Wednesday 19 May 2020

Hello all,

Could this be one of our last missives from captivity? Who knows, but things certainly seem to be heading that way.

That said, even with some restrictions being lifted domestically, returning to the global ‘normal’ of 4 months ago looks unlikely anytime soon, particularly given how the Brazil, Russia and the United States have utterly failed to effectively deal with the pandemic. Hmm...I wonder what those three nations have in common? Could it be they each have despots in charge? Could it have something to do with democracy making way for demagoguery in those nations, where inconvenient facts, evidence and experts are dismissed as ‘fake news’?  It’s kinda surprising that hasn’t happened here given our dear PM’s track record with expert advice…

But I’ll get on to politics in a minute (whoever thought it improper to discuss sex, religion or politics at the dinner table, hold on to your hats and dowdy undergarments because at least two of those topics will be discussed below).

Jur-gression Park

Oh, actually, I retract that ‘not a lot’ has happened. Archer and I sat down to watch the OG Jurassic Park and it was wonderful. What a milestone for all involved—both the viewers and filmmakers! For a 27-year-old film, it remains as thrilling and impactful as the day I first saw it. Even with 30 years of technology ‘improvements’, Jurassic Park proves the hacks behind Jurassic World (some of the same hacks as those behind the Star Wars sequels) have the whole thing arse-about. It’s not about cramming as many explosive, computer-generated action sequences onto the screen as possible, it’s about characters and story. And in the case of Jurassic Park, it’s about suspense. You don’t see a dinosaur until 20 minutes and 24 seconds into the film; the iconic T-Rex breakout (one of the great scenes in cinema) doesn’t come until the start of the second hour (1:02:10 to be precise).

Compare this to Jurassic World: there’s a 40 second, 11-shot sequence where an entirely forgettable tertiary character is picked by swooping pteranodons, passed from beak to beak, before being dropped in a lake, picked up again by a pteranodon just as the giant mosasaurus comes out of the water and devours both pteranodon and tertiary character (RIP). It’s gratuitous, forgettable and seems like it came from the mind of a Ritalin-addled 6-year-old. It’d be generous to ascribe this scene one-tenth of the impact of Gennaro being eaten by the T-Rex in the bathroom stall. Just because we can cram the frame with hundreds of meaningless computer-animated people and dinosaurs for ‘spectacle’, doesn’t mean we should.

Jurassic Park's restraint is partly because it was expensive to put dinosaurs on screen in 1993 (and they weren’t 100% certain the brand-new computer animation technology would work), so we had fewer dinosaurs in the film—a great example of creativity from limitations. Another reason: it’s Spielberg, one of the great storytellers of our time. Also movies are a lot better when you actually give a crap about the people about to be eaten on screen. See below for Archer’s priceless reaction to the T-Rex breakout scene. 

Just keep walking

Aside from work, we’ve been occupying our time with walks across to Deakin and surrounds, bike rides and anything else to pass the time. I even managed to visit the shops on Sunday, grabbing various bits and pieces I’ve long been in need of. It’s clear that, regardless what governments deem safe, many people will continue to be cautious for a long time to come. Though there are plenty of nuffies who will swarm a beach on a sunny day, there are just as many who will avoid public areas for the foreseeable future.

Maddie also bought the household one of those robot vacuum cleaners. The kids thought it was great until it started to come after them. You can see the inevitable results of this below. Somehow, Finn managed to press a combination of buttons which has changed the vacuum’s language to Mandarin meaning when it encounters an error, we have no idea which one it is or what action needs to be taken. Thank you, Finn.

Oh, I did go to kinder this weekend to take some photos and shoot some video for a virtual open day tour. That gave me the opportunity to see a wonderful work of art on the wall — Archer’s self-portrait! (see below for photo)

May the 4th be with you (and also with you)

May 4th was—of course—Star Wars day (see, now we're talking about religion!). I don't remember this day being a thing when I was a lad. To me, Star Wars day was every day I decided to load up the VHS and watch one of the films (first from the video shop, then the pre-Special Edition VHS, then the Special Edition VHS, then the DVD, then the Blu-Ray, now the 4K Blu-Ray 🤓). Growing up, I seem to recall May 25th being remembered as Star Wars day as that was the day the original film premiered in 1977. 

Regardless, I took the time to share this priceless picture with my other Star Wars kindred spirit, Dan: 

This was at Bourke Street Mall for the launch of the Special Edition Trilogy on VHS (I think?) circa 1997. I seem to recall the event was emcee'd by Tim Ferguson, then of Don't Forget Your Toothbrush fame.

May's also home to another significant milestone — happy 48th anniversary Ma & Pa!

Ah...politics

Trigger warning: if the header didn’t give it away, THIS SECTION CONTAINS CONTENT OF A POLITICAL NATURE. IF YOU HAVE AN IMMUTABLE WORLD-VIEW, THIS MIGHT CAUSE YOU SOME DISTRESS. If you find any of this ‘controversial’ or ‘boring’, I am truly sorry. For you. But now is the perfect time to engage a little more with the world around you.

Our state premiers have done a sterling job during this whole crisis. Because of our federal structure, the states are the level of government that actually do stuff in Australia: health, education, emergency services, roads...the list literally goes on. The state leaders have recognised that ultimately they’re the ones who are going to have to make the hard decisions and so they have.

By-and-large, all our state leaders have responded to the coronavirus epidemic decisively and responsibly. They’ve largely left party politics at the Parliament House door and done what’s needed to be done. Not so much our dear PM…

There’s a lot I could write here, but it’s okay — I won’t go on and on*. Suffice it to say that, despite presiding over this crisis side-by-side with the Chief Medical Officer and the best expert advice in the land, we will no doubt exit the pandemic with the government returning to their war on evidence, facts and science—particularly environmental and climate science. I don’t quite understand how you can listen and act according to scientific modelling and expert-evidence on one issue, but then completely disregard it on another issue. Oh that’s right, the science conflicts with their political donors.

'Where did you dig up that old fossil?'

Speaking of which, did you see the PM appointed a fossil fuel mate to head up the National Covid-19 Coordination Commission? Nev Power is serving out of a sense of duty to his country...and a $267,345 salary (plus expenses) for six months’ work. Nice work, if you can get it. Unsurprisingly, this commission is myopically focused on making carbon-intensive fossil fuels a key part of Australia’s ‘recovery’ (even though demand and prices for fossil fuels has fallen off a cliff and renewables are the cheapest form of new energy in Australia and much of the world).

Of course we could become a global powerhouse for renewable energy—there are literally tens of thousands of jobs to be had in this emerging sector compared to a declining industry, and billions of dollars more to make—but our federal government isn’t going to do that. They’re far too invested in falsifying council documents to smear political opponents. And it’s not just bolsheviks such as myself calling for such action. Known bastions of communism such as the World Economic Forum and the Reserve Bank of Australia are calling for huge investment in renewable energy to kickstart the global economy once this whole thing is over. Renewables are going to decimate fossil fuels whether governments like it or not (witness the absurdity of Wyoming applying a tax to wind-generated electricity because it’s too cheap and threatens the state’s coal industry), so best we get ahead of the game, yeah? There’s so much to gain and almost nothing to lose.

Now, future prognostications aside, the federal government has done a lot right during this crisis. Though they were very slow out of the gates (having to be prodded by state premiers into real action), the actions they’ve taken have undoubtedly saved many lives and many jobs (but could have saved even more jobs if action had been taken sooner).

But a neo-liberal leopard doesn’t change its spots.

JobKeeper, JobSeeker and JobWeeper

They’ve made it clear that measures like the doubling of the Artist Formerly Known as Newstart—now JobSeeker—unemployment benefit (which brought the payment *just* above the poverty line for many recipients for the first time in 25 years) will be rolled back, probably by the end of the year. This, despite an unlikely alliance of groups around the country—unions, peak business bodies, social organisations, Labor, Greens, One Nation and even many LNP backbenchers—supporting a permanent rise in the Newstart allowance.

And while the government’s JobKeeper program has undoubtedly been good for some, its design has left many behind: casuals (disproportionately impacting young people and women), the ENTIRE university sector, overseas students, visa holders, the arts and cultural industries and basically all freelancers. In fact, this program has done more harm to the arts industry than any philistines of the past could ever hope to. If you value our cultural industries, this shouldn’t just worry you, it should scare the shit out of you. These institutions, like Sydney’s Carriageworks, haven’t gone into ‘hibernation’, they’ve collapsed. They won’t ‘bounce back’. They are gone forever. And there are countless others around the nation that won’t be back.

Now, you might argue I’m being unfair, that JobKeeper was designed and implemented quickly and imperfectly in the middle of a crisis, and you’d be correct. However, there have been days and weeks and now months to address these issues and fine-tune the program. The government is well-aware of the shortcomings of JobKeeper and who is adversely impacted; they have declined to fix it despite a substantial underspend in the program.

Call me a cynic, but I can’t help but think the government has done this deliberately to damage sectors and individuals not known for their vociferous support of the Liberal Party. This is particularly important for Victoria as our biggest exports aren’t digging up planet-suffocating combustible rocks from the ground and shipping them to China, but are services such as education ($12.6 BILLION in 2019) and cultural industries (generates $31 BILLION in economic activity and $1.5 BILLION in exports for Victoria every year). It’s almost like the federal government doesn’t care about education and critical thinking…

Also, did you know the Minister for Youth is a 62-year-old man? He is also the Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians. Seriously. You can’t make this shit up. Then again, this is from the same mob that made a man the Minister for Women (Tony Abbott — remember him?). It would be humorous, except for the fact that youth unemployment skyrocketed to 13.8% in April (up from 11.5% the previous month and a much bigger increase than the rest of the population). Many of those now-unemployed youth are the same people excluded from JobKeeper: casuals in hard-hit industries such as hospitality and retail. Not good. I guess maybe they’ll be able to access franking credits when they retire at age 80??

In short, while the federal government has enjoyed a big bump in the polls during the pandemic, it looks like we’re going to exit out and be right back where we started. Faith in government has actually increased since the pandemic began. I think that’s a good thing. Imagine what we could do with a bipartisan blueprint for the future? Unfortunately, Scotty from marketing is probably going to squander all the goodwill and return to the internecine battles of the recent past — the old discredited trickle-down economics with a healthy dose of environmental and cultural vandalism. Good times.

(*whoops — did I ‘go on and on’? Forgive me. I’m going to be on this planet longer than some of you and my kids for even longer, so I’ve got a stake in making sure there’s an economic and environmental future for them to inherit. I’m sure you understand.)

Microsoft misc.

This little keyboard really is a joy to type on. In fact, this whole computer is a joy to use. Sure, it can be a little bit slow (UserBenchmark ranks its Intel Pentium processor a modest 915th out of 1236 CPUs for performance) but it’s tidy enough for simple things like typing this missive. And, let’s not forget, I have a device with a Pentium processor inside—it’s been over 16 years since I’ve had one of those.

Speaking of old computers, I’m trying to source an old Windows 95 or 98 PC with a Pentium or Pentium II processor as a plaything for Archer. Believe it or not, there’s still some great software titles out there from the mid-1990s that are fun and educational and offer an interactive experience that doesn’t exist today. Think Microsoft’s CD-ROM encyclopedia Encarta or their Dangerous Creatures program.

These titles (and many more) come from a time when ‘multimedia’ was all the rage, when it was a novelty to fit text, music and video on to a consumer storage medium. The thing is that even with the quantum leaps in technology and storage capacities, these sorts of interactive experiences haven’t been replicated in the modern world. For us adults, we can search easily for information on Wikipedia, or for watching movies, there’s YouTube and Netflix, but there’s nothing you could consider a curated and interactive family-friendly experience like the aforementioned Microsoft CD-ROM titles. Once I find a new/old PC, Microsoft Dinosaurs will probably be the first thing loaded!

Pictured below are some multi-media adventures from the past (1995).

As with missives prior, I’ve been working through some more film scans and digital photographs from the past AGE...like months and months...and here are some of the results, along with more recent images that don't fit anywhere else. Pls tap or click to embiggen.

Well, the end of another period of time. However long it is. We've been confirmed as working from home until at least the end of the month, so who knows what the next four weeks will bring!