Emlyn's Ideas

AIRPORTS

2008-11-23T17:00:00.000-08:00

Airports. I've been to a few - Christchurch, Heathrow, Tullamarine, Avalon, Hobart, Launceston, Perth, Pt Hedland, Incheon ... and every time I go to an airport it makes me feel a beautiful sadness. I've wondered if this feeling I get about airports is just a symptom of 'depression' as I'm sure the similar feeling I get from reading 'Adult Services' ads is. I previously thought that feeling beautifully sad about other people lives (prostitutes, families at airports) was a gift I had for being extremely compassionate and sensitive. WRONG!

But I was thinking this morning about the time I went with my Nana to pick my uncle and his girlfriend up from Perth airport at 1am. The airport was a very emotional place that night, like a hospital, or cemetery is. When we picked up uncle it was very emotional for us and for him too. I know what it's like to come back to Perth in the night after being away for a while. It really blows the mind. As does being the person waiting for a loved one to arrive. I remember when I waited at the airport for my girlfriend to come back from Korea. My feelings were all over the place! And they are now, thinking back to March o7 when her and I left Korea, saying farewell to her parents at Incheon airport. I have not seen her parents since then but they had been with me everyday for 1 month. You get on the plane and it's over.

Then there's the times I've dropped my parents off at the airport and watched them leave. I started to worry that something might happen to them while they were away.

I've been the person coming back, the person saying goodbye, and the person waiting for someone to arrive. I've also been the person leaving. In the sterile airport environment I have felt afraid, and in love, and paranoid, and excited, and extremely nervous. I've looked around at the other people there and imagined it to be the same for them.

DIFFERENT THOUGHTS AROUND

2008-11-23T14:36:00.001-08:00

I was reading the Sunday Times yesterday and it really made me feel bad but I kept on reading and reading it from front to back. There was a shock!horror! article about two women who killed a third and were allowed to kiss each other in jail. There were stories about Ben Cousins. It really was a horrible read and it made me vow to 1. avoid the sunday times 2. if I did pick it up again to stop reading once it started to hurt.

In the middle of the paper there is a section called 'Your Say' where people write short letters in. One letter said "mentally disabled people are less of a drag on society than those who do graffiti, hoon, steal, etc." I thought that could be true but that mentally retarded people are more of a drag on society that most able-minded people.

I really try to think my opinions through. Often, after I have thought about something enough, I realise that having an opinion about it is foolish because the issue is too complex. If the statement 'mentally disabled people are less of a drag on society than people who do graffiti and hoon' was my opinion, I would then ask myself all sorts of questions about the validity of that view. How could you fairly measure the 'drag' someone has? Maybe people who do graffiti can be reformed to become 'normal', but mentally retarded people will always stay abnormal? Perhaps it is wrong to celebrate mentally retarded people by comparing them to others who are 'more of a drag' and the celebration should be about what they are good at?

So by the time I have analysed my opinion in depth, it tends to become compromised and flexible. That's what has happened to my theory about avoiding middle east oil to stop terrorism and climate change. I think now that it's not a bad theory but it reeks of 'simplistic columnism'!

I did see some good news yesterday. Barack Obama said he would rebuild the American economy by infrastructure projects (our crumbling roads, our run down schools), and new solar and wind energy industries. Exciting but once again there are many questions to ask:

1. I don't think governments try to build roads at a loss (maybe a small one). Based on reading Andrew Charlton's book Ozonomics I would say "governments build roads because the economy needs transportation. The more roads, the more potential for transport, the more commerce, the more tax goes to the government." In the case of the US a massive road building project would employ a lot of people, make the roads safer, but it may not have the desired effect on the economy. In 5 years time the US may have great roads, a lot of road workers, but no increase in use of roads that comes from an increase in commerce?

2. perhaps solar and wind power will have some problems like
- they require more staff and other expenses to produce the same amount of electricity as nuclear/coal so electricity will become more expensive
- they don't require enough staff! people who have been working in the energy industry will have to get different jobs.

Obama's suggestions may not work but I am excited nonetheless.

PORN

2008-11-16T22:26:00.000-08:00

In my extensive career in the porn-watching industry I have only ever seen 3 movies that I thought were cool and they were all Asian.

AMERICAN PORN SUCKS! It is too violent, gross, and above all, TOO GENERIC! Every video is the same - kissing, sucking, vagina sex, anal sex, cumshot. That is it, time after time. Sometimes there is double penetration or something gross but that's not interesting. AMERICAN PORN is always the same no matter what the scenario (teacher-student, gangbang, lesbian etc.) and GERMAN PORN is just as bad, just as repetitive and lacking in imagination.

Thankyou Japan and Korea for making my three favourite porn videos:

* a bunch of naked Japanese girls are on a beach playing sexual games. One of the games is a baton race, like the ones lifesavers do. For lifesavers they race towards batons sticking out of the sand and each round one person gets knocked out as there is one more person than batons. The baton race in this video is that two ladies race towards a man lying on the sand with his penis sticking up like a baton. One of them gets there first and puts her hand on the baton/penis. I think that is great!

* the korean one was about cooking and remembering it now I realise it is quite weird. What happens is a man is making sushi and he chops up a carrot and a cucumber that had previously been going in and out of a ladies 'special fridge'. He then wanks on to the seaweed paper and they make a roll of sushi and eat it together. Man, that is funny! They smiled a lot during the experience and they looked like they were actually enjoying what they were doing and not being nasty to each other.

* two japanese ladies lie naked on a floor, on their stomachs playing nintendo wii. They use the controllers to play tennis and look at a TV screen. A man enters the room and starts to touch them and eventually has sex with them both. They continues playing the game and pay no attention to the man. He goes through a few different sex positions and finally comes then walks away. The girls continue looking at the TV screen and swinging their controllers. The end. Isn't that interesting? They don't even respond to the man at all and the audience doesn't even see his face.

I think sex is to be fun rather than violent and I like the interesting ideas in these videos. The Americans and Germans try to make things interesting by penetrating more and more holes. But there's a limit on holes! They think that to make porn interesting it must be violent or there must be A LOT of something - a lot of guys standing around coming on a girl; a lot of penises going into the one lady; and so on. It really is incredibly boring.

The porns I've described above show that there are more creative and interesting ways to make videos of people having sex.

DEVELOPMENT

2008-11-16T21:58:00.000-08:00

I have a baby, a pig and a goat and I have been thinking about their comparative abilities.

The goat (called Sally) I've had since she was 3 weeks old and in the past 6 weeks she has started to
1. eat grass and other greens
2. get bigger
3. get horns
4. do butting and jumping
5. jump over fences
6. bleat
7. show pleasure by wagging her tail

Her neighbour the pig (called dawn) is 2 years old and she can do more advanced things.

1. she only poos in one area and she never poos and eats at the same time (this I admire. Sally eats and wees/poos anywhere at all.)
2. she digs with her snout
3. squeals when hungry
4. indicates pleasure (the hair on the back of her neck goes up when she gets scratched)
5. and in general she seems more content than sally

My eleven month old daughter can

1. crawl and stand but not yet walk
2. is potty trained but dependent on her parents for this (here the animals win!)
3. can smile and laugh and say a few words and sounds...

Anyway, I don't need to list everything in order to make the point that my daughter can't do as much as Dawn or Sally. Sally is only 1/5th of her age but she can do way more.

When animals are born they can walk quickly (some pigs within 5 minutes of birth), go to the toilet themselves, eat themselves... they start way ahead of human babies in what they can do. But as they develop their bodies will only grow and become able to make babies. With humans we start off way behind animals (little babies can hardly move!) but we, over time, get so many more abilities than animals do (except flying, damn).

HOMELESS BROTHER

2008-11-15T13:04:00.000-08:00

I've been finding out that there is more to Don Mclean than the song American Pie (which, incidentally, I thoroughly enjoyed hearing on the radio last week as I was driving to town which takes about 8 minutes or the length of the song). But he is most well known for that one and whilst is it is brilliant it's so popular that it is hard for me to feel a special understanding with the song.
In September, I was at my parents house and I heard the song 'The Grave' by Don Mclean. Mum had put that record on to listen to while we were doing some cleaning up and when I heard it I thought 'Wow. I totally know that song.' I went to the record player and listened to it again and then I realised why I knew it. My Dad used to listen to that song many times when I was kid and its horrific story about dying in battle really affected me then, so much so that I knew the song completely when I heard it again in September though it must have been at least 10 years since I heard it last. Everything about it is stored in my head and re-listening to it as an 'adult' evoked a lot about being a kid afraid of the horror of 'The Grave' and I think hearing that song back then probably shaped who I came to be.

Another great Don McLean song is called Homeless Brother and I've been listening to it on the 1974 album of the same name. I have been going over the lyrics to this song because it touches on a subject that is a sensitive one for me - that of being a wandering person in a world that discourages this lifestyle.

DON MCLEAN - Homeless Brother

I was walking by the graveyard, late last Friday night (nice how the first line of the song is also the chorus)
I heard somebody yelling, it sounded like a fight
It was just a drunken hobo dancing circles in the night
Pouring whiskey on the headstones (I interpret this line as meaning the guy is quite the reckless drunk, and a bit angry, but on the bright side he is not afraid of his own headstone or dying without getting one) in the blue moonlight

So often have I wondered where these homeless brothers go
Down in some hidden valley where their sorrows cannot show,
Where the police cannot find them, where the wanted man can go
There's freedom when your walking, even though you're walking slow (a beautiful line. Keep moving and you won't be arrested for loitering/vagrancy, but it's also the symbolic act of walking, being constantly on a journey, roaming, rolling along, freedom to experience the world.)

Smash your bottle on the gravestone and live while you can
That homeless brother is my friend.

It's hard to be a pack rat, it's hard to be a 'bo
But living's so much harder where the heartless people go
Somewhere the dogs are barking and the children seem to know
That Jesus on the highway was a lost hobo

And they hear the holy silence of the temples in the hill
And they see the ragged tatters as another kind of frill
And they envy him the sunshine and they pity him the chill
And they're sad to do their living for some other kind of thrill (in all these lines the children are referred to as 'they'. They think the travelling hobo is pretty cool. Don Mclean is saying that there resides in each person, particularly when they are young, the desire for the freedom of being a wanderer. The 'other kind of thrill' that the children will live for is security, comfort, safety, and wealth.)

Smash your bottle on the gravestone and live while you can
That homeless brother is my friend.

Somewhere there was a woman, somewhere there was a child
Somewhere there was a cottage where the marigolds grew wild
But somewhere's just like nowhere when you leave it for a while
You'll find the broken-hearted when you're travelling jungle-style (I have to say that this line doesn't work for me. Jungle-style makes me think of something sexual or funny. I think Don Mclean couldn't find the exact rhyme he wanted until maybe after he recorded the song!)

Down the bowels of a broken land where numbers live like men
Where those who keep their senses have them taken back again
Where the night stick cracks with crazy rage, where madmen don't pretend
Where wealth has no beginning and poverty no end

Smash your bottle on the gravestone and live while you can
That homeless brother is my friend.

The ghosts of highway royalty have vanished in the night
The Whitman wanderer walking (nice alliteration here as below with Promises, Prosper, and Please) t'ward a glowing inner light
The children have grown older and the cops have gripped us tight
There's no spot round the melting pot (or harvey norman!) for free men in their flight And you who live on promises and prosper as you please
The victim of your riches often dies of your disease
He can't hear the factory whistle, just the lonesome freight train's wheeze (I love this line although the preoccupation with freight trains is tiresome in so many American songs, but I like the comparison with the factory whistle. Have you seen the movie Into the Wild? There is a poignant scene in this movie where the main character hitches a ride on a freight train in the early 90's and gets beaten the shit out of for it. People used to hitch rides on trains, but you can't do that anymore!)
He's living on good fortune, he ain't dying on his knees

Smash your bottle on the gravestone and live while you can
That homeless brother is my friend. That homeless brother is my friend.

In general this song has a romantic view of the 'Homeless Brother'. A lot of songs and books do (On the Road, The Drifter by Fred Neil, Simple Ben by John J. Francis etc). The way Don Mclean talks about it is broader, prettier and more sophisticated than other treatments I have come across. Still, I think he too is guilty of exaggerating the good things about being a wanderer. I say that because the wandering people I have met are often not living that lifestyle out of preference but because they can't do anything else. They seem really cool when a poet writes about them, but when I've met them they are more sad, uneducated, unwanted by the economy than anything else.

Being a wanderer in today's world is tricky. You need to have a free way of getting around and you need to have some work along the way. Hitch-hiking and seasonal fruitpicking do the job. But there are a lot of barriers to wandering easily these days - 'no camping' signs, hitchhiking taboo, no trains in Australia mainly trucks, a lot of social pressure to commit to things and settle down, and so on (see Into the Wild, it has some flaws but is about this subject) - which is why I particularly relate to the line 'there's no spot round the melting pot for free men in their flight'.

And finally, in the line 'somewhere there was a woman somewhere there was a child'... it is amusing the way the hobo is excused from abandoning his child and choosing the road instead. 'Somewhere's just like nowhere when you leave it for a while' is a beautiful, poetic line, but in the real world the Homeless Brother would cause pain to the single mum and fatherless child. In order to be a wandered you sometimes have to be a bastard to other people, it seems.

LOGOS THERE

2008-11-14T17:34:00.000-08:00

I was in Penneshaw, Kangaroo Island a couple of months ago and the supermarket in Penneshaw was an IGA and I got to thinking "I don't like the logo for IGA. I don't like it because it doesn't look good and I see it everywhere. Why, in this far away place (KI), do I have to see the same logo as I would see in Adelaide, Perth, and anywhere else in Australia?"

I realised then that I would like to live in a place where all the shops had their own special logos. For example, in Sheffield, Tasmania, there is a shop called 'Moo Choo' which is painted to look like a black-and-white patched cow. Just down the road there is an IGA... boring. I like the service that the IGA provides and perhaps there are lots of benefits to me that it is an amalgamation of the independent supermarkets around Australia (ie. cheaper goods, apparently). But it is not pleasing to the eye. Moo Choo's logo/colour scheme is. Wouldn't it be nice if all shops had their own logos and if all shops put a big effort into making their signs, names, buildings, all look interesting? Rather than see the same familiar logos everywhere going shopping would be more fun if there was a greater diversity of colour and design.

For example, why doesn't the Sheffield IGA pay an artist to design a unique sign using the letters I G and A so that people would know what shop it was? The font of the letters could be anything? The shop itself could be painted with orange and black spots to look like a leopard? Or yellow and black strips to look like a bee? There are so many options and whatever one was chosen, people would appreciate it. People like Moo Choo's patches!

Particularly in a small place like Sheffield and Penneshaw the IGA is so well known to the local community that it wouldn't matter if they had no sign, changed the design of their sign, or even, changed the order of the letters - Penneshaw AGI would have the same amount of business as Penneshaw IGA because people in that small town don't have an alternative place to shop. I am more sympathetic to the reasons for 'branding' in a big city context but in small towns there is no need for it.

Hey, I like eating Subway sandwiches. But why should I have to look at the same wallpaper of the New York train system every time I eat a nice sandwich (actually, they are rolls not sandwiches!)? It is the same thing there.

When my family were holidaying in the US we got attached to the Best Western hotels because we had a good experience in one of them, and as we were strangers to the land we were happy each time we saw a Best Western sign because it was something familiar. It is for that reason that companies do this kind of branding. It helps people to not go out of their comfort zones!

I understand the logic of franchises and I see that it has benefits. But people like beautiful, interesting, funny, unique colours and designs. There are so many ways to write the letter G. Why just have one way on an IGA sign?

DON'T TALK TO ME

2008-11-14T14:59:00.000-08:00

I've discovered the song 'Reason for it all' by Eric Bogle this week and I've got the lyrics below for you to have a look at. Without knowing the music the lyrics will be way less effective when you read them, but regardless, I like this song and the lyrics have got me thinking so I've put them up and I've got a bit to say about them.

After listening to the song a couple of times I thought it was about two competing voices inside a person - one voice saying "You should be interested in the big, sometimes sad topics" and the other voice saying "Don't talk to me about these things, I don't want to hear about troubling subjects." So the first voice is the curious, deeply thoughtful one, and the second voice is trying to protect the person from pain. That was my impression.

But after having a closer look at the words I see know that it is more about someone who wants to avoid dealing with the depressing issue of 'the elderly' and also 'death'.

Summer's smiling on the city, another lovely day in Sydney, sunshine pouring down like honey. But in the room where Clare is dying, no sunshine sends the shadows flying, no children gather round her crying (where are the grandkids? the song was written about 1980 but I think this line is relevant today, commenting on how families pay for 'the elderly' to be nursed rather than doing it themselves), there's no one here at all, except perhaps for the man who sees each little sparrow fall. (who is the man who sees each little sparrow fall? Is that a biblical reference? I wouldn't get it if it was one!)

Don't talk to me about lonely souls crying, dark quiet rooms with old people dying. I don't want to hear, I don't want to hear it at all. Tired old people die alone every day, don't blame me, I didn't make it that way. That's just how it is, don't look for a reason at all. (these lines about 'reason for it all' is why I got the first impression of this song. That inner/outer debate on whether there is a reason for life, death, or whether things just happen - 'that's just how it is'.)

Winter weeping on the city, a wet and windy day in Sydney, rain drops rolling fat and heavy down Clare's window pain. The rain upon the tin roof beating, disturb the rats as they are feeding. Back to the nest they all go creeping, leaving Clare alone again. It's been a long and lonely time since Clare could hear the rain.

Don't talk to me about the meaning of life; don't sing your songs that cut like a knife. (I like this line. When I was watching a football game in Hobart this year at half time they had some music playing and it was a song by Nickelback or something like that. I was thinking in that situation (half-time at the footy) it just wouldn't work to have a song like one of my songs, or a song by Leonard Cohen or even this song by Eric Bogle playing. It would interfere with the mood and just be totally inappropriate. But I think Australian Idol and commercial radio kind of music is made for people whose lives are like 'half-time at the football' most of the time. Any serious lyrics, anything that deals with the 'meaning of life' and 'cuts like a knife' would interrupt their lives too much) I don't want to hear, I don't want to hear it at all. Lonely old people ain't my concern, from dust we come, to dust we return and that's all there is, don't look for a reason at all.

Spring has come at last to Sydney; flowers are blooming in the city. In all their multicolored glory, they rise to greet the year. Memories in chain recalling, footsteps on the front porch falling, voices through the window calling, is anybody here? Clare Candle's lost and lonely soul is a long, long way from here.

Don't talk to me about life's seasons, don't ask me for answers, don't ask me for reasons. I don't want to hear, I don't want to hear it at all. From the moment we're born, we start to die; a man can go crazy if he keeps asking why. That's just how it is, don't look for a reason at all.

Can't you understand what I'm trying to say, there must a reason, there must be a way to make some sense of it, to try to find a reason for it all. We are not born just so we can die, there must be an answer and we got to try to make some sense of it; to try to find a reason for it all.

(I like the way he uses Summer, then Winter, then spring... he doesn't get through to autumn. At the end of the song it changes from the verses (the seasons) having a debate with the chorus (don't talk to me) to the opposing views singing over the top of each other, but harmoniously. I've given the bits that get sung at the same time, the same number.

1. Can't you understand what I'm trying to say,
there must a reason, there must be a way
1. Don't talk to me about life's seasons, don't ask me for answers, don't ask me for reasons.

2. to make some sense of it, to try to find a reason for it all. We are not born just so we can die,
2. I don't want to hear, I don't want to hear it at all. From the moment we're born, we start to die;

3. there must be an answer and we got to try to make some sense of it; to try to find a reason for it all.
3. a man can go crazy if he keeps asking why. That's just how it is, don't look for a reason at all.

4. That's just how it is, don't look for a reason at all.

4. Well, there must be a way, there must be reason for it all.

Beautiful song! From the album Scraps of Paper. I've got it on record. It may be hard for you to find on the internet but oh well.

WHAT ABOUT THIS:

2008-11-13T19:47:00.000-08:00

I was reading the book "SENTENCED TO DEATH" by W.J. Weatherby recently and it's about Salman Rushdie getting very strong criticism (death threats, fatwa etc.) for writing the book THE SATANIC VERSES. Mr Weatherby's book was, in general, a good read but it irritated me in the parts where it (as biographies often do) went on about 'and you can see the authors experience from highschool coming across in this character in the satanic verses' and 'it is obvious that this trip to bombay influence him immensely'. Those comments where Mr Weatherby is comparing the life experiences of Salman Rushdie with his creative work and making theories about why he wanted to be a writer, why he wrote in a particular way, and so on, are not what I am looking for in a biography. I want more plain facts about the life of someone who I am interested to know about. I feel that the job of the biography writer is to give me the life story of someone. If that someone happens to be a writer then I can make connections myself between what that person did in real life and what their books are about, if I desire to make those connections. In biographies of Jack Kerouac, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others, I have come across this same irritating feature.

The main thing I have to say about SENTENCED TO DEATH is that it occurred to me while reading it that some Muslim people are very passionate about their religious views and when their passions were insulted by THE SATANIC VERSES they wanted to become dangerous, violent people. (Actually that sentence isn't what 'occurred' to me, but I wanted to explain this phenomenon in a very simple way). What 'occurred' to me was this: the two most pressing world issues at the moment (this is speaking before the financial crisis) are global warming and terrorism. Perhaps the western world could go along way in dealing with both these issues at the same time by converting to largely non-oil societys. If violent people from oil-rich Muslim countries (eg Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia) had less money from oil exports, they would have less money to buy weapons, less money to organise 'terrorist cells' etcetera etcetera.

I realise that the situation is more complex but I still think this a logical view.

'INSURANCE PURPOSES'

2008-11-12T16:35:00.000-08:00

I took my car in to the mechanic this morning to get the 'bushings' replaced. I didn't (as you probably don't) know what bushings were so I wanted to watch the mechanic do his work to learn about my car.
"You're not actually allowed to be in here, for insurance purposes," he said when I asked if I could watch. "You can be out the back..."
"But not in the shed," I said. "Ok."

I watched the car get hoisted up to head height and I waited out the back of the mechanics, reading The Monthly. I wanted to be in there, asking questions to the mechanic, learning about my car. Watching from outside was no fun, and it probably made the mechanic feel a bit 'scrutinised', so I went to a cafe and got to thinking: I hate being fobbed off by people with the convenient excuse of 'insurance purposes'. When someone says that they normally mean "We'd like to let you do that but we're worried you'd sue use should anything go wrong." This is probably what the mechanic meant when he mentioned insurance (though he may not have wanted to take the time to explain car things to me, which I would have been more understanding towards).

Had I been allowed to be close to the work site, maybe I'd have got crushed underneath my car when the jacks failed? The insurance is there to protect them against me, and to protect me against any harm. But, for a curious person like myself, it is very irritating. So, I'd like to be able to carry around with me all the time a legal document saying "I UNDER TAKE THE RISK AND ACCEPT FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR MY ACTIONS". I signed a document like that before participating in a mountain run last weekend. Obviously running up mountains can be dangerous and if I rolled an ankle or whatever I would not rush to sue the local Lions Club who ran the event.

I would like to sign a disclaimer like that constantly, and run the risk of danger to myself but have the freedom to experience things and the wits to be careful.

BOB

2008-09-04T20:43:00.000-07:00

I think the lyrics for this song are amazing. It is a parody of the Bob Dylan song Subterranean Homesick Blues sung by Weird Al Yankovich. All the lines are palindromes. Very, very clever. I've had a lot of enjoyment thinking about this song. Check out the video for it on youtube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Nej4xJe4Tdg

BOB
I, man, am regal a German am I
Never odd or even
If I had a hi-fi
Madam, I'm Adam
Too hot to hoot
No lemons, no melon
Too bad I hid a boot
Lisa Bonet ate no basil
Warsaw was raw
Was it a car or a cat I saw?

Rise to vote, sir
Do geese see God?
"Do nine men interpret?"
"Nine men," I nod
Rats live on no evil star
Won't lovers revolt now?
Race fast, safe car
Pa's a sap
Ma is as selfless as I am
May a moody baby doom a yam?

Ah Satan sees Natasha
No devil lived on
Lonely Tylenol
Not a banana baton
No "x" in "Nixon"
O, stone, be not so
O Geronimo, no minor ego
"Naomi", I moan
"A Toyota's a Toyota"
A dog, a panic in a pagoda

Oh, no! Don Ho!
Nurse, I spy gypsies -- run!
Senile felines
Now I see bees I won
UFO tofu
We panic in a pew
Oozy rat in a sanitary zoo
God! A red nugget! A fat egg under a dog!
Go hang a salami, I'm a lasagna hog

picture of weird al -http://www.canberratheatre.org.au/pages/event/images/Weird-Al.jpg

picture of bob dylan - http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/PF_New%5C112008/3161734~Bob-Dylan-Posters.jpg

RECLAIMING THE GLOBAL COMMONS

2008-08-31T23:54:00.000-07:00

In Naomi Klein’s book No Logo there is a chapter titled ‘Reclaiming the Global Commons’ (at least I think that’s the name of it). Having read some of the book, though not this particular chapter, I’d say that ‘reclaiming the global commons’ is probably about driving through rural Tasmania and also about what happened to me yesterday in the toilets at Tullamarine Airport, Melbourne:

1. I went to the urinal and the toilet was crowded. It wasn’t really a urinal actually, it was a number of ceramic piss pods and I took my place next to some other guy. With one hand undoing my fly etc. I used the other hand to make a phone call.
“Hi Dad, it’s Emlyn. My flight’s been delayed. So can you pick me up a bit later?”
“Yeah sure.”
We had a brief conversation and I spoke as quietly possible. Still, all around me were people pissing, washing or drying their hands… you know, toilet stuff! So it was awfully inappropriate to use the phone while in the toilet. I did it to test people's reactions and I hoped that someone would say to me “Excuse me, but you shouldn’t do that in here.” But I got no reaction.

2. As I was drying my hands I saw a screen. The machine sending hot air onto my hands had a speaker in it and a small screen advertising something. As soon as I realised what the screen was I tried not to concentrate and I zoned out so well that now I can’t recall what the advertisement was for.
“Hello,” I said to the machine. This attracted the attention of a guy who was using another one of the hand dryers with screens. He walked past me, smiling.
“What an invasion of space,” I said. “It’s horrible.”
“What’ll they come up with next?” he said.

From these two experiences I think this:

1. No one should make mobile phone calls while using a public toilet.
2. Hand drying machines like these ones should not exist. When you dry your hands you should be able to look at no advertising.
3. In an airport there is a lot of wall space. Rather than just having blank patches, and then billboards, signs etc. There should be things on the walls that are not selling anything. Pretty paintings, cartoons, shapes, sculptures… particularly things without words, decorating the space.

Now, I want you to imagine that you are driving through the countryside in Tasmania. To the side of the road are fields.

1. In one field there is grass, cows and sky. That is the global commons.
2. In another field there is a picture of a politician on a sign. That is advertising for the upcoming election.
3. In a third field, there is a silhouette of an emu on a hill. At first you think that it’s a real emu, then you see that it is made of metal. This is public art.

My thoughts are that advertising has a place (in fields – yes, but not on hand dryers), global commons ought to exist (on farms and in toilets), and definitely, definitely, definitely, there should be more fake emus on hills (more public art).

(pictures: dryer http://www.conads.com/info/general/Content/get/183/itemId/
silhouettes: http://www.heritagehighwaytasmania.com.au/silhouettes/ )