Going to Malaysia

Globalisation is in my life again – first it was because a lot of friends were made redundant from my workplace, leaving a lot of empty desks - now it's because of a trip to Malaysia to visit the center where the jobs were outsourced to.

Am I a hypocrite to go on this corporate expedition, cooperating in the very operation that is behind the event I have hated and condemned for the last year?

Well shit – of course I am! There’s no way to excuse it really – it’s all in the realm of one’s “job”, of course – doing what the company offers you – taking what you can (a trip, money) despite your ideals. Thinking, well, I gotta pay the rent. Tyrannafoe said she thought it was a bit weird. It is. The only "positive" is that, being someone who enjoys people, I will probably enjoy meeting the Malaysian workforce (actually Malaysian, Chinese and Indian) and helping them if I can (that is the purpose of this visit after all). Also it will give me something to post about I guess.

Simple 2000 Series Vol. 105: The Maid Clothes and Machine Gun

Episode 105? Phew. I don't know anything about this thing except that the name is great and the synopsis, er, intriguing.

Here it is verbatim:

"During the dusk of one day, the girl maid Yuuki, who may act reckless at times, was secretly protecting her future master who was returning home from school. This future master was summoned to his grandfather’s villa and found himself facing a large robot army and a man with a hideous face. Faced with so many enemies, Yuuki had to reveal her identity as the secret bodyguard. But what is the identity of this master who is attacked by sexy maids and giant robots? And why is that? The key is linked to a certain secret closely related to him."

Hand Washing and Other Disturbing Topics

I saw an interesting variation in approach to toilet hygiene in the office loo today. I know this is a constant source of fascination for people – who washes their hands and who doesn’t, how hard they try, etc. I guess it has relevance if you have to shake hands or get back-slapped, also you share surfaces with these people’s fingers. This guy, who is a fairly well-place manager, was very perfunctory on the wash – wiggling his digits quickly and vaguely under a drooling cold tap - but he then proceeded to make a huge deal in drying them, going through several paper towels and really rubbing them hard and taking a while– it was like he hated water more than germs. Or maybe he was trying to impress me after he'd realised I’d caught him being slack with the wash. He was certainly dry, but was he clean?

Another thing that disturbs me are long conversations in the men’s – one time there was a suit sitting on the dunny and another leaning against the wall looking in and looking down on him questioning him – there was an interrogation-room vibe to it – why hang out in a bright smelly institutional cave to discuss business? What’s wrong with the staff room or café? I think these guys imagine its macho to talk in these places – sort of the locker-room – or maybe they are impervious to the whole thing. Maybe they just can’t stop talking business. Maybe I’m just neurotic.

The Movies of Harry Smith

Harry Smith was an important figure in the American avant-garde scene of the mid twentieth century. He was a collector, an occultist, a bohemian, a druggie, a musicologist and important archiver of American folk music (a reissue of his anthology received two Grammies in 1997).

The Chauvel showed his movies with an apology - two hours of abstract film is not easy to sit through, the convener said.

The show opened with animated abstract paintings boogying on down to early Beetles music. Two things struck me – 1) just how good early Beetles music actually is, and 2) how nice it is that, instead of plodding around an art gallery for an hour, you can sit in a darkened room sipping wine (it's allowed in this cinema) and have the paintings come to you.

The set then moved on to a very long film that resembled Terry Gilliam’s animation work for Monty Python – moving cut-outs of Victorian gadgets and occult symbolism all dancing around to random sound effects.

The whole thing is designed to mess with your bourgeois brain but it is far too entertaining to be threatening. My guess is that this is because Smith himself liked a bit of pop entertainment (it's in all his stuff) – maybe he just couldn’t help himself. Personally, I liked it.

The final film is a photo film montage with opera - there's European stuff in it and Native American - Smith was into Shamanism.

It's impressive just how much work has gone into these films. Smith had a lot of interests and his teeming brain is reflected here.

The Devil in Daniel Johnston

Daniel Johnston makes music for the geek who dares to love – all the tragedy, confusion and naked failure of hope-filled but probably doomed romance is poured out with his nerdy voice – underground folk music from the suburban doldrums of loneliness and depression – but laced with genuinely funny comic book joy and faith.

This movie tells a story that is dominated by art and mental illness – both phenomena at war (and in collusion), both overwhelmingly powerful in Johnston’s life so that, apart from his family, he really seems to have nothing else.

It’s also the story of the unreality that results from a celebrity and music culture that seeks to exploit individuals it doesn’t understand and ultimately can’t cope with. Is this movie part of the ultimate trip that is Johnston’s life and people like me (viewing it and blogging about it) just another abstraction? I wish. Anyway – this is a good look at an “underground” American artist with one hell of a life story.

Gotcha!

The terror that is the Daily Telegraph.

Australia’s right wing bogan media are frothing at the mouth with joy over the foiled terrorist bomb plans revealed last week. The Daily Telegraph is in the running for the most nihilistic hate-engendering story – the facts are all “alleged” of course - but if it inspires paranoia, anger and continued support for as much fascist militarism and control imaginable (and the Tele can imagine quite a lot), then print it large.

Wax - Or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees

When I first came to Sydney there were four independent cinemas showing non-mainstream movies – the Mandolin, the Encore, the Valhalla and the Chauvel.

Earlier this year there were none.

This lamentable state of affairs - a city with no (excuse the term) “arthouse” cinema AT ALL changed a few weeks ago when the Chauvel re-opened, allowing movies like this one to have a place to be screened.

Wax was released in 1991 and it is firmly placed in the experimental counter-culture of the late 2oth century – writers like William S Burroughs (who features), Thomas Pynchon and J G Ballard loom large.

Jacob Maker (played by the film’s creator David Blair) is a programmer for the military, working on simulation computers for experimental weapons technology. He also does a sideline in beekeeping, using bees he has inherited from his occult dabbling grandfather James 'Hive' Maker (William S Burroughs).

The bees are Mesopotamian and it turns out they have mysterious powers. Jacob begins to have visions – it seems the bees are reincarnations of the dead – which has significance to Jacob given his day job as weapons technician. Guided by a revolving geometric crystal (the bee’s “television”) Jacob wanders off into the desert – actually a missile testing range – to experience visions and confront the nature of death.

Pretty much everything from flying saucers to ancient civilisations, the hollow earth, transmigration of souls and other psychic gobble-de-gook is thrown in and the story, while more or less holding together, comes close to being incomprehensible and largely symbolic by the end. Apparently David Blair knocked it together over six years, incorporating accidents and free association as he went.

The session was prefaced by the Chauvel with an old interview with Harlan Ellison, Sci Fi’s bad boy of the seventies, explaining to us that “far out” shit was being written in the science fiction world now the sixties had happened – so watch out. He was right about that.

Wax also has the distinction of being the first movie to have had an interactive website (warning: big download!) The New York Times recognized the accomplishment, and ran the article "Cult Film is First on the Internet" in its May 23, 1993 business section (see the NYT review).

This review at Amazon is kinda flippant but sums up the Wax experience pretty well anyway:

Did you like "Eraserhead"? Did you like 'Being John Malkovich"? Do you listen to alternative music and read William Burroughs novels and SF and Charles Bukowski? Are you on drugs? Answering "yes" to any two of the preceding questions qualifies you as a good bet for WAX. Blair put a lot into this, and the right viewer will get a lot out of it. I loved it.

Big guys with small gadgets

In the world of tech – small is the new big. The smaller your gadget, the better, it seems. So in the office these days I am noticing big guys who obviously want to be “cool”, talking into mobile phones so small it looks like they are talking into their hands, squinting desperately at tiny laptop computers with unusable keyboards, and awkwardly stabbing with oversized fingers the controls of iPod Nanos. They look like immigrants from the land of the giants. They look like gorillas trying to thread needles. Then there’s trendy small cars (owned by their wives, girlfriends and mums) for them to contend with. Not to mention plugging in tiny USB things like flash drives. So if you have trouble fitting into your clothes, spare a thought for today’s big-boned executive. They can hardly push a button.