Arrivederci
I know I'm supposed to "sleep when the baby sleeps" but I still resist going to bed at 7pm. And regret it in the morning when I've only had the 11pm-3am sleep. Instead, I have just spent an evening stuffing around with a totally new blog because I discovered by accident that Blogger has relaunched with all these excellent changes like integrated comments, recent posts etc. (I normally just enter Blogger via a shortcut, bypassing its front page, so I've completely been in the dark.)
Anyway, from now on I'll be blogging from here so please adjust bookmarks.
I'm still working on it though. Somehow I managed to get the header to be solid yellow with white type on this blog, but it won't work on the new one. Sigh. Can any techheads help? Thanks.

posted by Gianna 11:02 PM

. . .

Operation Desert Ostrich
Why doesn't this surprise me:

THE Australian Government was told at least two months ago that prisoners in Iraq were being tortured by US soldiers, human rights groups have revealed.
...
Prime Minister John Howard did not respond to a question yesterday about when he first learned of torture claims against Australia's coalition allies.

What's the bet his carefully formulated response today will be: "I know nothing!" And then we'll hear that some underling at the intelligence agencies neglected to pass it on. Oops.
Geez, if this is true Howard's as bad as Rumsfeld. Did they think this stuff would just quietly go away?

posted by Gianna 7:58 AM

. . .

After all we've done for you...
The Foreign Minister is accusing East Timor of trying to bite the hand that feeds it is trying to steal from it:

East Timor's existence is under threat because of Australia's claims over the poor nation's natural resources, President Xanana Gusmao claims. In a Four Corners report to be aired tonight, Mr Gusmao said Australia was defying international law with its claims over oil and natural gas deposits in the Timor Sea. Australia and East Timor are at loggerheads over the boundary that separates the two nations. At stake are key energy deposits which, when developed, will be worth billions in tax revenues to the respective countries.
...
But Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer said Australia had done nothing wrong in its negotiations over the disputed maritime boundary. He said East Timor was wrong if it believed it could win support for its claims by attacking Australia.
"I think they've made a very big mistake thinking that the best way to handle this negotiation is trying to shame Australia, is mounting abuse on our country, accusing us of being bullying and rich and so on when you consider all we've done for East Timor," he said.

Gee, Australia wouldn't defy international law, would it?

posted by Gianna 2:57 PM

. . .

Salam Pax at Sydney Writers Festival
Anyone going to see famed Baghdad blogger Salam Pax talk at this year's Sydney Writers Festival (also via swanker)?

"Salam Pax’s web-log during the Iraq war resulted in him being cited as the Anne Frank of the war. He has only recently been able to show his true identity and he’ll talk to audiences at about blogging, the war and Iraq today. Thurs 20 May, 6.30pm, Parramatta Riverside Theatre, free, no bookings required."

Shame to miss him, but maybe someone will go along and blog about it. Good to see blogging being showcased at the Fest, eh.

posted by Gianna 2:45 PM

. . .

Pokie faced
According to a (self-described) Sydney wanker:

"The Catholic Club in Sydney's CBD has poker machines. When I was in there the other day, I noted a decrepit old man seated on a stool, staring mindlessly at a fruit machine screen, entirely motionless except for the periodic twitch of his finger to lay a bet. It was a sad sight. Nowhere is out of bounds for these bloody things, it seems, even a Catholic Club. The Catholic Church shouldn't be encouraging gambling...It smacks of hypocrisy to be countenancing social justice whilst at the same time operating poker machines."

Hear, hear.

posted by Gianna 2:36 PM

. . .

Ad nauseam
ABC News reports:

Labor claims a leaked Cabinet document shows the Government is considering spending $16 million on an advertising campaign to promote a range of work and family policies expected to be announced in tomorrow night's Budget. Peter Costello is not confirming that, but says such advertising is normal. "I'm just saying if you're going to pay pensions to people you have to advertise how to get a pension," he said.

If it's not political advertising, but just about informing the public about new policies, then isn't that something the news media does for free?

posted by Gianna 10:44 AM

. . .

A fraction too little fiction
I guess I'm not going to win the Vogel again this year--it closes May 31. Only two more years before I'm too old to enter the competition. I'm thinking of doing some formal study in creative writing next year though, which may force me to produce something. I think I need to be whipped sometimes.* Of course, I said the same thing last year...
If you've been a regular reader of my blog you'll have noticed I've been writing vignettes about my life now and then. It's basically just a form of writing practice. I find it quite hard, actually, because under my self-imposed 'rules', I can't embellish, even when it seems pretty banal. And I can't write up the more interesting material because ultimately people could be identified. For example there was a rather sinister encounter at a local shop the other day that I can't write about. Well, I can--but I'd have to pretend it was fiction!
A writer told me recently he needs the distance fiction provides. I know what he means, the problem is I plagiarise my own life to use in fiction anyway, so I reckon if I ever get published people in my life will still recognise themselves or situations from life that have been reworked as 'fiction'. Sometimes I feel bad becuse I know it's cheating. I should be able to come up with entirely original fictitious material just from my imagination, right? But then, reality-writing is kind of cheating too, in the sense that I feel insulated from any criticism: If a vignette's boring, it's not my fault; that's just what happened. It's a bit gutless, really. Anyway, Vogel 2005, here I come...

(*cs, don't get any ideas...)

posted by Gianna 7:01 PM

. . .

Rummy the dummy
Rumsfeld on Abu Ghraib:

"I failed to recognize how important it was to elevate a matter of such gravity to the highest levels, including the president and the members of Congress."

How stupid can you get.

posted by Gianna 6:55 PM

. . .

Coasting
My last visitor has left. She had come up for a few days on her way up to a seven-week Buddhist retreat in the bush near Casino in northern New South Wales. She studies the dharma.
When she meets Harley she bursts into tears, but she's grinning. He can't seem to stop smiling either. We go for long walks each day she is here, checking out the streets on the other side of the lake which I haven't yet explored. At the top of one hill we pause in front of an ugly house with Greek columns everywhere and behind it, there is the most glorious billion-dollar view: Two bodies of water, the lake and the ocean, separated by a narrow strip of white sand, framed by trees and sky.
On the second day she gets a call telling her the retreat has been cancelled as the ripochet (guru) has suddenly taken ill and is in hospital. It turns out he has heart disease and needs a bypass. I wonder how someone who spends their life meditating and eating lentils can get heart disease. I joke that he probably secretly pigs out on McDonalds.
It's some sickie though. My friend, and the other hundred people who were about to do the retreat, have put their lives on hold-- taken two months' leave from work, rented out their apartments, arranged for neighbours to feeds pets and plants. My friend says it's like she has been given two months off her life. She isn't sure what she will do now. She gets out the treats she had packed to share around at the end of the retreat, cream wafers and salty crackers in neon foil packages that she got from a supermarket in Chinatown before she caught the train up from Central.
"Maybe I'll go to India again," she muses as we eat.
"Stay. Live with me for a few months," I say. I'd love her company; she's my oldest friend, we've known each other since we were five. We sit looking at Harley in the Babygap pyjamas that my brother sent over from the US. The pants are printed with small cars all over, and the top has a large felt car appliqued on the front. She traces the car with a finger.
"I could go on a road trip," she says.
"We could go on a road trip!" I say, typically impulsive. This has been my standard response throughout our lives whenever she has mentioned taking off around Australia: I want to come with you. It's my little fantasy, Thelma & Louise crossed with Jack Kerouac. Maybe we'll do it one day. Then I think, for once, I don't want to go anywhere. I am so happy right now. I've never been so happy.
Anyway, more blogging later, hopefully. We need to get to the general store early as they only ever carry a few copies of the weekend papers, and this weekend someone else can miss out.
Oh yeah, and congratulations to my brother and his wife on the safe arrival of their new baby girl, my first niece! But wait, there's more...Harley will be getting yet another new cousin, to my sister, in a few weeks. Joyous times.

posted by Gianna 7:59 AM

. . .

It's gotta be...
The label on one of the baby's Bonds Wondersuits says "Assembled in China from Bonds Australian Fabric". Interesting...thought they'd be made in Australia for sure.

posted by Gianna 7:26 AM

. . .

Enter the dragonfly
Noticed some rather hysterical reactions at the weekend to the news that filming of a Hollywood movie has been banned from a wilderness area of Australia, particularly from the Daily-Telegraph's David Penberthy and the Sun-Herald's Miranda Devine. Neither of them seem to understand the concept of a fragile ecosystem, where a tiny change in the habitat of one small species can have repercussions a long way up the food chain, ultimately affecting us through environmental changes. Instead, both are braying that our entire film industry is now under threat. Penberthy is sarcastic:

"In a major win for the larvae of the giant native dragonfly, the filming of Stealth has...been stopped for good in the Grose Wilderness Area...Joining the fledgling insects in celebration are some 100 largely poncho-clad people from the Blue Mountains who have now antagonised Hollywood, which will retaliate..."

If the environment wasn't at risk, why, as Penberthy notes, did they even follow practices such as, "after each take, actors had to remain immobile while the threatened species officer checked for any damage, such as "compressed" footprints, and decided whether the next take should occur somewhere else"? Anyway, the tiny segment of the film which is affected involves "a sequence in which [actor] Biel, an elite pilot tracking a rogue homicidal robot pilot, parachutes behind enemy lines in North Korea and runs through a forest, evading gunfire." You're telling me they can't film this anywhere else in Australia?
Devine writes:

"Because of the remote possibility a few dragonfly larvas in the Blue Mountains might be disturbed, green groups have managed to shut down filming of the big-budget Hollywood blockbuster Stealth and jeopardise the state's $4 billion film industry."

So, the only films we can hope to attract to Australia are action films filmed in wilderness areas? That's ridiculous.
I suppose Penberthy and Devine would've been in favour of letting Baywatch move in and take over Avalon a few years ago. Anything not to upset Hollywood, eh.

posted by Gianna 8:41 AM

. . .

The Shorter Cardinal Pell
The Cardinal George Pell says the Howard Government's legislation against gays marrying each other is an "important measure to buttress marriage", because:

Marriage is about children (sorry, all you childless married people). Children should be raised by a set of biological parents (sorry, adoptive parents, foster parents, step-parents). Gays can't make children together, so they can't get married to each other (sorry, gays). Because otherwise, straight people might think marriage isn't about children and then they might get married less.

Same tired old illogical argument, identical to the Howard one. Is this the best they can come up with?

posted by Gianna 8:35 AM

. . .

Forest grump
See, what I don't get is why you can help get people out of the sugar industry, but you can't do it for the logging industry.

posted by Gianna 2:54 PM

. . .

Never work with children or animals
Or both. Especially if you want to maintain a blog. God knows how I found the time to blog for the first six weeks! Anyway, looks like this blog may have to slide into hiatus until mama adjusts to the new schedule. Anyway, best to all...hope to see you soon.

posted by Gianna 10:38 AM

. . .

The wonder weeks
I fell in love with him yesterday. I've loved him from the start, as you do, but yesterday we had this special moment when we were just looking into each others' eyes, and kind of seeing each other for the first time. Falling in love. Yesterday I think I saw him as a complete little person in his own right, totally separate from me. You get those little flashes of their personality. And we spent a lot of time just looking at each other and smiling. I'm pretty sure he felt the same way. I looked at him and finally it hit me that I've made a little person.
Later we met his Oma and Opa down at the lake for pflaumenkuchen; he gave them the same treatment. So much love going around.
One thing I never expected is that it would be this physically demanding. I feel like I'm at Baby Bootcamp. We walk up and down hills with the jogger for a couple of hours a day. (I will never tire of looking up at eucalypts and gum trees against blue sky and daydreaming.) Then at home, when I've got him in the pouch, all five kilos of him, we go around doing housework. The laundry is meditative. I hang nappies out, I take nappies off. You can't bend over to pick anything up, so you end up doing a million deep knee squats. It's like the gym, only not as boring. And you're there all day.
My parents bring around food. Roasts, salads, cake. They often bring meals involving pimiento or something, or they'll bring pesto with forty cloves of garlic. "Oh, no," my mother says. "It doesn't affect the milk. You shouldn't read so many books. You think in Italy they stop eating garlic?"
"You think in Italy they stop drinking red wine every night? You want me to do that, too?"
"Hmmpf," is all she will say.
Anyway, he's very cute.

posted by Gianna 7:25 AM

. . .

There goes the neighborhood
Does Osama Bin Laden have any idea how ridiculous he sounds offering Europe a ‘truce’?

Instead of dismissing European nations as the "crusader-Jewish alliance", the voice addressed "reconciliation" message to European states, referring to them as "our neighbours north of the Mediterranean".

The paper reports "the truce offer would be good for three months". And then what? They resume bombing innocent people? Nice neighbours! But that Bin Laden is a clever speechwriter. The al-Qaeda recording says, "What happened on September 11 and March 11 was your goods delivered back to you" --a mocking reference to the West's attempt at exporting democracy and capitalism.

posted by Gianna 10:37 PM

. . .

Wedded blitz
The US Assistant Secretary for Children and Families Wade Horn met with the Howard Government's minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Kevin Andrews, "to discuss what governments can do to promote marriage". To the right kind of people, of course; gays need not apply.
Interesting also to read that family-friendly America has a policy where single parents have to go back to work for a minimum of 30 hours a week once the child turns one. This, compared to Australia, where single parents must work six hours a week once the child turns 13. One measly year - sounds pretty tough.

posted by Gianna 10:35 PM

. . .

episode 27
Germaine's upset by the reaction people had to her article in January. Today the Australian gives Greer a chance to "bite back at critics after her defence of expatriates". I agree with Greer that the headline used by the Oz last time was a bit harsh. The headline was "Slack and insufferable" and it felt like it was meant to refer to Greer herself rather than to what Greer thought of Australians. But when she talks of the "certainty that an Australian newspaper would pick up the article that I was commissioned to write for The Times, and use it to foment a fatuous and ill-tempered controversy that they would then blame on me"--that's a bit 'poor-me', considering she must have written the article knowing it would push a few buttons Down Under.

"I was reviled as an expatriate, the worst thing you can be, worse even than being a pedophile - and there were those who said I was that too."

Well, I still think her book on boys was dumb. Even the boy on the cover, who is now a man and wasn't consulted about the use of the photo, felt he had been exploited:

He found it odd that Greer, who had campaigned so vigorously against the exploitation of women, was using him as an object of desire: "It is ironic," he said.

Anyway, here's what Greer says her previous article was about:

"What Howard carefully avoided admitting was that the Australian diaspora is real and the Government is concerned about it...Instead of getting stay-at-home experts to find out why 1million Australians, 5 per cent of the population, choose to live outside the country, the Australian Government could try asking the expatriates...My basic argument [is] that highly qualified Australians live and work overseas because conditions in their home country allow no scope for their full professional development."

But that doesn't explain paragraphs like:

"Each street has a nature strip; each bungalow faces the same way, has a backyard and a front garden, all fenced, low at the front, high at the back. Somewhere nearby there'll be a shopping centre with fast-food outlets and a supermarket. If your ambition is to live on Ramsay Street, where nobody has ever been heard to discuss a book or a movie, let alone an international event, then Australia may be the place for you."

She also rejects claims she is publicity hungry:

"I was so incensed by Denton's irrelevant and intrusive personal questions that he felt it necessary to send me a written apology, which has gone into the archive."

It's hard to believe she was upset by Denton when the transcript is full of (CHUCKLES) and (SNORTS) from Greer, and she seems perfectly happy chatting away about personal subjects like her relationships; in fact, she cheerfully volunteers a lot of information.
Germaine Greer: In my view, what happens when you fall in love is you turn into an instant stalker.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
Germaine Greer: I mean, you do that thing of driving by the house at night to see if the window is illuminated, that kind of thing. And having been stalked, I think it's a terrible state to be in. To be obsessed by anybody, that is just so ignominious, it's so awful.
...
Germaine Greer: ..in three weeks of marriage, it's true to say I was unfaithful seven times.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS AND APPLAUDS)".
She's a refreshingly honest interviewee, anyway, and that episode of Enough Rope is a great read.

posted by Gianna 10:34 PM

. . .

Close encounters of the blogging kind
Getting busy at Casa Gianna so will shamelessly steal the blogjam concept and direct you to some other people's blogs instead. Angela has moved her blog again, and as usual I follow because I like her random fragments. James has a new book published--read about Uncle Rupert here. Chris has left the blues behind and it's business as usual. Deltoid is collecting bloggers' Myers-Briggs personality test results. Add yours if you're game, bloggers. Jill has been interviewed about blogging by BBC World Service. Who better qualified on the subject than Jill? Languagehat meets his first bunyip. A definition 'hat cites describes the animal as "a fierce creature from Australia. Amphibious by nature, it has the appearance of a giant seal or even a hippopotamus. It is greatly feared, for it enjoys the taste of human flesh, particularly the more tender flesh of women and children." (I haven't met blogger Professor Bunyip myself so can't validate this definition.) Speaking of tender flesh, Tim's been talking about the birds and the bees. Glad I can put that off for a while!

posted by Gianna 7:14 PM

. . .

Still doesn't call Australia home
Someone tell me again why an American actor is ambassador for the Flying Kangaroo.

posted by Gianna 7:11 PM

. . .

Pairs
There's a man standing outside the general store leaning on a double stroller and looking at the notices on the noticeboard. As I pass he turns and looks in my pram and jokes, "Think you've got it hard." He turns his stroller to show off his twins.
I peer into his buggy and two sets of fierce eyes regard me. The father says, pointing to one twin, "This is Tom." The other baby swivels his eyes sharply to look at Tom. "And this is Jake." Now Tom twists his head to look at Jake.
"I know," I say. "I met them yesterday, with your au pair." A pretty blonde German girl called Heike. Maybe she has the day off today.
"How old is your little one?" he asks me.
"Six and a half weeks," I say.
He says, "Ah, he's still got the label on, eh?"
A woman comes out of the general store and marches over to us. She must be the mother, I think. She's wearing a Burberry mini and a black rollneck, and is sweating a little. As you would, if you were wearing a rollneck in this weather. She seems incongruously dressed next to her husband, who is more properly attired for the holidays in shorts and a teeshirt. Maybe she's just driven up to the holiday house straight from work. I notice her foundation is too orange, and her eyebrows are perfect arcs the likes of which nature has never seen. For some reason she scares me a little, so I pretend to be reading the noticeboard.
"Where's Josh?" She says to her husband. For a moment he has a bewildered look on his face, as though he has completely forgotten he has another child. They look around. There's a little boy on a trike in the distance, doing small lonely doughnuts outside the bottleshop. She says angrily to the man, "You were supposed to be looking after them!"
I move on and hear her yelling, "Josh! You come back here right now!"
Poor little Josh, the forgotten toddler with the sweet little fierce twin brothers that everyone stops to check out.

posted by Gianna 11:32 AM

. . .

B in Ken's bonnet
Welcome to new Armadillo "B", who happens to be Ken's girlfriend (is that the right word?). She does some metablogging here.

posted by Gianna 1:18 PM

. . .

Sleepless in...where am I again?
It's eight p.m. and it feels like three a.m., but then three a.m. felt like noon. He's six weeks old and sadly no longer the endlessly sleeping 'stunned mullet' they sent me home with. Now I'm the stunned mullet. He just takes catnaps. Maybe the odd hour here or there.
And I'm not even having coffee! I stagger out every morning to fake it with ground defaf in my percolator. (It's not so bad; I'm used to it now.) Maybe he's a bit overstimulated from all the attention he's been getting from everyone, but then all babies would get that, wouldn't they? (I don't know...why so alert, Harley-baba? If only he could talk... More than 'ah-goo', I mean. Though he says that a lot, so it must mean something important. 'Gimme a milkshake', most likely.)
Anyway, have rearranged the blogroll to incorporate some other bloggers who write about their bubs. Good for stealing ideas, for example, from Kathy's expensive sleep consultant (scroll, cos permalinks don't seem to be working). More to come, hopefully.

posted by Gianna 8:29 PM

. . .

Oh, ye of too much faith
Church meets State. And again.

posted by Gianna 7:40 PM

. . .

Sprays of our Clive
Interesting article by Clive James in yesterday's Australian. I disagree with his conclusions though.

"[W]e really do have fanatics of our own, preaching versions of The Protocols that differ from it only by substituting the US as the source of all the world's evil - including the depredations of the Israeli state, which generate such universal anger that a bunch of young headcases in Bali are moved to blow up a nightclub. In reality, they blew up the nightclub because they didn't like the way young Australians dance. I don't much like it either, but I don't think blowing their legs off is an appropriate cure...It shouldn't need pointing out that the Bali bombers knew no more about the history of the Middle East than I know about quantum mechanics. But it does need pointing out because so many Western intellectuals are incapable of reasoning their way to any conclusion that does not suit their prejudices."

Nah, I don't buy that. The Bali bombers--and any other fanatical thugs--obviously don't need to know the 'entire history of the Middle East' in order for them to perceive America as 'the Great Satan'. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

posted by Gianna 1:52 PM

. . .

A new blog I dig
Z's not dead, baby, but it seems everyone around him is. He's a Portuguese Goth who works as a gravedigger.

In the end of the morning, when I was taking care of some flowers that I planted last week, I heard the church bells toll, anouncing the death of someone. Ding ding, dong; ding ding, dong. It was a woman. If it were at man, the beels would go dong dong, ding. It came to my mind the people that are in the city hospital....Constantina, my cousin in third degree, her grandmother was first degree cousin of my grandmother. Constantina opened her wrists. I din't believe that it could be her. It was the third time that she opened her wrists. I never believed that she really wanted to kill herself. She knew her husband would arrive and she opened her wrists a few minutes before that. I can imagine her husband driving her to hospital. Just a few metters before the city hospital, they crashed against other car. I can imagine the paramedics surprise when they arrived at the car crash and found a woman that bumped her head and had her wrists open. She stayed in hospital because of the head bump. I never believed that she really wanted to kill herself. She just wants her husband to notice her. She is just sad.
...
When it is not raining, I clean the graves of those that everybody forgot and I colect dead flowers left by old widows. I should take off some of the lower branches of cypresses any day soon. When it is raining, I sit by the door of my little shelter house. I imagine a lot of things while I watch the rain falling over the fields of olive-trees and cork trees that lie above the walls of the graveyard, smoking a joint and listening to "Helplessness" by Lacrimas Profundere

His blog has original poetry and quirky tales from the graveyard shift. Go catch some Z.

posted by Gianna 7:03 AM

. . .

Voyeur eyes only
A working girl's blog. (I think I came across recently this via Weekend Warrior, but I can't remember now.) And you thought my blog was revealing.

posted by Gianna 6:59 AM

. . .

Can of worms
Opened here.

posted by Gianna 6:52 AM

. . .

Society in the wilderness
We're strolling down an unsealed road past a little wooden house with the sound of Bob Marley softly drifting out, when I hear voices. I look up and notice a man sitting on his verandah with a large cat curled up on the railing in front of him. I wave.
"Don't mind me, I'm just talking to my snake," he calls out, stroking the cat, and it starts to unfurl itself along the railing until it is a few metres long. What the...? I wheel the stroller around and we go back to have a closer look. Sure enough it's a giant diamond python. Eek!
"There's only five of these left in the valley," the man says. "This is Candy. Don't be afraid, she's harmless. Want to touch her?"
Uh, no thanks.
He comes down to the street and stands beside me holding a plate of toast, and we have a chat. Turns out he's our neighbourhood's resident greenie. He fits the stereotypical mould: waist-length hair in a ponytail, fraying beard, faded yellow Bonds teeshirt, beads around his wrist. He tells me his name is Peter and that he works for the local wildlife rescue group. "See over there?" he nods at a nearby tree. "There's a tawny frogmouth and her baby. I've been looking after them." I squint through the foliage and make out the two owls. "I thought owls only come out at night," I say. He shakes his head. He says he's turned his property into a reserve for endangered species, and points out the rare plants along the front of his house--"there's only three of these left in Australia"--and reels off a dozen types of endangered dove that he nurtures.
I tell him I love walking around with Harley and listening to all the birds. He frowns and mutters, "Well, there'd be a lot more, if it wasn't for all the cats". Gulp. I don't mention my cats, and secretly wonder if he's the one responsible for the anti-cat message I saw on the local noticeboard the other day. I rationalise to myself that my cats haven't caught a bird...yet.
We talk about how much the area has changed over the years, how built up it is now. He delivers a blistering attack on the hordes of seachangers and holiday-housers who have moved up here, with their four wheel drives and domestic pets.
"They're killing all the wildlife with their noise and pollution," he rails.
"It's looking more and more suburban," I nod. "All these perfectly manicured lawns."
"You get these idiots with their leaf blowers--you know, just blow all the leaves magically out of sight around the corner--and there, you've got an instant fire hazard. And you know, if there was a fire, I'd be out in the street, hosing down a dozen properties, because nobody's here, these ones are all holiday houses. And the funny thing is, they all hate me, cos I'm a greenie!" He looks wounded at the thought.
"Well, I don't hate you. I like you already," I smile.
"The thing is, you can't even swim in the lake anymore. I tell people--but they don't want to listen--it's a closed catchment lake. So every time they hose their dogshit into the creek, every time they wash their goddamn car, all the water just runs down into the lake. And stays there."
It makes me sad, because I remember how much fun it was to play in the lake when we were kids. Back then, there were no jetskis on the lake, just rowboats and water tractors, the ones you pedal with your feet. I'm relieved I chose not to swim in it when I was pregnant this summer--it just looked too murky and unappealing.
"And now there's these new fire regulations, where they say you've gotta chop down all the trees within 70 metres of your house, or they won't approve your development application." He pauses for breath. "And builders, man, they're the worst." He looks at me sideways. "Now you'll tell me your hubby's a builder."
"No," I laugh. "No hubby...no builder."
Peter tells me he came to the area fifteen years ago, after his wife died, to raise their five year old daughter closer to nature; bit like me. "But there's less and less nature by the day," he laments.
"My dad calls it North Mosman," I say.
He turns to me. "Oh, you from the North Shore then?"
"Yeah, grew up in Balmoral."
"You're joking. I went to Mosman High," he says.
"Me too!" I say. It's one of those small-world moments.
"When did you leave?" he says.
"88," I say. "You?"
He grins. "I was kicked out in '69."
"Geez, what on earth could you get kicked out of Mosman for?" Mosman was full of kids expelled from other schools; a school of last resort.
"Um...attacking the headmaster, actually," he smiles sheepishly. And I'm curious but too slow, and don't think to ask him to elaborate. I'll ask him next time, I think.
I get home and open the Sunday papers to read about another conservationist called Peter; Peter Garrett, who's thinking of returning to politics, standing as a Green in the next election. Coincidence, or something more?

posted by Gianna 11:10 AM

. . .

April, come they will
March was a quiet month for us, but April looks like being pretty lively around here. I've got five sets of houseguests coming through the month, so blogging may be sparser than usual. Maybe--you know I can never stay away for long!

posted by Gianna 10:59 AM

. . .

Bumper crop
I thought Americans weren't supposed to be any good at laughing at themselves, at least not as good as Australians or Brits, but flicking through the February issue of Vanity Fair (no link), I came across a page of "New Slogans for America". Here's a sample:

America. Almost All Paved.
America. The Moon's Ass Belongs to Us. So Don't Be Landing Your Skanky Rocket on It. Don't Even Be Looking at the Moon.
America. Inventor of the Gated Community.
America. Tell It To Somebody Who Cares.
America. Proudly Serving Ritalin to Our Children since 1995.
America. We Nearly Smashed Al-Qaeda.
America. Teenagers With Money.

So I don't get accused of being anti-American, I thought I'd better come up with a few New Slogans for Australia:

Australia. Where Men Are Men and Women Won't Breed.
Australia. We're Not the Sheriff, We're Just the Deputy. (So Don't Shoot Us, Please.)
Australia. We're Tough.
Australia. Just Don't Try Coming Here By Boat.
Australia. It Used To Be Bigger.
Australia. Where Even Vegemite Is American.

posted by Gianna 1:12 PM

. . .

Babe
Here's the little harlequin at four weeks.

posted by Gianna 5:40 AM

. . .

Jam on, jam on
Tim's latest blogjam is up. Ah, we bloggers do love to see stories about blogs and blogging in the mainstream press, so these blogjams are great. More power to us.

posted by Gianna 7:34 AM

. . .

The blues
Well, that's what you get when you sell your soul to the devil, Chris. And the blues is what you give your non-sporting-minded readers when you use cricket metaphors for describing politics... Geez, isn't one uebersportingpundit enough for the blogosphere?
Jokes aside, yeah, it's sad news about Lucinda.

posted by Gianna 7:14 AM

. . .

Sweethearts together
I never thought it would happen, but my secret lover (I can keep some secrets, you know) apparently wants to make an honest woman out of me, and in the interests of keeping Bettina Arndt happy, I've accepted. Incredible, huh? A complete fairytale.

posted by Gianna 6:27 AM

. . .

Shiver me timbers
Thanks to James for sending me this old snapshot of Captain Quiggin:

posted by Gianna 12:10 PM

. . .

Arndt misbehavin'
Bettina Arndt reckons single mums would turn down a relationship because they've got it so good on the dole:

"There's no doubt less-educated young men are being left on the shelf. Since almost half of the unpartnered women they meet are likely to be single mothers, these males can't compete with the financial incentives offered by the government to lone mothers who remain single."

Of course, Bettina. I mean, who needs a man when you're in bed with the Government? And I don't know about you, but I always get my calculator out when I'm falling in love.

posted by Gianna 8:45 AM

. . .

Sunday
We took the long way around to the boatshed today and back up the hill to the shops, past all the kids playing footy in the street and the retirees out for their power walks. Walking around this neighbourhood reminds me of why I moved out here; it's like living in a rainforest. Except for the kids playing footy and the retirees, that is.
On every street corner there's a little wooden arrow nailed to a tree, pointing in the direction of the boatshed cafe, painted with the words FROTHY COFFEE. The signs have remained the same since we started coming here in the Seventies, when I guess nobody knew what "cappucino" was, and have always been a source of amusement to us city folk.
Up at the shops, I bought all the ingredients for veal marsala except marsala, and a tub of TimTam icecream (argh!). Outside the general store there a noticeboard with a bunch of handwritten notes on it, advertising bodyboards, boats and rotary hoes for sale, the 'ultimate girls' night out!' (some kind of lingerie-Tupperware party, I take it) and a local sk8ter competition. There's a note written "to the person who ran over the cat in ____ Drive. You could of at least STOPPED to render assistance instead of leaving the cat there to DIE. The kids at the bustop were DEVASTATED. I hope you get bad KARMA." Underneath, someone (the culprit, perhaps?) has scrawled, "Good on the driver!! Cats are wildlife killers!!" And under that, someone else has written, "A life is a life! It's not a cat's fault it is an introduced species. Our cats wear bells anyway!"
My cats haven't caught a bird since we got here. They're generally afraid of them. There's so many it's like living in a giant aviary--a thousand twittering birds. The worst are the butcher birds that come to steal the cat biscuits--they have such a hideous, raucous cry that I wish the cats would catch them.
Everyone we pass on our stroll always stops to exclaim how tiny the baby is and to ask how old he is. He seems huge to me (latest weighing has him at 4.630kg), and it's only really when we're in the company of other, older babies, that I realise how small he really is. Like yesterday, when he shrunk in comparison to a beefy six month old baby and two one year olds.
When we got home I put on my two new CDs--The Salesman and Bernadette by Vic Chestnutt (courtesy Tim) and my friend Steve's latest album, Stolen Goods (Steve Griffiths, Fork Records, available to order via Red Eye Records); scroll for a small description here). Both full of gorgeous laidback Sunday tunes. While the baby slept I cooked dinner and then tried to paint hippos and giraffes, copied off some cot linen, because I figure his nursery needs something to liven up the walls. I couldn't quite nail them; think I need live models...
Then he got me all choked up when I sat down to gaze at him and rested my hand on his chest and he stirred slightly and gently placed his little hand on top of mine. Awwww...

posted by Gianna 8:46 PM

. . .

Tainted love
What exactly is her point? That it's hard? That it's harder? (than when?) That it's all women's fault for being too picky? That it's men's fault? That it's nobody's fault? What?

Ah, here's the answer. It's economic, stupid.

posted by Gianna 7:13 PM

. . .

Handle with care
I was on the phone tonight to my friend J., who is Jewish. She pointed me to this story today in the International Herald Tribune which gives a pretty good analysis of the motivations and repercussions of Sheikh Yassin's assassination. In my view the assassination was a strategic mistake, no matter how many people Yassin killed. Rather than making Israel appear strong as it withdraws from Gaza, and so deter violence (as Sharon seems to hope), it seems just as likely to incite further hatred and cause more violence. Purely from an anti-Israeli propaganda point of view, you can't really get much more potent than those images of Yassin's bloodied wheelchair. And as the IHT story details, it's all just about spin. That's exactly why that other pre-emptive unilateral strike--America's war on Iraq--was a strategic mistake in the 'war on terror'. Here's how Hamas spun that:

"We are dealing with America as the co-partner with Israel for all the crimes committed by them against our people. So they give them the green light and Sharon will never decide to assassinate Sheikh Ahmed Yassin without taking green light from Bush. Bush, who brought army to attack and to kill also civilian people in Iraq. Bush now is representing the... as he described, a new Crusades."
Mahmoud al Zahhar on dateline

On the same program, Shimon Peres gave us the root-cause argument in a nutshell:

"I believe personally that you cannot stop terror just by killing the terrorist. You have to fight them, clearly. But you also have to tackle the reasons for terror. You have to ask yourself what are the motivations of people who commit suicide and for that reason, we in the Opposition feel that you have to do two things, which are contradictory in a parallel way. One is to fight the terrorist in a determined way. On the other hand is to negotiate with the Palestinians that they themselves will begin to fight terror because terror is their enemy, not only ourselves. The terroristic works are frustrating any agenda that the Palestinians are trying to introduce."

It's the only way forward, no matter how hysterical Tim Blair gets about the simple idea of attempting to "know your enemy".

posted by Gianna 11:30 PM

. . .

Ignorance is not bliss
Talking to J. tonight reminded me of a phone conversation we had after peace activist Rachel Corrie was killed in Palestine last year.
J. said, "Darling, I can't talk now, I've got D. over for dinner."
"That's OK," I said. "I just want to know, in a sentence, what's your view on what happened to Rachel Corrie? Do you think they deliberately ran her down?"
"She sat in front of a bulldozer, Gianna. I mean, I think it's tragic, but of course they didn't target her. She shouldn't have been there. Those bulldozers only target houses where they know Palestinian terrorists are hiding."
I said, dumbly, "But why won't Israel give Gaza back? It's terrible what they do to the Palestinians. Rachel's emails, they're heartbreaking." I sensed her increasing frustration with me, but went on, "So, what's the Jewish position on Gaza, again?"
"Listen, Gianna, you don't understand. Israel tried to give land back to the Palestinians and they didn't want it, it was all or nothing--"
"What about how Arafat won the--"
"He's the guy who's responsible for every fucking airliner that was hijacked in the Seventies!"
"Well, a few years back he got the Nobel Peace Prize together with Rabin, I think, and someone else."
"He invented terrorism!" Deep sigh. "Look, I'm going to lend you those two books I told you about, so you can try to understand."
"Okay, okay."
"OK?"
"Say hi to D."
"I will, darling."
"Goodnight."
"Goodnight, sweet."
I never did borrow those books. I wish I had, because the Israel-Palestine conflict isn't going away and it's a root cause of the Islamic terrorism that threatens all of us now.

posted by Gianna 10:52 PM

. . .

Heartbreaking
Once in a blue moon I can receive SBS up here, and last night was one such occasion, so it was great to be able to catch the two fascinating interviews with new Hamas deputy leader Mahmoud Al Zahhar and Israeli Opposition leader Shimon Peres on dateline. (Note, Dateline has an irritating way of posting transcripts whereby you can't link directly to the stories as they only open in small text boxes off the main site.)

posted by Gianna 6:43 AM

. . .

DNA
Has anyone ever had to do a DNA test? Harley's father's lawyers are insisting I have one, otherwise Harley won't see a cent of child support, apparently. Strange, since the father has already signed the birth registration papers, and in the past I've sworn an affidavit confirming Harley's parentage, which was used in a court case (not mine). And geez, the father was extremely keen to claim Harley as his child on his website, so being told by the lawyers that he's questioning paternity is a bit rich. I mean, as if I'd lie about who the father was, when it could be proved through DNA anytime. Oh well. It's also a bit strange that m'learned friends are demanding that my DNA be sampled at the same time. Surely we don't need proof that I'm Harley's mum? It's like that Irish joke where the daughter comes home and announces she's pregnant and her father says, "Are you sure it's yours?". And I'm not all that pleased with the idea of my DNA being stored on some database somewhere, where it could potentially be misused, either. Anyway, I hope they can just snip a lock of Harley's hair (god knows he has enough of it!) rather than stick a needle in him.

posted by Gianna 11:32 AM

. . .

Over before it even began
For a while there it looked as if Jeff Kennett might become the Peter Andre of politics, but he's now ruled out a comeback, apparently. Mystified as to what he meant by an 'announcement of "federal" importance' though.

posted by Gianna 8:18 AM

. . .

Of all the blogs in all the world, you had to walk into mine
Something got lost in translation over at Languagehat.

posted by Gianna 4:59 AM

. . .

The unforgiven
I like to read about other people's families. The Scribbler, for example, has just written a lovely piece about his dad. I'd like to write something about my dad, too, even though I think he occasionally reads my blog. We've only just come to a kind of truce after not speaking for some time over the summer. This happens periodically in my relationship with my father; when I was 18 he didn't speak to me for a year because he didn't approve of my junkie lover--but what father would? It's funny, though; it only recently emerged that he's still angry at me over those events more than a decade ago. I'm not someone who can hold a grudge for longer than a couple of days, so it always amazes me when others can.
My mother comes by about every second day. She rides her bike, or my father gives her a lift. He'll drop her off and stand by the car, so I have to bring the baby out to see him. He says he won't come into the house until I apologise. He's still smarting over some things that were said over the summer. In fact we both said things, but my mother admonishes me, "You're the younger one, so it's you who should apologise." He thinks I'm an ungrateful child; I guess he never read this.
For Harley's sake, the other week I attempted an apology. But my father deemed my apology to be only half-hearted and so is holding out for a more convincing one. In the meantime, he won't come in the house, but when pressed, he'll join us on the deck. Last Sunday my mother brought around a chocolate pecan pie and some leaf tea and a glass teapot--she doesn't care for teabags. She spread out a white tablecloth on the deck and we sat there with the rain cascading down all around us, eating cake. I made the classic 'proud mother' mistake of waking Harley when they arrived, even though he'd only just fallen asleep, in order to let them have some quality time with him awake. He'd been awake for most of the morning but had fallen into a deep sleep about a minute before they arrived, so I woke him and gave him a bath and dressed him in the faded purple jumpsuit that my mother had bought him at the op-shop. After all the excitement of seeing his Oma and Opa he was overstimulated and wouldn't settle again for hours. You learn these things the hard way.
My dad shies away from holding the baby and he winces and grimaces when I do, as if I'm going to drop him. "Luis," my mother rolls her eyes. "You don't have to worry. Mothers have an instinct about their babies." It makes me wonder what he was like when we were small; I know he was wonderful when we were children, but perhaps he was afraid to hold us when we were babies, too.

posted by Gianna 4:05 AM

. . .

Soldiering on
So anyway, what I wanted to add about Christopher Pearson's piece yesterday is that, like the Howard Government, he wants us to believe that Australians are terrorist targets solely because of 'who we are, not what we do'. But what I don't understand is how we can divorce one from the other. Surely the idea of 'who we are' is affected by 'what we do'. I mean, if terrorists just want to kill us because we are a secular democracy, then why aren't they targetting, say, Sweden?
On the refusal of the Howard Government to admit that the war in Iraq made us more of a target, as though they can't comprehend the concept of 'more', Pearson just dismisses the concept of 'increased risk' by talking about 'the madness of the Islamo-fascist project' where 'relative vulnerability becomes more a matter of terrorist opportunities than notional orders of provocation'.
However Pearson ends his column by quoting the 'leading expert on Al Qaeda', Rohan Gunaratna, who said,

"Australia has no option but to work with the US in the fight against terror because it has long been regarded by Islamic fundamentalists as a crusader country."

And Pearson concurs that "our antagonists imagine us as a crusader state". Well, if we are perceived as such, doesn't it have to have something to do with our actions, rather than just the fact that we are a secular democracy?

posted by Gianna 5:40 AM

. . .

Rudely cut off
I hadn't finished blogging last night when the line dropped out, and I didn't want to risk waking the baby with that hideous dialup noise. Just wondering, can anyone tell me if there is any way of dialing up silently? Cheers.

posted by Gianna 5:35 AM

. . .

Peed my lips
Think this is In bad taste?

"CITING public concern, Virgin Atlantic has scrapped plans to install urinals in the shape of a woman's lips at the airline's clubhouse at New York's John F. Kennedy airport."

They could've come up with something worse, but we won't go there (this being a family blog now 'n all).

posted by Gianna 8:27 PM

. . .

Silly me
In today’s Australian, Christopher Pearson writes:

“…the task of government will be to engage [Australians] as conscious, civilian participants in a life or death struggle that will undoubtedly reach these shores one way or another,”

then in the same paragraph goes on to say:

“…the lessons of Bali have not been learned and the land of the long weekend lives on in the infantilised minds of many.”

So the Government should treat Australians as ‘conscious, civilian participants’, but Pearson can keep describing us as ‘infantilised’. Got it.

posted by Gianna 8:21 PM

. . .

Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood
Checking my letterbox this afternoon I found a gift from my neighbour Debbie, she of the devoutly Christian family of nine. There was a handmade card with 'Babies are God's gifts' written on the front and a copy of Above Rubies magazine:

"Above Rubies is a magazine to encourage women in their high calling as wives, mothers and homemakers. Its purpose is to uphold and strengthen family life and to raise the standard of God's truth in the nation."

The stories are quite interesting--organic babyfood, homeschooling tips, inspirational anecdotes, that kind of thing--even if every second word seems to be "God". Do you think she's on a mission to save me? At least now I know why the lawnmowing is so cheap: it's either pay or pray. Don't get me wrong though, I'm not poking fun at her. I'm secretly impressed by the religious, because they have so much certainty about everything. Hell, I wish I could be a believer, but unfortunately I can't seem to suspend disbelief.

posted by Gianna 3:12 PM

. . .

Where do we go from here?
Tim does the hard work, we just link to it--here's this week's Blogjam.
As far as hot blogtopics go, I'm trying to keep up with all the Madrid debates but I have to admit I find the whole thing pretty confusing. I wish we could just start over and find a practical way to deal with terrorism instead of wasting a lot of time and energy with all this namecalling and fingerpointing at each other in the West. It just doesn't feel like we're getting anywhere in this supposed "war on terror". It feels hopeless. I don't feel as if there is any kind of intelligent strategy to destroy terrorism from the bottom up--ie. from where ordinary Islamic people are seduced and brainwashed into supporting fundamentalism. Catching the megalomaniacs de jour in the leadership positions of the various Islamic terrorist organisations is important, sure, but it isn't enough if we aren't doing something about the reasons why fundamentalism is able to be so effectively marketed by them. When I say "we", I mean us and "them"--the world's moderate Islamic majority. If it's going to work it needs to be a joint venture.

update: This is a start: "Al-Qaeda a bunch of crazies: Mufti" .

posted by Gianna 6:34 AM

. . .

Referrer madness
Thought I'd do a regular post linking to any new referrers I get, or new commenters who have blogs. Of course, you can already access them through my site stats or through the comments box, this just makes it easier for me to visit them in future, especially if I want to add them to the blogroll (although I don't get around to updating my template very often). Anyway, please meet zucchinis in bikinis, lunacy101, The China Letter, soul pacific, bowled over, Powerup, kitschenette, any resemblance and amnesty for Claire--some of whom you may already know.
And hey, lookee here, stradbroke isle has been blogging again, if sporadically. Here's a link to David's latest post, about Hawaii: Forlorn in the USA (love the headline). One for my brother who lives there--in case he reads me, which I suspect he doesn't.

posted by Gianna 1:07 PM

. . .

Palm reading
My local neighborhood newsletter, Voice of the Palms (no link; it probably only has a print run of a couple of hundred), carries a news item about a recent visit to our area by Carmen Lawrence:

"...Before her speech and questions, Carmen Lawrence visited each table and talked with just about everyone there. She shares Mark Latham's belief that politicians must listen at least as much as they talk. At the end of the evening, she was farewelled with a standing ovation. This was at 11pm. How many politicians would you farewell like that after 4 hours of them?"

Bodes well.

posted by Gianna 11:37 AM

. . .

Tricky and out of touch
I'm having so many problems with the internet again lately, it's not funny. I can't get into hardly anyone's sites--it keeps telling me "the connection with the server was reset". And when I do manage to logon somewhere, I am booted off after a minute or so. I had this problem around Christmas but then it kind of fixed itself before I got around to switching service providers (I assume it's a service provider issue). This time, I don't know...Optus, you are officially on notice. Hell, I can't even read the news. Just when I feel like blogging again, too.
Well, while I'm here I may as well give you the weekly Harley update. He's three weeks old now, and has finally got the hang of feeding without causing me to grit my teeth. Unfortunately, he's also got the hang of inexplicable daily crying sessions, but the books assure me this is normal once they hit three weeks or so. And oh, joy, it's supposed to last til about three months... Still, we've now invested in one of those amazing pouch thingys-whoever invented them deserves a medal. Puts him to sleep almost immediately and has the added benefit of allowing me to catch up on housework. The hard part is unattaching him (or stopping moving) without waking him up, so I often resort to doing laps of the dining table while reading a book. I'm sure the cats think I've gone nuts.

update: The connection seems to be working again...it's now given me almost half an hour online without cutting me off...amazing.

posted by Gianna 6:51 AM

. . .

Sex, drugs and Rock'n'roll
He's managing to stay Stone cold sober these days, but poor old Ron Wood has been told if he doesn't give up smoking within a year, he'll cark it. So he's set himself a quit date of 17 March. Wish him luck: cigarettes are harder to quit than heroin, as they say. Personally I doubt I would have managed to quit if I hadn't got pregnant. The morning sickness turned me off them almost overnight--they suddenly acquired the distinct flavour of rotting fish.
Just rereading that story, I'm quite curious how our Rolling Stone gathered Kate Moss as an "old mate"? Oh, right: "I've got a wonderful dedicated wife. But I still have a look, you know. You must never stop looking--and I have a flirt." Ah, so maybe that's it.

posted by Gianna 3:56 PM

. . .

If and when
If it turns out that Al Qaeda were responsible and that Spain was targetted because of its membership of the Coalition of the Willing, then you have to assume the timing--just before the Spanish election--was indeed relevant and intended to punish and destablise the incumbent as much as possible. Setting off the bombs just days before the election meant that people would be voting while still angry and emotional. Anyway, if this really is part of Al Qaeda's new campaign of retribution for America's war on Iraq, then Spain was only first because its election came first, and Australia and the US are looking particularly vulnerable in the days and weeks before our respective elections later this year.

posted by Gianna 6:57 AM

. . .

Known unknowns
Donald Rumsfeld honestly doesn't know if Osama bin Laden is dead or alive, or where he is, or when they'll catch him, but one thing he's certain about is that:

"...we've put a lot of pressure on the al-Qaeda network around the world. And we believe we're safer and more secure because we have put pressure on that network...And they [US trained local forces] are working their way around in that country [Afghanistan] to see that the Taliban and the al-Qaeda don't have an opportunity to regroup and try to cause additional terrorist acts."

Looks like they were able to regroup just fine in Madrid.

posted by Gianna 6:30 AM

. . .

Just a silly phase?
The five stages of blogging according to Crooked Timber. But I think they've left out Desperation, characterised by the frantic and usually futile search for potentially bloggable news items on the net. This stage is typically experienced after an episode of Panic, when you realise you've been talking about yourself way too much lately and your blog is in danger of disappearing into your navel. Desperation and Panic are often followed by the stage of Disillusionment, when you find out that you've got nothing to say about anything today and, anyway, everyone else is saying it better.

posted by Gianna 3:41 PM

. . .

Hooptedoodle and the Wholesale Safety Pun Factory
"Damn!" I exclaim angrily. I was just about to open with the weather again, and then perhaps describe a few more wacky neighbours, when suddenly I discover that I routinely break all Elmore Leonard's rules, and all hell breaks loose. "Thanks a lot, Scribbler," I groan sarcastically. "But hey, I love your James Joyce anecdote!"

posted by Gianna 6:59 PM

. . .

Blubbers in arms
You're never too young to join the Army:

"AMERICAN soldiers in Iraq will this month be armed with a stun gun that uses a baby's high-pitched scream to bring enemies to their knees. The Secret Scream gun fires sonic "bolts" as far as 300m at up to 145 decibels, with results ranging from excruciating agony to permanent deafness -- or even death after a prolonged burst."

Apparently soiled nappies are also being considered for use as biological weapons.

posted by Gianna 8:02 AM

. . .

Johnny's cash
Gee, it's amazing the amount of spare change you can find stuffed between the couch cushions when you're tidying up for an upcoming election.

posted by Gianna 7:18 AM

. . .

The latest nudes
I think Bust.com is trying to convert me with their latest offering--she's gorgeous, eh?--but I haven't given up on meeting my dream man just yet. I must be a sucker for punishment. Match.com, on the other hand, seems to have been reading my blog, because they've emailed me details of a guy who says that at his place, 'clothes are optional'. Which reminds me of one of the few things I've missed about Sydney so far--life drawing class. That, and the hundreds of options for takeaway on King Street. Sigh.

posted by Gianna 10:23 AM

. . .

An unguarded moment
Lord, how embarrassing. I just answered the door in my bra to find the teenage son of a neighbour standing there. Jesiah is one of Debbie's seven children, and they're devout Christians--I hope I haven't now corrupted him. He's come by to mow my lawns for five dollars. Debbie wanted him to do it for just two dollars, but I felt like I was taking advantage, so I managed to negotiate her up slightly. (I should send him round to Kirribilli House, where John Howard spends about $210,000 a year of taxpayers' money to get his lawns done.)
I've now met most of the neighbours in my street, either bumping into them while out with the stroller, or through them dropping around to introduce themselves. When I was heavily pregnant and grumpy during the heatwave, I didn't appreciate the intrusions, but since being virtually housebound with a newborn, I've come to enjoy the endless cuppas and offers of help and advice. Which explains me groggily opening the door wearing only a bra and jeans--I've been getting regular visits from the local womenfolk, who aren't shy about giving me hands-on advice on nursing Harley: "So, if you just take your breast in this hand, like so..." (Now if I could just get the menfolk to do the same...haha.) Even Frances from next door has inveigled her way into my affections lately, popping in with homemade caramel slice and showing me the quilt she's making for Harley, and when it rained for a few days recently, carting off my wet nappies to dry them in her dryer. Yesterday, her husband Bill, who's a Justice of the Peace, helped me out with witnessing a statutory declaration, and popping it on their fax for me, thereby saving me a trip into town. In return I have made myself available to Frances for long chats, filling her in on the saga involving a certain unmentionable person. She's a sweet thing, really. Bless them all.

posted by Gianna 1:00 PM

. . .

Weighing in again
Harley's infant nurse, Jenni, was passing through the area just now and dropped in and weighed him again, and he's put on about 50gm a day since her last visit (he'd put on half a kilo when she weighed him after 10 days). She says he's really thriving. Ah, just what we absolute beginners like to hear! What's more, it's getting much less painful to feed him by the day--less like piranhas, more like your average nipple clamps (I imagine, not being an expert on S&M).
So anyway, back to regular blogging soon. That's if Harley gives me a break today. It's so hot again that he's been pretty unsettled through the daytime, but he's still doing the long sleeps at night, so I can't complain. And it's the perfect time for a Lefty blogger to coast a little--the Liberals are imploding just fine without any help from me.

posted by Gianna 11:15 AM

. . .

A stroke of luck
Malcolm is out mowing his lawn again this morning, as me and Harley take our new three-wheeler stroller up to the shops for a test drive. Malcolm waves when he sees us, stops his mower and takes off his earmuffs.
"I looked for you at the hospital," he grins. "But you'd already gone."
Huh???
"Oh--I'm a paediatric nurse at the hospital. Didn't I tell you? In the Children's ward, right next to Maternity. My wife reminded me to look out for you, but by the time I did, you'd left."
"Ohhh, right! Yeah, I was only in there a couple of days," I nod, amazed. Builder, electrician, truck driver--sure. But a paediatric nurse? Never would've picked it a million years. Just goes to show my latent prejudices.
"So if you have any questions at all, you just come right over. Anytime, OK?" Malcolm says.
Right across the road from an expert on babies! How's that for good luck?

posted by Gianna 4:00 PM

. . .

Hot blogs
I'm sure all my readers are Surfdom readers as well, so you'll probably have seen the announcement over there, but in case you haven't heard, Tim Dunlop has joined forces with the Herald's Margo Kingston to publish a regular piece over at Webdiary focussing on what's getting people hot and bothered around the blogosphere so keep an eye out for that.

posted by Gianna 3:22 PM

. . .

Allah, the world's a stage
It's no surprise that the Islamic world is outraged by the production of an Arabic version of Big Brother--after all, enough Westerners were outraged by the local show and the televised antics of the yoof of today. What's surprising is that anyone has dared to appear on this show in a Muslim country at all.
For me, the cross cultural angle is the true evolution of reality TV. Forget the ever tackier resort/reno shows--I want to see what 'reality' (yes, even when highly staged) is like in other countries. Can you imagine how fascinating it would be to watch this Arabic version of the show? Don't you just want to be a fly on the wall as they all sit around and interact? What would they talk about? And assuming they'd have to wear chadors, how would you tell the female contestants apart?
I've often wondered why the international versions of the franchise aren't screened in different countries. Presumably the distributors' rationale is that we won't want to watch, say, the Dutch contestants, because we don't relate to their lives, or even just because we'd need subtitles. But personally, I'd love it, and the more different the culture, the more interesting it would be. Of course, a daily show could be too much, but a condensed version could work, I reckon. Then again, maybe it's just me with my particular interest in social and personality psychology!

posted by Gianna 4:19 AM

. . .

Me ne quitte pas
I know I'm not supposed to have time to blog, and at first I didn't see how I possibly could, what with the washing machine permanently running and the piranhas constantly attacking me and the visitors and phone calls and emails to answer (sorry if I haven't answered you yet). I guess I'm lucky that, so far, Harley is a really peaceful baby who settles easily into long sleeps after feeding. I suppose where I blog, others might watch daytime (or nighttime) TV. And hey, you can type with one hand! Cool. Anyway, it looks as if the deflating lady hasn't sung just yet, so it's back to bad puns and whingeing about John Howard (though I expect posts to be fewer than in my previous life).

posted by Gianna 4:00 AM

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wow..............
Ah, he's sleeping.....Quickly then....Words pretty much fail me...but I thought I'd check in and say hello before I forget how to blog altogether. Thanks for all your well wishes--it's truly the most incredible thing I've ever experienced and I'm totally in love with the bub, whose name, incidentally, is Harley (which I've since found out is Teutonic for 'deer hunter' or 'archer', and Old English for 'from the rabbit pasture').
He arrived after a short (5 1/2 hours) labour that was incredibly intense. I won't go into the gory details lest I put any aspiring parents off the task (suffice to say nothing you read and nothing anyone tells you can prepare you for it--and I remain of the view that human reproduction has some serious design flaws). For those curious about the drugs--I had gas and pethidine but left it too late to ask for an epidural. The gas worked for a few hours, then I begged for pethidine, which was completely hopeless during contractions, though it did get me nicely high between them (I said some pretty strange things to my mum, apparently). I did whimper pathetically for an epidural towards the end, but the anaesthetist was in surgery elsewhere and by the time he arrived an hour or so later, the obstetrician said the baby was only minutes away, and so he was.
Harley's the cutest darn thing I've ever seen and I've been on a massive high ever since and am absolutely loving the whole thing. Yup, all the cliches are true. What's more, he's been sleeping for four-hour chunks during the night, which is great, so I'm not too sleep deprived (yet). And geez, it's nice not to be pregnant anymore! But I need to get the hang of this breastfeeding caper--at present, it still feels like little piranhas attaching themselves to me twenty times a day...Anyway, as you all predicted, there's little time to do anything except look after him at this point, so I probably won't be back into blogging for some time yet.
Well, see you some time down the track, I hope.

posted by Gianna 12:24 PM

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******************Newsflash*********************

A small country town, Australia: After a very long day, Gianna gave birth to a gorgeous baby boy late last night, assisted by grandmama. Baby's vital stats are:

-ten little fingers: check
-ten little toes: check
-baby blue eyes: check
-on a scale to 1 to 10 of gorgeousness - 10000000000000000000000000

weight: 0.003360 tonnes
length: 0.00053 kilometres

The baby is a little brother for Fuzzle and Chi Chi.

Mother and baby are happy and healthy.

(This message by Auntie)

posted by Gianna 8:13 AM

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The late show
Well, see you all in a little while, I guess. I'm just ducking out to hospital first thing this morning to see if we can't somehow persuade this baby make an appearance, as he's now a week overdue. Thanks for all your support and good wishes along the way--I'll miss you. Meanwhile, here's something from the Fertile Feral Eye:

posted by Gianna 4:23 AM

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Parsed lives
Last time I caught up with Miss JenJen over at Paperback Writer she had resigned from her despised day job and was not exactly holding back on her feelings about her workplace, though I don't recall her actually saying anything defamatory or using anyone's real names. And I have no idea where she worked; I don't believe she ever spelt that out.
Now I find out from Invisible Shoebox that Miss JenJen's blogcover was recently blown and she was apparently fired. She's taken her blog offline so I'm not sure what I missed in between the resignation and the sacking (how does that work? had she retracted her resignation?), but it sounds like a blogger's nightmare.
What I don't get is, since many of us blog anonymously or semi-anonymously and probably aren't stupid enough to openly identify our workplaces if we are blogging about them negatively, how can the workplace consider itself defamed (assuming that's what it's grievance was)?

posted by Gianna 1:14 PM

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Quilt thou be mine?
A knock at the door, then a face at the window that quickly disappears again.
"Yoo-hoo, Gianna. It's Frances."
Groan. "Hang on, Frances, I'm not decent."
I've been sitting in my knickers under the fan which is on the highest speed. I wrap a towel around me and open the door. I hate it when people drop in unannounced.
"Just came by to see how you're coping in the heat."
"Well, it's hot," I say, keeping my hand on the door, rudely not inviting her in for a cup of tea.
"Forty degrees, they say," she says, looking past me at the newspaper fluttering in the fan's breeze. "Is that the Herald? Did you read the story about quilting on the front page?"
"Um, not yet."
"Because I thought you might want to come around and help me with my quilting."
Lady, it's forty degrees! Who the hell feels like quilting in this weather? If I could even quilt.
"Well, I'm actually going to the beach with some friends in a little while, so..."
"We're thinking of going down later too! Which beach?" she says.
"Lizzy."
"Oh...we were there yesterday and there were thousands of bluebottles."
"Really?" I'm crushed. "I guess we might end up having to go to the lake instead."
"Listen, put some clothes on and come over and sit in the aircondtioning while you wait for your friends," she says brightly.
"Oh, that's sweet of you. But I'm just about to have a little nap before we go."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
"Oh. Well, sing out if you need anything, won't you?"
"Thanks, Frances. You're very kind."
Later, in the car on the way to the beach, I tell Bec about the bluebottles, and about Frances. I tell her how everytime I walk past Frances and Bill's place, Frances literally comes running out to engage me in conversation.
"Maybe she thinks you're lonely."
"I think maybe she's lonely."
Bec's ten-week-old boy Django nods and grins at me from the backseat. I've never met a baby that smiles as much as this one.
"The good thing about having a baby is that you have a good excuse to tell people to call first, in case the baby's sleeping or something," Bec says.
"She makes me feel guilty. I mean, I know she means well. But I don't need to see her every day. You know?"
We get to the beach and meet the rest of our party. Luckily, the bluebottles are all gone. There's only gentle waves at this beach, and I hope some frolicking in the surf will bring on labour, but it doesn't. I am starting to feel as if it's never going to happen.

posted by Gianna 5:38 PM

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Heroics, please
I just know one of my readers would be perfect for this new reality show called "Hero of the Outback" ("Think The Bachelor meets Survivor"). From the ad in the Australian today:

Are you ruggedly handsome? Steve Irwin meets James Bond? Had lots of outback experience? Successful and charming?"

Follow the link to the show's website, and you'll see they're not asking for much:

We are looking for a single man 25-35 years of age who has a passion for the outdoors, adventure and romance. He's a modern day Indiana Jones who is sophisticated, handsome, rugged and successful. He can start a fire without matches, catch fish with his bare hands, leap from a plane and waltz whilst quoting Shakespeare. He's not a competitor, he's the star of the show. He already has all it takes to survive in the outback.

As well as being able to waltz whilst quoting Shakespeare--always an important outback survival skill--you must also be able to rub your tummy while patting the top of your head.
(Oh, and there's a spotters fee of two grand, so if anyone's considering applying, allow me to nominate you, OK?)

posted by Gianna 9:13 AM

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Man of Lycra
Hey, Sedge, can you please put John Howard and his team in leotards, as they're clearly practising their gymnastics for the Olympics. Watch Tony Abbott, doing the backflip on the term 'backflip' itself:

Mr Abbott rejected suggestions the two decisions [pollie super and veterans entitlements] were policy backflips, instead calling them expressions of democracy.

Tony, Tony, Tone. You do realise that with that, you forfeit the right to ever again accuse Latham, or anyone else, of backflipping, since they can now just claim to be making an "expression of democracy"?

posted by Gianna 9:45 AM

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New SNAGsation
Did I say "blokey"? I meant "SNAGgy".

Latham eyes paternity leave:

OPPOSITION Leader Mark Latham today flagged the idea of paid paternity leave for new dads, saying it could eventually become government policy.

Latham calls for fatherhood focus:

Mr Latham stressed the need for mentoring programs to give boys more male role models, and said men needed to do more to recognise the significance of fatherhood. He said he expected more men to give up work to stay home to care for children. "Women have traditionally taken this role, but I expect in future we will have many more stay-at-home dads in Australia," he said.

Men losing their identity: Latham:

"Historically, big boofy blokes like me, their role was to be dominant in the workplace because of the prominence of muscle jobs, manual work, and obviously being the main breadwinner at home. But now with technological change, a lot of those jobs have been lost and a lot of men are having to reassess where do we belong in society, what's our identity...The thing I'm suggesting is for all of us, and particularly through government policy, to promote the importance of fatherhood." He predicted there would be a growing number of stay-at-home dads in the future and fatherhood was becoming an important source of identity for those who were struggling with the issue.

(All via Murdoch.)

posted by Gianna 9:33 AM

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Oh yeah, and...
I'll buy the argument that "you get what you pay for" that is being bandied about by disgruntled politicians who want a pay rise in exchange for the super cut, if they'll agree to give teachers a great big payrise too. I ask you, how is the job of a politician any more important than the job of a teacher?

posted by Gianna 10:44 AM

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Lay lady, lay
I've been thinking about Tim's piece yesterday on laypeople and politics. So here is a little ramble off the top of my head...which also serves to distract me from this interminable waiting...
As a layperson who from time to time blogs about politics, I sometimes feel as though I have no real right to express political views, since I actually know very little about politics (which is surely clear to those readers who do!). My mother likes to teasingly call me an 'intellectual' because she knows I read the newspapers and have an interest in what's going on in politics, and while it's true I'll read a paper and surf the news on the net, this obviously does not make me an intellectual--anyone can read a newspaper.
And I've never felt like an intellectual just because I've been to uni. I have a degree in psychology, but I've never studied political theory or logic or philosophy or anything useful like that. Psychology, while useful for self-awareness and for understanding interpersonal relationships, is rarely useful in understanding politics, despite what you might think. I think this is because most politicians have such a false or cultivated public persona that you rarely, if ever, get to see the real 'them'. So there are huge gaps in my understanding of the political process and concepts.
As a layperson, then, my political views are usually just a combination of gut feelings and instinctive reactions to what politicians say and do as reported in the media. For example, I have long-standing feelings of resentment, hostility and animosity towards John Howard. This is partly rational, based on observations of how he has behaved on specific issues (from asylum seekers to war in Iraq to our indigenous people) that have colored my view of him, despite my not being 100% aware of every little detail of the politics involved. And my feelings are partly irrational, based on general impressions of him as someone who is sneery and dismissive of my concerns. The kind of person who, if I bumped into him in the street and outlined my feelings on various issues, would stand and nod impatiently and look over my shoulder and give me the impression he wasn't really listening at all. Further impressions of him are that he is sly, shifty and dishonest, and, as a lawyer, someone who would probably bamboozle me with big words and esoteric concepts so that I would find myself unable to successfully argue a point with him, and I would go away confused and defeated, but in my heart remain unconvinced. And my feelings of being disenfranchised are heightened by the sense that he is a man who has a distinctly blokey agenda for this nation; someone who idolises sport, war, beer-drinking and mateship, and not much else.
Sadly, my feelings on Mark Latham are not much more positive. Despite being happy that under his leadership, the Labor Party has a greater chance of winning than under his predecessors, at a personal level I find him cold and similarly blokey--the main difference is, if I bumped into him in the street, he would probably make a convincing show of pretending to listen, consistent with Labor's image as being more 'caring-sharing' than the Liberal party.
Anyway, based on these vague, intuitive feelings as to their characters, my political views are then sharpened by observing their day-to-day behaviors and statements as reported by our media. But while I like to believe I am less influenced by 'opinion' than by straight-up 'news'--forming my views by the actual words and images that I receive through the various media and not from what any pundit tells me those words and images mean--due to the media’s filtering process which serves us soundbites and grabs, I know am subtly being influenced by the opinion makers who control the media. And I am vaguely aware that they have their own agendas, even if I don’t always understand what those agendas are.
So the whole thing is vague and imprecise, if not entirely uninformed. But if I’m going to be influenced by opinion makers whether I like it or not, I can at least choose whose opinions I’d like to subscribe to. And that's what I like about the blogosphere--because they are independent, I know I can trust the opinions of bloggers like my Fab Four--Tim Dunlop, Rob Schaap, John Quiggin and Christopher Sheil. I happily defer to their specialised knowledge of the nitty gritties of the relevant issues and have, through absorbing their opinions over time, come to rely on the fact that their views are going to be similar to mine, only better formed and more credibly justified. They are undoubtedly 'intellectual', however I do not regard them as ‘elites’ nor do I feel inferior or somehow resent their years of education and specialisation that have made them experts on various topics. I just appreciate that they have more rational reasons than I do for holding the same (or usually very similar) views as me.
Anyway, like I said, this is just some random thoughts on the subject. Be interested to hear what others think.

posted by Gianna 10:05 AM

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Yeeeeeeeooooooooooooouuuuuuuwwwwwwwwwwwwww!
Just kidding...nothing yet. Wherefore art thou, babe?

posted by Gianna 3:52 AM

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Here's looking at you, kid
This is good to hear. Even if it does seem like a bit of a no-brainer--I mean, how many times have you heard a mum (or dad) talking about falling in love with their new child?

"[functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging] scanners show the brains of young mothers lit up in the same way when they looked at their babies as the brains of people who looked at images of their lovers."

And this bit seems to support the notion that 'love is blind':

"Parts of the brain also turned off when looking at a lover, spouse or child and that was the system involved in making negative judgments, the team at University College London (UCL) said."

Can't wait to put the theory into practice, anyway. (Hope it doesn't just apply to "young" mothers though!)

posted by Gianna 11:56 AM

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Open mike: All shook up
I'm due tomorrow and I'm finally getting a bit nervous. It's such a huge unknown. You lie there thinking, at every movement, "is this it? This could be it. Perhaps this is it...Nah, this isn't it. Or....is it?" Anyway, I thought this was as good a time as any to have an 'open mike' post--haven't had one in a while. So please talk amongst your elves! Here's what's running through my mind right now. Valentine's Day today. For one brief moment I thought perhaps this year I was going to get a card, but then I realised I had forgotten to post it...boom-TISH! Ah, well, the whole thing's a cliche and a big commercial hoax, anyway. Sniff. John Howard. Seems like he really is shaken by his new opponent. Having painted himself into a corner with the super backflip he's now talking about giving pollies a pay rise to compensate, which is really going to go down well in the electorate. Then there's that comment he made yesterday, "I'd rather die in a ditch over national security than super". Careful what you wish for, Johnny. The weather. What's with this heatwave?! It's been around 40 degrees everyday for the past week. I'm as hot as hell and I can't take it anymore! The last days of Chez Moi. This is the biggie. It is only very slowly dawning on me that my life is about to change drastically, that I'm about to become a parent, that for the rest of my life someone else is going to be dependent on me, that these are the last few days of being a solo entity. Wow....I kind of can't believe it sometimes. Me and my crazy ideas.
Over to you.

posted by Gianna 2:06 AM

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Two as one
Ah, great minds think alike. John Howard suddenly announces he will match Mark Latham's proposed super changes. Well, almost. The changes, clawing pollies' super back from 69% to 9% like everyone else, won't apply to the PM himself:

"I will take the entitlements I have under the existing scheme," he said.

Natch. Can't see a transcript of the PM's press conference online yet but on the news he said something like, "when I see a good idea, I will go with it". Which begs the question, in all these years in office, why he couldn't he think of it himself?
Obviously a win for Latham and while Howard probably thinks he's neutralising the issue, it just reinforces the idea that he really is out of touch. Well played, Latham. How about some more good ideas--the Liberals could clearly use a bit of help.

posted by Gianna 5:02 PM

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Accidental tourists
I like these latest surreal search strings which have directed people to my site: Chirac child tuna elf, and President Carter attacking an animal. There's also been a stack of searches lately for 'girls in thongs' and 'girls without thongs'. Why the obsession with beach footwear, I wonder?

posted by Gianna 7:31 AM

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Being pro-bush
Tim Blair reckons this item from his Bulletin column last November is evidence he cares about the environment--the American environment, that is:

THE ENVIRONMENT MUST be protected, especially the vital roads/factories/buildings part of the environment. But some attention too must be paid to the animal/tree sector, which is why on Saturday morning I joined about 100 volunteers planting willow trees in the shadow of the giant Sierra Nevada mountains. This event was supported by a coalition of local business and environmental groups, and was distinct from most Australian environmental initiatives in that it wasn't defined by loathing of agriculture or rejection of capitalism. Some of the volunteers were ranchers, working alongside members of the Washoe Indian tribe. There was no chanting or hugging. There was, however, beer.

I'm sure this gave you enough warm and fuzzies to last a lifetime, tim, but it sounds a bit unAustralian to me.

posted by Gianna 7:24 AM

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Enough said
Damn, I wish I'd blogged that.

posted by Gianna 2:29 PM

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Hues game
There's nothing like bright colors to cheer me up, so I'm enjoying this HTML color chart (via Barista's link to a color psychology quiz--I am Hot Pink; Barista is Steel Blue) Look at all the gorgeous aquablues and seagreens! I'm tempted to try a site redesign. It's been over a year after all. But I fear I'm too lazy. You know what? I've just realised the interior of this house I'm renting is actually painted in my blog's colors: two shades of blue plus yellow. The colors are much paler though--like someone tipped a bucket of bleach over them--light blue walls with cornflower blue window and door frames and skirting boards and pale yellow doors...all very beachy. I'm happy it's not all beige, anyway, especially after the last house.

posted by Gianna 4:13 PM

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The long and curlies
I go to the beauty parlour at the end of my street and let the beautician, Rose, tackle the map of Tassie for me. Rose, who is thirtysomething too, has had five kids, so we bond over talk about labouring and she somehow convinces me that the whole experience is actually something to look forward to. She jokes how so many women fear childbirth but are game enough to have a Brazilian wax (man, I'm not!). Anyway, after having admittedly given in to vanity and cultural pressure and had a leg and bikini wax, I am however a bit offended when I sit down to let hairdresser Francine trim my hair and she looks at me critically and says, "Hmmm...have you ever considered straightening your hair?". You may have noticed from the photo I posted a few weeks ago that I have quite curly hair. "Oh yeah," I say. "I blow-dried it straight every single day for more than a decade, until last year." (Last year, I just went 'ah, stuff this' and started wearing it au naturel.) Francine shakes her head. "I mean, chemically straightened. You know, like a straight perm." She pulls one of my curls taut. "It would look so much better straight," she says.
What is this cultural obsession with straight hair?! Why are curls so reviled? The other day there was a TV promo for some new makeover show hosted by Australian fashion designer Wayne Cooper and the promo said something like, "Curly perms? Hate them." Well, any girl with natural curls knows that they aren't all that distinguishable from perms; indeed, I had to suffer a hundred people asking me if I'd had a perm once I stopped blowdrying the buggery out of my hair. No, it's clearly a crime to have curly hair, full-stop.
Francine continues, "I worked on one of my clients for 18 months before she agreed to do it, and she's never looked back." I want to laugh at her admission that she 'worked on' the client for so long. But I suppose she's just being a businesswoman. Of course the client's never looked back, though; she can't. As soon as you start altering your appearance this way, you are locked into an expensive cycle from which it is difficult to extract yourself, because of that annoying thing called regrowth. Ask anyone who's ever had blonde foils put in their hair.
I ask Francine, out of curiosity, how much it would cost. "$275," she says blithely. Right. And what about the necessary touchups? "$75, but you only need to get it done every six weeks or so." Well, you guys can do the maths. This relentless pressure to relieve women of their money in the name of beauty really is a kind of economic oppression, I reckon. Metrosexuals don't have a clue what they're in for.

posted by Gianna 4:03 PM

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