haven't been there for over a decade). I've been looking for ideas of things to do. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to offer them. Here are some tours I've been looking into:

The Weird Sydney Ghost and History Tour

Ghosts, history, crime scenes, sites of suicide, suffering, scandal, sex, drugs and rock n roll, we cover it all, relinquishing every dirty detail with an informative and entertaining commentary. So come and join us on Sydney's most unusual and fun filled tour experience, and your first ride in a hearse won't be your last! Wearing of fancy dress (a dead celebrity perhaps?) or just plain black is encouraged, and don't forget your camera!

The Weird Sydney Ghost and History tour includes an adults-only tour of a bondage parlour, a souvenir DVD of the hearses, facts sheets and a complimentary drink in the cellars of a haunted hotel.

Ghost Tour of Historic Sydney

On your ghost tour of historic Sydney, you can expect to hear stories of murder, suicide, hangings, hauntings! These ghostly tales will be told whilst you are taken on a lantern-lit, two hour walking tour around The Rocks area - the birthplace of Australia. Walk along cobblestone lanes and alleyways into the hidden part of The Rocks and discover how a haunted past has created the spirits that still linger here today!

Your ghost host will enthral you with the horrific story of the mutilated body and the gruesome tales of The Rocks 'Dead House'. Hear the tales of the ghosts who haunt the Opera House and the ghost of 'George' who stakes his place on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Enjoy the scenery whilst you search for the ghost of the cabin boy and discover why Mrs Greenfield was chased by her knife wielding husband. You'll also visit a haunted house site built in 1822 where the apparition of Amelia still lingers.

Crimes & Passions (Kings Cross)

Kings Cross is traditionally the home of Sydney's artistic, bohemian, criminal, passionate and deviant lifestyles. From sophisticated society beginnings, the area has transformed itself again and again to become the lively, vibrant and controversial hotspot it is today.

This tour guides you through Kings Cross and its speckled history of fame, fortunes, murders, drug-obsessions, mysteries, crimes & romances. Stand on the site of one of Sydney's greatest unsolved mysteries, hear of the sly grog and razor gang days, visit the heart of old Sydney bohemia... and more. Don't miss this rare opportunity for a taste of Sydney's colourful underbelly!

And there's a couple more here.

Time Warner have started trialling a new 'tiered internet pricing' system. Instead of unlimited downloads, customers will be given a choice of plans based on how much data they download. Some Digg users are acting like it's the end of the world. Is Australia, for once, ahead of the game? We've had this system ever we've had broadband (and before that dial-up was charged by the hour). Or is the US taking a step backwards?

The American 60 Minutes recently ran a story on Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. Zuckerberg showed his own profile to interviewer Lesley Stahl. Stahl noted that Zuckerberg listed himself as a "Harvard alum" and then pointed out "...but you're not a Harvard alum", to which Zuckerberg replied "That's true. We don't have a setting for drop-out". If anyone could amend this problem it would be Zuckerberg, but instead he chose to falsely present himself as being a Harvard graduate.

I've been thinking about getting a paid account. I'm particularly interested in the friends-of-friends feature.

Any advice? Is it worth it? Should I wait to see how the SUP plans work out?

Time for bed. Tomorrow is a red-letter day for me.

I am back from my holidays. I was relieved to find that the internet is still here.

Updates soon.

I will be offline until 3 January. I'm not yet sure how I'll cope!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.

Islamic school protesters threaten violence. A group known as the Public Affairs Education Committee organised a public meeting to oppose the construction of an Islamic school in Sydney. No Muslims were invited to the meeting, but they did invite Rev. Fred Nile, who complained that Muslims believe the Koran to be the word of God. When asked if he believed the Bible to be the word of God, he replied

"I believe the Bible's the word of God but Muslims have greater belief in the Koran than Christians have in the Bible".

And in a display of true Australian tolerance, egalitarianism, and a 'fair go', one protester said

"If it does get approved, every ragger that walks up the street is going to get smashed up the arse by about 30 Aussies".

Furthermore

Several pig heads were left at the site of the proposed school late last month, including one placed above an Australian flag.

Recently bookmarked:

• We'll Climb That Bridge When We Come To It. Unfortunately, I got halfway through this Financial Times article on urban exploration, when it suddenly became 'subscriber-only'. "When everything has already been explored, here's a chance to open a manhole and climb into a world you don't always see".
  

• One World, One Market: How Advertising Breaks Down Cultures. An article from Adbusters on how marketing crosses the boundaries of national and ethnic identities. "The language of advertising is universal, and it speaks to everyone who has been singled out as potential consumers".

• The Globe, Politically Corrected. On the difference between Mumbai and Bombay, Sri Lanka and Ceylon, Myanmar and Burma, Kampuchea and Cambodia, Suomi and Finland, and so on.

• A World of Insults: Mind the Gaffe. What may seem innocent in one culture may be offensive in another. "Blowing you nose into a handkerchief in Japan: The Japanese call snot hanakuso - literally "nose shit" - and find the idea of walking around with a cloth full of it disgusting".
  

• 25 English Language Oddities. From the excellent List Universe blog, a collection of word trivia. "Soupspoons is the longest word that consists entirely of letters from the second half of alphabet".

• Double-Tongued Dictionary. "A lexicon of fringe English, focusing on slang, jargon, and new words".

Some thoughts on today's readings:

• Fighting Yesterday's Battles. Ruth Lea suggests that since the late '60s, feminism has been successful in liberating women from the submissive social roles they once inhabited. Along with economic equality, today's women also enjoy freedom from cultural representations containing "implicit assumptions of female inferiority, subservience and stupidity". As such, Lea argues that beauty contests have become innocuous. Interestingly, Lea points to the "sheer wackiness" of typical contestants as being proof of the harmless fun that beauty contests have become. Yet it's surely this kind of smug ridicule that contains the inherent sexism of beauty contests, reinforcing the myth that such women are good to look at, but nothing more.

• Miss World Deserves Our Ridicule. This is a companion article to the one above. Beatrix Campbell argues against the notion that "feminism is a thing of the past, ergo sexism is a thing of the past". To Campbell, beauty contests are an obsolete cultural relic. I particularly like this passage which touches on the way traditional sexism has been recast as 'cheeky' retro-fun:

  "...kitsch is a weapon in the propaganda value of retro-sexism, it flourishes in a frame of period style, and the style implies that it is a knowing design: this is sexism with an alibi. It throws the pageant into an another era – before feminism came along and spoiled the fun. Kitsch is the key to its transcendence – it slithers between eras, between pre and post-feminism. It invites the thought that feminism never happened".

  I find it interesting that Ruth Lea draws on L.P. Hartley's succinct adage "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there" in order to explain how far women have come in the last four decades. I've always taken this adage to mean that, in order to 'understand' the past, we must reframe our assumptions, we must exercise a little historio-cultural relativism. To my mind, this adage is more in fitting with Beatrix Campbell's argument, in that it explains how social rituals, such as beauty contests, can become irrelevant and redundant over time.

• Blame Women for the Death of Feminism. Karen Murphy in The Age yesterday, takes the pessimistic view that feminism is dead, and lists the women who have killed it; prostitutes, porn stars, pole-dancers, strippers, women who wear stilettos and get Brazilian waxes, etc.
  
  I think the truth lies somewhere between Campbell's and Murphy's arguments. Feminism does still have a place in modern western society, and probably will do for some time. But it should be fluid and malleable, and it should change as the battle changes. It's challenge is to navigate the space between sexuality and sexualisation, and perhaps admit that the boundaries are different for each person.
  

• Argentina: Ugly People Strike Back. Somewhat related to all of the above. Gonzalo Otalora is an ugly man in a city of beautiful people. He's proud to be ugly, and has started a campaign to tax good-looking people to compensate for their social advantage over less attractive folk.
  
  

Some articles I've been reading tonight:

• Facebook Grooming Us for Intrusive Marketing? Amy Tiemann on Facebook's increasingly invasive marketing tactics.
  

  You remember the old story about the frog placed in a pot of water that was slowly heated up, until it was cooked? When I read the about Facebook's reaction to the anti-Beacon protests, my first impression is that Facebook's concessions are essentially along the lines of, "OK, we turned up the heat a bit too much on this one, so we'll turn it back down a little bit--for now." Are marketers counting on the fact that we'll get used to the warm bath, then the hot tub, calibrating their fine-tuned ability to stop just short of the lobster pot?
  

  I have to admit, I find Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg quite creepy.

• Ad Targeting Improves as Web Sites Track Consumer Habits. A broader view of 'behavioral targeting' in internet marketing, which also touches on the idea of web-users becoming acclimatised to increasingly intrusive forms of marketing. Makes you wonder what SUP has up its sleeve!

• Friending, Ancient or Otherwise. An interesting article that looks at Walter Ong's notion of 'secondary orality' with respect to social-networking (perhaps this is up your alley little_nay ). Comparisons are made with traditional oral cultures in Papua New Guinea, and the arbitrary nature of the term 'friend' is touched on. Cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch makes an interesting point:
  

  But there’s also this fundamental distance. That distance makes it safe for people to connect through weak ties where they can have the appearance of a connection because it’s safe.

  I find this intriguing based on a couple of personal experiences; a) On Facebook and Myspace I am 'friends' with quite a few ex-students from work, people I have gotten along with but wouldn't really count as true friends, and yet through this medium I am able to stay in touch with them without being so intrusive as to send them emails - dropping the occasional comment seems much less creepy. And b) Apart from nictoupee , I have not met any of my LJ 'friends' in real life, and yet I find LJ to be the most personally engaging and supportive of all the social-networking sites I've tried. Let's hope it stays that way with the new owners.
  

• I love this line from reddragdiva :
  
• "A baby is the best geek toy ever: a small intelligence that you can watch growing and learning and interact with. Utterly fascinating. The core dumps are messy, of course".
• According to this site, I am 300,000 hours old today!
• Kitchen Myths - it's like Snopes for foodies. Amongst the myths that are debunked:
• A box of baking soda in the fridge or freezer absorbs odors : "This is a very clever and successful marketing ploy by the baking soda people, but the fact is that baking soda is very poor at absorbing odors. It seems to make sense, however, so lots of people have spent untold billions of dollars to put boxes of baking soda in their fridge or freezer to no effect. Activated charcoal would work much better but is expensive. Better to wrap your food and clean the fridge once in a while".

From Robert Hughes, A Jerk on One End: Reflections of a Mediocre Fisherman (London, 1999), pg. 17.

The fundamental experience of fishing consists of dropping a line into the unknown. You can guess what is down there; you can make your best estimates based on tide, habitat, feeding patterns and so forth; but you do not really know. Whatever takes your hook therefore has a character of revelation, even if it's only a flounder. It may be edible or not; thorny, spiny or beautifully sleek; equipped with gnashing jaws or relatively passive; but there is always, assuming that you aren't sight-fishing, the magic moment when the thing struggling on you line down there could be anything. The similarities between the writer's work and the angler's need not be laboured, but they exist. The writer lets down his or her hook into the deposit of memory and experience, the semiconscious fluid - not the dark, abyssal unconscious, which is out of reach, but the tidal zone where word, phrase, idea and memory circulate in a kind of half-light, forming their unpredicted patterns. With luck, you bring something up. If it is undersize, you toss it back.

From Robert Hughes, A Jerk on One End: Reflections of a Mediocre Fisherman (London, 1999), pg. 11.

To fish at all, even at a humble level, you must notice things: the movement of the water and its patterns, the rocks, the seaweed, the quiver of tiny scattering fish that betrays a bigger predator under them. Time on the pier taught me to concentrate on the visual, for fishing is intensely visual even - perhaps especially - when nothing is happening. It is easy to look, but learning to see is a more gradual business, and it sneaks up on you unconsciously, by stealth. The sign that it is happening is the fact that you are not bored by the absence of the spectacular.