Quick Shots 28/May/2023

Still Unpacking

We're most of the way through unpacking from our move, well over three months after the move date. I've not really caught my breath from the frenetic 2022, and now we're nearly half way through 2023. Part of it is that there's been some furniture buying that's been going on. You think you don't need to do it, but an extra shelf here or there really helps with the organising of things. Sometimes you underestimate just how many CDs you have until you start putting them on your new shelves. I shouldn't be surprised - I bought a good deal right through the CD era that spanned 35 years. At an average of 30 albums a year, that's easily 1050 discs, not counting that some of the albums are double albums. Box sets add both numbers and bulk - and I have a few of those too. This might be the first year that I haven't gone and added a bunch of discs to the pile. The move has dented my inclination towards more stuff in general. 

On the bright side, it's the first time in many years that I've been able to just unpack all my books, LPs DVDs and videos on to shelves. It's quite a pleasure just looking at the spines and remembering what was in them. It's like a map of where your brain has been. The young's laugh at us and our physical media, but that's just the thing. The physicality of the stuff helps you retain just what the hell is in them. 

Gigging Life

One of the weirder developments in my life is this gigging thing at this late juncture. The band Whateva has been going a few months now and we haven't blown apart. We seem to do a show about once a month. Our repertoire is a bunch of originals and it's now growing slowly after the initial burst. I guess we're getting a little finickier about what passes for a good idea, whereas in the first three rehearsals, we just threw shit against the wall and made it stick. 

I didn't really expect this development although it's a bit like becoming a parent late in life. You have a better perspective on it so as to appreciate it more. The process has been far less stressful than the bands of my youth and for some odd reason the band seems to go over much better than anything I did back then. 

In June we'll be playing the Moshpit and somewhere up in Newcastle. That ought to be fun. 

New Album Out Soon

There will be a new Art Neuro release in June. It's called Cyberpunk Chronicles, and it's largely based on my songbook from the 90s. The offical release date is 22 June 2023. 

 

Katrina

 The Girl In The Song

This one is self-explanatory. You woo the wrong woman, you get nowhere fast. If rejection and the accompanying frustration were not so profound we'd never do anything worth shit. The life of the artist or the life of the mind are in some ways grossly inflated by the people who toil in the arts. The rather obvious and un-gratifying truth is that nothing we do matters and nothing we accomplish lasts. Meaningfulness comes embedded in the context, and so when times change or the people who knew what was what die off, context is lost and with it meaningfulness. Bottom line? Things change and we all move right along. When we look back, things just don't mean what they used to mean. 

Sometimes you see docos about the girl in the song - and in most part they're utterly meaningless because the song is the song is the song, and it exists outside and away from the actual girl. We're blessed that there is a separation of identities there. It's stating the bleeding obvious but a song about a certain girl is not the girl herself. I might even venture to say in this instance this song is much better than the girl in the song.  

The funny thing about people is you can tell a lot about them by what they do, much more than what they say. 

Come join the fun.

It All Goes By

History Repeating

I'm quitting my job at UTS. I handed in my resignation at 9:00 am on Monday. The response I got from my boss was mild surprise. I'm surprised they're surprised at all, but I've also been told management that is  surprised is displaying its incompetence. There seems to be a lot of truth to that adage. 

The joke is I'm headed back to my previous work place, albeit with a promotion and pay rise. When I left I got offered double the money I was making so maybe that made an impact. I'm going back to 3/4 the money I'm earning now but... it's not going to be so annoying. Plus, it's nice to be wanted as opposed to tolerated because you happen to be the random dude they picked up to fill a weirdly shaped need. 

Last year when I got the job I said I felt like was graduating Chatswood to go to university all over again. This turned out to be weirdly prophetic in that I promptly quit university 36 years ago and... here I was quitting it again. I've somehow managed to get my ass back to Chatswood. It's weird. 

The morning I handed in my resignation was also the morning an old colleague from my days at AFTRS passed away. I'd lost touch with him, but others had not and so the news filtered through to me like a bad rumour. I imagine he'll haunt this world as a ghost. There was a lot in his life of which he couldn't let go.

View from the Couch - 09/May/2023

The Housing Crisis Deepens

Just about everyday, I read an Article in the ABC.net.au about some poor person going through the indignities that go with the housing crisis in this country. Some of these stories are harrowing. Others are disturbing. It's all very crazy in a nation with lots of land but also one of the lowest population densities of anywhere. I'm not saying there should be equal lots of quarter acre blocks all the way out to the and outback, but surely there's something not quite right going on. The gap between ownership of real estate and renting is so vast, it's hard to form a picture of how wide the gulf has become in this disparity. Worse still is the utter lack of control the renting class have over their fates, and this is simply not tenable as a society. 

Arguably, all of this is symptomatic not of good government but a succession of bad governments that have simply allowed the problem to fester, grow and metastasise. The problem has become so protracted it not only forms a large chunk of the economy, it's pretty close to being the heart beat of the economy. 

Not being able to plan for the future drives down the birthrate, and with the drop in birthrate comes an ageing population. The very inequality we've devised for ourselves in this society is directly going to be the mechanism by which our governments will fail in the near future. How far is this future? In private conversation, I've been told that NSW Treasury sees 2040 as the outer limit for how long the current model of government can last. If we do not change how we run society, we will run out of money in 2040. Apparently, the future forecasts are so bleak on this, there is a palpable sense of panic inside government bureaucracies. The person who told me this also said that the NSW government is pretty good amongst the state governments - meaning the other states are in a more dire trajectory, and may not last until 2040 before revenues collapse. 

In the short term the state governments are buoyed by the stamp duty rolling in on the back of the housing bubble. When things normalise, what will become clear is that all of those earnings were temporary and the tax base will collapse with the ageing population. There are all kinds of scenarios leading up to 2040, but they all share a common dystopian feel. That's according to my contact. All this is to say, things are not going to be like they are forever. When the adjustment comes, governments are going to see their revenues dry up. Nobody's really got a good plan for this just now. 

Back to the issue of housing. It's kind of strange watching how badly governments are hiding the fact that they are in fact on the side of the landlords and not the renters. The tax breaks that are given to the landlords far outweigh the financial support given to renters. Something like two thirds of the political class own multiple properties, up to and including our current Prime Minister who gets an awful lot of mileage out of the fact that he grew up in dire circumstances. I'm not saying he shouldn't own those properties, but that because he does own those properties, it is harder for him to find the wherewithal to change the status quo. It's no wonder then that the housing crisis just gets worse everyday that goes by. It's no accident, it's actually inevitable. 

The Budget Surplus

Speaking of this kind of thing... the current ALP government is a very queer duck. It has been in power for a year and there's no Whitlam-ish zeal for massive spending programmes to bring Australia up to speed with the world. There is no zeal for reforms in the style of the Hawke-Keating ALP governments. There isn't even the kind of energy (and programmatic specificity) once possessed by Kevin Rudd's government. It somehow balanced the budget and delivered a surplus. This was something that was once protected not to take place until later in the decade. The treasurer Jim Chalmers claims we had help from the increased revenue, which all went to the bottom line to alleviate Australia's debts. 

This is all very nice, and the bit that is perhaps surprising is that they are selling it as a wonderful thing in a time of inflation, that this budget does not add to the problem because it doesn't open money. As virtues go, that sort of sits with the conservative side of politics, no? 

JobSeekers and welfare payments got a little boost but nowhere near what was being sought by the various agencies that report on this topic. It does not concern me, but it does make you wonder why the poor and young would vote or Labor, if Labor aren't going to put a dent in their plight. It's all very mysterious why they couldn't do right by their constituency. I'm sure there's a reason that makes sense in the halls of power down in Canberra, but it does look like a loss of fortitude on the part of the ALP.      

She Used To Live Right Next Door

Geez it's Been A While

Let's see now. April sucked completely. On Good Friday our cat ran away and so we spent the next 17 days in a distracted-depressing-daze, looking for the cat. We eventually recovered her so that was okay but it ruined Easter. That ordeal was an utter drag. 

I still hate my job. It sucks dogs balls.  If I were to pinpoint it, I'd say I hate working for my boss. She means well and she can be nice and understanding but in most part she is a painful pedant with a penchant for power harassment. I've been looking for other work, but so far I've only had 1 interview and didn't land the job. 

I also had the flu since we last spoke. That sucked too. At least it wasn't Covid - although you can't really trust the RATs. I got my Pfizer shot in Mid-April, so at least I don't have to worry too much about the Omicron variant killing me this year.  

A lot of my spare time has been consumed by doing small repairs and assembling bookcases. One view is I have too much old fashioned physical media. The other view is that our old physical media has this wonderful ability to tell us where our minds have been. Judging from the spines of my books, I think I've been t medieval Scandinavia a lot, and a whole bunch of places imagined by Philip K. Dick. 

Some good news... the punk band I formed with some people called WhatEva has been gigging a little bit. We've been doing support and playing in some private functions. We even won a little band comp at the Moshpit. 

Come join the fun.