lightning strikes twice

In an amazing and enlightening post titled What Are You Afraid Of?, Dave Pollard distills the essence of fear for the working classes, and the “catering/affluent/educated” class.

Fears of the Catering/Affluent/Educated Class:

• Recession: Because we own more, we are more vulnerable to declines in value of our assets, and because our work is so tied up in the modern global interrelated economy, a recession that makes our skills less valuable and basic survival skills more valuable threatens us more.
• Responsibility: By virtue of having more control and say in our world, more authority, we also have more responsibility. But, although this is a controversial thing to say, I think we’re afraid of this responsibility, afraid of not being able to discharge it well, of letting people down. We long, many of us, for a simple, responsibility-free life. The idea that this is civilization’s final century is horrific not only because of the loss and suffering, but because of the guilt of what we might have done to prevent it.
• Living in the Real World: Affluence allows us to cut ourselves off from the real world, to live in communities (and cars) where we are cut off from the rest of the world, to live inside our own heads, where it’s safe and secure. A brutal ‘real’ world where the majority love to hunt, accept cruelty and violence as normal, hate others, and are enthralled by movies and YouTube videos that show torture, rape and murder is terrifying to us.
• Intimacy: This is probably a consequence of the fear above. Intimacy involves emotional vulnerability, and those of us who have been cocooned emotionally most of our lives and who have experienced, at least once, the anguish of being emotionally hurt when we have opened ourselves up, quickly become afraid to repeat the experience.
• War: We know war never solves anything, never has a winner, and always makes things worse. Yet we see it everywhere, becoming bloodier all the time. Machetes used to kill neighbours in Rwanda, torture, rape, burning of villages, massive theft by gangs and enslavement of children in Darfur — we find these things unfathomable and unbearable, contrary to our notion of humanity.
• Letting Go: I think educated people find it harder to just accept, to abandon themselves and their ideas, to let go of what control they have. We are inherently more anal than those who live close to the edge, by their wits. Contrary to all logic, Colombians are more happy than Americans, perhaps because they don’t worry about things they have no control over.

The (fake) man is a genius:

Re: the dismay over events at the Journal, let me say this: There comes a moment in the life of every filthy hack when he finally realizes what business he’s actually in — not the glamorous, rollicking newsman’s life depicted in movies like The Front Page and His Girl Friday; not the grandiose investigative heroics of All the President’s Men and The Insider; but rather the grubby business of attracting an audience to whom advertising messages can be shown, and performing this task for a tiny fraction of the money your organization intends to generate from those advertisements. In other words, you are a whore. And not even a well-paid one.

Better yet, you are duped into not realizing your whoredom by being flattered and pandered to and spoonfed lies about the importance of what you do. You believe these lies and fill yourself with the notion that you are central to the business at hand — essential, key, vital, necessary. But then one day, for whatever reason, you see the real nature of your job. You realize that far from being central to the business of journalism you are in fact the piece that could most easily be dispensed with.

Much to your chagrin and dismay you realize that the true heart of your corporation beats not in the newsroom, where you sit, but on the other side of the wall, in that storied realm you’ve never actually visited but where you are told various dirty people do various dirty things and are paid, you’ve heard, a great deal more than you are. You’ve always dismissed those people, thought of them as a pack of glad-handing graspers who were kept on board to keep the ad machine running so that you, Mr. Hack, could carry on the grand important work of Journalism with a capital J.

Then one day you realize you’ve had it backwards. The beast doesn’t exist to support you. You exist to support the beast. They, not you, are running this business, and they laugh at you behind your back and not-so-secretly despise you for being so easily tricked into lining their pockets for them. The truth is right there in front of you! It has been all along! This is all even more hilarious because you make such a big deal about how shrewd and cynical you are; you’re the tough guy who cuts through the bullshit and spots the truth. Except when it comes to your own situation, that is.

Suddenly you feel like a puffed-up, pious fool. Which is good, because that is exactly what you are.

I hate TV, but there’s a few things I’ve enjoyed over the last couple of years, and generally they are TV series that I can watch at my leisure (Yes, I’m a stuff white people like cliche):

• The Sopranos
• The Wire
• Friday Night Lights

That last one is the most recent obsession.  We’ve just finished season 1, and will get started on 2 just as soon as we can… but unfortunately there are only 37 episodes total, which is going to make for a quick and sad end to it.

I suspect I’d also really like Arrested Development, but haven’t got the DVDs so haven’t been able to get into it.

Through a perk, we went to see Graham Murphy’s adaptation of Swan Lake performed by the Australian Ballet at the Opera House on Wednesday night.  Brilliant seats, right in the middle about five rows back.

I’ve never been to the ballet before, and to be honest I expected I’d be a little bored, not understanding the intricacies and conventions.  However, it was spell-binding.  We brushed up on the plot before we left, and knowing a little bit about it, along with the familiar parts of the score helped the enjoyment level quite a bit.  I’ve no idea how this compares to other performances, but this review of the same production (with the same sets, but probably different cast) is glowing.  Much better than watching an average cliched film.

God I loved this game! Good times. More details here

• Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead – bleak and dark film about a pair of brothers, hopeless loser Hank (Ethan Hawke) and scheming Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who get together to rob their parents jewellery store, starting of a sequence of disastrous events.  Featuring murder, drug-abuse, infidelity and torn apart families, it’s not an easy film to watch.  Basically it is a story about how easily things can get out of hand, particularly when people are not brave enough to stand up and face their mistakes. 7/10
• Paris – the lead actor in this film is a friend of a friend, so it felt a bit more personal.  Anyway, he’s been diagnosed with a heart condition and has perhaps only months to live.  All around people have their stories unfolding, and in this way it could have turned into a disaster like Crash, but thankfully did not turn into a moralistic and judgemental mess.  From the story of Benoit in Northern Africa, to Caroline, the market worker in a man’s world, to Pierre’s sister who feels old and past it there was resonance with each character.  Not a perfect film, but pretty decent.  7/10
• The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford – a really long (153min), but really good film, starring Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck.  Jesse James is a charismatic and increasingly wayward criminal, while Robert Ford is best described as a “fan-boy”, who has worshipped James since he was twelve.  The characterisations are great, and it didn’t feel like it was too long, just about right.  There’s a good interview with Casey Affleck here at smh.com.au

Fear The Beard – damn straight!

random Trender Bender love (via yourfriendaxel):

i was in C’s Flashback on Friday afternoon

there were two young fashion scenesters downstairs where i was looking at jeans

one said to the other: ”hey man, i really wanna see what you wore to your formal”

the other said: ”the pictures are on trender bender dude, check em out”

i was so proud

“We don’t need to increase our goods nearly as much as we need to scale down our wants. Not wanting something is as good as possessing it.” - Donald Horban

Great quote, but I’ve no idea who Donald Horban is — all the searches I’ve done just return results with this quote in them.

• Maltese Falcon – Made in 1941.  Classic.  Snappy dialogue, intrigue.  Who killed Sam Spade’s partner, and where is the Maltese Falcon.  Bogie is awesome. Great Film.
• North by Northwest – drags a bit in places, but interesting enough.  Cary Grant is pretty good.