Podcatting

So here lies episode 4 of the The World According to Oscar Wilde podcast. In it, me old china plate Adam and myself yak on about the crises in sport in Australia, talk about the potential legislation of same-sex marriage in Britain, hear a beautiful reading of James Fenton's "What would the dead want from us" (read by Adam) and critique the Australian cricket team's summer. Enjoy, and don't forget to like our Facebook page, which has links to the big stories of the week and questions for debate and discussion.

Enjoy.

On the Study of Literature

So, another year, another dollar. I'm back for another year of prognostication and procrastination. Below, I look at why studying literature is a Good Thing. Hope you can make it to the end.

Yes, why is literature so important? What is literature? What is "is"? Why am I rehashing old jokes?

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Beyond the usual argument that literature helps see our better and worse angels and demons (yes, I am referencing Dan Brown; no, I am not subtly or otherwise endorsing his works) in a conveniently fictive form, literary studies encompasses all that one should know, should the Coalition win government should one choose to work in the field of the liberal arts in whatever capacity. For me, (hopefully) my future career as a journo will be helped immensely by my past, present and future study of lit. 

There are a few accepted disciplines that one should be aware of if one is to work in a field requiring predominant use of the left side of the brain: history, philosophy, language and linguistics, and even the pseudosciences (yes, I am being provocative) of psychology and sociology.

The important to understand about literature, besides its being a key proof of Derridean intertextuality, which is of course kindling for another fire, is that, more often than not, it is an attempt by the author to assert their view of the world on the world. Hence, Orwell's 1984, set within the quotidian activities of the worn-out Winston Smith, is a dystopian tale of allowing the government too much power. In another example, various right-wing ideologues cite Ayn Rand as a favourite for her Nietzschean message (set within a book about architecture, or something) of individualistic struggle against the collective; the (moral) victory of the kulak over all the other Bolshie peasants. Of course one prominent Rand fan was last year's American vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan, who apparently made his staffers read Rand's magna opera The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. I would have gone for The Consolations of Philosophy myself, but each to their own I guess. The key point, again, is that authors construct and drown us, the reader, out with their world view.

(One advantage the author has over the film director in this regard is that in no case does the director ever have complete control about what happens in their film; indeed, it has been suggested through the so-called Schreiber theory that screenwriters are, to use a plain phrase, the big cheese when it comes to making movies. This complements the work of François Truffaut who, alongside bringing up auteur theory (whereas directors not only have complete control over the film production process, but also include their life experiences in it) in the first place, came up with the idea of the metteur en scène, or setter of the scene (think Michael Bay as "director" of Transformers) as the auteur-director's polar opposite. I will acknowledge the following: while some big names loom large over the century-or-so of film directing (Griffith, Welles, Rossellini, Truffaut himself, Bergman &c), I just feel films are too ephemeral to leave a lasting impression of the tangential experiences of a director. We can sense this impression in a book, especially in a memoir or "confession". Indeed, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, which is one of the more strange books I've read, gives us a sense of what the author has and hasn't read through his allusions, name-checks and referents, which Penguin has kindly and conveniently detailed in its edition's endnotes. Even novels will have these allusions, name-checks and referents, which we can read - in more than one sense - as the author speaking to us, breaking the fourth wall if you will. Even my own allusions, name-checks and referents in this post and others speak volumes about my literary interests. How could I reveal that information through film? Of course writers have to deal with pesky editors (as well as peskier sub-editors if the publication is some sort of journal of record) and peskiest proprietors if business interests are at stake, which is rare-ish, but still unfortunate. On this blog, there is only my good self (which is like dealing with different people sometimes) to deal with, but the trade-off is that no one actually reads my stuff. Still, the independence and power of the author is much more than the independence and power of the auteur.)   

Before we go further, let me add, if you didn't read the parenthetical paragraph above, I discount films in the study of literature. Why? I feel films are too ephemeral and fleeting to be analysed and reflected on, whereas I prefer the materiality of a good tome. Two more points: I recall attending a seminar on how to be a movie reviewer (yes, I was evidently very bored), and the main tip seemed to be to write the review in the hours after the film is seen, so as to not forget the, y'know, details. Why rely on something as incredibly unreliable as memory (it's the basis of Modernist literature, after all)? Wouldn't it be better to write the review while the movie's being seen? Except for the, y'know, darkness of the theater, that would actually be a good idea. The other thing is, were I running pedagogy in any capacity, I would immediately take off films off the text studying list for English and Literature. Besides the unreliability of memory, information is transmitted differently between film and the written word. This would lead into a discussion of Ong and McCluhan, but suffice to say different senses are being tickled when consuming film and book. (On an increasingly tangential note, on the chest-beating and brow-furrowing that occurs whenever anyone considers the demise of print, think of this: the context is just as important as the text. Who has ever tried reading a book online? My experience (reading Aristophanes' The Clouds; don't ask) was my concentration diminished tenfold because of other distractions (music, cat videos on YouTube, social media &c). Print needs to be kept alive as a medium, unless we want to become a bunch of distracted rats, looking for the next dopamine hit (well, more than we are already). Call me a tweed-wearing geezer, but you wanted my opinion so there you are).

We shall stick to good books, then.  

A student of the literary will encounter all facets of knowledge - and epistemology itself - (even the pseudosciences) in an exemplar of literature.

Take, for example, the study of Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground. The story of a neurotic man (and I should know!) who journalises his life, I was fortunate (?) enough to be prescribed it for my literature course last semester.   

Reading the novella (instead of only its synopsis on Wikipedia), one becomes immersed in a range of ideas and concepts that one can store for later so that one can confuse friends and strangers alike at parties.

What does Notes from Underground, as an arbitrary example, teach us? (Besides the lesson that getting emotionally involved with prostitutes is never really a good idea?)

• We can approach the text from an philosophical stance, looking at the case for and against Rational Egoism, the viewpoint critiqued by Dostoyevsky
• We can study, psychologically, what motivates a person to abandon all forms of social contact and become a misanthrope
• We can explore the aesthetics of the novella, and its links to Modernism
• We can explore translations of the novel from Russian into English - various translations have titled the work Notes from the Underground, and key ideas are changed slightly, or significantly, due to differing ideas on how a word or phrase should be rendered comprehensible to the monolingual English reader
• We can study the role of censorship in 19th century Russia, amid autocracy.

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I mentioned my aspiration to work as a journalist in the opening section. There is, in fact, an intersection between journalism and literature. No, I don't mean journos making it up as they go along. At the heart of journalism and the wider media industry is the desire to tell, and be told, stories. Why is it that news bulletins refer to reports as "stories"? It seems to me to be the most receptive way a particular message can be reached. What I mean is, by labeling these packages as "stories", there's an element of artifice about the content, and therefore an element of unreality, and therefore an element of irrelevance, and paradoxically, an element of believabilty. Who cares, and who's going to not accept, about what those clowns in Canberra do if it's all meaningless and without practical implications? The press gallery can prattle on all they like about Kevin Rudd's leadership chances, but what does it mean to the people on the streets and in the suburbs? The other side of the coin is that the more serious bulletins actually do refer to their packages as "reports", because the people running these bulletins understand consumers want to stay informed. 

All media involves some element of story-telling. From the most bland documentary to the hippest advertisement, the creators of these productions have thought about narrative, and the sequence of items to be presented. Is it no small wonder that the elements of hard news - who, what, when, where, why and how - are the same things schoolchildren learn about in primary school when learning how to write a story?

There have been attempts to formalise this story-telling in the heady world of journalism. The most notable of these is New Journalism, a term coined by Tom Wolfe in 1972. (He was, and still is, a satirist, so we should be careful about how much this term may or may not reflect badly on journalists.) The whole point is to subvert the hard news style of reporting (25-word paragraphs, ordered by most newsworthy information, written in language comprehensible by a 12-year-old) and instill a style of writing that is more languid (think Saturday feature as opposed to Monday headline). More than ordinary breaking news, New Journalism moves closer to the omniscience and omnipotence of the pre-Modernist novelists (as if journos need another reason to give themselves a big head) and this way lies that link between literature and journalism.  

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The points being the following: we can study and learn from well-written books in a way we can't do so from well-directed films; well-written books should contain a range of disciplines and history and philosophy should be the foremost of these; Notes from Underground, as an arbitrary exemplar of literature, teaches us both about ourselves and the temporal and physical surroundings of the author; literature, because of the above points, is essential consumption for anyone wanting to make a living in the liberal arts; and journalism, my chosen field of work, has strong connections with literature and story-telling, made stronger by the advent of Tom Wolfe's New Journalism.

Happy Australia Day Citizens' Day weekend, folks.

   

Podcasting

Happy New Year, folks. Here appeareth the new episodes of the podcasts I'm doing with my china plate Adam. Episode 3 is here. It also strikes me that I forgot to add episode 2 at the appropriate time, so here it is. If it please you to leave some feedback, that would be mightily appreciated. You can also like the Facebook page, where we post the stories from Australia and around the world each day.

Enjoy

Why 12-Hour Time is Flawed

I today write to propose that the system that we use to keep time is flawed. Stay calm, for it is only a minor adjustment that needs to be made.

For people of a certain disposition that's not necessarily sweet, (and of course I'm referring to people like me) 24-hour time seems to be the only one worth following. Indeed, it would be fairly hazardous and confusing trying to follow both 12-hour and 24-hour time - not to mention a complete waste of time !¹
It's fortunate, then, that I've stepped into the vast breach that is this flawed system.

For those interested/bored, you may or may not be questioning why I use 24-hour time. Simply, it's simple, and unambiguous.

The opposite goes for 12-hour time. The problem is it seems to be doubling up on information. Let me expound on what I mean.

If we start at midnight - which is problematic in itself - or 0.00, then 12-hour time works fine until we get, funnily enough, to noon. Some scallywag, in trying to come up with a solution, just confused everybody bar themselves by decreeing that there would be an arbitrary line known as the meridiem, assumably referring to noon, the point of which is to signify the time at which the sun is highest in the day. Hence, morning is ante meridiem, or before this point and afternoon, evening and night are post meridiem, or after this point.

There are many problems with this setup.

Wikipedia, as is often the case, has much to say on this matter. The article delineates one part of the issue, viz., assuming am is midnight and pm noon, one runs the risk of the thing occurring to them when one assumes. And, contrary to popular belief, I don't like being made an ass of. (Just for the record of adding to the compendium of what style guides (or is that "styleguides") have to say on the issue, everybody's favourite fair and balanced news media company News Limited says to "use noon and midnight, not 12pm and 12am which do not exist".)

But there is another problem.

I hope we are all on the same page when I declare 11am is a later point in the day than 1am. But what is really being signified here? I pointed out above that am is "before the point of afternoon". So what's happening here is 11am, which we all (hopefully) agreed is a later point in the day than 1am is actually eleven hours before noon, while 1am is one hour before noon. How silly is that?

(Afternoon, evening and night is not a problem, again presupposing noon as the fixed point around which all other times are based, because the measurement of time (1pm, 3pm &c) concords with what is actually happening (one hour after, or post, noon; three hours after, &c).)

What should happen is we should modify the morning hours to concord with what is happening. So while 6am would remain constant, we should change the current measurement to its complementary number. Eg 11am would become 1am, 4am would become 8am &c.

Change is diificult, I appreciate, and I also appreciate that there other issues the thinking person could spend crucial hours on: climate change, not resting until Prime Minister Gillard is guillotined then hanged, drawn and quartered &c.

But the clock is ticking.

   

^{1. This joke was, in fact, not written by Jerry Seinfeld. Not that there's anything wrong with that↩}

Spam email #4

The next spam e-mail on the list is a little, well, dated. Not only is it dated in the sense that I received this email some months ago, it is written, as I'm sure you can see, by "one of the daughters of the embattled president of Libya", viz., the daughter of Muammar Gaddafi, who at the moment is probably the opposite of "embattled" - one of the easiest things to do - and hardest, I guess - is to be in a state of non-being. Anyway, I provide the following for your entertainment procrastination.

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I NEED YOUR URGENT ASSISTANCE! I am Miss.Ayesha Gaddafi, one of the daughters of the embattled president of Libya, I am currently residing in one of the African Countries1, unfortunately as a refugee. At the meantime,my family is the target of Western nations led by Nato2 who wants to destroy my father at all costs. Our investments and bank accounts in several countries are their targets to freeze. I have been commissioned to contact an interested foreign investor/partner3 who will be able to take absolute control of part of the vast cash available to private account with my late brother who was killed by NATO air strike, for a possible investment in your country. If this transaction interest you4, you don’t have to disclose it to any body because of what is going with my entire family, if the united nation happens to know this account, they will freezing it as they freeze others so keep this transaction for yourself only until we finalize it.I want to transfer this money into your account immediately for onward5 investment in your country because I don’t want the united nation to know about this account.6 Therefore if you are capable of running an establishment and can maintain the high level of secrecy required in this project7, kindly respond with the following information for details of the project. 1. Your full names and address 2. Your private telephone and fax numbers8 3. Your private email address 4. Age and profession Best Regard9, Miss.Ayesha Gaddafi.

1 When capitalisation is done erratically, as it is done here and is also a phenomenon of 17th and 18th century English (one only needs to read the Preamble of the American Declaration of Independence to see what I'm talking about), it annnoys me to no end.^↩
2 Why "she" changes from the correct writing of Nato to NATO later on is unclear. Standard journalistic practice - and therefore good English - in News Limited - although the Guardian is one prominent non-Murdoch publication to follow suit - is to use lower case in the appropriate places if the acronym is said as a word. "Nato" - the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation - is one example and Opec - the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries - is another.^↩
3 If "she" wants me to invest a large sum of money - which presumes "she" wants it back at some stage - wouldn't "she" bother to check if I have experience in the whole investing thing (which I don't)? Far out, every company expects experience in an applicant (reminding me of the old chestnut that to have experience to sell, one must gain experience first). Poor business acumen and practice.^↩
4 Fascinating use of the subjunctive. The subjunctive is rarely used in English - although more popular in the Romance languages, especially Italian. The subjunctive is used to express hypotheticals, and works well in "if" formulations, as here. Or it could just be a typo. ^↩
5 Intriguing debate on whether it should read as "onward" or "onwards". The starting point for this debate would be to look at the Americanisation (or should that be "Americanization"?) of words, starting after the War of Independence was won in 1783. Anglo words tend to have the "s" at the end, while Americanised ones drop it off. The classic case is of "maths" (Anglo) against "math" (Americanised) as an abbreviation of "mathematics". Or, again, it could just be a typo.^↩
6 This paragraph doesn't have the lucid feel of previous ones. The mind boggles at the drop in standard.^↩
7 Well, that ship has sailed.^↩
8 Is fax still a thing?^↩
9 So "she" purports to be able to give me "vast cash" and yet she is so stingy she gives me only one "regard"? Obviously fake^↩

Podcast promotion time

G'day folks,

Great to be here, and it's great you could join me as I announce my exclusive podcast with good friend Adam Morris*. It's been said I have a good face for radio (or audio, whatever) - probably by me - and listening to it is the way to prove this theory. So now, not only can you read my inane thoughts, you can hear them as well. At least they're countered by the sagacious views of my friend Adam.

Episode 1, which you can listen to by following this link, covers the Arab-Israeli conflict as it occurred in the week, as well as the announced Royal Commission into alleged abuses of children by priests. Hefty matter, indubitably.

We hope you not only tune in, but also leave comments/feedback/criticisms/assassination attempts and also what you had for breakfast this morning.

Enjoy.

*Were it not for the technological savviness of Jason Pace, it is doubtful there would be a podcast at all (obviously, some may view this as a good thing). So here's cheers Jason, and thanks for all your help.  

Races that Stop Two Nations

Ah, is it November already?

The termination of pedagogy for another year (God, I love uni), the promise (frequently broken by the Melbourne weather-gods) of warmth and the expectation (nominal, at least) that the upcoming summer will provide a lifetime's worth of memories (this expectation of course clashes with the fact that the predictable over-indulgence will prevent any meaningful memories from being remembered).

But enough with the horizon-gazing. Events in the very near future demand attention.

Two particular events have been fixed by my attention, of which both provide punters with a spectacle and of which both happen to fall on the same day.

I refer of course to the Tuesday, November 6, 2012 runnings of the Melbourne Cup and the US presidential election (in order of priority, naturellement).

The following is a guide to how to survive/embrace fully one or both events.

The Melbourne Cup (a public holiday, at least in Melbourne and some parts of rural Victoria, and apparently also in Canberra for federal bureaucrats (under the title of "Family and Community Day", which seems meaningless enough)):

The 2012 running of the Melbourne Cup will be the 151st occasion in which the good ladies and gentlemen of the community will turn up to a track in Flemington, in Melbourne's inner-west, to watch a few horses go by for just over three minutes (the fastest was - trivia buffs take note - Kingston Rule in 1990, at a time of 3min 16.3s) before getting completely sozzled on cheap champagne, before taking an overpriced taxi or an overfilled train carriage back to home base.

If you decide instead to watch from home instead, then you too can still get completely sozzled, with the help of some fun games, because, really, no one watches the horse racing for the horses, and, besides, the coverage is sure to be so tedious that forgoing even a little liquor seems inhumane, even if it is only one o'clock in the afternoon.

Most of the fun is based on the following principle: consider that Channel 7's purported coverage of Cup Day goes for seven and a half hours. Given an average race time of three minutes - there are those that will go for fewer - and given there will be about six or seven races (producing 18 to 21 minutes of racing time), it leaves Bruce McAvaney and his crew (wouldn't Dennis Cometti make a marvelous race caller?) somewhere between seven hours and nine minutes and seven hours and 12 minutes of coverage to fill. Let's not be mean,  but when you have to provide material for that amount of time, well, some of it will be less entertaining, informative and instructive than what would be expected. It is these moments that we can exploit for our own amusement and inebriation.

The Cross: Bruce McAvaney can't talk for all of the broadcast, of course, so he has to recruit some friends to assist him in the process. Be on the lookout for crosses with various "personalities", each one more dubious than the last. Some of the categories of crosses, for which you can reward yourself for staying the course by having a tipple, include:

• The Fashion Cross: I'm not the biggest fashionista in Melbourne, or even in the western suburbs, or even on my street, or even in my house, but at the same time I'm not the worst-dressed either - I mean, I know how to appreciate, for example, a decent pair of button-fly jeans when I see one. You tend to see two types of interviewees in this cross: one is the preening model, so self-conscious by her three minutes of fame, she - or he - hurriedly namechecks the manufacturer of her wears, perhaps anticipating the real or imagined cheque coming her way for her role as advertiser. The other type is the outlandishly-costumed punter, perhaps cross-dressing, and usually with sunglasses on to add to the absurdity of the outfit. This type can typically be seen - and heard - yelling boorishly - in their own minds, excitedly - to camera or to various others. Forensic studies have concluded alcohol is a predominating factor in the latter example.
• The Betting Cross: Forget about horse racing, betting is the sport of kings in this country. Apparently by the time the Cup is run and won (a phrase you'll hear a lot more of between the winning of the race and the sports update on the 6pm news), we'll have spent "more than $60 million" on various wagers. Point men, at the risk of being accused an advertorial agent myself, would be Adam Hamilton and racing scion Tom Waterhouse. Have yourself a double tipple if you manage to spot that token woman of the industry, Julia Gillard Kelli Underwood Chelsea Roffey Jaimee Rogers. Another game can be to see which titles have, in the smallest point, the words "Gamble responsibly". Also raise your elbow whenever the coverage cuts to the betting guy who's next to the totalisator, which is also known as the Machnine with the Funny Knobs and the Horses' Names on It (that's not the scientific name, obviously). In this age of digital display, it makes no sense to utilise what is a pre-digital solution. I guess it all has to do with eating up time (see above).  
• The Cross-Promotion Cross: Various folks are getting prepared for Season 2013, and for once I'm not talking about football. No, Channel 7's 2013 season launch was held a few weeks back (what do you know, reading the society pages of the various papers is informative) and so be prepared for the lather of cross-promotion that will be unleashed. Forget about the advertisements, what you should be fearing are the interviews - oh my God, how many? - of Channel 7 "stars". "Dancing with the Stars", the "X-Factor", "Australia's Got Talent" - the list goes on and on. Do try and be out of the room whenever a cross of this type fills your screen. 

The On-the-Ground Interviewer: Will probably be a woman (for the "softer" and more human touch) and somehow connected to the racing industry, no matter how tenuous the link (the wife's sister's daughter of the trainer, maybe?). Hopefully, the interviewer doesn't follow the path of the BBC woman in charge at Royal Ascot, who to my eyes seemed well on the way to tipsiness (it wouldn't have been because she was enjoying herself, of course not). If the Channel 7 woman in the same role says or does indiscreet on camera, reward yourself by joining her on the road to over-indulgence.

The Blatant Product Placement: During presentations, comperes (on Nine last Saturday it was Tony Jones) make reference to the name of the cup before officially declaring the winning jockey. This is fine. What irritates me is the inane speech that some representative (probably - God forbid - a flack, or some PR spokesperson) of the sponsor of the race makes, as if to prove his or her self-importance to the uncaring crowd. I'd like to think the compere, too, reserves a corner of their heart for what must be the unadulterated hatred that they must surely feel for a world which makes its money by engaging in deceit and fraud. I'd like to think that, but then I'm probably just being edgy.

So yeah, that's my take on Cup Day. So what if I've blown my bridges to the racing media industry? It's not like I want to make as many connections as possible as I make my way into the industry, or anything.

Enjoy your drink(s) while watching the horses go by, because you won't be the only Melburnian to do so.

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The US presidential election will be held on the same day (the result will be known around 11am Wednesday in Melbourne).

In a two-horse race (geddit?), it seems no one has any real idea, and can just make up their own facts on the issue.

No, to be fair, we can draw some conclusions about what has been occurring in the land of the free. If we were to take the FOX news view, anyway, about the campaign, it would be something like this: every other notable news organisation is liberal, biased, subjective and hopelessly partisan (read: Democratic). Its own take is strictly "fair and balanced", and it's not like Messrs Murdoch and Ailes haven't force-fed viewers with their own ideology. Of course.

In any case, let's try and understand what will happen on Tuesday, November 6, 2012 in the United States of America (except of course in the political capital of the world, Washington, DC - more on that in a moment).

The channel through which the President and Vice-President are decided is known as the Electoral College. There are therefore two elements of voting that takes place: the electoral vote and the popular vote. the direct and indirect means, respectively.

The electoral vote is decided by electors, who, strangely enough, form, through those 50 United States, except the territories and DC, the Electoral College. The Electoral College has a member for each senator of a state (so 2) plus a member for every representative. 

Confuzzled? The point is that the popular vote leads to the electoral vote. If enough people vote for Democratic electors, then the state will pass its votes to the Democratic candidate - in this case, of course, President Barack Obama.

Technically, the Electoral College meet on a state-by-state basis on the Monday after the second Wednesday in December - this year, the 17th - but the reason why I say a result will be known almost straightaway is because there shouldn't be any surprises, like an elector using the old bait-and-switch and flip-flopping on their vote.

My tip, because I know you're all dying for it: Both candidates are not inspiring at all, because Barack Obama has nowhere to go on the "Hope" and "Change" platform from 2008 and Mitt Romney is hardly an inspiring alternative. There is nothing wrong with being successful in business, but economic rationalism is hardly a good set of principles to govern by ("Rappin' Ronnie Reagan" would of course disagree). As I said (from the relatively calmer waters of Australia, I guess) to a friend, and I'm rather fond of this quote: "Obama is the President that America needs, but Romney is the President that America deserves."

I'm also keen on the results of the congressional elections, because it determines what the President will have to work with. My other plug is to look for how third parties, like the Libertarian Party or Green Party, fare.

Final guess: Obama will just pip the post because a) of a prevailing "better-the-devil-you-know" attitude that probably got Bush re-elected in '04 and b) natural disasters like the "Frankenstorm" Sandy tend to favour incumbents, and because Obama didn't stuff up rescue efforts (one imagines a man, short not only in stature, but also in dignity and humanity, drinking whiskey somewhere in Texas, cursing a fellow President for getting natural disaster rescue right). Another contributing factor is that a sitting Republican Governor in Chris Christie endorsed Obama's efforts. Traitor or not, Christie is looking towards the big picture, and you should expect to hear and see a lot more about him in the run up to 2016.

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While arguably more important, it's probably the case that proportionally fewer people care about the presidential election. And while a political horse race affects the public more than a literal one, that's fine. What's also fine is that the horse racing enthusiasts get a day off, while voters in the most significant democratic state in the world, in exercising their right, do not. Yep, we certainly have our priorities right.