Throughout this bizarre saga, i have found colleagues, friends and family to be wonderfully supportive, and genuinely hilarious. So thanks to all of you, especially:

Tim – always on the lookout:
“Did you say fertiliser? Michael, you don’t know who’s listening! (Louder) i am not associated with this person.”

Bushy for his crack-up comments:
“Think we got ourselves a reader“, “Whatcha reading for?” and “Read any good books lately?”

Amarina for leaning across to the window of her ute and drawling,
“We don’t like your type around here.“

Gayle, as i was dancing in the doorway at the launch of i dream a highway, northcote high st.
“I’m sorry we’re going to have to ask you to leave. Heard about you and your inappropriate dancing.“

Rhi and Ben:
“Gotta get you a t-shirt that says ‘Northcote’s favourite terrorist’”

My fabulous sister for sending me the “I’m a tourist not a terrorist” t-shirt from amsterdam.
Lou for reading through the first letter to the editor.

Plus thanks to people who’ve joined in this online storytelling experience:

• Rhi and Jo for posting brilliant comments to the blog, and twice!
• Katie, A.Duck, BiddyB, Howard, for their delightfully supportive comments.
• Susan for her limerick all the way from Canada ..

Colleagues who applauded my entrance at a work celebration day, the morning after this whole thing hit the headlines.

My mother for showing her protective side and saying, “I just want this to go away. i think it’s over now.”

Okay mum, i’ll write about other stuff now. Hope, the future, and being polite.
i won’t talk about the fear and hysteria gripping the western world, or the possibility that governments are using this fear to destroy civilian freedoms. No no no.

I’ve found some references to Naomi Wolf’s latest book, and it is scarier than the one by Richard Flanagan. “The End of America” is apparently about the ten steps any would-be dictator can take to rapidly shut down a democracy. She’s done her research on the early years of several dictators .. and here’s the crazy stuff – she suggests that Bush’s US government has taken all ten steps.

This caused a storm earlier in the year, but i missed it. There’s an article in the Guardian, and some youtubed interviews with Noami, including this one:

In this interview she speaks mainly of the first four of the ten steps:
1) Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy (Osama, Saddam ..
2) Create a gulag – an off-shore prison with different laws (Guantanamera ..
3) Develop a thug caste – a paramilitary force not answerable to the people (apparently a private army called Blackwater already operates in the USA?
4) Set up an internal surveillance system aimed at ordinary citizens (make sure everyone has a fridge magnet, break down trust and stir up discontent between different social groups ..

Having a vote doesn’t mean you’re living in an open society with the underpinnings of civil rights and freedoms; because closed societies (countries without freedom) do have elections, and they do have newspapers.

Why does the President have the right to federalise the national guard, to torture people, to detain citizens without charge? Naomi sees this as a war on the citizens of democracy.. that our apathy and our terror has blinded us to the rapid onslaught of tyranny.

People in Alabama being put in prison for donating to the Democratic party? Time to wake up, says Ms Wolf. Now! Every day counts. Let us restore the rule of law.

Blimey! Surely it can’t be that bad? I mean America is land of the free, isn’t it?
You don’t think we’re going to see vigilantes in the streets? Concentration camps? Invading other countries for colonialist gain .. oh ..

When the First Tuesday Book Club on abc.net.au reviewed “The Unknown Terrorist”, the book didn’t come off so well.

• Marieke said it was “Earnest” and would only convert the true believers (the people who don’t need converting).
• Jason Steeger enjoyed the book, and said it was more of a tragedy: “Not a thriller, it’s dressed up as a thriller .. it’s more of a contemporary horror story.”
• The other guy (?) said it was “Too stark, too stereotypical .. but a bit too raw,” although “the Flanagan brothers are very good news for Australia.” More like a film script in novel form.
  

But Germaine stole the show with her wild and angry commentary, calling the preface “infuriating, pretentious bilge” .. to begin the book with a weave around Jesus and Nietszche. Ms Greer found the narrator and The Doll to be “inextricably tangled”, and the plot to be nonsense: “couldn’t have got it past a harlequin editor”.

“Greatest load of old nonsense!” Germaine says she will cut her throat from ear to ear if this book wins the Booker (she toned this down when asked to compare Flanagan’s supposed exaggeration with her own). Oh Germaine, your vitriol is unsurpassed! What a delightful roller-coaster!

i’m glad i’m not the author of the book. i felt nervous enough just having enjoyed it. i’m also glad i can enjoy reading a book without having my internal critic give me angst all the way through. Must be awful being a critic.

Ooh, look, they’ve reviewed Chris Womersley’s new book, The Low Road. This won a premier’s award for unpublished manuscript, and my mum gave it to me for my birthday. I wonder if it’s the sort of book i can read in public places…?

all the best, and happy reading 🙂 !

Hasan Elahi – the Visible Man – found himself on the wrong side of federal government agencies. “Where were you on september twelfth?” they asked him, before grilling the guy with nine lie detector tests.

So Hasan decided to publish every tiny morsel of his life. Many times during each day, images from his location are broadcast live in the name of art and safety.

Will this transparency be required of all citizens in the future? Are we heading in the Right Direction? Would you be prepared to wear a GPS Ankle Bracelet for your own safety?

Here’s an interview with the artist.

(Read more on this fascinating suspect: Wired on Elahi, Live tracking, article in World Changing, Wikipedia, CBS News, Wired article about Sousveillance)

(image: thanks for what are you looking at by nolifebeforecoffee, and under Surveillance by Naccarato at flickr)

Enough reacting to the desperate and vicious attitudes of media commentators!

.. here’s some good news. Unfortunately i missed the SBS documentary, but Martin Flanagan (Richard’s brother), demonstrates his delightful flair for interviewing Aussie sporting greats, in this piece on Mecca Laalaa.

Mecca has hit the headlines because she represents a change in attitude at Cronulla Beach, Sydney. Following the riots of 2005, the local council decided to encourage non-anglo people (especially Muslim people) to become lifesavers. But they only invited the men. Ms Laalaa however has always wanted to be a lifesaver. So she fought the discrimination, and joined the lifesaving forces.

Now she’s pioneering a new Australian fashion .. the “burqini”, which is a wetsuit with a hood. Yeah! Go Mecca!

Let’s all keep an eye out for the positive and healthy changes in our cultural environment. It’s not all bad, is it!

Delightful friends, i gotta say that .. That infamously strange hotel experience was not the sum of my travel time in Cairns, nor did it epitomise the overall joy and usefulness.

As well as working for the community engagement project, hosting an online conference session and presenting a work project at the adult learning australia conference
.. i went SnoRkelling on the Reef!

Yay for SnoRkelling! On my birthday i went to Green island and dived headlong into the reef. Covered up in a huge lycra body suit to protect against the stingers and lice, i gazed in bliss at the totally gorgeous, wondrous underwater panoramas. Mmm, delicious and delightful. Yum. i could have snorkelled all night, um .. day.

Cairns is a beautiful place, especially when you get out of town. Rainforest, reef, tropical rivers .. my time was a bit too work-focussed, so i was mostly indoors and in the city.

i’ve never seen a city beach more abandoned .. perhaps because of the “Beware of Crocodiles” signs. One person walking on the beach in ten days. Thousands strolling along the promenade.

Amazing history panels. Turns out there used to be a fabulous beach with stunning sand dunes, but dredging in the 1930’s destroyed all that. Need for shipping channels etc. (Are you paying attention, Victorian govt? no, i guess not.)

i also caught up with the very amazing Avril Duck who is a theatre director up in Gordonvale. Avril used to live and study in Melbourne; she’s preparing for a play in 2008 focussing on the experiences of local parents. The other week they had a reading on the radio. Sounds good .. perhaps i can post a copy here.

And look, i carried a book around with me the whole week (yes, that book), and i was often wearing my iRiver mp3 player, with wires hanging off me everywhere. In very many places people glanced at me with no suspicion whatsoever, just the friendly happy-go-lucky Cairns vacant gaze. Lovely place .. i’d go there again.

thanks for reading,
xo michael

by the way, this video made me laugh:

(images: thanks to richard ling and melilab at flickr)

More from the media: book reviewer Rosemary Sorenson, writing in the Weekend Australian Review (02 dec), reckons that it (that Cairns pub incident) all depends where you were standing at the time, and regurgitates the patrons’ version of events.

(.. a version i heartily disagree with ..)

Rosemary also claims that management have declared they were acting to protect the ‘provocative interloper‘ from potential violence.

Well a blessed relief. Good to know that any (allegedly) potentially violent people are left inside the hotel, where they can’t do any damage. Wouldn’t want them out on the streets.

It’s an interesting version of events: i’ve read similar things on comment pages all around the country. One web cruiser wrote that Queensland must have gone soft because “a few years ago he would have been shark bait“.

I guess that the security workers were protecting that Indigenous woman too. She was probably escorted to the door for her own benefit. Don’t you reckon?

Still i’m glad to learn that management didn’t seriously think i was a security threat. Because it would be disturbing to learn they let a potential threat go to the next pub down the road. Wooden it?

ugh, i’m sure i’ll get over the whole thing very soon. Smile.

Love to youse all.
from the unknown reader

(thanks a bundle for fighting statue by mmarchin, and the attacker by kodama (home); both from flickr, licensed under Creative Commons.)

Do the Nut Bush. Do the Funky Gibbon. Do the Expressive Chicken. Yah!

Or .. Do the Motionless Standstill.
It’s the latest craze.
Mm-hm, the Stock-still (apparently).

Would you believe the Very Slow Robot?
The Freeze Frame? The Matrix Slow-Mo?

Sigh! Will i ever live this down? Standing still on a dancefloor !?
No way .. i wasn’t .. i didn’t .. those people, they’re being disingenuous!


Look i’m sorry you got called ‘paranoid’.
i know you’re just Normal within a Paranoid Society.
Can’t we just be mates? Maaaaate?

That’s it for me and dancefloors, we’re over!
I’m just going to sit still at a table with my beer and a my mates,
staring at the chicks on the chequered squares
.. like a Normal Aussie Bloke.

“You say, Everything’s All right. I Say, Nothing can go right Babe. Chequered Love.”
Yah. Right.

(images: thanks Carf and aardvaark)

Other online comments have included Andrew Bolt’s suggestion: that any hotel ejecting a reader of Flanagan’s novel is a sane and cultured place. To back up his controversial (outright rude) claim, the columnist dipped into the book’s preface which contends (in a literary way) that Jesus was “the first suicide bomber”.

okay, i admit i had some issues with that beginning too (wasn’t sure whether to take it seriously), and it took a while for Richard’s style to grab me. But i persevered with the novel, and found it a very worthwhile read. Challenging and insightful, it echoed many powerful themes for me. A good story.

i’m not sure that Andrew read the whole book. i think the preface may have been too morally outrageous for him. Or too politically correct. (“it’s so PC to attack JC.“) Or something.

His readers take the bile much further: “Pillow over the face is a good solution for people who take the first page of this book seriously. After that, a shotgun is acceptable.” (from ‘MareeS’ – does she mean me or bolt?)

Give credit to mr bolt, he did add, “Incidentally, I’m told by someone who has talked to him that Chalk is a nice, shy guy, so ease up on the personal criticism, please.“

But then he let the pillow / shotgun comment through. Ouch.

What am i doing reading bolt’s readers anyway? Publicans and punters in Cairns have nothing on these folk. Am i completely mad, a Glutton for Punishment? Stop it, right now!

(imagez: thanks so much for jesus says .. by RobertFrancis, and text hope u can handle it! by foTommEn, both creative commons licensed images at flickr)

Big it up for the remarkable Paul Keating (on abc world today), who never fails to produce a juicy metaphor. To him, the Ruddslide wasn’t something to be happy about .. rather a source of immense relief! He compared the election result to being hosed down after working in a toxic environment. Yes that describes exactly how i felt too. Thank you Paul.

(audio from abc, also available at their site)

powered by ODEO

Other people enjoyed the wit of Keating:

• Not a Hedgehog also appreciated PJK’s commentary. Thanks for the direct link.
• Guido at Rank and Vile links to a celebratory Crikey article by Mungo McCallum, who quotes the final line of Dante’s Inferno: “E quindi uscimmo a reverder le stelle“: “.. and thence we emerged to see the stars again”.

(image: by Johnny Huh)