runcible spoon

Arse-end of the world

Thus spake a former Australian prime minister on this country’s perceived positioning in the global order. Of the phrase 'arse-end', I have this to say: at least it’s a lot less coy than that other favoured descriptor, ‘down under’.

I mention these things as a prelude to my current obsession: the 1929 Surrealist Map of the World.

Maybe the map appeals because, living at the so-called ‘ends of the earth’ or ‘bottom of the globe’ in Australia, perhaps one is more than ready to get annoyed at how understandings of the world are typically constructed. After all, locating where the ‘top’ of the world is and identifying who is ‘on top’ are surely loaded questions, not self-evident truths.

This website, which talks about explaining to kids that maps encode a lot of information about power, privilege and belonging, uses the following 'family' example:

 Your aunt is making a family album and she puts really big pictures of her kids but only little ones of you and your sister that you can barely see!

Nice.

The surrealist map has its own limitations, as with any map. But I like how radical it is. In its imaginings, the Oceanic islands are the center of the world, the bulk of the US does not exist, and places like Alaska, Easter Island and Labrador loom large. Paris stands in for the whole of France.

I like that the Surrealist map is bold in challenging how one thinks about places in the world and mapping their importance. It also got me thinking about blogs and how one might map or imagine the English-speaking blog-o-sphere in geographical terms.

New York would loom scarily large, I reckon. As would Salt Lake City. In fact, come to think of it, Dooce would probably have her own freaking country. There’d be a huge contingent of Parisian Bloggers-in-English, blotting out the rest of France, just like the surrealists did. If Australia appeared at all, there would be no marking for Sydney – only Melbourne. I don’t know why this is (perhaps my Victorian friends would have some unkind suggestions about Sydney being culturally moribund?!), but it seems to me to be the case: Melbourne bloggers outnumber and outpower Sydney bloggers by a substantial margin.

As I say, I can't explain it, it just seems to be a fact ...

Reading while walking

I like Stuart's description of How to Read While Walking at the Same Time when in New York City.

He calls it 'shadowing':

Reading when walking is a skill, especially in New York City. My preferred method is to simply walk behind someone else and let them do the work of parting the sea of foot traffic while I get on with my book.

(see September 12 2005, 'Alack! Aaaalack! A-lacke!')

49-Up

In the early 1960s, a group of Brits at Granada television came up with a then quite extraordinary idea: they would film the lives, thoughts and daily realities of a group of 14 seven year-olds. So was born the documentary series '7-Up', as made by Michael Apted.

As his starting point, Apted relied upon an old Jesuit saying, give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man. The programme's manifesto was simple: economic class determines future success.  To test this claim, the same children would be filmed aged 14, then 21, then 28, 35, 42 and so on.

Despite the fact that the 14 children were chosen as a 'cross-section' of British society, there is only one non-white participant in 7-Up and there are only four women. When queried in recent years about this seeming imbalance, Apted stated: 'Honestly, it never occurred to us.'  The Guardian has in turn pointed out that this is itself an interesting reflection of the way Britain saw itself as in 1964: essentially, as a white, male place.

When I first watched the 7-Up series in around 1991, I was 13 years old and I was transfixed. Somehow, this group of people has insinutated itself into my life over the years. Each time the seven year period rolls around, watching the 7-Uppers invariably reminds me of what I was doing seven years ago and how my life has variously changed or stayed the same. Watching those children morph from tykes rumbling in a playground in 1964 (replete with plummy English voice-over of the sort you might find on a nature documentary) to awkward adolescents and sometimes angry and uncomfortable adults in the 1990s and beyond has marked itself on my own mind, and is lodged in my consciousness of growing up.

49-Up had its first screening in the UK last night, and I eagerly await watching it here. That said, the series is not always easy viewing, and all the participants have said that they've felt deep anger at certain times towards the documentarian and his process.  Interesting stuff.

Urge overkill

IKEA had set up a bed in the rush-hour madness of Town Hall railway station this morning. Not just a bed, mind you. A fully dressed, decked-out bed - speckled with pillows and covers and coverlets. There were even bedside tables and standard floor lamps. And, of course, a humiliated looking employee handing out catalogues to the harried commuters swirling around her.

I didn't need all this just to appraise me of the fact that IKEA has a new annual catalogue out. Oh no, my friends. I have known this for several days now - in fact, I can trace my knowledge to the exact moment that the 2006 catalogue came into being.

The reason is this: I am living with one of the world's great IKEA addicts. Andrew's mother.

The woman lives and breathes IKEA in a most phenomenal manner. She has studied the catalogue at length and can tell you the pros and cons of the $9 water decanter as listed on page blah. Beds have been scrutinised, along with lamps, cabinets and storage solutions.

The house we're currently living in could - among other things - list as a claim to fame the fact that it's a sort of Residential IKEA Museum. There are pieces in this place that stretch back a good twenty years or so, and you can trace the company's evolving dedication to particle board and cheap finishes.

If I sound irritable and on-edge, it's because I am. In the past, I too have strayed to IKEA's dark side. The stuff is addictive. You can lose all sense of value, time and logic in those stores. Whole afternoons dissolve, as you wander round the megastore under the growing illusion that what you REALLY need in this life is a matching set of kitchen canisters and some more of those folding cardboard box thingos.

I have to watch myself.

Alma mater on George St

The oddest thing happened yesterday.

I was walking to uni, threading my way down George St (all the tackiness of London's Oxford St, without any of the fame). It's wall to wall tourist tat, shabby fast food joints, multiplex cinemas and a Planet Hollywood.

Oh, and a massive, half-dismantled fake volcano that belongs to the Scientologists. I kid you not.

Anyway, the other sort of place George St does a mean line in is gaming parlours. Arcade games, loud noise, automated dance machines, shoot-em-ups, Skilltesters and Daytona racing. There are several of these places along the street's midsection.

Lounging on the dirty steps of one of the gaming places were two girls. For some reason, the embroidered logo on the navy blue woollen jumper of one caught my attention. My school crest! That little white emblem with its Latin motto; I'd know it anywhere.

That's when I realised they weren't schoolgirls. They were Japanese tourists.

Both were heavy-eyed with make-up, like hard-bitten Hello Kitties. One had somehow dreamed to team a high school jumper with super-tight, stonewash denims, glittery silver flats and a retro 80s belt.

I really wanted to ask them something, but I had no idea what to say.

Bizarre China travel tip

Well, it's bizarre to me, at any rate. I have been to China several times, and had no idea this concept existed.

(Of course, the fact that I have never travelled mobile phone in hand might have something to do with my lack of awareness):

... if you get stuck, there is a great mobile phone translation service available in Shanghai called Guangxi, which I found absolutely priceless. To explain to a local/taxi driver, say, where you want to go, you just type the destination in English (or pinyin) and send it to 885075 and the Chinese translation will be sent back, which you simply show to the driver. Make sure your phone accepts Chinese characters by visiting your mobile phone shop before you leave. When you’re visiting more obscure sites, this little service can be a lifesaver. You can also use it when ordering food in a restaurant or asking directions from people in the street.

It's also strange that I found it here, in 'Lawyers Weekly'!

Man in monk's clothing

We are living in Sydney's leafy suburbs at the moment, rather than closer in to the CBD. Everywhere about here are big cars, bigger houses, and quiet, tidy lives.

I must admit that I miss the inner city. I do get my daily dose when I go in for uni and work, but it's not quite the same as living there.

Yesterday, I happened upon a man walking along Broadway, on the city fringe, wearing the full regalia of a monk. Regalia is the wrong word entirely, really, as his get-up was very spare: a long, voluminous grey gown (like a cross between a mu-mu and a huge sack), secured with a couple of simple strings of what looked like Rosary beads.

I want to call his outfit a 'monk's cassock', 'cause that sounds kick-ass - but I don't think it actually WAS a cassock. At any rate, he was young and carrying a laptop bag cum briefcase.

He made a strangely satisfying city sight.

Street rambling and the grand Penguincubator

From my friend Jess, I received for my birthday a slender volume of Virgina Woolf essays and short stories released this year as Street Haunting.

The name of this little book is taken from the title of a piece within - 'Street Haunting: A London Adventure'.

The story goes a little like this:

... so when the desire comes upon us to go street rambling the pencil does for a pretext, and getting up we say: 'Really I must buy a pencil,' as if under cover of this excuse we could indulge safely in the greatest pleasure of town life in winter - rambling the streets of London.

The hour should be evening and the season winter, for in winter the champagne brightness of the air and the sociability of the streets are grateful.

The 'champagne brightness of the air'?  Kill me now. This entire piece is just too lovely. Its central concerns are those of the flâneur: one who wanders the streets and discovers all manner of oddities and wonders simply by being awake to the city.

What is additionally compulsive, though, is that this little book is part of the splash-tacular series of tiny, wee books released (or in some cases re-released) by Penguin to mark the publishing house's 70th birthday.

These books appeal to the part of me that likes lollies, I think. They're small and bright and tasty. Just morsel-sized. I love books, but I do not take them as seriously as some. I will never make a capital-C Collector: I have no desire to put Mylar 'round covers or to talk of the foxing and spotting of pages or clipped or unclipped dustjackets.

Instead, I think I love books as a four year-old loves TV: messily, and with the rather substantial chance that chocolate's gonna get spilled.

There is a super-dooper Flash thingo at Penguin's Happy Birthday site that is colourful and very much for playing with! Click on any of the spines, and the book pops out at you, as if being taken from a shelf and you can see the cover and read an extract. The covers in particular are very cute and graphic. Each artist was given only seven days to come up with the design, so they're punchy, but also have a sense of having been done on the fly.

Penguin also have a list of 70 reasons why one should wish them a happy birthday. Some of the 70 are fab, such as:

54.  Because after being kidnapped and held in solitary confinement in war-torn Beirut, Terry Waite sketched a penguin as a way of asking his captors for some good books to read - and was understood.

Some are more of the lame-ola variety, though:

27.  Because Penguin is the home of reading.

The absolute corker for top-notch piece of trivia may well be this one:

26.  Because early Penguins were available from a dispenser called the 'Penguincubator'.

Penguincubator? I want me one of those!

 

Trouble in Murakami-ville

Book club was delayed last week as Andrew was sick. I have it on reputable authority, however, that I am in trouble for choosing such a big, fat book as Wind-up Bird Chronicle.

Yes, quite.

I have to say that I got somewhat distracted during our discussion of what should be read this month and conveniently overlooked the size of that particular tome ...

Still, it sounds like it has spawned some interesting encounters already: Liz was reading it on the bus only to find a stranger tapping her on the shoulder. She turned, perplexed, only to have the woman say, you know you only find a book like that one once a decade. Enjoy it.

This bolt-from-the-blue advice was, as Liz put it, pleasantly bizarre.

What's also bizarre in a lovely way is that that it was such a Murakami-style intervention.

People just write shit and stuff

Yesterday we were all experiencing the blog lurve, but today I think we should visit some people not feelin' it at all.

I heard this on a train the other day. I think it's super:

Commuter1:     So many blogs these days.

Commuter2:     Whaat?

C1:    Blogs. People just write stuff. It's not even entertaining.

C2:    It's weird.

C1:    And all blogs will have a list of other blogs - like, 'these are my friends,' right.  And you'll go from a blog that's interesting - like, it's all celebrities and how Tara Reid had liposuction or something on her stomach so it's looking really weird. And that'll link to a site that has nothing. No pics, no funny commentary, nothing. It sucks.

If only one of those Tara Reid sites would link to me. People, I have NOTHING: no celebs, no goss, no surgery.

Link to me from your liposucking paradises, damn you.

***
ps: thank you Kahli and Tristin for mentions on your lovely blogs! I read your stuff and then think, wow, how hard must Salt Lake City rock?!