Consumerism

‘I believe that the consumer society is the final stage of civilisation. This society can continue for another hundred years or so but I completely believe that this utilitarian, devouring way of life signals that civilisation is ending.’

Jan Švankmajer

I wouldn’t normally listen to old Czech puppet film makers, but when I see how much crap is out there on the shelves for the x-mas shoppers right now, Švankmajer’s words make a lot of sense.

So, when you stand there in the supermarket toy isle tomorrow and wonder what you are going to buy for your little nephew or niece, just forget it. Don’t buy anything. The kids will only throw it in their massive pile of toys anyway, and the Chinese slave workers will have to produce even more plastic rubbish for next Christmas.

Sorry for writing negative stuff in this festive time of the year. Next blog posting will be a positive one, I promise.

Scener ur ett äktenskap

Jag ser Bergmans “Scener ur ett äktenskap”. Erland Josephsson och Liv Ullman kommer in i en sommarstuga på landet. Någon har haft kräftskiva där nyligen. En gammal cykel står i vardagsrummet och ett par åror ligger på golvet. De städar undan några nubbeglas och skrattar åt en kräftlykta. Erland Josephsson gör upp en brasa och visslar “Hej tomtegubbar slå i glasen”.

Sverige.

Who’s Your City?

I really look forward to Richard Florida’s new book “Who’s Your City?”.
Florida is an Urban Studies theorist and American economist, currently working as a professor at the University of Toronto in Canada. When a lot of people say that it doesn’t really matter where you work from today (as Internet makes it possible to work from the ski slope, the beach or the cave in a remote mountain region of Pakistan etc), this professor believes that it actually does matter.

Florida thinks that cities or metropolitan regions with a high number of high-tech workers, artists, musicians, gay men, and a group he describes as “high bohemians”, correlate with a higher level of economic development, and he has invented his own indexes to measure how interesting different cities are, for instance a “Bohemian Index” a “Gay Index” and a “Diversity Index”. His research shows that these factors are more important for a city than a massive culture or sports complex, or a new Guggenheim museum. Perth and Dubai – Take notice!

I can’t wait to see what indexes he comes up with in the new book. A “Math Rock Index”? A “Wholphin Subscriber Index”? A “Mumblecore Index”?

Crossing the Nullarbor – Part 2

So we crossed the Nullarbor, right. After one of the long drives through miles and miles of nothingness, you finally come to a place called Eucla. Like all other “towns” in this remote part of Australia, it is nothing more than a combined service station, motel, camping, and – if you’re lucky – bottle shop. Eucla has a population of 50 and still uses its own time zone (GMT+8:45), which is no longer mandated by the Australian government. Some people would define this as cute anarchy, but I would rather call it confusing.

On the day we got to Eucla, the Melbourne Cup was on. I don’t know much about the Cup, but apparently it’s some sort of horse race in Melbourne, which is held on the same day every year. And it’s a massive event in Australia. I knew that the race was shown live on TV soon and asked a fat woman, who was browsing the yellow faded postcards in the motel/service station/camping reception/bottle shop, if she knew what time it started.

“Are you heading East or West?”, she asked me. “Eh, from Perth to Adelaide, so East”, I answered. “Well, we’re heading west so we’re on Adelaide time, and my watch says it’s 3:30 now”. My watch showed 2:00. The man who worked in the reception looked at the clock on the wall and said: “Well, here in Eucla it’s 2:45, and the race starts at 2PM Melbourne time”. “So when does it start Adelaide time?”, the fat woman asked. “Well, that’s 45 minutes after Eucla time, but then you’ve got daylight saving, don’t you?”, the man answered.

I left them and didn’t get to see the race in the end. Instead we visited the best thing in Eucla (the only good thing, I guess), which is an old derelict telegraph station, half buried amongst the sand dunes. The beauty of things falling apart.

Job Hunting

I’m looking for a job so I’ve hung out in recruitment agencies here in Melbourne this week.

“So where do you ideally see yourself on this organizational chart in five years, Adam?”

“Hmm, if you turn it into a 3D chart; somewhere 10 cm to the right of the paper and 15 cm above it. Yes, there – between Dee Dee Ramone and Richard Branson.”

Perth top 5: #4 – The Dingo Flour Sign

When you drive down the Stirling Highway from Perth to Freemantle you pass the Dingo Flour sign. It was painted on the side of the Great Southern Roller Flour Mills by Ted Pulham in the 1920’s. The iconic building received a $13,500 grant from the Heritage Council of Western Australia last year. Heritage Minister Michelle Roberts said that the Dingo Flour Mill was an iconic landmark recognised by thousands of Western Australians. “The dingo image painted on the silo, has been a landmark for generations of Western Australians and is a welcoming sign visible from land and the sea,” Mrs Roberts actually said.

Miracle Fortress

Miracle Fortress from Montreal is my Monday morning soundtrack for this week.

Perth – Again

People often ask me what I think of Perth and that is a very interesting question. And a very hard one to answer. I like Perth as much as I dislike it, if that makes any sense. I’ve tried to come up with various theories and metaphors for Perth (slow motion, comfort zone, City of Satisfaction etc etc). Hell, I even entertained the thought of sending a suggestion to the local city council to put heavy rock band The Drones on the roof of the Westpac skyscraper in central Perth, and let them play a couple of sets every day through massive loudspeakers to get the citizens to “wake up” (I can’t say that I’m all that fast and electrifying myself though- rather the opposite – but I guess that’s why I prefer to be in faster cities).

Another interesting experiment would be to exchange the entire population in affluent suburb Peppermint Grove with the population of South London suburb Brixton. And then change back after a year. Like a wife swap thing but on a giant scale.

I always say that I think Perth will be one of the greatest cities in the world in 2050. And who knows – it might happen sooner.

The Drones formed in Perth in 1998 (and probably took their name from that city’s inhabitants) and their second album Wait Long by the River and the Bodies of Your Enemies Will Float By should be played at a loud volume.

It’s Election Time!

The Australian election is coming up in a couple of weeks, which you probably haven’t noticed if you live outside Australia. In the right corner we have the liberal coalition and Prime Minister John Howard, who’s been running the country for the last 11 years. In the left corner we have Mr. Kevin Rudd and his Labour party, very keen to get in and rule Australia. We also have Mr. Bob Brown representing the Australian Greens, but like everywhere else in the world, his environmental single-issue party won’t get many votes. Which in the case of Australia is a great shame, since it seems like this country will face some serious environmental problems in the future if we don’t act now. I’m currently reading On Borrowed Time: Australia´s Environmental Crisis and What We Must Do About It by David Lindenmayer and it’s very scary.

The election campaign is focusing mostly on tax issues – or rather tax cuts – when it should focus on the environment. The Australian people are quite interested in tax cuts, but their real focus is on following every minute and every movement of Mr. Ben Cousins. “Who’s Mr. Ben Cousins?” you may ask. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know myself when I came to Australia, but you can’t avoid him once you’re here. According to Wikipedia, he “is an Australian rules footballer who played for the West Coast Eagles in the Australian Football League from 1996 to 2007. The West Coast Eagles terminated his contract on October 17, 2007 after he had been arrested for alleged drug possession.”

If you read through his Wikipedia entry you find enthralling chapters like 2.2 Assault and broken arm, 2.3 Association with criminals, 2.4 Booze bus incident, 2.5 Arrest at Crown Casino, 2.6 Diagnosis of drug addiction and rehabilitation, 2.7 Chris Mainwaring death. Who wouldn’t be more interested in this guy then in some endangered marsupials or a bloody boring paper mill in Tasmania?

 

Crossing the Nullarbor

The last six days we’ve spent in our old Subaru. We decided to drive from Perth to Melbourne – a trip that includes the legendary “crossing of the Nullarbor”. The Nullarbor Plain is the world’s largest bedrock limestone plain and scientists believe that it is between 15 and 45 million years old. The word Nullarbor is derived from latin for “no trees” and that’s a pretty good description of the place. It is very flat, dry and empty. The explorer John Edward Eyre, who was the first European to successfully cross the Nullarbor in 1841, described it as “a hideous anomaly, a blot on the face of Nature, the sort of place one gets into in bad dreams”. Now, Eyre didn’t have a queen size blow-up air mattress, nice sheets, some delicious Hungarian salami and an iPod full of great reggae like we did, so I can see why he had bad dreams on his trip.

I’m going to write some more about it here later. And now we live in Melbourne btw. Nice place.