We are apparently all mindless worker bees, drones. Ray La Montagne is on ABC today playing a few songs spilling his words of wisdom about how senseless and mindless people are going to work every day, doing meaningless, time-filling things, going home, sleeping, and that he guesses these people haven’t touched the reality of life so they don’t know any better.

Look as a teenager I was brought up with this idea too; hate the system, hate the mindless corporate scum, they’re just drones. It’s depicted quite beautifully in John Brack’s Collins St, 5pm, and anyone who catches Tram 86 or 96 (i forget which) gets this diatribe spat at them by the abusive homeless guy that harrasses travellers each morning. But it occurs to me these days that this is a very 1950s anti-conformist attitude, it’s SO fucking out of date. Back then, the beatniks were rebelling against an emerging consumerist society a society that is fully developed today, a society we are trapped in. but the beatniks in their day, they still had church, neighbourhoods, and communities. We don’t.

Many of us, not all of us, but many of us depend on work for social contact, for some kind of connection with other human beings. You take work away from us, and we are completely isolated. We rarely talk about the small family units, the loss of the neighbourhoods, the dismantling of community services and the isolation of living in cities. This is not something that successful musicians understand because their job description requires that they are excellent social networkers, so they fit seamlessly into whatever community they need to, in order to be the artist they want to be. How many ‘drones’ are people who used to dream of a career as an artist of some kind, and had to give it up and find an actual way of sustaining themselves in this world? How many things that these artists and musicians depend on would no longer be there if us ‘drones’ abandoned our dronish ways and led our lives like butterflies?

I’m not a fan of schools and therapists molding people into little cog-like citizens that support a status quo. I’m not into popping out kids like ping pong balls. And i’m not a fan of the working hours required to make a living, the way that work, travel and needy children take up valuable thinking and creative time. There literally aren’t enough hours in the day. It’s an incredibly effective way to keep the populace from caring too much about things like art or politics or the direction we’re all going. Office work does stifle creativity, but don’t blame the worker for how the system works, we just try to fit in as best we can so that we survive and get whatever it is we need – security, family, space.

I’m not leaning on family, or my partner to slave away in The System while I fluff about. I’m not the artist who got half rent in our share house ‘because she couldn’t afford it otherwise’ while I paid 1.5 rent because i had a full time job in a fucking call centre. Why am I subsidising her? I’m a musician, I should be subsidising my own work, not her shitty attempts on a canvas. This happens all the time, you talk to the beatniks with their inability to process the idea of an office job and you find out how other people are subsidising their lifestyles. Lucky them. or… unscrupulous…

Today most of us spend more time with the people we work with than anyone else, and more workers than not are completely cut off from any form of solid community. We talk all the time about how workers will work 21 different careers in a lifetime, we don’t talk about that meaning they traverse 21 communities in a lifetime, never fully holding onto a single one. But these transient relationships offer support and encouragement that is all too rare in a modern lifestyle.

PS. i know i’ve been doing a lot of ‘hating’ on my blog here lately and it’s not always so palatable, and i can’t always put it in the context it deserves, often i’ll say i’m talking about ‘musicians’ but really i’m talking about the people who do what i’m talking about, which is not necessarily all musicians, nor exclusively musicians. I’m just processing, thinking critically about what i’m being fed by other people, by the media, using this blog to reinforce my own opinions. You’re not supposed to agree with all of it.

I took yesterday off, a Wednesday, and it was so stimulating. This is an account of how I spent my day off, ’spent’ being the operative word. I have a lot of disposable cash at the moment, I don’t want to offend people not in the same position, I know how that feels. But this day brings up a lot of issues if you think about how we live, what we value, what makes life easy or hard, and where a person needs to be – what kind of person you need to be to find the following day satisfying. And then you can watch this video and think how trivial my life is.

I spent the morning reading a Max Barry book called Company and listening to RRR. While I finally did the dishes, the lady on RRR was talking about ‘community’, that we should be talking to people behind counters about meaningful things, and we are allowed to have days where we just don’t want to talk to anyone. Community is a complex issue, I usually feel completely cut off from any form of community, it does bother me.

I started the day going to the local Readings to pick up Jennifer Government by Max Barry, I’d ordered it the Friday before at Borders after spending $60 (with 40% off) on three expensive books I could never otherwise afford, or justify.

I went to the post office and returned an expensive tee-shirt i’d ordered online which stained itself on the first wear. Bought from a local maker who only uses local materials, no slave labour etc. Hopefully she’ll send me another one, it was really nice.

I went to the little cabinet maker at Malvern Station but he was closed until next week. He is always closed when I visit, I have never been inside. I am becoming bitter.

I went to Greville street, couldn’t find anywhere to park, refused to pay meter parking at $2.30 an hour, two hour minimum, esp since i didn’t know how long i’d take. drove round and round and found a free 1 hour park.

Went to Revolver and ordered a glockenspiel, not a good one, not a bad one, have to wait for it to arrive. I’ve wanted one for a very long time. Ever since 1992 when I saw Laura MacFarlane of Ninety-nine on her knees in Polyester Records playing Velvet Underground’s Sunday Morning on a Glock.

Went into Friends of Couture, all the clothes reminded me of the most vacuous Gen X friends I have. left feeling self righteous.

Went to Greville St Records, couldn’t find a cd i wanted, bought an Akira Kurosawa dvd, because i couldn’t leave without getting something and it looked good even if it was $35, disappointed Steve didn’t recognise me even if it had been 5 years since I’d visited, I’ve gone there since I was 16 for fucks’ sake.

I went to Greville St Books, Urata did recognise me, I didn’t think she would. I used to buy design books and Lemony Snickets, basically half my wage went there. We chatted for ages, I found some things I didn’t really need (T.S.Eliot and Dylan) and bought them to help her business and make me feel purposeful spending so much time in there.

I raced back to my car thinking I’d have a parking fine, I didn’t. I took my secret shortcut and parked outside Alternate Worlds, I stopped in at Fat Helen’s but almost I never buy anything there, I’m just reassured that it’s still there, unlike many of the nice stores from the past, unlike the Tote which is closing this weekend. The comic book store guy was significantly younger than me which was weird, but he gave me good advice. I bought two graphic novels, after literally going through every shelf in the store looking for something to get.

I walked up to Penny Syber’s secondhand book shop to tell her the book she recommended was awesome, but she wasn’t there, all her cats were curled up in the window in tiny boxes or between books on the register. like large furry coffee scrolls. I looked for a similar book but there wasn’t one, and she wasn’t there to help me. It’s not the same. People who say internet shopping rocks, may have forgotten how awesome it is to have record, comic and book store staff who know their shit so well and know your tastes so well, they can thrust things in your hands which you will form a life long bond with.

I jumped in the car it was time to get home, my new mattress would be delivered between 5 and 8pm. They came at 7:58 but took away my 18 yr old futon mattress as a favour, it’s like a chapter of my life i’m saying goodbye to.

I frequently buy something in a store I like, or something extra in a small but vital business I don’t want to close down. I feel guilty for spending the money and often the business owner probably is rolling in it and doesn’t need the money as much as I do. But life without these businesses would be a struggle of internet shopping and having to return every other purchase in the post.

And a final question, I got this idea from the radio…

What song do you NOT want to die to?
ie you’re walking along, iPod on shuffle
and a runaway street sweeper careens
round a corner and lands on you crushing
you to death.
and the last thing you hear in this world should NOT be…

so last year, 08-09 holidays i spent the summer with an atlas learning the countries of the world. My geography is pretty bad and I thought if I had to waste my time on something perhaps it could be something useful. I also figured there’d be iPhone applications that would help me do it too (not as many as I’d hoped, but anyway).

So this summer I picked up the habit again, I went to Borders for the Boxing day sales and bought myself a full priced atlas with nice clear political maps and things and have been slowly teaching myself the capital cities of Europe… didn’t get too far.

Anyway each day for a week i’ve been testing myself on Traveller IQ and finally I completed the 12th level! So I must be improving… even if i’m only jabbing at countries and hoping I don’t get too many russian cities on the east coast!

so it’s festival season and a heap of bands i’ve never heard of but probably heard plenty of times on the radio are coming over. these are the alternative bands, the ones that do festivals, get an album of the week on JJJ etc.

I’m watching ‘rage’ at the moment, i usually like watching music videos (as long as i can avoid the booty-shaking women-are-a-piece of meat videos) so it’s a lot of mid paced ballads over a dance beat at the moment, the contenders for the mainstream charts.

And it’s all AUTOTUNE, CHORUS and COMPRESSION on the vocals, every single video. Well, particularly the American ones, as though they got these pretty people that can’t actually sing but look good in a video, so they’ll just put all these effects on 11 and you wont even be able to recognise if they’re male or female, let alone which singer they are. The only ones that seem to be spared the AUTOTUNE are winners of the Australian Idol competition and the Black Eyed Peas, but they still get the CHORUS and COMPRESSION on 11.

AUTOTUNE makes singers sound like robots singing in a box.

So i guess it’s apt for the mainstream music sound.

People often told me I couldn’t be a performer cos I don’t sing well enough (yeah those little comments you make to musicians, we never forget them), but it’s just that I don’t use vocal effects. How the fuck are all these artists going to perform live without their CHORUS and AUTOTUNE?

but you watch a video from some ‘indie’ festival band and it looks more over produced than a Black Eyed Peas video, with alice in wonderland costumes and elaborate sets and every girl is shout-singing because Karen O can do it, only they need COMPRESSION and all their instruments are PROGRAMMED IN. and shit i can’t tell the different between these supposed indie acts that sent $50,000 on their video and the mainstream acts that spent $200,000.

None of it feels real, none of it feels like theres a musician behind it. or that there might be a genuine enthusiasm and love for playing and entertaining their audience.

They all look like puppets.

All the songs sound the same.

What really concerns me is that truly independent music gets totally pushed out by the Laura Marlings and Passion Pits that try to keep it under wraps how heavily backed they are by their major labels because it would sap all their indie cool and they’d just look like lame ass acts that aren’t quite good enough to crack the mainstream.

seeing all this stuff, seeing their videos, albums, the massive promotions even for the supposedly little bands, their pretensions laid out in front of me. it doesn’t make me want to fight against it, it demotivates me, makes me want to crawl away and die and never make music again.

it’s the great war of modern music analog versus digital (or ‘didSHITall’ as dad says). if the idea of me going through a history of how i’ve learnt to make music bores you to tears I apologise, but recently, since I’ve had lots of time I’ve been able to work on my music a lot more and now that things are feeling more flowing, I’m finally reconciling with just how much hard work it’s been just to deal with this bloody modernisation of music (and talkingthese things out always helps me move forward).

More than any other format, music has suffered at the hand of digitisation, you’ll know this from the number of stolen MP3s in your iPod. but i’m not talking about that end, it’s the music-making end I deal with in my time off. Instruments now are more often than not born, raised and recorded within computers, they never breathe the light of day, they live in binary coding. I think this is hardest for guitarists… atleast piano players can pick up a digital synthesiser and it’s a familiar setting, but guitars will always be real living things best made with wood and strings, fed into crunchy amps that blast your ear drums so they ring for hours all the walk home from a gig.

I started out with a little Tascam 244 four track, I got it when I was 16, it has a cassette inside it and can record four things at once, so I’d do guitars, rewind, do vocals, rewind, do casio, rewind, to more vocals… you could quite easily record a song in a day on your own, write it, get out the 4 track and a mic, and record it straight away. VERY satisfying.

Of course there are problems… you have to tune your instruments to each other (easier said than done, have you tuned a synth?), you have to have relative quiet in the house, you have to have physical room to spread out your instruments and the wires between all of them.. you have to bloody FIND all the right wires hat will connect up each of your instruments, and replace the crackly ones that don’t work any more… you also have to know how to sing, and how to play in time to a beat (yeah… i’m not so good at this)… no computers to make you sound like Britney, or fix up your mistakes… it’s all LIVE, one take, beginning to end. which can be a bitch.

I built up an arsenal of instruments I could use for my recordings, Electric guitars, basses, recorders, casios, and big ol’ crunchy vintage synths. My pride and joy, and inspiration for today’s post is my Korg Poly-61. It was the very first digital synthesizer, it’s such a thick chunky bass sound, it’s easy to program but unpredictable in that, well it’s old and not feeling very well, much like most of my instruments and so it burbles and warps and god I love it! Next to my equally ancient casios (most of my instruments are circa 1980) it makes a great sound.

But it’s not MIDI. it can’t play to 120bpm, I can’t even tell it to play to a BPM i just turn a knob and hope for the best… this makes matching it to a drum beat in a computer, or even from my casiotone (which is also controlled by the randomness of a knob twisting) highly challenging and rarely successful… so my instruments don’t play together well unless you keep it real simple.

So recently I bought a little Microkorg, well, actually about 5 years ago. I promised I’d chuck out the big ol’ Poly-61, but I couldn’t, the sound just wasn’t the same, the Microkorg can at least play to a BPM, I can tell it, you will play at 130bpm and it obediently responds, it even sounds like my Poly-61, but it isn’t as beastly…

Living in this wiry jungle, of analog versus digital, might be messy and contrary, and professional muso’s scoff at me because really I should only need a laptop and a little MIDI keyboard and i’d be laughing. There’s a world of amazing sounds if I choose to learn all the software, but it’s just never been the same for me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a nerd, I love sequencing out a beat step by step, but I prefer doing that for a drum beat, not for a whole song. Basically if going digital means leaving behind my casio’s, my korgs, my guitar, the sound of the room i’m in, the cricket playing quietly from the room next door, the bird chirruping outside… well I don’t want it. If going digital is all about being clever and looping rather than playing a whole song, editing out all the mistakes, having perfectly clean channels that sound like nowhere… i don’t want it.

So i continue to struggle, I spend most of my time trying to find a happy middle ground, depending on the song, depending on the instruments I want to play today. I may have left behind my cassette four track, for my iphone four track, and I may not be producing studio quality sound, but I’ve never been more productive musically. Today I woke up and without even thinking, I turned on the two Korgs and started playing and FINALLY recorded a song with the two of them together, I recorded it on my iphone’s tiny mic which sat in my lap pointing at my half dead BassKing valve amp which had both my Korg Beasties plugged into it. The mastering is terrible, the song is average, the hiss is incredible, and everything sounds like it’s dying a little bit. But the pure achievement of finding a way to work with both instruments at once is something i’ve been struggled toward for forever.

So listen to my happy struggle in synths of vintage [3mb download]

Alan Alda was interviewed by Denton on Elders recently, and one of the things he reminded me of was that Humans are a baby species, we’ve been around 10,000 years and compared to most other species who’ve been around millions of years we really are a speck in time.

When we talk about the future of the Human Race we get all defeatist and think about nuclear wars and climate change and so on. Admittedly Nuclear war would pretty well fuck us, the few people that would survive wouldn’t have many resources to rebuild, the Earth would be contaminated… it’d be a lot worse than Noah’s floods.

But climate change… well you know ‘The end of life as we know it’ …yes. But that’s not saying much. ‘Life as we know it’ has supermarkets, cars, economics and a whole bunch of other things probably not vital to the survival of the species. Enough people could survive with enough resources that humans would bounce back. We’ve survived Ice Ages before, it wiped out the majority of the worlds humanish population, but humans are resourceful and can survive such disaster. Clothing, fire, scaring the crap out of bears and stealing their caves.

Not to survive intact, not to bring our cars and credit cards with us, probably not to get to colonise Mars any time soon… I think we’re a long way off those kinds of sci-fi dreams. Realistically we probably need to learn to survive as a species before we ascend as beings…

Think about it though… Humans, resourceful Humans… where will they be a thousand years from now, a hundred thousand years from now, a million years from now?

so it’s been a while since i’ve updated you on my life at home. things have been settling down.

In the past i felt lonely and listless a lot, now i seem to be filling my time more easily. there is a lot of television in my life, but I have been picking up the guitar and recording little bits on the iPhone on a more regular basis.

Christmas has broken my awesome no-spending period, i went about 3 weeks without shopping at all, and you don’t miss it. I believe catalogues are the bain of life, because they make you look at what you *could* be buying and how much money you could save doing it. So i never look at catalogues! But Christmas has the same effect, you have to go online looking for a cool present for a friend, instead finding three cool presents for yourself… then you go to Borders or JB Hi-fi to get the things people requested for Christmas and then you buy one extra thing for one person, so you have to find one extra thing for the other person, then you find out they already have that thing so you have to return it and find another thing.

So my savings are gone.

The dentist is the other bain of my existence at the moment. At first it was the money, now it’s just getting him to do a decent job for the rather large sums of money I pay him… grrr. I’m thinking of asking to see my x-ray and just grabbing it and running out the door. Go see a different dentist and fingers crossed! They’re worse than car mechanics!

Work is settling in, i no longer feel like i’ll be fired any second, i’m finally actually doing what I was paid to do – make a website! But my social life is still very quiet. what can I say? I’m shy. I don’t like going out with big crowds, I don’t like staying out till 2am every weekend, I don’t like drinking regularly. Fortunately I have atleast three work Christmas parties to make me feel like I have a social life anyway.

Can anyone recommend a good band to go see? I wish my damn job gave me access to myspace, so i could see when my favourites will be playing next :/

Often I find myself disappointed with the 21st century (aka The Future). No flying cars, no female Prime Minister, no dinner in pill-form.

But then you buy a Penguin Classic of the first Bond novel from 1953, and realise holy shit, maybe we’ve come further than i realise, and i quote:

“This was just what he had been afraid of. These blithering women who thought they could do a man’s work. Why the hell couldn’t they stay at home and mind their pots and pans and stick to their frocks and gossip and leave men’s work to the men. And now for this to happen to him, just when the job had come off so beautifully. For Vesper to fall for an old trick like that and get herself snatched and probably held to ransom like some bloody heroine in a strip cartoon. The silly bitch.”

Yuh huh… a popular classic eh Penguin? Right up there with Pride and Prejudice or Of Mice and Men. It’s a pretty crap book for any one who’s curious. The movie was way better.

…because i’m seriously cranky now. there are TOO MANY FUCKING UPDATES to Wordpress and NONE of them fix the same fucking problem that makes my last.fm plugin broken despite the developer PROMISING us the next update (twenty updates ago) would fix it.
a new update every couple of weeks is STUPID. There’s a reason we don’t do it. You are harming your own product by requiring so much maintenance, maintenance that ISN’T compatible with the plugins you continue to promote.

stop crawling up your own asses and start making my life easier.

so I downloaded an iphone 4 track recorder, which apparently some band called the 88s made a rather good song with and put the making of on YouTube. I’ve just recorded a riff I had in my head, it turned out alright.

Hear my new song 7-11.

I think I prefer working this way it’s so quick! I only needed the computer to filter some noise and trim the end of the tracks. I have some much better, old riffs that I haven’t had the heart to record til now, now I’m all excited!

i have never been a gardener, outdoors to me means insect bites and sun burn and no air conditioning. But two of the gifts given to me recently have been living things, and they really became treasures to me. THe waratahs I wrote about in my last entry.

This morning I woke up to see that my little cactus whose little nodules at the top were growing all week, has actually bloomed, the litle nodules were flowers! i think i’m starting ot get why people love gardening so much!

So the afternoon tea I had organised as a housewarming was a lot of work i’d invited about 40 people and 20 had confirmed they could come and I was freaking out about how to feed that many people, or even fit them in my tiny little apartment! It was mostly friends from work and school, but there were actual non-librarians there like Rachel who I was very glad to see. Anyway it all went so smoothly! People were lovely, everyone got along, everyone brought food – we had too much food! Vegan donuts and chocolate cake, cupcakes, sushi, lamingtons and heaps of other stuff. Most importantly it was fun!

I think it fulfilled it’s purpose which was to show everyone where I live, let them get to know me a bit better that way (of course I didn’t talk to anyone very in depth since it was so busy) but now people will hopefully feel less shy about coming over, or inviting me to their place. I’m realising that these old rituals do have a purpose.

Honestly I thought the party would be a disaster, I was envisaging 4 people coming. I’m almost embarrassed at how well it went, how generous everyone was for coming. I also got a couple of lovely gifts, mostly to do with the kitchen, which is still not very brilliantly furnished. I think my favourites are the tea towels, I love tea towels! especially bright colours, and I got beautiful (real life) Warratahs! from Lu, which are heavenly, they’re the flower of ACT I think, so I have fond memories.

I did buy myself a rice cooker for the kitchen, yet to use it yet. And for the party I did a few final touches like putting up some art and fairy lights! which are staying up it’s so nice having them on while the tv is on, the light is so soft and makes it really pleasant to be in here. Don’t talk to me about electiricty.

Most excitingly I got a new guitar, an SG copy and a Marshall practice amp. They sound awesome and are much easier to play than my other guitars. So finally my music will sound more crunchy and grunge, than acoustic and folksy. I’ve been playing lots but not recorded anything yet. I’d love to learn to play riffs like Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Storkes and those ‘new rock’ type bands play. I guess it’s stuff that’s usually stolen from the likes of Rolling Stones and AC/DC, it’s such a different way of playing to the chords I’m used to… but I don’t know where to start.

So I guess I’m settling in, I have a holiday planned soon so I’ll get to hang out more and maybe catch up with friends. I’m also pleased to hear that some of my old friends are still making music in bands like Gold Tango and lots of other projects, so I have lots of local music to catch up on! But at the moment I’m hanging out to see a movie… any suggestions?

♪♫i’m alone, i’m aaa-lone, i’m alone.♪♫

So i’ve mostly made my life pretty comfortable and day to day stuff is kind of easier. i’ve even organised a housewarming tea party in a couple of weeks (which cost me a fortune in paper cups and things.. yikes!) Now when I get home from work, which I do pretty early, I kind of stare at the tv (off) thinking “i’m bored, what to I do now?” and i (reluctantly) turn the tv on and half watch it guiltily. make some dinner. check my email. i’m always feeling guilty that i’m not vacuuming the house, or writing new song lyrics, or calling a friend to go out. basically, now that I don’t have the excuse of living with family, I feel like i’m ALWAYS procrastinating. i’m told this is just the next phase of living by myself which is a relief, i want it over NOW!

However my sunday has been epic! I vacuumed, mopped, cleaned bathroom, did the dishes, did two loads of washing, got the groceries AND went out to see a gig! AND wrote song lyrics while at the gig!

I finally got to see Flying Scribble and Royalchord and Bachelorette all in one night! it made me sad I had to go on my own, I’m okay when the music is on, but between bands I just want to curl up and die. Sarah says I should feel like the “mysterious lady” . but really I feel like I am wearing the wrong clothes, unattractive and not drinking enough to look like a local. I did chat to the label owner i just thought he was a guy but he had sat next to me and he was interesting. and i chatted with the bar lady she was nice.

the nice thing about the night was that NOONE got out their phones, everyone was too cool to be texting and blah. except me, i felt peer pressured to go outside and check my twitter. and i did take just ONE photo (for you). to prove I was out-of-the-house. Actually the PA system wasn’t insulated properly so poor Royal Chord got the fright of their lives when one of their phones made that ‘clicking’ noise when phones change towers, and it went REALLY loud over the whole PA, it was doing it all night much more quietly from audience phones because people refused to turn them off. FYI i put mine in airplane mode for the photo… and accidentally started playing bachelorette (during her set) on my phone (which was muted dammit!) while I tried to figure out the name of the album I had and whether to buy her new album.

so it was an all girl, all electro pop night! i’m really glad I went. Bachelorette uses the same two casios I use. makes me happy. Her music is much warmer live than on cd, I find some of these types of bands’ recordings are very ‘perfect’, particularly the vocals, and they just don’t sound as endearing and ‘real’ as they do on stage… the opposite of Sarah Blasko who I saw the other week, I expected her to be all acoustic guitar, shy and sweet, like Missy Higgins or something. but she was a fucking marionette play-dancing in front of the microphone unable to banter with the audience at all. Meanwhile Bachelorette a lovely girl from NZ played the whole set herself from a laptop an acoustic guitar and three keyboards, with the sweetest voice and lots of jokes about the ‘bossy new zealand bitch’ that was telling people to turn off their phones.

Flying Scribble are a must-see two piece and they are releasing their ‘album’ as separate singles bit by bit, which is my idea but they beat me to it dammit. and their sound on recording is as effervescent on disc as it is live. which is the best compliment I can give.

when I was a young ‘un and struggling to finish my research project for multimedia, I had become very used to my teachers and seemingly everyone around me telling me off for this that and the other. except for one stranger, Toby who was on the other side of the world and had become a sort of muse to me. he would write to me encouraging and inspiring me to finish my work advising me on matters of the wider world, such as love, and self knowledge. it was such a breath of fresh air I was in shock.

I learnt from his patronage, that giving advice can be a very dangerous thing. people tend only to give advice when they think you’re doing it wrong and need correcting, they give advice without asking if it’s needed.

I see people I work with grate, though they don’t quite know why, at some coworker telling them how to do their job, it’s like having people try to parent you, when you yourself might already be a parent. My favourite which I think I’ve mentioned before is 22 yr old boys telling women significantly older than them what they should or shouldn’t eat. actually anyone telling you not to eat what you’re currently eating for lunch is pretty rude. so this kind of advice giving is pretty common.

but from Toby, and later other good friends, I learnt that you should never give advice unasked for. and if giving advice, assume the best of a person, not the worst.

eg. don’t give advice assuming someone doesn’t know any better, that they’re stupid, or weak, or don’t know as much as you do, or couldn’t cope with doing things right.

you shouldnt be giving any advice unless you have complete faith in the receiver. good advice is a rare and valuable gift, the giving of it shows others a better way to share.

but then its almost impossible to convince people in the midst of the race, that life is not a competition.

//end of advice.

slowly slowly my life is put back together like a jigsaw. one of the big improvements was the bathroom. see the before and after shots. currently have Phoenix playing which makes the morning go by nicely. no real internet for ages yet though. I’m having trouble finding anyone that will supply naked DSL to my area. bastards.

can’t believe I’ll have to do this again in a year. might be time for a big cleanout. again.

my hope for tonight is to be sitting in my armchair, feet up, watching a Morse DVD I pinched from mum while drinking a very strong gin. I’m thinking ikea next week. on a tight budget. could be a challenge.

footy tomorrow. yes it sounds funny even to me. but I do love keeping dad company and getting into the spirit of it. and atleast it’s an underdog football. not AFL. it’ll force me to stop bloody working, cleaning, moving, packing and unpacking. which I think I probably need right now. I did 11000 steps yesterday. not wearing pedometer today. it’d only depress me.

so I’m almost finished moving house! I’m southside which feels weird but I love Windsor so I’m happy. putting up the shelves was the big dbacle. I had to buy a drill and learn to drill brick etc. but now that is done and the grouting sealant and a zillion other jobs. I can finally unpack the 46 boxes.

I’m really starting to get my head around the freedom of living having my own place! no sharing! screw living with strangers! I’m in my 30s too old for that crap! making music has to be the riority. someone slap me if I go off wasting my time watching tv. book reading is okay though.

it seems heaps of people I know live in my area. I’m only just discovering! and finally I’ll be able to visit alternate worlds regularly. but are there any good comics out there these days?

first posting from my iPhone today.

2009 has been very good to me. career, car and in a few days time a (rented) home. yet I’m no more cheery or confident than past years. I feel no love toward 2009 and all the smooth sailing it has brung.

I’ve had all I aimed for ripped away from me enough times now to know that my position in life is tenuous. I feel this especially with my job. I wait for them to realize I’m not someone they want and to just fire me on the spot. stranger things have happened. mostly this stems from the fact that I’m in my early thirties and don’t look it or behave like it. I’m not emotionally anchored. ups downs lefts rights. you know?i’d like to give off the air of someone confident in themselves, satisfied, give off that “I know who I am” air that a 30something professional should have. I put it down to clothes and things but really it’s about me. I am playful and spirited and all over the place. perhaps I still have some growing up to do?

this is all coming to a head because I’ll be in my own place soon but also because some much younger co-workers and friends have gotten promotions and this has given me the jealousies and the “this would never happen to me”s. for no real reason.

do I want to have a 23 year old boss? this could happen in my profession all the oldies are leaving and someone with management experience could overtake me and become my boss. would hurt the ego a bit. I guess I’m worried the people around me don’t take me seriously. forget my age and think I need to learn a lot more. which is true in some areas. but actually I know myself pretty well I have been around the block a few times. I know what to expect from life and people. I feel I’m always on the back foot. people are forever surprised at how clever I can be. like they wouldn’t expect it of someone “so young”. if I had children and a mortgage I suspect they’d give me more credit.

and now I come ever closer to my real goal. making music. there will be fewer obstacles, fewer excuses. hopefully there’ll be more time to enjoy it. but they say be careful what you wish for or you just might get it. and I think I’m very close to that precipice.

are there other nymphs out there like me? thirtysomethings that still feel like 22 yr olds? poor generation x when will we ever take ourselves seriously?

I’ve been trying to learn about why, REALLY why we have the parallel import ban in our copyright law, and why it’s going to be destroyed in three years time. Basically we’re talking about allowing cheaper U.S. books into the country, and the hope is that books will become cheaper in Australian bookstores.

But there are lots, and lots, and lots of articles which make this issue about as clear as mud, it’s all propaganda and no-one seems to talk in facts… so I am beginning a little research project on it myself.

here are some salient points:

Currently Australian publishers buy a licence to publish a big popular book within Australia.

Like Harry Potter, there would have been a bidding war between publishers competing to own the rights to publish the British books here. But this also happens for Australian books.

This is much like the record industry, where all these sleazy A&R guys would go to see hot fresh young acts and try to wine and dine them onto their record label. Australian bands would find three or four major labels competing for their record deal. Australian bands like Frente!, the Lucksmiths, Custard etc wouldn’t have had a chance of getting a record deal overseas until they’d gotten one here and really proved they could do the ‘hard yards’. It is very rare for an Australian band to get signed overseas first, if they do it’s because they moved there.

Parallel imports of a British or American printing of Harry Potter is currently illegal according to Australia’s copyright law.

The Australian publisher paid HEAPS of money for the right to sell to our market, so we can’t have every Tom, Dick and Harry muscling in on the licence they paid good money for. Parallel imports will become legal in three years. No more local licences.

This could be good in that Publishers will no longer pay exorbitant prices for the right to publish and sell books like Harry Potter, which probably helped push the price up of said books. But Publishers make the majority of their money on those big titles, which helps support the company well enough that they can get their own original (Australian) titles out on the market. Now, Australian publishers will have to rely only on the proceeds of Australian books sold. And that’s not enough to keep the publishers afloat – bye bye local publishing industry.

Australian writers will have to compete on a world market to find a Publisher that will take them on.

Australian Publishers wont be able to take the risk of publishing new unheard of Aussie writers, these new writers will have to go out into the world on their own – imagine Frente! in their early days, trying to get their first CD out, they’ve had good local shows, they have a small loyal following, but to get a record deal, all the small label are gone, and the big labels aren’t interested in the risk – they’d have to go overseas to find a record deal. This is a slight exaggeration. In fact there will be very small publishers who will carry Australian material, and hopefully with subsisidies bigger Aussie publishers will take on a few new Authors along with best sellers like Tim Winton. But the whole industry will be much leaner, much more wary of risk taking. It’ll be like going from an acre of large rambling gardens with all kinds of things sprouting up all the time, to a handful of potted plants on the balcony.

Meanwhile UK and US publishers will be able to sell us their prints, shipped in direct.

Amazon.com was hurting before, now the wound will be gaping. The US market is the biggest so you can guarantee that most of the books we get will be American and won’t be printed especially for us, it’ll be the stock they already have – in American English, promoted to an American Audience, about American things. Stuff Americans want to read. It’ll be like Hollywood in Books. Compared to a piddling little Australian Industry that will rely heavily on Government subsidy, where before the government didn’t need to pay anything to keep publishers publishing our stuff.

Will the books get cheaper?

I don’t know. If it did it’d be a matter of a few dollars off a novel, and maybe $10 maybe $20 off a $100 book. We’ve already been through this with CD’s, in 1998 they said CD’s would get cheaper – did you even notice?

The only thing that ever made CD’s cheaper was in 1995(?) when the independent distributor Shock Records refused to get in with the big boys who had agreed with each other they’d all hike up the prices to $30. Shock put theirs down to $22. Nothing to do with parallel imports. Big Business absorbed the price difference there.

People are so quick to say how cheap US books are, but their country has a much bigger domestic consumer market, and the books don’t have to travel that far. Once you add shipping to Australia, advertising, and the cost of distribution around the country (which is probably what Australian publishers will be reduced to – distributors), any price difference wont be that marked. UK books aren’t actually cheap to start with. It’s more likely that any savings consumers could see will be absorbed by the publishing and distributing companies.

Does it matter? I buy all my books from the U.S. anyway.

I’ve heard a lot of people say they buy their books on Amazon, but the reality is that they only do that when our dollar is strong. The rest of the time they don’t buy books at all. This tide will effect us on ALL our books in future, not just the ones we buy on the internet. I know I don’t read Australian fiction at all, but I also know that our cultural identity is built from books about us. Not books about slavery in America’s south.

In the end we probably wont notice a big change, but the industry will, Australian works will be sidelined, the industry will not be as robust as it currently is: From lush rambling acreage, to miserly potted plants. This has all happened to the music industry in 1998, I remember avidly waiting for the legislation to change, even holding off on buying CDs in the expectation there might be a change. Zip Nada. Zilch. So again I urge you to not decide thinking about your wallets when, the reality is CD prices are as artificial as the price of oil barrels. If book prices are equally artificial, then this is just a legislation to attack Australian writers, it seems to achieve nothing else.

I am going to keep researching, see what I can learn.

EDIT:
As promised I researched further and asked around with acquaintances who have experience in the publishing industry, some salient points i’ve learnt were

* there isn’t much fat to cut from book prices as is, so prices wont go down noticeably
* amazon.com is cheaper because it’s an online book store, it doesn’t have to pay rent for stores and staff and interior decoration across the country/world
* Australian publishers are already very market driven, and don’t support aussie writers for the sake of it. it’s all about money
* freight costs to Australia are really high, which pushes prices up but also keeps the trash out, it’s too expensive to turn us into a dumping ground, only what WILL sell will make it here.
* and print is dying, go buy a kindle.

Essentially this shows almost nothing will change, except that Aussie writers will have to swim in a bigger international ocean for publishers… subsidies for publishing original Australian content, particularly fiction should be encouraged, just as it is for film, theatre, art etc… So the real question is, is the Rudd government’s recent suggestion of providing $1.40 per Australian book to publishers enough to protect our writers?

There’s so much going on in the world that sometimes I feel like I’m living in a sci-fi novel. There’s Meth Lab Contaminated Houses a problem that is spreading fast across America, or there’s the Bride throwing bouquet causes plane to crash (though mostly it just reminds me why spending $50k on a wedding day is not a good plan). and then there’s this iPhone app Grindr which Stephen Fry recommended on Top Gear, for showing you the nearest gay guy with an iPhone (lets be honest, how many gay guys DON’T have iPhones?).

I sometimes wonder how i can NOT be writing a sci fi novel right now.

Are you looking for something to read? Are you not on good enough terms with your librarian to trust their judgement? Well I may have the solution for you.

Firstly there’s the Book Seer which recommends other books based on what you’ve just read… it just pointed me to what looks like a charming and relevant read for me at the moment, Revolutionary Road – by Richard Yates

Then there’s the School of Life in the UK which provides a service called Bibliotherapy which recommends books tailored to you on an on going basis (for a fee). I’m seriously tempted to sign up for that one! Except that I already have a pile of books to get through.