We lock children up because they don't fit a white, heteronormative template of what a child should be. This is baked into transphobia, racism and a dozen other fascisms.

Put this straight into my veins. An object lesson in how to take children seriously. Clash bassist Paul Simonon, 70 next month, singing Guns of Brixton with some busking kids.

We really have to start talking about why we hate children so much. overland.org.au/2023/12/we-h...

It’s Richard Burton’s birthday Ian McShane on making Villain with Burton: He said to me: ‘You know I’m very glad you’re playing this part, Ian.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because you remind me of Elizabeth.’

This is a copy of Whitlam's 1972 policy speech I found in my local 2nd hand bookshop. Its obvs meant to be read by ordinary Australians & compared to today's Labor govt Whitlam is a raging Marxist (& to left of Mamdani). Here's a short thread of policies (Non-Australians look up The Dismissal)

She is right.

It's been a week of some achievements. Zohran elected, Cheney died, Bolsonaro still going to jail, Watson died, I cut down a large dead acacia & chainsawed it up, I planted out potatoes, I found a missing sock. All weeks should be like this.

Man, this whole project is so ghoulish. I'd walk barefoot over hot coals before I'd read this.

Me, 2 minutes ago: I would like to watch something, but everything is inane garbage. Mosfilm: Hey! Over here!

Grant on Insta in sunnies: Someone just pantsed me in the water at Cannes! 😡 Brigitte Auber nowhere to be seen! Grace Kelly says she saw nothing. 🙄 Acker: Orgasms are great sisters, the more the better! But remember patriarchy will fucking kill us all!

The world would be a better place if we had access to Cary Grant's Instagram & Kathy Acker's Twitter. No question.

Classical music is a good comparison. Until quite recently orchestras were 100% white men. So for generations we've been listening to music that was not only interpreted through perspectives of dominant masculinities, but wasn't even being played by the best players.

Seen a few 'this isn't really systemic change' takes popping up from various well-intentioned comrades. But I've long had an idea that everyone on the right is paranoid & the left chronically depressed. So, this is what the depression can look like.

Just wanna say that I stand in unconditional allyship with aloof wives.

Lol, Mamdani certainly has the juice. "Donald Trump, since I know you're watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up'.

Seriously, the entire media class who treat politics as a delightful soap opera are going to have the daddy of all meltdowns about socialism becoming cool & popular. Smoke coming out of their ears, eyes spinning, gibbering 'This does not compute' until they collapse.

Albo already working up his talking points for distribution to the faithful on why socialism 'won't work' in Australia.

Cheney dying & NY electing a socialist Muslim mayor 21 yrs after 9/11, is (a) awesome (b) will drive the right insane with fear, and (c) will start a meaningless & very stupid op-ed campaign from the liberal press about 'unworkable' socialism, while (d) everyone else discovers socialism is cool.

I have a lot of thoughts about Del Toro's FRANKENSTEIN, too many for BSky except to say that the lives of women, the way we split off parts of ourselves, how we haunt others and how men wall off their lives, predominate. And the word 'forgiveness' at the end of the film is carrying a LOT of weight.

Sure, you could stay at the Lunatic Hotel in a silent, decaying, one-mule Australian town in the middle of nowhere. What could go wrong?

The ALP are such imbeciles that it's entirely possible that they didn't even know this proposal is a staggering breach of due process that sets unfathomable precedents, but was just another fun way to punish anyone on benefits & are now having to double down.

You can only want to help other living things grow, if you have something alive & growing in yourself. I wouldn't say that gardening is inherently anti-capitalist - think gardening as colonisation - but it can facilitate anti-capitalist growth in someone & soften them up for the coming revolution.

It's an inherent good to grow living things. Can you imagine Trump gardening? Netanyahu? Or Albanese or Marles? Mass graves, marble dunnies, environmental vandalism are their niche interests, consonant with the nature of capitalism as a death drive.

Here in Anaiwan country it can get down to minus 5 in winter & the changes of season are really something to see. In subtropical Bundjalung country, where I gardened for years, there are basically two seasons: Extremely Wet, and Somewhat Wet. Anything will grow there & usually does.

Bro is out here just casually dropping bombs like

After years of subtropical gardening I've had to learn cold climate gardening. I've scratched my head a lot & cursed my lack of knowledge even more, but it's a lot of fun. Everyone should do it. Gardening that is, not cursing one's lack of knowledge.

Colonial sadism, in the form of attacks on children, looks like this. Mutatis mutandis for people policed by Centrelink, marginalised because they are Blak or queer or disabled etc.

I feel like I'm going to be tapping this sign for the rest of my life. overland.org.au/2023/12/we-h...

This isn't going to win votes, save $$, give them leverage anywhere. So why do it? I'm gonna go with a sadism the Oz ruling class often resorts to, an involuntary itch to police & punish which they have to keep scratching. Sure the ruling class are banal, dumb etc. But they also like hurting people.

Can't underscore this enough. It's emblematic of plutocrats & politicians everywhere. They don't enjoy *anything* & don't want anybody else to have fun, or joy or pleasure because they literally don't understand it & can't see its dollar value. Just living the most boring lives imaginable.

Either the ALP don't understand the dynamics of DV & racist policing (which would not be surprising) or they don't care. The 3rd possibility, which I am inclined to, is that they enjoy punishing women and First Nations peoples & like to invent ways to do both as little treats for themselves.

If you know how much Strugatsky books routinely go for, you'll know that this is an incredible bargain. Free postage too! (Yes, I bought them)

Peter Watkins' film on the Paris Commune blew my mind. His films are like confrontations with a reality you've struggled to face your whole life. His personal statements on commodification of cinematic languages can sound a bit paranoid, but artistic languages *have* been dumbed down & truncated.

See Burke as example: His capacity for emotional life was likely killed off very early imo. With help of career politics & trad masculinity he's now a husk, a human flatline, so dead that the only liveliness he knows is punishing others. He's become a shadow of the thing that killed him.

Struck by many things in this essay on fascist masculinities. But having worked both with violent men & disturbed children it speaks to my conviction that when they were young, the play of fascists and their grovelling fanboys (the current Oz PM) would have been flat, empty, leaking despair.

According to this interview (published today) Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is currently here at a First Nations gathering in Ngunnawal country. Anyway, great interview (long) on fighting fascists, having fun & being connected. Hard recommend for her books.

This is where we seem to be permanently located now. Headline stories that run & run - Albo's tee, Joyce's shenanigans etc etc- are things that *nobody* cares about except a tiny media class. You can log out of Oz msm for days & literally miss nothing important.

I think about this quite a bit. Capitalism is so hostile to a creative life right from infancy & becoming more so. I wonder how many writers just give up writing because it's become so difficult to be heard & find others to talk with. And don't get me started on creative life in Australia.

Chris Hedges being in Australia for 5 minutes & nailing our media class as having no shame, no reflective capacity & being rife with self adulation is actually quite funny. And nailing Marr in the first few seconds of that interview as attempting a 'sleazy, dishonest hatchet job' is even funnier.

Who robbed the Louvre? Right answers only.

David Marr. Surprise, surprise.

Attenborough voice: The usual habitat of these shy creatures, rarely filmed, is the basket or discarded box. Several may use the same one at different times, from which they emerge to stalk their preferred prey such as cheese, weetbix, shadows, invisible objects & well upholstered furniture.

If you are a landlord, airbnb owner RE agent or anyone profiting from 'the housing market' and are not waking up each day consumed with deadly shame, pleading with your chosen deity to give you a little more time to redeem yourself before you are shunted to Hell, you are not fit for human company.

Companion animals can become entwined in your life in ways you don't notice. It's not just the usuals - affection, intelligence - but their intense unhuman aliveness, and when you lose them, you can feel bereft in odd ways that don't fit with other experiences of loss.

We have a winner in the 'unhinged literary opinion' thread doing the rounds, one I completely endorse, and which could profitably generate a new field of literary studies.

Philip K Dick is grossly overrated and In Search of Lost Time is too short.

Fellow citizens, and those occasionally watching, meet the Australian media class. So utterly unaware of the politics of 'reporting', so cocooned in their privileged bubble, so unalterably hilariously smug they may as well be Tories.

Who *hasn't* wanted to burn down Parliament House?

You can add a sentence beginning "Children will suffer as a result of..." to nearly every ALP policy.