Closing time

Well then, I’ve gotten rather tired and a bit lazy to write this silly blog, which is why I haven’t ideed updated it on any sort of regular basis for quite some time now. As the main reason for starting this blog in the first place was to try to keep some contact with people at home and otherwise key down some reflections on whatever experiences I have had during my time in this peculiar country called ‘Australia’, I thought it would be fitting enough that I stop it now that I am “soon” leaving (March or April 2010). So this is a sort of summary for my “Perth/Australian experience.”

Good Things about Perth:

1. Asian food: I assume it’s because of so many Asian people living in Australia because of the closeness especially to Singapore and Malaysia. There are plenty of very good Asian restaurants in Perth. Also a lot of Asian food stores which is certainly something I would like to have more of in Sweden. Tip: Chilli Squid Tentacles at the ‘Asian Caravan’ (which is not a caravan anymore) at Murdoch Campus, or Roasted Duck at ‘Fortune Roasted Duck House’ (something like that, not sure) on Williams Street in Northbridge.

2. Peanut butter: For some annoying reason peanut butter is not particularly popular in Sweden and as a result there is not much of a selection, which is unfortunate for me since I really like it. In Australia there are many varieties of peanut butter, and the best, according to me is one called ‘Dick Smith Foods Peanut Butter: Super Crunchy’.

3. Multiculturalism: Everyone is an immigrant! (Apart for the aboriginal Australians of course) In a nation created by ‘immigrants’ and where more and more are coming each year there is a great potential for cultural diversity. Unfortunately this also has a backfiring effect: point 4 in the next list.

4. Margaret River: Wine districts. Wonderful landscape and good wine, don’t need to add much more than that!

5. Cheap things: Clothes in general tend to be, sometimes quite a lot, cheaper in Australia  as compared to Sweden.

6. Alcohol: Much cheaper! Also there are, in fact, even drive-through liquor shops!

7. Public transport: Again far cheaper than in Sweden.

8. The language: The main reason I came to Australia in the first place was the fact that they speak English, it was a great opportunity to both get a university degree and improve my English at the same time. Although, I have to add, the Aussie accent is a bit tricky at times.

9. Outdoor Theatre at UWA: Wonderful atmosphere watching film on a cinema screen under trees in a little patch of forest hidden away behind some dull university buildings. I saw the Swedish film ‘Suddenly’ (in the Perth International Arts festival programme)  here and enjoyed it very much, the film was good, the environment was good, and what’s more, they sold beer! Also, if you like theatre you should give The Blue Room in Northbridge a try, there are some very interesting amateur/semi-professional plays there and it’s all very small so it’s quite different from a ‘normal’ theatre experience.

10. The Beach: An obvious thing perhaps, the beaches in Australia are great, I cannot deny that, however, personally I don’t really enjoy the beach and so I haven’t been that much at all during these three years … twice I think.

Bad Things about Perth:

1. The meat: I don’t know what they do with the meat but for some reason it just taste terrible, especially the sausages, and I am most certainly not alone in thinking this many others agree, including people from various places all over the globe, Europe, South America, East-Asia, Middle-East and Africa. Everything tend to taste a bit like mutton to me, very odd.

2. Dairy products: Not a very wide selection range, I miss the cheese and I’m sick of cheddar this and cheddar that.

3. The humour: There is something odd about Australian humour as well, either it could simply be considered bad or at least very different. Try watching an Australian comedy show, it’s not even funny, you simply won’t laugh. I suppose it’s more of a straightforward sort of humour, like slapstick and cheap sexual references and perhaps not as witty as what I’m used to, you don’t really have to think, well that pretty much says it all. There tend to be some sort of issue concerning irony and satire as well, it’s just very basic or more simplistic, the people at Worstofperth were very defensive when it came to this issue and said that, “no it’s you who do not understand irony and that it’s because of your understanding of English as a second language”, odd thing is, of course, that other English speaking people not from Australia (or to some extent U.S) interpret irony the same way I do. Communication breakdown?

4. Racism: As mentioned in point 3 in the previous list, there is a great issue concerning racism and overly done/expressed patriotism/nationalism that exists in Australia. The reason for this is most likely the many immigrant that come here each year (well, obviously…) and I’ve seen plenty of graffiti and stickers (if these can to some extent indicate a popular general opinion in some way, there are other examples as well) of racist sayings e.g. “We’re full, go home” or “Keep Australia White,” all of which are rather ironic considering any white Australian must inevitably have a immigrant background or immigrant parents/grandparents/great grandparents/… /…. At what point does a person cease to be an “immigrant” and start being an “Australian” ? Australians appear to be very proud people (although I’m not entierly sure what it specifically is that they are so proud about) and some even get offended if one is left indifferent to something that to them is a “great tourist attraction” (e.g. Rottnest island), and on this subject I was given the explanation by a professor at the university that Australians don’t tend to travel very much and therefore have a narrowed perspective on things, and that within this narrowed perspective something that is ‘nothing special’ to a foreigner may be seen as something rather huge to a local.

5. Egg tossing: For some reason there are quite a large number of (mostly young) people in Australia who appear unable to behave in a civilised fashion. This is displayed by, for example, throwing eggs through the window of a car at people passing on the side walk, or random testosterone-reeking-fights in nightclubs,  or general loudness for no reason whatever, and other child-like behaviour without purpose.

6. Buildings: Everything is build with stone walls, one layer, which is great in summer since it keeps the warmth out but in winter, since there is no insulation at all, you’re bound to freeze a lot. An advantage with a warm climate is that you can build very cheap building with very cheap material, the problem, however, is when this is taken a bit too far. The walls of Murdoch University’s new student village are mere millimetres thick and already covered with plenty of holes.

7. Infrastructure: You NEED a car, seriously pedestrians are certainly not favoured. There are barely any zebra-crossings, and I can’t figure out why.

8. The flies: The flies in early and late summer are terrible! I simply hate them!

9. Internet and communication: Internet communication in Australia is something that is quite far behind the rest of the modernised world, to my surprise. It’s much slower and far more expensive and for some reason they also have quotas, meaning that you can only use so and so much during a certain period, very strange.

10. Isolation: Perth is the world’s most isolated capital city….

There you have it!

……………………………

Older Saved Posts: (A few random texts of very random quality) (All other posts have been deleted for various reasons, mostly because they are too silly and therefore have no worth in being kept. The internet is far too full of crap already)

On the Masculinity of Australian Men

The Fiction of the Bible and Blair Witch

How to Survive the End of the World

Non-Questioning and Absolute Certainties

World’s Longest Rabbit-Proof Fence

Wintermute and Neuromancer

Valued Customer or Constant Suspect?

On Heart of Darkness and the Story of Kurtz

I Secretly Want to Poke Slow Walking People in the Back of The Head

Bizarre Laws in the U.S

Blog stats: (at closing time)

Total views: 24 004 (most in 2007)

Busiest day: 683 (Tuesday, September 18, 2007)

Posts (total): 343

Comments: 458

Spam: 6 528

Quite obviously there were plenty more people reading this blog when I was writing it in Swedish and during the first year of uni. During my second year I was becoming far too busy to write much more than complete nonsensical entries without meaning. Ha!

What now?

I have for intention to eventually start another blog, a blog more seriously intended, and when I do I will post the link here, but for now … I don’t know, I just don’t want to write on this one anymore.

From now on I’m just going to focus on graduating, writing and then planning for next year, a Master’s degree in Literature, or Film  possibly or in Creative Writing, it really depends on what I find. Also there are plenty of travelling plans, possible destinations: Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Japan followed by Europe: Germany, England, Scotland, France, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Malta and probably others.

For whatever else might be going on, this can better be read on by beautiful girlfriend’s blog: chokladig.wordpress.com

Well that’s it! Good night and Thanks for the Squid!

On the Masculinity of Australian Men

I read some interesting articles today, about a study from Oxford University which shows that Australian men are apparently the worst husbands in the world.

An economist from Oxford University found that women wanting to settle down were better off finding a bloke from Scandinavia, the US or Britain than Australia. (news.com.au article)

And accordingly Swedish men instead tops the list:

Swedish men’s enlightened attitudes toward equality and gender roles make them among the best potential husbands in the developed world, a recent study shows. (the local article)

The results are naturally due to the norms of the societies in question, in Sweden there is  generally a much more developed equality thinking in regards to both gender and ethnicity etc. this is not surprising, Scandinavian countries have always been the forerunners in such matters. And considering the Australian result I cannot really say that I am surprised either, since as for my own observations, there are plenty of issues here when it comes to identity, male insecurity, sexual insecurity and a “macho” culture that to me seems more belonging to the nineteen-thirties or something, perhaps even older, turn of the century possibly. This does not concern all Australian men obviously, but a lot of them. These men in question tend to be almost over-the-top masculine, masculine in accordance to the stereotypical maleness of a ‘action hero-Hollywood-American-badass’ kind of man, the endlessly beer drinking, iron lifting type of man who have a creeping need to indefinitely claim their liking for blonde girls with big breasts, and not because they actually like it (some might do) but because it is typically male, and because that’s what men do, that’s what men like. Sports cars is another example (or four-wheel-drive, or UTEs for some inexplicable reason), and rugby and other ‘edging-on-homoeroticism-sports’, such as AFL (Australian Rules Football).

What is interesting is also the responses to these articles, some probably triggered by comments such as the following:

16:25 August 4, 2009 by lolly
Heh…

This is why I am marrying a Swede, Aussie men make the worst husbands / partners apparently. I’d agree to that.

:-)   (the local article)

This appears to have opened for responses in a very defensive/offensive manner. The people giving comments are saying that, “yes, Swedish men are good husbands because they are weak and let’s their wives make the decisions” which clearly is nothing but an uninformed response from someone who feels offended due to the result of the study. Anyone who are even remotely familiar with Swedish culture and society (and I don’t mean commercial things that gets exported and displayed on walls in IKEA, but the real Sweden) would not be very surprised by the results at all. Swedish people are known specifically for their open-mindedness and their constant re-enforcing of freedom for the individual, rights for the individual and a promoting of independence in every sense of the word down to the single person, meaning ultimately that one person is just as strong as the next, the goal, seemingly, is a non-hierarchical society, which might be something rather impossible to achieve yet something that is certainly worth getting as close to as possible.

However, in the end, saying that a man is weak because he values equality with his female counterpart only highlights the issue of male insecurity in the first place, the sense that those certain men do not feel man enough unless they can assume a position of power over their women, or perhaps it’s just a sense of having a position of power over anyone, regardless of who in order to ensure themselves that they are not the last in line but, if nothing else, second to last.

I conclude by quoting the following litte comment from an Australian woman:

Aussie Chic of Geelong Posted at 10:23am today
Honestly, I don’t know any guys that actually take the initiative and wash the sheets or mop the floors! And they definately do not know how to put things away or wash the dishes without prompting!! It is really their mothers fault though, women of this generation are expected to live like the mothers of recent generations, be a full time worker as well as a full time mother and house wife! Those ladies need to make it clear to their husbands and children that we are all made equal, and that includes in housework!! Less momma’s boys in Australia would definately help our society! (news.com.au article)

The Fiction of The Bible and Blair Witch

It is of course rather difficult to write very negatively about a religion that has in fact contributed so much wonderful art and culture to our society but there is still something essentially wrong with people still strongly believing in a compliation story book about a vidictive god character and allusions, stories about higher values that in the end only contradict themselves. We all know the stories set in the bible, more or less, and how they are terribly judgemental in many ways. This would all be very fine if it was read perhaps in the same way as the story of Beowulf or The Sorrows of Young Werther and so on, but it’s clearly not, and yet people would surely think someone mad if they were to claim that they strongly believe and have faith in Superman for instance (with which one can coincidentally draw many parallels from to the character of Jesus, but that’s another story). Why do religious people assume authenticity, truism, factuality about a told story by the only assuring factor of a sheer passage of time? Will there be churches raised in the name of Superman a few hundred years from now? Most certainly not. But why is that? Wherein lies the real difference?

Compare perhaps The Blair Witch Project or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Batman or Midsummer Murders, all of which are fiction with the difference that the former two are ‘pretend-reality-fiction’ (or whatever it might be called, meaning that the makers have made the films in such a way that it should seem as close to reality as possible, most often used in the form of ‘documentary-gone-wrong’ kind of films, of which Blair Witch, of course, is an excellent example. Texas Chainsaw Massacre is made on the basis that it is a remake of an actual happening of which we can see parts of in the beginning and the end of the film), and the two latter are simply fiction-fiction, where there is not real pretend that it is real, everyone is aware of the fact that it is fiction throughout and no-one every tries to claim otherwise neither directly nor indirectly.

Now keep this in mind and go to the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs website where you can read this article: King David and Jerusalem: Myth and Reality, here follows and excerpt:

The Bible is not – and was never intended to be – a historical document. A work of theology, law, ethics and literature, it does contain historical information; but if we want to evaluate this information we should consider when, how and why the Bible was compiled.

Until comparatively recently, the Bible was accepted as the word of God by most Jews and Christians, and therefore scholarly works dealing with it, such as the Talmud, rabbinical commentaries, and the work of Christian scholars, concentrated on its interpretation.

In the 19th century CE, the “Age of Reason,” scholars began subjecting the biblical texts to linguistic, textual, and literary analysis, noting inconsistencies and interrupted rhythms, comparing styles, and placing the text within the archaeological, historical and geographical background. There are still many differing opinions regarding the origin of the Bible, when it was written, and under what conditions; but it is fair to say that, outside fundamentalist circles, modern consensus suggests that the assembling and editing of the documents that were to constitute the Bible began in the seventh century BCE, some three centuries after David’s time. (The earliest actual material in our possession, part of the Dead Sea Scrolls, dates to the second century BCE at the earliest)

It is not a historical document but naturally historical information can certainly be found within it. Is this not the same as with most fiction of today? Stories put in a (then) modern, present society, reflecting historical data, acts, beliefs and values etc. but with an essentially fictionalised story as the plot told against the background of the author or the narrator or the intended reader or the characters in the story? The bible therefore is simply a (then) contemporary moralistic story trying to make people think and reflect but is probably not much truer than Miss Marple. So why cannot fiction be fiction?

Consider then that the bible could be similar to The Blair Witch Project in that it is pretending to be based on reality to such an extent that it even produces ‘documentaries’ about the (fake) ‘documentary’ re-enforcing the idea of it being real all the time, and since communication was rather much more limited back then (the timespan during which the bible was written) for the purpose of discussing the work or researching it or checking the source etc., perhaps some people eventually started to doubt and actually thought it was real … for real, and then this spreads by word of mouth and the belief in that it is actually real gets established so that later when extensive research and so on can actually be done it does not really matter so much any more because no-one will believe the “one” saying that it is not real because it has been very much real for a long, long time, people have even founded their entire lives on the belief that it is real. It’s like building an exact replica of Mount Everest and towards the end you realise that in the bottom layer you have put in the wrong pieces so that if you wanted to correct your mistake you would have to start all over again. Rather troublesome, no?

How to Survive the End of the World

I encountered some people today promoting the process of non-thinking commonly spoken of as ‘faith’. They came from something that they called ‘Sunset Coast Christian Life Centre’ the small note I was given depicts some sort of concert, it looks almost like a rock concert, people singing and cheering and just enjoying themselves. On these pictures are mostly depicted young people, as was the people handing the notes out very young and this is what bugs me a little, that organisations such as the one mentioned does not appear to be dying out within a few generations or so, in fact they seem to grow. I thought (or rather naively hoped/wished) that is was only really the older generations who had been brought up very differently, and in a less enlightened environment that was still stuck to closed in religious belief, but that is simply and unfortuantely not true at all, I see young people everywhere with religious symbols around their neck and talks about upcoming Sundays etc..

I see continuously more and more papers in the letterbox from various religious organisations, one which I got today from Jehovah’s Witnesses, reading ‘How can you survive the end of the world?’ and which further claims that they, the people within that organisation can provide the answer if you are interested, and if you’re not I suppose the implication is that you simply won’t survive the end of the world. It is not, however, mentioned any date for when this occurrence is going to happen, perhaps, one has to assume, they are still looking into that. Astrology (superstition etc.), which is closely linked to the same way of thinking clearly does not help much, Nostradamus was wrong, do these people claim to know something that others don’t? Has this terrible joke gone too far?

Anyway, it just makes me quite angry to see the way these religious organisations are trying to reach out to a younger and younger audience, preying on insecurity and unanswerable questions, luring people in with music and free food and whatnot until their invited guests gets comfortable enough, dragged into the community of mindlessness to the extent that it would become very difficult indeed to then start to say no to whatever they tell you, one does not want to disappoint one’s new-found friends, surely? It’s so much easier to have other’s tell you what to think, but to live in a constant state of infancy seems rather a harsh punishment.

Non-Questioning and Absolute Certainties

There is a curious behaviour being displayed by many people, more often than not on the internet where these individuals can hide behind screens and false names for obvious reasons, but also outside of that, on the streets and in universities etc.. This behaviour is one of adopting a non-questioning or an absolute truth kind of attitude, where one thing is right because it is right and therefore an opposing opinion to that one thing is always wrong, and there is no balancing, no challenge, no arguments for and against but simply a straight ahead acceptance of whatever has been said and/or implied (by presence/non-presence).

Now self-confidence, confidence, pride that’s all very good but only to certain extents. Australia(1)  in general is a much racialist country which naturally is due to the large numbers of immigrants and otherwise foreigners within its borders. Consider also the fact that the only actual non-immigrants in Australia are still today being much marginalised either intentionally and directly or unintentionally and indirectly. Yet for some reason the older emigrants feel that they are more entitled to the land than later emigrants, the result of which can been seen in the many examples, among one very direct example would be the eggs and worse stones that are being thrown at mainly Asians at night by passers in rusty, run-down cars and plenty of interesting words being shouted every now and then (no excuse for drunken boredom killer activity). Surely this cannot be the case for every single Australian (‘white-Australian’) citizen but there appears to be something in this fear of change/new things/multi-culture that grows a bit deeper and runs, spreads through many more people than just those few egg throwing simpletons.

The idea is about a sort of illusion of perfection or flawlessness, a sort of blinding patriotism that says “we are better than anyone else, we are proud of it and there is nothing whatever need for change in any aspect either within the society in itself, interaction, communication, general attitudes, image, people etc. or that which is directly related to it by way of marketing, industry, technology, development etc.”, basically, regardless of the level of truth in such a statement the illusion says that there is no need for any evaluation or further questioning. There is an obvious lack of perspective, no sense of real perspective, a closed in vision of constant one-upmanship. “Do not put our ways of thinking to the test, because we know best, and so by that sheer fact we don’t need your opinion”, and if their ways of thinking would be put to the test and proven inferior to an alternative a defence mechanism automatically sets in. This defence comes in the form of an arrogance where the pretence again is “we’re right, you’re wrong” and a picking out of whatever minor flaw that might be detectable but most often completely irrelevant or something derived from a misinterpretation and twisted around to be made to look in a certain way, normally the opposite of what was the intention. Ignoring the actual issue and sweeping it over with black painted irrelevant countermeasures. It’s a nationalistic narcissism where the people (selected groups of people) are offended by the mere idea of anyone questioning their values, and their vision of their own community, society and structuring.

The problem of course comes down to the same problem as with any other people with a wide spread common delusional view of the world (i.e. religious, superstitious, and otherwise mentally enclosed/sheltered persons) which is that of non-reasoning, a dangerous thing which cannot be changed by anything else than enlightenment or self-realisation on the part of the delusional individual, step by step. You cannot argue with someone who does not believe in arguementation. You cannot reason with someone who does not apply reason to their own thinking. My concern is how do we solve this standstill, this stasis, this limiting blockage in the progress of ‘evolution’ (in every sense of the word)? Is it simply an ‘afraid of the dark’ situation? Or is it something more, a competitive stubbornness in a competition without competitors? A nonsensical contradiction?

Be proud but not to the extent that nothing else matters, not to the extent of blindness, not to the extent of selective vision, it does not benefit you and it does not benefit anyone else.

*

Again there are a few obvious responses to this post even though I have already referred to those, and which are a diversion and a further misinterpretation and then following would be a defensive offence to further diverting the subject and the overall issue which in turn is unproductive and nothing but definite confirmation of the above stated thoughts.

1 (Australia is being used as the main example since this is where I have seen the behaviour described in a most prominent manner, yet the idea could most likely be stretched to include many other nations/communities and other situations as well.)

World’s Longest Rabbit Proof Fence

Saw this Aboriginal/Australian film yesterday, Rabbit Proof Fence from 2002, it says in the beginning that it is a true story and it is a very touching such story. It’s about two Aboriginal sisters that together with their cousin gets taken away from their mothers by the settler Australians to a camp where they are supposed to be “helped”, from a young age to become integrated and learn of the culture and society of the white Australians, in the camp they are forced to always speak English and nothing but English and also to pray to a Christian god and sing religious songs. The attitude from the white Australian government at the time seem to have been something like “tough love”, like “yes you will hate us now and you will not like what we are doing to you at the moment but at some point in the future you will realise how good we are to you and you will thank us sincerely”.

These three girls, however, escape from the camp heading back home to their country. They are being followed mainly by a tracker (who by the way is played by the same guy who played the tracker in ‘The Tracker’) and they do all sorts of clever things to cover up their tracks. Eventually they end up following the Rabbit Proof Fence (knowing that their country runs alongside the fence further down it, the fence is used to keep the spreading rabbits from one side to another, the longest fence in the world apparently). This is a good film, not a spectacular film but a very good film indeed.

The story deals with the so called ‘Stolen Generations’ which Kevin Rudd, as one of his first things as new prime minister of Australia, later made an official apology for, the ‘Sorry’ campaign trying to make it all go away by a single word. But it was a major advancement anyway and surely better than nothing, yet it is difficult I suppose to apologise for something that can never be fully forgiven. For me, as a visitor to Australia, seeing a film like Rabbit Proof Fence is a very good thing to make me understand a bit better the still obvious tension between white Australiana and Aboriginals (see Redfern Riots etc.) and it is an essential part of the history of this country which cannot possibly be ignored. (Otherwise watch ‘First Australians’ a documentary series, terribly lengthy and quite badly made in that sense but very interesting nonetheless.)

I’m looking forward to see the recommended more recent film ‘Samson & Delilah’. And there was one more which was recommended to me but I’ve forgotten the name, a quite major one, got plenty of awards an such I think and not too old … not too much to go on but, any idea which one I’m thinking of?

Wintermute and Neuromancer

I just finished reading Neuromancer and it is a terribly confusing novel to read. Action, action, action and not much description, not many descriptions of what the hell is going on etc. But that is also what makes it so interesting in a sense, because it is written from a point of view of a narrator who does not seem to care the least about much at all, it’s a very distancing voice that is given, a voice that describes the killing of an innocent eight-year-old boy, for example, without the slightest emotional response or any of the sort. There are other scenarios which are far more disturbing which also just passes by as if an everyday kind of thing, even important part of the book, the murder of the main character’s, Case’s girlfriend, is mentioned really as a very much non-important fact. ‘The wall is blue, someone was killed and someone else’s shoes are untied’.

Throughout the novel there is also plenty of random ‘fancy words’ that one as a reader can only really guess at their meaning, which in a way adds to the sense of the story happening sometime in the future yet also adds to the overall confusion. I have read some summaries of this novel, some on other blogs, where readers have been describing in quite extensive detail a rather complicated plot, and every time it seems that these summaries are not meant for anyone but themselves as a reader to make a bit more sense out of the book. (The best summary to make the novel more readable however, I found simply on Wikipedia, read that article after you read the novel and it will most likely make you go ‘ah’ and ‘oh’ a couple of times.)

At first I thought that Neuromancer was just a very badly written text and that that was why it was so odd perhaps, oddly structured, or stylised rather. (Location especially is constantly shifting so one has to be careful to keep track of that throughout.) But this is all also likely to be deliberate, the distancing, the shifting and changing back and forth and the non-description, it might be part of the general idea of the book, giving it an ultimate feeling of it having been written, not by William Gibson, but by a computer, an AI.

Anyway, it’s weird yes, but worth a read anyway because of it being something like ‘one of a kind’ and one can certainly understand why it would stand alongside ‘1984’ and ‘Brave New World’ as one of the twentieth century’s’ most potent novels of the future. Cyberspace and virtual reality were invented with this book, and as I read this now in 2009 (it was written in 1984) I can see plenty of connections to later work, it is clearly a novel that has inspired many later science fiction, cyberpunk, virtual reality stories etc. On the backside of my paperback edition it reads “The Matrix: a world within a world, a graphic representation of the databanks of every computer in the human system; a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate users in the Sprawl alone.” I’m supposing it should be mentioned somewhere the obvious links between Neuromancer, Ghost in the Shell and the Matrix trilogy, they are there right?

Valued Customer or Constant Suspect?

In JB Hi-fi today as I exited the store the security guard by the entrance asked rather rudely whether or not he could check my backpack. Naturally I said no, yet I knew that he would insist and that I was going to have to give in because such is the policy. He was checking, of course, to make sure I had not managed to smuggle with me a “52 TV or a surround-speaker system that I might have put under my jacket, under my girlfriend’s jacket in my bag, naturally put in there completely undetected and without any cords etcetera sticking out. This check, airport-security-style, occurs despite the fact that on almost each and every item within the store are attached sensors which would trigger the detector which whoever enters the store are bound to pass by while leaving the store. So unless the hypothetic thief/s sets camp inside the store the security guard is rendered completely superfluous … which in a sense he would be anyway since he is positioned by the entrance and clearly, as of my own observation, does not enjoy moving around very much. The camping-thief would be more likely to be detected by random staff wondering what the hell is going on or if in the unlikely scenario the camping-thief would remain a part of the environment, ignored by the staff, the security cameras in every single corner of the store would surely see the situation for what it is.

In K-Mart another day I was buying something, I have forgotten what (not important), something not particularly cheap. In the checkout another guard shows up and after that I have paid for whatever I bought asked to check my backpack. What did he expect? That I would buy a pair of pants, for example, for let’s say $50 and then steal a chocolate bar worth $0.80? Not even when you buy something are you trusted. Not even a demonstrated paying customer is being trusted. Target, Coles, Woolworth, Myer’s, same thing, and many more.

Now, the only things easy enough to steal from any such a store is usually not worth stealing, other things are very troublesome to steal and so no-one tries because they will indefinitely get caught, and things that are easy to hide under your shirt that are potentially worth stealing are commonly equipped with the mentioned sensors or other locking systems. How much do the people controlling these stores think they lose in profit due to stolen chocolate? How much do they think they might lose due to pissed-off customers who do not appreciate the way they are being treated while visiting these stores? I have not experience this level of paranoia and ‘big-brother’ control scheming anywhere before; it seems to have gotten completely out of hand, raised to something much more than preventing thieves from stealing. Suddenly all are thieves. Potential thieves. Constantly suspected, upon entering the store, of being a thief, and never ever a valued customer, a customer which in most other cultures are treated with immense respect (since after all, how else will the stores owner’s and personnel gain profit?). Whenever I step into a store in Perth I am not a customer but a suspect.

It’s a disgrace really. Public relations do not appear to be one of the strong sides for Australian companies, and I cannot understand why. This is only one small example and it might seem rather ridiculous even, but it builds up to much bigger problems. If everyone are suspected thieves going to buy a new pair of shoes then what stops this paranoia-virus from spreading into other sectors? Anyone simply walking on the street is a potential murderer with pistols hidden in their clothing resulting in random policed checkpoints on the street with metal detectors. People eating hamburgers and drinking coke have to do so enclosed in a special box, a cubicle by themselves, attached to which is a time-lock, because otherwise the hamburger-eater-coke-drinker might deliberately spit regurgitated food at other people in the restaurant, and this hypothetic situation has to be avoided. Wildly imagined occurrences of things that may not happen are being stopped before there is any chance of confirming truth/untruth. Generally this is the ideal: ‘People are evil, do not trust them.’ Manichaean tendencies and a non-existent ‘grey zone’.

This is some sort of generalised, socially accepted prejudice towards all people who shop. At some point in time the shopper-person is going to steal something and at that moment we better be ready. Is it worth it? That is all I’m really asking. Is it worth checking every customer who passes through your shop and making them feel uncomfortable and mistrustful and producing endless ‘do-I-look-like-a-criminal’ expressions on many, many faces, feeling offended, which in turn makes it less tempting to ‘go in and just have a glance’ because it’s not quite worth the trouble anymore, so that one only goes in to a store henceforth knowing exactly what to buy, thereby grabbing it and quickly leaving again, using plastic bags at the checkout since being environmentally friendly and bringing you own bag leads to the inevitable sniffing around of nosy guards with some false sense of real authority; guards that because of their shiny slanted nametag are pretending constantly they are actually “important”. Is it worth all this for the sums that are being saved on a decrease of stolen goods due to these measures? (Because one only has to assume there is a decrease, otherwise there would be no point). And if the answer to that above question is Yes, then what are the numbers? And why is this not applicable most other places? Are people generally more prone to steal in Australia? Or do other countries simply don’t care enough? That can’t be true?

(The obvious response to this post will surely be, as other simpleminded responses have been to previous posts that ‘if you don’t like it then don’t go into the store’ or more directly ‘if you don’t like it then go home’, those who feel tempted at responding in such manner please refrain yourself from doing so, it’s not constructive in the least and well out of topic)

On Heart of Darkness and the Story of Kurtz

I’m currently writing an essay on postcolonialism, insanity, prejudice and Joseph Conrad’s wonderful novel of 1899 Heart of Darkness. The plot of the novel is actually rather simple in a sense but the story per se is far more complex. Anyway, most people who reads this are probably already familiar with it and/or have at least a faint idea of it or have seen the film version of it which is also a rather famous work, Apocalyspe Now, directed by Ford Francis Coppola which was certainly not a direct translation of novel to film but instead a modern adaptation of the text and was perhaps more “distantly” based on the novel.

Marlow (secondary but prominent narrator of the book) journeys into the Congo river in search for ivory, initially, here he hears rumours about another man sent for the same task by the same company but who never came back and instead “got lost” among the natives further up the same river. Marlow then sets off to find this man, Kurtz, about whom strange, almost mythological stories are being spread.

Anyway the point I wanted to make was that this Kurtz character is basically seen as being mad, insane or over the top with whatever he is up to (which is even more exquisite in Apocalypse Now with Marlon Brando doing an excellent performance), and I wanted to compare the Kurtz character in Heart of Darkness to the character of The Madwoman in the Attic (Berta Mason/Mrs Rochester) in Jane Eyre. The Madwoman in the Attic is portrayed as nothing but a madwoman in an attic. However, Jean Rhys did not like this onesidedness and wrote therefore her novel Wide Sargasso Sea giving Mrs Rochester more of a background and a potential reason as to why she went “mad”.

Would it then be a good idea perhaps to give Kurtz a similar justification (if one could call it that) or something other to tell the story of why (although heavily implied in Heart of Darkness) but more importantly how he became “mad”? Of course, I don’t know who would dare to write such a book since they cannot be anything but ridiculously self-confident, but it was just a thought. Any ideas? (or has it already been done?)

I secretly want to poke slow walking people in the back of the head

Although, by stating that here it cannot quite be considered a secret anymore I suppose. I do, though, I really do want to poke slow walking people in the back of the head, why oh why do they need to walk so damned slow? And always as they walk slow the tend to do it in the most narrow places so that they can make sure you cannot possibly pass.

There are, of course, those who have their reasons for walking slow and as much as these bother and annoy me I can accept that as the very kind person I am (since it is illegal, as of what I’ve heard, to randomly tilt people on the streets and trample them) but it is those who have no reason to walk slow but do it anyway to deliberately provoke angry emotions in the people behind them and at the same time it seems quite obvious, even though they are hiding it well that they are enjoying it, those bastards.

We need speedsigns on the walkpaths as well, and for those who cannot keep up, we’ll let them be run over, or possibly shot. The latter is probably a better method in crowded places like shopping malls for example since it will probably create an immediate scattering of people as well so that I (we) can walk comfortably past, strolling happily at 7 km/h until I (we) get tired, slows down just for awhile and get shot in the back of my (our) head(s).