A Letter to Tony Abbott Expressing Why I Would be an Excellent Knight

To my liege lord Tony Abbott: Scourge of Gillard; Rhodes Scholar; Guardian of Free Speech; Climate Change Denialist Pragmatist; Reigning Top Bloke of the Young Liberals; Holder of the Sacred Speedos; The Captain,

After the glorious revelation of your reinstatement of knights and dames amongst the proud people of Australia, today I write to you to state my case to become a knight of the Queen’s court and your blessed parliament.

Obviously, we are not familiar with one another; or, rather, you are not familiar with me (for I am somewhat familiar with you - see: http://arantingdistraction.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/some-true-facts-about-tony-abbott.html). In brief, I am a student of literature, striving in this most noble of pursuits to achieve a PhD. Predictably, then, I have valuable qualities of articulation and wit, alongside surprizing, and deft, skills in leadership and swordplay.

Yet, more importantly, I am a loyal subject of your lordly reign; respectful and honourable in the true blue tradition of Australian culture that knows the Queen to be more than a figurehead, but the spiritual and physical ruler of our land that you, like a shepherd’s wolfhound fearsomely protecting the flock, protect and nurture for her in your stately, reasonable and appropriately combative manner.

Strictly speaking, however, despite these virtues, I do not meet your pivotal requirement that recipients of the honorific title Sir or Dame be Australians of “extraordinary and pre-eminent achievement and merit.” This is not to say that my thesis on Modernist and Postmodernist poetry will fail one day to be significant—truly, it will be a catalyst of shifting global notions about how we conceive reality—but it is yet to achieve these rarefied airs.

I have thus achieved nothing particularly of note. My merit, in your terms, is negligible.

Indeed, I am not the type of person usually accorded the type of value associated with being knighted or dame-ed. I am not a politician, army guy, lawyer, lawmaker, disease-solving doctor, mining or media magnate, or magnificent sportsman (although my air hockey skills are something to behold: a mixture of power, precision and psychological intimidation, held together by a South American-style flair).

But I feel we must consider the honour of being knighted as something more than just a symbolic title; a reward for general and lifelong excellence; a prefix before a name in an email. It is here that I am well-equipped to be dubbed Sir Dick. Because as a real, bonafide, reified knight, I believe I would be more than an asset to the realm.

Firstly, my natural leadership skills have granted me a rare understanding of the serfs who work our land. My firm hand and careful management strategies would maximise their productivity, while keeping them properly cowed. It is time, again, for our rural areas and outlying suburbs to be reminded that they are only given leave to work the land because of the benevolence of you, Mr Abbott, and our Queen.

It is in this regard that I believe reinstating Prima Nocte—the right of the lord to take the virginity of the serf’s maiden daughters—to be a prudent notion. The members of your cabinet, along with our various and bored lord mayors, would benefit and the serfs would be reminded of their rightful place: to work for and please us.

Secondly, my castle building knowledge is unmatched. I would build, or supervise the building of, many great monuments to our monarchy, Mr Abbott. Australia would be littered with bastions of your and the Queen’s splendour, which serve also the practical purpose of keeping the serfs and any other undesirables out with a careful system of hot oils and catapults placed upon on the walls.

They would be the homes of your front bench, Andrew Bolt (to retire to when the stresses of the critical world become, understandably, too much), Gina Rinehart, and Rupert Murdoch (although Rupert and Gina may already have castles). They would uphold the rights of bigots and protect the virginity of your daughters, who would be locked high in the Maiden’s Tower I have specifically designed.

Thirdly, my skills with the greatsword are of a legendary character. They sing of my exploits all over the land. The famous ballad, ‘The Dick’s Extension’ (which I suspect you may have heard), tells the tale of my conquest of Prahran, where my weapon, so expertly wielded, appeared to onlookers as an extension of my body.

My formidable reputation would uphold your laws with vigour and honour. Rebellions would be averted just by the rumour of my imminent presence; wars won with a single, morale crushing blow; and the safety of our land assured.

To be a knight is all I have ever really dreamed of. While other little boys stared wistfully into space thinking about being a footballer, I was off dominating weaker people, constructing castles and practicing with my greatsword. I thus have years of training.

I will swear fealty to you brave Prime Minister, protecting home and hearth with the totality of my being.  

With these attributes in mind, please consider me for knighthood.

Yours in utter sincerity and with God’s gleaming goodly presence illuminating my blondeness,

David Dick

Let's Sexercise Till We're 80

Let me begin by saying that I don’t particularly care for Kylie’s music. It’s not because I’m too cool.[1] I’m not dolewave or bust. Abiding by the old cliché—‘oh, I just love all music’—I truly do enjoy all music—well, except for most thrash metal and cookie monster singing, which is just awful—and listen to a fairly wide variety with only minimal discrimination (see my dislike of metal).

It’s not even that bubble-gum pop dance music is beneath my rarefied academic standing and serenely intellectual reading of the avant-garde. Trust me, I am as suspect to the subtle and persistent invasiveness of pop culture, with all its goods and glittery chattels, as any person inundated in the internet, well YouTube, age. I don’t spend my evenings seated in a leather armchair, swirling cognac and deconstructing Deleuze whilst wearing a monocle, a fine Kashmir cardigan and well-healed slippers, a scarf carelessly flung around my neck. Generally, I indulge myself in free-to-air television and videos of screaming goats/top ten countdowns of the best superhero weapons (Iron Man’s suit, predictably, wins hands down).

Rather, it’s as simple as the fact that her music has never really grabbed a hold of me. Yeah, ‘Can’t Get You Outta My Head’ and ‘Spinning Around’ are fun tracks, and I think we’d all be lying if we were to say we’d never done the ‘Locomotion.’ I’ve locomotioned—or was it locomotored?—like a surprisingly nimble train on more than one occasion. Even then, however, I’m not going to go out of my way to listen to Kylie.

Yet, after reading this what seems to be camp tongue-in-cheek,[2] albeit with a serious contention, piece of tripe—http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/private-sydney/the-end-of-my-love-affair-with-kylie-minogue-20140321-356if.html—I will defend Kylie's right to sing about sex—having it, embodying it, affixing a ‘y’ to the end of it and being it—in whatever ribald terms she feels warrant such expression. ‘Sexercise’ for all and sundry, I say! ‘Les Sex’ for everyone! Why not stop there? Let’s chuck in some ‘Sexy Love’ for the hell of it because why not?  

The gist of the article is that Kylie should essentially, at her “age,” scale down the sexual content—in her music—and provocative sexual image she insists on projecting—a cover shoot for GQ magazine with a couple of young male models comes under fire. Why? Well, apparently, at a ripe 44—and dayum it is a ripe 44—it’s “a little bit creepy and undignified” to sing about sex in particularly physical, one may say kitschy, terms. Worse still, she actually has the audacity to try and be sexy! Still! At her age! How dare she refuse to submit to Anne Bancroft’s upper-class cougar image in The Graduate!

And, topping it all off, adding the completely innuendo-less cherry to the top, Kylie defended the indefensible, the utterly morally corrupt, the disfigured hell-spawn of the Devil, the pop-star Tony Abbott of our time: Miley Cyrus!!!

GASP!!!

Kylie didn’t lecture a young woman on how to behave!? She didn’t act like her facsimile mother!?

WITCH!!!

(A moment, obviously, while you all collect your jaws from the ground and recover from the fainting fit I am sure all you had. Please, go have a drink of water and hydrate. Maybe a chocolate bar to get some sugar back in your blood.)

…

What ageist and sexist garbage. And let’s add nonsensical to the mix too, because Miley’s behaviour doesn’t really have anything to do with Kylie’s age and her notions about the younger star’s actions. She is entitled to her opinions, and her opinion about Miley being a “scapegoat” in pop music (particularly in terms of ‘appropriate’ levels of female, even youthful, sexual and personal expression) is actually not too far off the mark. If Kylie thinks that Miley is ok doing what she is doing, that it is Miley's choice, then why criticise her for having such an opinion?

The suggestion, then, is that Kylie should be leading her down some mythical path leading to a righteous ideal of pop-stardom. (Is that a virgin image or the married with children one? Perhaps, the road leads to gay iconicity? Maybe, Jason Donovan? Who knows? I get confused when it comes to socially accepted appropriate female behaviour.) Yet, since when was Kylie supposed to be a role model for younger pop-stars? Who gave her that role? And why has she not been more present in Brittany’s life, I ask?

But back to the ageist and sexist thing, which is at the heart of my rant here.

Just because Kylie is getting older does not mean she is suddenly barred from sexually expressing herself; that this aging process mysteriously dismisses, or precludes, her sexuality. And let’s talk simply here, perhaps quaintly in keeping with the author’s old-fashioned view of ‘dignified’ behaviour: Kylie is a stone-cold fox and if she wants to flaunt it and use it as a tool in her continued career as a singer, then she has every right to do so. Even if she was starting to wrinkle and show her age, perhaps sag here and there, she can still express her sexuality, in whatever over-the-top, Sia-written, way she so desires. It is utterly her right to do so. And I, for one, am grateful for it.

Ultimately, I can’t help but think that this is all tied up with her being a woman. To pull a tired analogy out of the bag, we look to Hugh Hefner, in all his excessive age, as some sort of demi-love-god; chuckling and muttering, ‘good old Hugh. Still got it! The sly dog!’ We excuse his extremely creepy, grandfatherly expression of sexuality. But as soon as a woman like Kylie—who even has the advantage of being spectacularly attractive—in all her prohibitive 44 years (half Hugh’s age) has the gall to sing gyrating-ly of ‘Sexercise’ and suit down next to a couple of much younger models, people scream, ‘act your age,’ suggestively silently amending, ‘you slut,’ to make the point clear.

And, really, attractiveness should have nothing to do with it. Sexual expression is not something that should be stashed away as people age just so the archaic and repressed expectations of society are sated; whether the lady, or man, in question is 18 or 80 if they want to call themselves a sexual being, then so be it.

In the end, we all want ‘Sexy Love.’ What’s the point of hiding it behind some kind of disguised, unassuming and restrained exterior? And why criticise people who do not feel compelled to hide it just because of their age or looks?

Let’s just do the locomotion and get on with life.

---

[1] Happy to hear refutations of this statement … not all at once now.

[2] Poorly done, by the way; as in, not really funny … at all.

Some True Facts About the Platypus.

1.     The plural of Platypus is ‘Platypie.’

2.     Commonly thought to be a marsupial, the Platypus is actually most closely related to the mallard and sea otter—although it does share certain characteristics with the echidna: namely, a rigid sense of its territory and the joyous spectacle of its lovemaking. The famed biologist/meteorologist/garden gnome expert (hortagnomatist), Zinåne McGrégoré, has successfully and cogently traced Platypus genetics back three centuries to the beautifully strange moment of this rebellious union of the mallard and sea otter that birthed the First Platypus.[1]

3.     Supporting McGrégoré’s hypothesis is the curious oddity that Platypie worship, and actively aspire to, the status of the Cosmic Duck, whose quack does not echo in eternity; whose churning webbed feet turn the world; whose desire is bread; and whose pond can only ever be a dream for the Platypus.

4.     They are famously shy because they are embarrassed they cannot fly. If caught by surprise, you will often find them floating on their backs looking longingly at the sky, sometimes holding flippers.

5.     Their arch nemesis is the goose. Although more rare recently due to human intervention, pitched battles between a group of Platypie and some geese still happen with alarming frequency.

6.     When they hide, they tend to hide in their disguised, neat, Cosmic Duck decorated, and surprisingly well-furnished riverbank burrows. Like humans, they consider these homes to be their castle and jealousy guard them against attack from geese. 

7.     The sound a Platypus makes is quite close to the bark of a kelpie.

8.     Platypie live in large groups, or ‘platypacks,’ of between 10 to 33 Platypie, in well ordered communities of burrows and Cosmic Duck temples. A sole matriarch leads these Playtpacks and can be identified by the gum tree leaf they carry around in their bill, which McGrégoré simply calls the ‘scepter.’ This matriarch assumes her position—generally held for life—through a rudimentary, and still yet to be fully understood, democratic system that appears to mostly involve the Platypie barking at each other and scheming in their burrows.

9.     Their diet consists of river moss, geese eggs (hence some of the animosity) and tadpoles. Indeed, they are considered the finest tadpole hunters in the known world, utilizing a complex system of sonar, pack hunting techniques—involving copious and morally questionable diversionary tactics—and their outstanding agility to capture tadpoles by the hundreds.

10.  The males have toxic spikes, or spurs, on their legs. These act both as defensive tools and emergency penises in the event of a particularly horrific goose attack. The toxin these spikes carry is poisonous to all but the Platypus for whom it essentially acts as a fertiliser.

---

[1] See his book, The Changing of the Webbéd River Tides: When Mallard Met Otter (2005), for more detailed information about the conception of the Platypus.

Where do computer files go when computer files go away; or, I accidentally deleted a whole days work … where the fuck is it?

In the process of the slightly weird—perhaps, convoluted—system I have of ensuring that I backup everything I work on, the other day I managed to delete a document I had spent all the previous day writing.

            To be honest, I have done this before. Moving around the monstrous, damn near organic thing that is my PhD Folder, between university hard drive and external hard disk and my home laptop, occasionally means that accidents and peculiarities occur. Although I like to think that technology is just having a laugh at my expense (ever felt like your computer was watching you, taunting you, just breaking down or shutting off to be pest?), when these accidents occur, they are generally my fault. This is particularly because I am somewhat OCD when it comes to deleting old versions of files/folders/documents. Thus, the problem often rears its head when I delete older versions that actually, in the end, through some dynamic twist of fate, are indeed the very things I had been working on.

            Fortunately, in most cases, I am usually able to recuperate most of the work by pleadingly looking into the Recycle Bin and gently coaxing free what I deleted the previous day: because one does not make demands of the Recycle Bin, one asks its permission to have one’s work back, and one is grateful for its benevolent nature.

And even then, when the Recycle Bin has failed me—and thus shows its true toxic self—I have never eliminated anything that, after a few moments of self-rage, I knew I wouldn’t be able to reproduce anyway.

            Then yesterday happened.

            I few blogs ago I wrote about losing my enthusiasm for my task; that the theoretical muse—in the sense of it being figurative and me needing some muse to help me with theory—had wandered off somewhere. On Monday it returned and it was all shiny and happy and probably coked up, but full of ideas and piss and vinegar and, with its forceful, slightly abrasive, blessing, I managed to produce the best work I have written in nearly three months.

            It gave me structure. It gave me something I was happy to work with.

            Then I deleted it, tried to manipulate the Recycle Bin—which rebelled against my disrespect … jerk paper-scrunch-sound-making-arsehole—and now it is gone, disappeared into some vague abstract computerized space where deleted documents go to dwell and sadly watch us desperately try to find them, as we scream, ‘why?’ Sure, they leave hints, like in the Open Recent directory in Word or sometimes a random shortcut brought up by a random search, but these are only ghosts, literally empty memories and signifiers with nothing behind them. The name of the document is there, filling you with hope, but that is all it has become: a name; a name you whisper over and again; which becomes a deranged mutter; which becomes an angry cry; which becomes the unhinged laughter of wry acceptance; which becomes silence.

            You can only ask yourself (or the computer): where has it gone?

            It is a question we will never know the answer to. Perhaps, it just evaporates into what is truly nothing. Perhaps, it is transmitted to some other megacomputer that stores all deleted files. Perhaps, there is a place in the computer, beyond our reach, where deleted files all hang out, eating sausage rolls, having a dip, singing campfire songs about being abandoned, but sort of being OK with it.

            I can say that I miss my document. It was honest and everything I wanted in a full days work. The sad thing is that I cannot even remember now, two days later, what it looked like: it was a flash of inspiration and of intense writing; then, again, like a flash, it was gone.

            A disclaimer: I am, I think, blatantly romanticizing the lost document here. The work was probably quite good, but that it is now gone means that I think it was the next closest thing to Shakespeare—and we’ve all been guilty of this; of taking the blasé (although what I had written was not blasé, it was reflective and smooth and OK) and imbuing it with super powers when we’re not allowed to access it or be near it anymore. Indeed, it is this phenomenon of stating the lost document’s transcendence simply because it is lost that stops us just rewriting the damn thing (its certainly stopping me at the moment), and I wonder if it, in watching us depressingly from its inaccessible space in the computer or in lost document heaven—where it goes when it goes away: a falsely sunny place of other deleted files, all telling their stories about how they were lost, but together, freed of having to be amended and corrected and edited, they are now found—slightly basks in the hold it has over us, the stages of grief it puts us through, while looking at itself and saying, ‘fuck, I look good. He’ll/she’ll never have it as good as me.’  

Therefore, when we are finally capable of recognizing that perhaps we are able to rewrite it, make something better of and from the fragments of its shape playing at the corners of memory, then it ceases to have this elevated sense of importance, as if the fate of the world lies in its creation and vanishing. Its staggering arrogance in its hidden place is drawn to question and we begin again. Sometimes, the new version is even better.

Speaking of which, I should probably start again.

a letter to the jerk(s) who stole my bike

Dear fuckstain(s), cockhead(s), arsehole(s) afflicted with elephantitis levels of jerkishness, average-drunk-joe(s)-looking-for-a-ride-home-on-a-bike-with-flat-tires-and-questionable-brakes, crackhead(s) who stole my bike out of my garage the other night,

I hope you crash and seriously hurt yourself. And I don’t mean death—I’m heartless, not soulless—or even any long lasting disability—you don’t deserve a pension—but I want a broken coccyx bone, maybe a fractured shin. I’d settle, perhaps, for some serious whiplash that leaves you with a deeply embedded psychological fear of whiplash for the rest of your life.

If you don’t cause yourself physical injury, I hope you suffer a seriously damaged ego. Because I imagine that you’re the type of person, or persons, who would take my bike off ‘sick jumps’—if you haven’t already sold it for drugs or a goon bag or a carton of Winnies—in front of your slack-jawed, graffiti-stained, mulleted, shirtless, Bundy drinking mates. (I don’t give a shit about clichés here too. I’ll work the stereotype of this bike thief bastard into the ground. Righteous indignity gives me the right, dammit.) And when you take it off your ‘sick jumps’ I hope you stack and look like a dickhead … wait, more of a dickhead.

Just so you know, both the tires and the rear brake are pretty stuffed—as in, I was intending to get them fixed at some price so I could ride it again. So, after you had finished weaselling into my garage and took off with my bike in your sneaky cowardly getaway, I hope the ride home was bloody uncomfortable as you felt every cobblestone, every bump, every aberration in the road soar up through the flat tires and right into your rear-end. I hope, in riding on flat tires, you bent and screwed them up so much that the bike was worth less than when you pinched it, robbing you of at least one night on the rock. I hope you experienced a moment of utterly abject fear as you hooned down a hill and realised that the brakes were refusing to slow the bike down to a manageable speed. I hope you made the connection between the road you felt at a distance through the flat tires and the fact that you may very soon be feeling this road up close without the mediating qualities of my bike’s frame; without even the flat tires between you and it.

Because, in the end, you trumpet-cunt, and here is the kicker, that bike is cursed. The bugger threw me two times (once sending me to the hospital), always threatened to slide out from under me, and has, after these accidents, never let itself be fully repaired—no matter how much money I’ve sunk into it. I’m sure in some primordial and ancient cultures they told stories of my bike’s evils and autonomous intent to maim to frighten their children into being proper and active members of society: ‘behave, or the bike will come, and you will have to ride it …’

I hope you enjoy the bike in all its twisted glory. I hope the curse rears its ugly head when you try to ride it and fall off, or sell it and get little for it.

And you might ask, ‘why then Dave, considering the bike’s obvious evil, do you care that it is gone?’ Because it’s mine and I detest thievery of other people’s property that they have managed to acquire with their hard-earned: it’s low and pathetic. Moreover, despite its curse, it was fun—in the sense of wrestling with a nippy puppy that occasionally draws blood—and practical and fast and I miss it.

The person or people who stole my bike are less than, and certainly not equal to, the oddly sticky grease stains above my stove. Pigs.

Sincerely,

Dave

PS. Go and hurt yourself.

can someone please find my enthusiasm?

The problem with writing a PhD thesis is the same problem one has with writing anything: sometimes your enthusiasm or inspiration or muse-like-angel-creature for the project decides to pack up and leave, and you’re left straggling after it, desperately trying to bribe it with treats to hang around a little longer; some morsel or promise of revealing it to the world as the thing that drove you. In other words, you promise it a kind of fame, an acknowledgment of its existence.

However, it mostly just looks at you curiously, as if it doesn’t know you anymore—doesn’t want to know you anymore—and potters gently off. Where? I couldn’t tell you, and if you know, could you please tell me so I can go and fetch it back. I suspect you can find it in the vast mental space beyond our own heads that we can never hope to fully grasp—like the little differences between you and me. It perches there, outside of reach and suddenly invisible to your needs, contemplating nothing but what you want to know and express, holding, or jealously guarding, all this beautiful information for itself.

            This abandonment, far from being sudden, is a curious, utterly self-aware process of deflation. It is a process I have been undergoing in the last couple of weeks as I grapple with trying to produce some vital, theory-driven chapters that had been clear in my head a week or two ago, but have now become this convoluted mess of facts and contradictions, quotes and misquotes, my opinions and others. My enthusiasm used to sort out all the riff from the raff for me; making clear what I needed and what I didn’t; making the process of reading my notes enticing, rather than the utter bore against which all other bores are compared. And my inspiration made writing it all a constant process of illumination, as if with every word I learned something new about my topic—and thus myself and my intellect—I didn’t even know was present.

            Despite the dryness of an English Literature PhD thesis, the presence of this muse figure made the whole thing significantly more interesting and alluring than it otherwise is in the steady, somewhat stately, course of its mostly sterile creation.

            I’m curious now as to how it ever actually entered my head. How did I reach out into space, past the poetry I am supposed to be analysing and the words I am writing, and find something there that helped me locate the aspect in my work that kept my interest balanced delicately on this peak from where I could see the process of my writing as a means of expressing something that I wanted to express; that was important enough to warrant expression?

            Writing is work. This is certain. You can get lucky occasionally: a moment grabs hold and, such is the opportune appearance of this moment, it occurs in close proximity to a notebook or a computer or a typewriter for it to be divulged into and onto. From here, however, you actually have to work the essential idea or image or quote or whatever into something broader than its momentary flash. This is the work of writing: to hold tightly onto this inspiration after its startling materialisation. Alternatively—and this is the more likely establishment of this inspiration—you must entice it out through the repetition of you just being present and writing in spite of its lack: act like you don’t care and in its need to be loved, be expressed and assume the position of the raison d’être of creation, it’ll come to attention. This is also the work of writing.

            Yet, when you look for it too hard, desire it too much, try to coerce it into some kind of authorial submission, it maintains its opacity and distance, and you are left in the position I currently find myself in: wondering what the hell you are actually doing and what, in the end, it all means. There are words there, but they exist in this strange space lacking the kind of certain structure that we, as conscious humans, need to compile the world into something understandable. It’s a lot like human relationships in this way, I guess: the more desperate you become, the more obvious it is that you are not ready for it or another. This, of course, does not mean I’m not continuing to try and find it, only that it obviously senses my need and probably knows I am not ready at the moment for its graceful, life-affirming presence.

            So instead of working on my thesis, I write this instead, which is imbued with a sense of inspiration and, hence, is much easier to provoke into being.

            All the same, if anyone does see my enthusiasm or inspiration or whatever other ethereal thing that kept me focused day-to-day on my work, could you please promptly contact me with its exact location—as far as I know, it doesn’t bite, but what it has learned in the wide world, separate from me, could make this past truth a falsity—or at least tell it that I miss it and I forgive it and it will be welcomed back with open arms and we can get back to making sense of whatever it is that I am writing about.

Planes, Guns, Plots and Neeson

I saw Liam Neeson’s new film, Non-Stop, last week: the alcoholic, stumbling, abrasive cousin to Taken who has boarded a plane in a frankly inappropriate state and utterly forgot his manners—cussing, spilling red wine, ogling the flight attendants—before awkwardly passing out with the full complement of lolling head and half-closed bloodshot eyes before the jet even lands.

It was magnificently awful in a way that can only be true of action movies that try to dress themselves up in thriller-clever clothing, only to shed that nonsense when shit all too suddenly gets real, or the plot clearly slips out of the grasp of the players and it’s easier to shoot the plot (figuratively) in the face … in slow motion, whilst falling backwards, in the aisle.

Because, strangely, Non-Stop was actually sort of good for its first few acts, setting up a completely unrealistic, but nonetheless intriguing, level of suspense. The pacing was about right, the plane setting provided just the right amount of claustrophobia and helplessness, there were plenty of suspicious eyes/faces to become alarmed about, and Neeson wasn’t trying to disguise his Irish accent (when he does, he just sounds more Irish). Plus his character was a drunk, which, at least from my perspective, only made him more dangerous; more inclined to use his unique set of skills for intoxicated vengence. The plane was Neeson County and its inhabitants lived under Drunken Neeson Law. This was a plane I could side with and would've happily taken (accidental Neeson movie reference!) a ride on.

As it proceeded, setting up its murder-on-a-plane-could-it-be-terrorists-or-a-psychopath premise, the film kept on going back for second and third helpings of mystery and danger, heaping it ever higher, and (kind of) drawing me ever closer to the edge of my seat. Building, Non-Stop threw all these story elements in the air and the audience was left waiting with slightly bated breath for Neeson to explode and throw down ‘I will find you, and I will kill you’ style.

)
(Bad ass - but, then, I'd expect no less from my father, albeit with a likely different set of 'skills.')
How was the film going to reconcile these odds and ends into a satisfying ending? What did they all have to do with the plot? How was Neeson going to cope? How was he going to fucking savagely break the neck of this mystery? Was he going to hurl it out the plane into oncoming plane traffic? Oh please let that be it, I muttered.

I watched the final act unfold with a set of feelings bordering on escaping as hysterical laughter and epic sighing disappointment, mingled with a critical understanding that Non-Stop just seemed to have no idea how to handle its thriller-angle, various machinations and the suspense it had so laboriously set up. It was like watching a juggler suddenly realise all those swords he had started juggling were indeed kind of sharp and he struggled with flipping one sword, let alone six. It fell apart in a deluge of idiotic dialogue (my favourite was when the bad guy yelled, ‘and it was all so easy,’ to which I wanted to respond, ‘nothing about your plot looked easy, in fact, if anything, I’d be proud of and loudly touting how meticulous your planning was to make this series of coincidences look like purposeful action’; there was also a ‘Smith! You son of a gun!’ included to make sure we all knew this was, indeed, an action movie, although I was tempted to remind them that Danny Glover surely has a patent on this kind of line), absurd plot twists and something about being disappointed in homeland/plane security post 9-11.

The worst part? I thought Neeson’s revenge fuelled flip out was really pathetically tame. Basically, it was limited to a flying slow motion head shot and, um, moral support for the pilot who had to crash-land the plane.

If I’d written this movie, I would’ve had Neeson throw both bad guys out the plane, take control of the plane, and fly it straight into them as they hurtled to Earth, using them as a rudimentary—perhaps, more symbolic—landing pad: they tried to ‘take’ his plane, and ruin it, well he’d make sure they were part of its safe arrival home. That’s Neeson Justice.

I expected more.

(PS. Watch Taken for the true Neeson experience and play the ‘taken’ game, where you try to use the word ‘taken’ in context as often as possible throughout the course of the film: ie. after a bad guy crashes his car when trying to launch of a platform in pursuit of Neeson: ‘I bet he wishes he hadn’t taken that short cut.’)

once upon a time on the number 6 tram

My brother and I were sampling the local drinking establishments on Chapel St a couple of nights ago, accompanied by outrageously cheap pizzas. We hadn’t gone too hard, but had probably consumed enough to be just at that point of weary where walking home (15-20 minutes) seemed like too much of a bother. Fortunately, the number 6 tram up High St gave us the option of a gentle, short cruise, followed by a 5 minute stroll back to our flat. So we caught the tram.

            After a brief wait, the number 6 sauntered to a halt at our stop. We hoped on board and sat down opposite a man wearing a ski jacket, jeans, sandals (over socks), sunglasses, a beanie, and a copious amount of zinc smeared across his nose and cheekbones. I’m pretty sure he was also wearing a fluorescent backpack. He was standing in the doorway, sort of peering around.

            Now it should be said that it was about 9.30 at night, rendering the sunglasses and cricketer-like zinc coverage completely pointless. Moreover, it was a balmy Melbourne March night, sitting somewhere around 24 degrees. The necessity of the ski jacket and beanie, then, was also a mystery. Of course, anyone who wears sandals over socks is instantly suspect.

            Usually, I would’ve been awake to such weirdness, but after years of serving the inhabitants of Melbourne’s middle-class eastern suburbs, I must’ve had a moment of complete desensitization, because I initially didn’t think much of the fellow. Compared to some I've dealt with, he seemed almost normal.

            Then he started talking.

            Upon seeing us find and take our seats, the man looked like he kind of twitched and his head tilted slightly forward and, presumably, his eyes behind his sunglasses bulged a little. He took two unsteady steps over toward us and then unexpectedly shuffled across to an Indian man listening to his iPod seated next to my brother. Fixing the poor unsuspecting soul with a neutral gaze, the man muttered: “do you know the guy who had two kids and died of a heroin overdose?”

            The Indian fellow ignored, or didn’t hear, him, while my brother and I stifled a giggle. We sure as hell weren’t expecting him to say that. We didn’t choose to ride the tram to talk about Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

            Later on, after some reflection of the incident, we realized that the man was actually having a very weird and very subtle dig at my brother who has been told repeatedly that he closely resembles Hoffman. The sheer randomness of the statement at the time, however, meant we weren’t aware of this, although upon realizing it later, my brother and I were perplexed why anyone would be so obtuse in making the comparison and why they felt the comparison needed to be made to another random on the tram.

            Anyway, he didn’t get an answer, so he wandered back to his doorway and proceeded to swivel his head around, checking out who was on board the tram. His face the entire time was flatly empty, disguised by his sunnies and zinc.

            We thought that perhaps this was the end of his antics, but, no, he continued.

            Out of nowhere he said quite clearly, “you people pretend to know about appropriation, but you nothing of the letter P.”

            Then, as if to firmly make his point—mark it with a finalizing exclamation—he said, “pedophilia,” and lounged back in quiet contemplation.

            It took an enormous amount of self-control not to break down in hilarity. We had no idea what he was talking about, but he sure seemed to. He had made some vital and mysterious connections between ‘appropriation’—perhaps ‘pretending’ to know of it was another comment directed at my brother who had ‘pretended’ to ‘appropriate’ the identity of Phillip Seymour Hoffman?—and the consonant ‘P’, lumping them somehow with ‘pedophilia’ as a transcendent term of totality and finality to make sense of it all.

            For the first time in the short trip—and we were only on the tram for all of 5 minutes—I swear some emotional look actually swept across his face: he was chuffed with himself.

            His attention finally seemed to definitely wander away from us, or my brother, and we got off a few stops later after listening to him listen in on another man’s conversation with his girlfriend, which he kept trying to interrupt and insinuate the lady on the other end of the phone actually wanted him. It was awkward, but also pretty funny in an inappropriate way. I'm surprised the man on the phone didn't tell him where to go.

            Everyone talks about how they attract the freaks on public transport, and, indeed, there are plenty of freaks about for people to attract. There is something about a bus, tram or train that just seems to encourage people’s weirdness to burst forth, unabated by any sort of social etiquette or basic restraint. I can tell you, after years of riding its transport system, Melbourne has its far share: from drunk bogans to the old lady who used to dress up as Marilyn Monroe on the 70 tram years ago.

            But just remember, you may pretend to know something about the logistics of transport, but you know nothing of the letter Q.

            Quintessential.