View From The Couch - 04/Jul/2024

Payman Quits ALP

 And just like that, Fatima Payman quits the ALP, pointing fingers. 

She said she was "deeply torn" over the decision and continued to believe in the principles of the Labor Party, but felt she could see "no middle ground" that would allow her to remain in the party.

"On one hand, I have the immense support of the rank and file [Labor party] members, the unionists, the lifelong members, the party volunteers who are calling on me to hang in there and to make change happen internally," she said.

"On the other hand, I am pressured to conform to caucus solidarity and toe the party line.

"My conscience leaves me no choice," she said.

Ha. There's that word conscience again. 

So the way she sees it, there's the rank and file, unionists and activists all asking for her to stay, and grit her teeth and gut it out for the good cause, and then there's her conscience that says she can't toe the party line. 

Farknell. Good riddance. The ALP is better without her. and I'm not even a rank and file member. I mean, what would Paul Keating say in the dunny behind Old Parliament House.  

You know what popped into my mind? This: 

The first rule of party politics is to toe the line and keeping it elegant. Otherwise you're just rabble. Or 'Campus Trots' as Albo calls them. If you can't do it like Penny Wong, you shouldn't be there. If Fatima Payman really had a conscience, she should quit the Senate altogether but hey, six years in Parliament gets you that fat pension so she'll stay on. Her vaunted conscience won't extend there, I'm pretty sure.  

What a blight on our country.  

Deep In Muslim Territory

I live in Jason Clare's seat of Blaxland. His office is just around the corner from where I live. There are a lot of muslims here and now they're organising into something to protest the ALP's allegedly weak position on Palestine. 

This bit made me laugh:

Asked if a shift away from Labor could end up getting a Coalition government elected, Sheikh Charkawi said it was about punishing Labor.

"The community doesn't want a Liberal government either.

"And there could be an unintended consequence. 

"But ultimately, if you don't participate, and if you don't effectively flex to show the power of your vote, how will they ever take your vote seriously?"

So, the kind of bloody-minded thinking that would beggar they neighbours and take the world into a hellhole with Palestine, is going to organise to sabotage the ALP in this electorate, even if it gets a Liberal Party member elected. I can assure you this area is full of this kind of low civility, but even this kind of 'thinking' takes the cake. It's not the-enemy-of-an-enemy being a friend. They don't care that the enemy-of-an-enemy is going to rule over them as an enemy, as long as they do in their own enemy. They would cut off their noses to spit their face, cut off their dicks to spite their balls. It's insane out here. Jason Clare had better watch out! 

On second thoughts maybe not. Nobody in the Muslim Vote party would ever toe the line because their conscience won't let them.

Some Other Thoughts on Gaza

The Philistines of old lived in Gaza. 

Yup, that's it right there in red. 

Who Pays Payman? Who Pays Out On Payman?

Caveats To Today's Discussion, Lest I Be Tarred

Before I get on with this today, I just want to make clear that:

• I am not a Zionist
• I am not Jewish
• I do not support Binyamin Netanyahu, or his government
• I think what is happening in Gaza, free of context, is a terrible thing; 
• ...and I think that the IDF response is disproportionate.

That said... 

Exile On Federation Mall

This business of West Australian senator Fatima Payman who crossed the floor to vote with the Greens in support of Palestinian statehood, is eating up a lot of airtime. On Sunday she was interviewed and said she'd do it again if the issue came up again. In response the Prime Minister summoned her to The Lodge and told her she's now excluded from Caucus until further notice. Albo can't outright expel her from the party because damnit, they need that vote in the Senate. So exiled out of Caucus it is, and Albo ends up looking weak. The ALP strategists must be having some heaving indigestion over this one. 

The ALP is in a bit of a pickle. The offical line is that the ALP supports a two-state solution so Senator Hayman voting to support a Palestinian statehood is not against the policy. It's just that she's flying in the face of ALP rule where everybody takes collective action. You can't go it alone with policy positions. Them's the rules. So the ALP finds itself admonishing the person standing up for what they allegedly hold as their offical position. 

The reason why the ALP doesn't commit to this position is because Hamas holds power in the Gaza strip,  and as far as anybody can tell Hamas is a terrorist organ more than a credible government. The ALP would like to support a normal state for Palestine but they don't want to be supporting Hamas, or for that matter lend any legitimacy. The gap, as it were between the ideal of a Palestinian state that behaves like a state and Hamas is so large nobody is willing to stick to their ideals. If anything the events of 7 October 2023 have put a big fat underline under this problem.  

If Senator Payman doesn't want to roll with the realpolitik that's her business but she shouldn't be surprised she's the one that's out on her own. 

The Business of Voting With Your Conscience

Penny Wong sort of admonished her colleague by pointing out that she had to vote with the party against her own wishes during the debate for gay marriage. Fatima Payman retorted that process took 10 years and the Gazans did not have 10 years. I beg to differ - they have had 70 years to come to some peace agreement over there, but they have not- and it's not incumbent upon the Australian Parliament to make that happen. But that is by the by. 

I guess the best way to interpret this is that if you draw false equivalences, you can expect to be shot down. Senator Payman also cited 40,000 casualties in that quip to underline how dire the situation is in Gaza - and let us all properly state it and leave no ambiguity, what the government of Israel is doing in the Gaza strip is terrible. However, what exactly we call that kind of loose acceptance of civilian casualties by the Israeli military, is highly contestable. Is it genocide? It certainly seems like War Crimes; but I'll come back to that one too. 

If we are indeed playing the conscience game, I would like to hear something about those killed on 7th October 2023, which prompted this mess. What troubles me about Senator Payman and those who support her defiance is that on the face of it, we have no accounting of what the Hamas-led Palestinian militants did to buy the violent response from Israel. If the argument is that there should be a two state solution, and therefore there should be recognition of a Palestinian state, then surely that Palestinian state should be held to account for its violent actions. I don't really detect there to be that kind of consideration coming from that camp. 

So Much For Having Labor Values

It's disingenuous at best to claim having core Labor values when you cross the floor. It's more contradictory and self-defeating. 

Speaking afterwards, Payman said she crossed the floor to represent the core values of the Australian Labor Party — equality, justice, fairness and advocacy for the voiceless and the oppressed.

"I walked with my Muslim brothers and sisters who told me they have felt unheard for far too long," she said.

"And I walked with the people of Palestine, for the 40,000 killed, for the hungry and scared boys and girls who now walk alone without their parents and for the brave men and women who have to walk alone without their children.

"I walked for humanity. I am proud of what I did today and am bitterly disappointed that my colleagues do not feel the same way."

Ah yes. So if that's enough for her to cross the floor, then it begs the question just how much she understands these so-called Labor values, given that the Labor party by definition has always been the collective action party. I mean, hello. Has she not read much Marx and Engels? The moment she chose to walk with her Muslim brothers and sisters across that floor, she abandoned her ALP bothers and sisters. She put her Muslim identity above that of the political party that delivered her to Federal Parliament. She can't spin this as being faithful to true Labor Party values when she clearly states she put something else that's not the Labor Party above the party line. 

Frankly that line of reasoning is a Liberal thing to be arguing - as in Capital 'L' The Liberal Party. If she can't toe the collective line come hell or high water, she's no Labor Party faithful. Please let's not delude ourselves into thinking otherwise. As for this threat of muslim votes being organised to oust Labor from safe seats, you have to say, maybe they're just conservatives who can't get a look in because they're also not white people. 

Honestly, she should quit the ALP. She hasn't got the right stuff, and she even has the wrong stuff. 

Does 40,000 Amount To A Genocide?

If you read history, you get inured to the suffering of other people. People suffer in history, wherever it took place. Worse still, nobody cries for Carthage in 2024. Cities got razed. they got bombed, and flattened, a couple even got nuked. Cities like Dresden, Osaka and Tokyo lost hundreds of thousands in a night. Nobody calls those moments a genocide because World War II served up 6 million Jews as the number that delineates what genocide looks like. Like it or lump it, 6 million is the benchmark. Nobody looks at Dresden and the 120,000 that perished that night and calls it a genocide of Germans. Nobody looks at the 120,000 lost in a flash at Nagasaki and calls that a genocide. So by this historic scale, if 120,000 Palestinians perished at the hands of the Israelis, it might not be a genocide yet. 

So much for the 40,000 casualties forming an argument that says there is a genocide going on, but that's if you're a reader of history. It turns out that for lawyers, the bar for proving genocide is actually pretty high. 

The bar for proving that a genocide has occurred is “so high,” said Cohen, the law professor. The ICJ has previously said that crimes that may be abhorrent, such as those constituting ethnic cleansing, do not automatically fall under the definition of genocide, he added.

A. Dirk Moses, an expert on genocide at the City College of New York, said the legal definition of genocide “is extremely stringent and narrow” and added that he is “skeptical” it can be “a tool for recourse for those that are suffering mass violence.”

The definition was set “not by the victims but by states, to ensure that the law cannot be used against them in meeting or confronting security threats,” he said.

We really should stop bandying around that word genocide like it has any relevance to what is going in Gaza. And that very situation out there, brings us back to the need for a proper state, and not a terrorist organisation to be ruling Gaza. I do feel sorry for the people of Gaza getting bombed. I feel sorry for those being used as human shields - Hamas is so ruthless and spinelessness at the same time, it would hide behind their own women and children to force larger collateral damage, and then use that collateral damage as evidence of genocide. The Gazan Palestinians would have been better served had they had a proper state instead of Hamas as their reps - but alas they voted them in and they never left.

In And Out Of Oslo

Once upon a time the Palestinians and the Israelis came to an agreement about a 'two state solution'. They went to Oslo and signed an accord on it. To get there, the Palestinians had to stop being terrorists and become more state-like. That was the long road for Yasser Arafat and the PLO who became the Palestinian Authority. They had to give up on being terrorists. The Israelis had to come to the table and agree that the Palestinians could not be all chased off and made into refugees. For those of us looking on, it was a watershed moment when we thought maybe the Arab-Israeli conflict could finally come to a close. 

Boy were we wrong. 

Less than six months after the signing of the DOP, an Israeli extremist killed 29 Palestinians in the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre.^[5] In response Hamas conducted its first lethal suicide bombingkilling eight Israelis and injuring 34.^[41][42] An additional five Israelis were killed and 30 injured as a Palestinian detonated himself on a bus in Hadera a week later.^[43] Hamas claimed responsibility for both attacks.^[43] The attacks may have been timed to disrupt negotiations between Israel and PLO on the implementation of the Oslo I Accord.^[41] In 1994, Hamas killed around 55 Israelis and injured over 150 in an effort to derail the peace process, stating that these attacks were a part of jihad against Israel's occupation and in retaliation for the Cave of the Patriarchs Massacre.^[6]

Following the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the labor party's recently selected prime minister Shimon Peres' would give the green light for the assassination of Yahya Ayyash, which Avi Shlaim describes as "the greatest mistake of Peres's political career" due to the subsequent rise of suicide attacks. Shortly after this increase in violence and Israeli security concerns, polls would show Likud's Binyamin Netenyahu ahead of Peres for the first time since Rabin's murder. Shlaim describes the role played by the Israeli right during and after the Oslo years, highlighting prime minister Binyamin Netenyahu's "largely successful" attempts to undermine the accords after his election in 1996.^[44]

Despite the Oslo Accords stipulating that "neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations", Israeli settlement expansion continued during the Oslo period. The Jewish population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (excluding East Jerusalem) grew from 115,700 to 203,000 between 1993 and 2000.^[45]

Binyamin Netanyahu came to power in Israel with the intent of killing the Oslo Accords. Similarly, Hamas broke free from the old PLO, specifically to keep fighting and by definition, kill the Oslo Accords. All these years later, It's still Bibi for the Israelis and Hamas for the Gazans. The shit show we're seeing has been very well planned, rehearsed and orchestrated. Neither side wants a sensible peace if they can keep fighting their ideological war.

It's one of life's tragedy that they make you think so much about their problems that they opted to make more complex and more violent for their own purposes. I have to say, after the Oslo Accords fell apart, I stopped being invested. There is no process. There is no peace deal that will hold.  

"From The River To The Sea"

 It's no joke that the phrase refers to wiping out the Israelis and reclaiming land. It sounds so romantic like something from a David Lean movie but what the phrase means is pretty uncompromising. 

I've asked some Arabic women about all this, the conflict and prospect of peace and what I was told is that the way they learn it in their religion, when the fighting stops, it is the end of time. As long as the fight goes on, it means the Apocalypse is not yet here and the rest of the Arabs can live on knowing the end of the world is not here. If peace should ever break out, this would be a terrifying development because the end would be near. Even if the present day parties could or would agree to terms, from the Arab point of view it would be only a temporary respite before the fight continues once more. The whole point of it, is that there is no peace in their framework. Therefore, there is no peace process. 

From the Arab perspective, the Oslo Accords was only ever going to be a mere ceasefire that punctuates the eternal struggle. Whatever peace that can be arrived at after this ordeal, will also be temporary. 

There is no ever-lasting peace. The Arabs do not want it. The Israelis know this too about their Arab opponents. And so they will not stay their hand because there isn't a good enough reason to hold back if there isn't going to be a peace. What is killing 40,000 people, is the very notion of 'From The River To The Sea". 

Here's the thing - and it's probably very unpopular to say it but it goes like this: You can't go and kill 1200 people and then complain the other side killed 40,000 of your people in retaliation. There isn't a moral scale for this kind of thing. If you go and cut up somebody's mother or sister and the other person comes and shoots your daughter in the face with a .50 Desert Eagle, you can't really claim victimhood. It doesn't make any sense - no matter how much you hated the guy and he hates you. Once you start the violence, you better own up to what ever results from the violence unleashed. 

The Palestinian cause and the people who throw themselves behind them are shocked the world is rather tardy in helping them out. They underestimate just how fatigued the world is from the commitment to keep fighting. The rest of the world just wants real peace, people. 

Star Wars Content And Its Discontents

Star Wars Ain't What It Used To Be

There's a bit of brouhaha going on about the new Star Wars TV series 'The Acolyte'. Like with 'The Marvels', I've avoided seeing it. It seems prudent to know when the content isn't targeted for you. Just as I don't go and seek out Country and Western Music or Lesbian Political Poetry, I have decided I won't be seeking out 'The Acolyte'. As such I have nothing to say about its quality, lacking or otherwise.  

I do want to pass some judgement overall on Disney+ and its effort to bring these products to screen. Star Wars products that have been devised since Bob Iger bought Lucasfilm from George Lucas, have been underwhelming, with only a few exceptions. The Skywalker saga sequels were resoundingly awful while 'Rogue One' did manage to tell story that appealed to the old Star Wars audience. 'Solo' was alright except grossly miscast. These were a very bad sign for the TV shows that came along. 

'The Mandalorian' started out okay but as the second season gave way to The Book of Boba Fett, it kind of drifted off into a weird diversion that went nowhere. 'The Bad Batch' has been passable but it's not something to write home about. 'Andor' season 1 was good, but that one will come to definite end at the end of its Season2. 'Ahsoka' had its most triumphant moment when the casting was announced and they got Rosario Dawson to play the titular character. The show didn't exactly live up to the hype. With 'The Acolyte', they appear to have hit a new low. 

Two questions arise out of all this: Why do they want to make stuff that alienates the original audience so much? And when will they run out of money to keep doing this, because they're not winning.  

Who Are These Customers?

It's crazy, when you think about it. The original Star Wars movie opened up an entire new generation of audiences to cinema. The modern blockbuster as they call it, was borne from that moment in history when the audience for movies exploded, thanks to that movie in 1977. Cinema worldwide has ridden that wave of Gen-X kids who flocked to see Star Wars, and kept watching movies well into their adult lives. That's pretty much it. The Millennials are not married to cinema the way Gen-X were married to cinema - they're married to the internet and streaming and the golden age of television, but not cinema the way Gen-X were. 

For the last few years, Hollywood Box Office receipts have dropped off significantly. There has not been  significant post-Covid recovery. here has been much discussion about why this might be, but what people are failing to notice is that at 50-something, Gen-X just doesn't get out to the cinema every week any more. So they blame streaming and people falling out of the habit of going to the cinema, but really, it's because the generation that gave Hollywood the Blockbuster for 40 years has passed on from being their regular customers.

But even that is by-the-by. The very real problem Disney+ has on it stands is that the people most positively disposed towards Star Wars - arguably the reason why you would want to buy Lucasfilm and bring it under the House of Mouse - are absolutely up in arms with the terrible product made by Disney+ creatives. This is the audience they bought when they slapped down all those billions for George Lucas. The trick is, you have to keep on making stuff for the same audience, but by the looks of things, there is no intention of doing so. 

Imagine you buy McDonalds worldwide. Do you keep running it as is, or do you change the menu so it's nothing but Vegan? If you do the latter, what do you think happens to your global customer base? 

Are Disney then really that surprised when 'The Acolyte' - with its episodes about Communist Lesbian Space Witches - gets some of the worst reviews? People are calling it the worst Star Wars TV show ever, including the Christmas Special. Now, I was around to see that Christmas Special when it first aired. If you have people thinking you have made something even worse than that, you might want to review your entire organisation.

Why Are The Audiences So Angry?

It's because it's the end of the road. The angry, are actually the old-farts who are forced to reckon with the fact that we are no longer young and times have passed them by. Maybe Gen Z is really as queers as they say, and this shift to addressing a 'woke' audience is what the marketing hacks ordered, but this bunch just don't like it. They don't like being called racists and homophobes by Disney's shills either. 

For a long time, movie marketing has been about the 18-24 demographic. Gen X hasn't been that demographic for a good 20 years now. Film and TV products - now referred to as 'content' - is decidedly aimed at people much younger than Gen X. The older generation is tacitly being told to go quietly into the night - the movie business is no longer interested in their custom. 

And perhaps maybe that is what is freaking out the Gen-X cohorts who pretty much supported Hollywood for 40 years. It's a two-way street. Gen Xers seem like they've stopped going to the cinemas except for absolutely-once-a-year marquee movies. I think we're seeing just how disinterested the current 18-24year old demographic is, when it comes to spending cash at the cinema. Box office receipts have been terrible. We'll see how long Hollywood holds out before it starts making movies for the people who want to go see movies. 

Grogu-X

Have You Looked at Baby Yoda Properly? He's 50 years old but still a baby and he throws his psychic weight about. Surely that's Disney's view of the Star Wars fanbase - a bunch of emotionally immature 50-year old man-children. 

Disney's Other Disasters

 It's not just Star Wars. Disney also screwed up the Indiana Jones franchise, and made a truly abominable TV series out of 'Willow'. The latter was so bad they've had to pull it from Disney+. Beyond the issues of mishandling Lucasfilm, they've also contributed to the carnage that has been Marvel Phase 4. None of the Marvel TV series they have produced have been anywhere near as good as the Marvel shows made with Netflix. None. And I've watched all of that stuff. 

At this point, I'm waiting to see 'Andor' season 2, and then I'm cancelling my Disney+ subscription. There's just no point in staying with them. The jig is up, It's over.  

That Presidential Debate

How Bad Was That?

If you lean to the left like me and you're with the progressive, there's no way in hell Donald Trump is acceptable. It goes without saying, but I'm saying because let's face it: Joe Biden looked much worse than Trump - who was largely being himself - and revealed to the world how far gone he was. 

That wasn't just some sleepy forgetful guy there. That is the POTUS looking for a second term and maybe even some of his lost marbles. I kind of brushed aside some of the rumours about how bad his senility was, but there was just no denying it in that performance. Get this: Trump was awful, but we're not talking about that because we're so used to pointing out how awful Donald Trump is, every time he opens his mouth. No, we're taking about just how far gone Joe Biden is towards the happy place. Man, I was squirming listening to him mangle not just his answers but his legacy with it. It was so bad he's going to be remembered for it. 

Look, if you were applying the criterion that maybe Donald Trump isn't compos mentis, you have to apply the same scrutiny to Joe Biden and frankly, he looked further along the road to an unravelled mind than even the Donald. The early crit is that there would be panic in the senior democratic ranks. Jeez, you reckon? 

How Did We Get Here?

I've probably said this here some time ago but American politics has uniquely been unable to move on from the Baby Boomers. Australia quietly made the transition in the last decade. Anthony Albanese is probably the lat ALP leader who is a BabyBoomer, and he's a young one at that, being born in 1963. Malcolm Turnbull was the last Liberal Party leader and he was born in 1954. Scomo, is the first Gen-X PM of Australia and while he was terrifyingly terrible, he wasn't an old fart - just a stinky one. 

 If you look around the world, the leaders of the first world apart from Japan have moved on from Baby Boomer leadership. Boo was the last Boomer UK PM. Liz Truss was also a terrifyingly terrible Gen-Xer born in 1975; Rishi Sunak was born in 1980, so he's practically a Millennial. Macron was born in 1977. Olaf Scholz of Germany is a Boomer, but Giorgia Meloni, Justin Trudeau, Pedro Sanchez, and even our favourite Gen-Xer Volodymyr Zelenskyy, were all born in the 70s. 

Somehow, America has resisted moving on at every juncture in the last 25 years. They have gone from Bill Clinton being the first Boomer to be POTUS, followed by 2 terms each of Dubya and Obama, 1 term of Trump, and 1 term of Biden; all of them baby Boomers. Flanked by the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, the Dems look pretty ossified. The Republican leadership in Congress and the Senate on the other hand have added some Gen-X voices voice, but they seem to be the voices of the deranged, like Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Matt Gaetz. Gaetz is in fact a millennial.   

I understand, age is just a number. Paul McCartney is 82 and still touring. When asked about retiring he     quipped "first you retire and then you expire. What am I going to do? sit on the couch and watch Netflix all day?" And he seems mostly fine, but he doesn't run the top job in the Free World. The point is, it's one thing to defy age and keep going - and the Boomer generation of US leadership has gone on for a very long time, but it also can't last forever. These guys are simply getting too old, but America's been in denial about it until this debate. Both sides need to play back the debate to the respective candidates and ask them if they think they really did alright. Maybe they will see the blindingly obvious and step down.   

Wanna Feel Old? 

A couple of days ago, Derek Jeter turned 50. Fifty!

View From The Couch - 27/Jun/2024

Welcome Home Julian Assange

After 5 years of incarceration at HMP Bellmarsh, Julian Assange has struck a plea bargain deal with the Americans, this week. And just like that the long siege was over. The seemingly quiet denouement belied the all-of-government effort Australia put together to work towards the release of Assange. 

In the commentary and articles that have come out in the wake of the Saipan court appearance, this one caught my attention. a six MP delegation consisting of a wide spectrum of Australian politics went to lobby the US Department of Justice. One of them was none other than the Fossil Fool himself Barnaby Joyce.

The delegation raised several issues including freedom of speech, shifting public sentiment in Australia, the US-Australia alliance, and jurisdictional rights.

Senator Whish-Wilson says Mr Joyce played an important role.

"He said, 'I was the deputy PM, I've been the acting PM. I have been the deputy head of the National Security Committee for many years, and I don't agree with what Assange has done. But it was not illegal and this extra-territorial overreach [by the US] is a precedent that cannot stand.'"

Dr Ryan said that the US officials pushed back against their arguments, claiming Assange's freedom was purely a legal matter, not a political one.

It was then that Mr Joyce brought Johnny Depp's dogs into it, raising the infamous case in 2015 when the then-minister for agriculture threatened to euthanise the Hollywood star's pooches — Pistol and Boo — due to quarantine breaches.

Dr Ryan said Mr Joyce suggested to the meeting that political considerations inevitably played a role in these sorts of matters.

"Basically, he said there had been pressure placed on him at the time and if it had been left to him, Pistol, Boo, Johnny, and Amber would be behind bars in Australia."

That's pretty funny. I don't much like Barnaby Joyce but if his lousy-loutish-loony-bin argument of bringing up Johnnie Depp, Amber Heard, and their dogs made the point that all of this was a political consideration over a legal one, then I have too say he was a beautiful broken clock that happy day. He's done good, and Lord knows I never thought I'd write that about Barnaby Joyce. 

The other bit that was amusing was this observation:

Senator Whish-Wilson believed two main issues cut through during the meeting — public opinion in Australia and the impact on the US's reputation globally.

"I was watching when they were suddenly taking notes on a couple of occasions. Firstly, when we raised the issue that the political situation had shifted [in Australia]," he said.

"And also that the Chinese government had commented around [Australian journalist] Cheng Lei's imprisonment … that they were criticising the US saying, 'How can you point the finger at us when you are going after Assange?'"

Dr Ryan also made the point that at a time when Russia, China and other authoritarian nations were locking up journalists, it was not a good look for the US to continue its prosecution of Assange.

"I'd taken some Chinese newspapers with me. And I said, 'Look, here's evidence in the Chinese press where this case has been used as an example of the US not respecting freedom of the press,'" she said.

"In the Chinese media's perception, there was a degree of hypocrisy in the US accusing China of that sort of action. They were really surprised by that."

You can just picture the DOJ representatives squirming in their chairs. I guess the important thing was to remind the DOJ that at the end of the day they were running point for a political consideration that had run its course. The politics surrounding Julian Assange had simply changed vastly, as had Australian politics. 

"It would be fair to say within that hyper-partisan environment, they didn't know what to make of this group of assorted Australian politicians who on paper had so much that divided them, that were all pushing for this same outcome, and all prized Julian's freedom."

"Mate, it's just a point of fairness", I can hear somebody say. 

Why Blog About This Today?

Back in the glory days of Julian Assange telling truth to power by telling the world of their misdeeds and  before his situation blew up, he made the remark that blogs are useless. Bloggers, are mostly only talking to their friends. They make no impact on the world. And it always stuck with me because by then this blog here was a few years old. 

First of all, he's right. 

Secondly, he sure made an impact because what he did got the entire US government to come for his head. Yours truly over here's been noting stuff down that amuses him over the decades and here we are - no impact, no substance, no importance - but I don't regret this. 

Thirdly, I just wanted to write how, as useless as my blog has been, I'm still here and I have enjoyed my freedom for the last 12 years so go suck on that pal. But I'm delighted he's been released. That much is true. 

Where Have I Been For The Last 8 Months?

Hard to say. The usual rabbit holes of Youtube and all that it entails, I would say. Work has been exhausting too. New years came and went and all I did was make a 1/24 scale plastic model of a 1970 Pontiac Firebird. Easter was spent doing things I didn't expect to do and then recovering from it. I haven't managed to do a whole lot of recordings, but my band WhatEva did manage to play a bunch of gigs.  

As for the Youtube thing, what have I learned? Putin's Russia is deeply, deeply fucked up. If this war in Ukraine keeps going, Russia may even disintegrate - and then we'll really be in a world of pain.  

Australia Says 'No'

Fear And Loathing In Maranoa

As the pollsters have been predicting for some weeks, the referendum failed to garner the 'yes' vote. 

I happened to catch a Youtube video of Sky News hosts gloating about it and I've wondered if they inhabit the same reality I do - everything they said in celebration of the outcome sounded like Australians came together to thwart a massive conspiracy the likes of which has never been seen. I mean, come on, how much more disinformation does Murdoch's people need to spew about, even after 'winning'. 

The ABC put together this analysis which is informative. 

The journey to the 2023 vote was set in motion in 2017 when Indigenous leaders and community members “from all points of the southern sky” met at Uluru and wrote an invitation to the Australian people to walk with them on a path toward “constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country”. 

That letter asked Australians to listen, and urged us all to support structural reforms to overcome the “torment of [First Nations] powerlessness”: 

“Proportionally, we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. We are not an innately criminal people. Our children are alienated from their families at unprecedented rates. This cannot be because we have no love for them. And our youth languish in detention in obscene numbers. They should be our hope for the future.”
Neither side of the Voice debate denied the need for Australia to create a better future for First Nations children. 

But, by majority vote, Australians have made clear that a constitutionally enshrined Voice to Parliament is not how they want to respond to these crises. 

An urgent question emerges — what is?

So  the last rhetorical bit got me thinking about the whole exercise. 60% of the population voted no. It's nothing to be sneezed at. Within that context there's an electorate out there that voted 84% 'no'. I hope I never go there. 

Unlike the plebiscite for same sex marriage a few years ago, the outcome of this referendum was more in line with the 1999 referendum for the Republic. As was then, the great unwashed decided the Monarchy was fine enough thank you very much in the same way they decided the very idea of Indigenous people having a say in the laws put forward about them was not acceptable. This country has not come very far since then, and dare I say it was miraculous that the '67 referendum to recognise the Indigenous people as citizens got up. 

A Question of Civility

There's a Japanese politician Taro Aso, who got into trouble for saying something undiplomatic during the pandemic. He was asked about how well the Japanese people responded to government directives to wear masks and exercise social distancing compared to other countries. To what, he asked, would he attribute this difference? Aso replied the level of civility is fundamentally different between those countries and Japan. 

He was asked for an observation and then was pilloried for his off-the-cuff opinion. I get it - it sounds like he's saying other countries and populations that don't behave like the Japanese are somehow inferior. What he may have meant was the Japanese were superior, which is not better, but a different proposition. It's not that they/you suck, but we just do things better, is different to "you all suck". 

But when I look around me, what I feel is that the gulf lying between the 'Yes' and 'No' voters is exactly that characterisation: There's an absence of civility in wanting to vote 'no'. Are they inferior human beings? No, but their civility is pretty low if they want to vote to keep the status quo in Australia where the indigenous population is impoverished, incarcerated, disadvantaged and alienated at every turn. I'm not the one that's being churlish in suggesting that it's an utter lack of civility that made them vote 'no'. 

I'm Used To This Feeling

The Republic Referendum of 1999 felt pretty much like this, but that one happened way before Blogs, let alone Social Media so I suffered that in my own headspace more than anywhere else. In retrospect, I think I took that defeat on the chin too, although in the years since, I've sort of backed off the Republican position. Maybe it's that old age brings a certain kind of cynicism about other human beings, that in turn makes you fearful for their lack of civility. In which case a Republic would open doors to any number of executive hour stories, as many republics around the world have found out, including the United Staes of America on the 6th of January 2021. 

That leads me to suspect we with the higher sense of civility should perhaps stay our hand at casting condemnations at the low civility 60% of this sorry nation. After all, there was once an organ called ATSIC and it was abolished because of the corruption allegations it managed to accrue in its time. That experience alone should temper the notion of any political organ that purports to represent the indigenous voice - and in turn, maybe there is a kind of wisdom in the base (and I mean, bottom feeding base) conservative impulse to just saying no to enshrining body that could go the way of ATSIC. 

After all, it was never answered who was going to sit on that advisory body and how they would come to be. Maybe that was a discussion for another day once there was a referendum consensus that we would have such an organ but... it does the beg the question. If roughly the same consensus that didn't want a Republic also don't want a rewrite of the constitution, with some humility, we with the high sense of civility should take that on board more seriously. Is it really intellectual arrogance for the inner city types to want to change the constitution? No. Just the hope that we thought we were better than this. 

So there you have it. Our nation is split into haves and have-nots. It's not about having money or property - it's about having a conscience. 

Referendum Coming Up

The Voice, The Voice

The referendum for The Voice is coming up on Saturday. No surprises, I'm voting 'Yes', so let's just get that out of the way. The choice is pretty stark. There's really no confusion except those points-of-confusion spread about by 'No' vote campaigners. If you want to side with people who think outcomes for indigenous Australians are going swimmingly well, you vote 'no'. If you want to side with the people who don't think things are working that great when it comes to outcomes for Indigenous people, then you vote 'yes'. The fact that you might be lining up with the woke, the sanctimonious, the inner-city-latte-sipping urban elites, and the LGBTQ+ alphabet soup people is actually by-the-by. In turn, if you want to be on the side of conservatives, red necks, racists, conspiracy nut jobs, and other assorted bloody-minded personality-disordered types, you vote 'no' and wear the opprobrium. Society is binary (gender, is less so) in 2023.  

There was that scintillating observation made by an indigenous MP that things were working out great for indigenous people because European colonisation brought running water, got ridiculed a lot. She's only right if you ignore all the suffering otherwise - and we are trying to address the suffering. The "what have the Romans ever done for us?" gag from 'The Life of Brian' is now coming up to almost 50 years old. You would think that our political classes would have digested it a bit better by now, but clearly they have not. Nobody siding with a parochial 'cultural' mindset (as per David Graeber) is not going to accept the merits of civilisation. It's interesting that the best argument in favour of continuing the status quo is history as seen through the prism of civilisation and technology. 

Conversely, it is equally notable that the there are a number of indigenous groups saying they want to vote 'no'  because they didn't get a say, or it doesn't get enough of a bite out of what mainstream Australia possesses. Some even argue if it's not the treaty, they don't want to know about it. Others have said they weren't consulted, while yet others more have said they don't get how it's going to make their lives better immediately - so 'no' thank you. The defiant poses struck by these indigenous leaders arguing for a 'no' vote is also reminiscent of the argument made by David Graeber that the heart of culture is defiance. That in the face of encroaching civilisation, some would defiantly say no to it, is deeply cultural. 

All this has me thinking that this referendum is largely symbolic for a reason. The Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wants us to waste our energy on something trivial, patronising, and somewhat idiotic for the sole reason of distraction. He would like us to expend tremendous amounts of energy arguing the pros and cons of something that is largely without economic or climactic impact. The nation has spent a good deal of time talking about this, while exercising very little scrutiny of just what this government is doing about housing, energy policy, climate change (read "GLOBAL WARMING") and healthcare after the pandemic. He has basically given us this idiotic shibboleth with which to beat over our own heads. It is government by the patronising, for the patronising of the patronised. 

In other words, we are the idiot marks for putting up with this so-called debate.  

View From The Couch - 27/Jul/2023

Vale Sinead O'Connor (Dec 1966 - Jul 2023)

When people die, it's not really the dying that shocks you but the age at which it happens. Sinead O'Connor is/was essentially my age so, the shock is somewhat greater. She was an extraordinary singer whose phrasing was exquisite. She remained rebellious through her career and essentially fearless. 

There are three images of Sinead O'Connor in my mind - the first is her singing 'Nothing Compares 2 U'. The second is of her ripping up the image of Pope John Paul II, denouncing the church for its role in child sex abuse. The third is of her brief fourth marriage to some therapist guy Barry Herridge, and she released some photos on social media. The funny thing is they didn't seem like aspects of the same person, even though it was clearly her in all three situations. 

Her Wikipedia page reads like a string of outrageous statements made by O'Connor which were then retracted. She appears to have been somebody who blurted things out and then had to retract them often. She was a truth-seeker as well as truth teller - and she was definitely vindicated about the Catholic Church and sex abuses so we owe her something right there. The diagnosis of being bipolar did not come as a surprise, although her struggles seemed to be equally Herculean, Sisyphean,  and Pyrrhic. She also had many incidents where she threatened to commit suicide.

She is going to be sorely missed. The world is a little dimmer and more grey without her. 

Funny Story

Maybe this isn't so funny... but my replacement/successor at my previous job at UTS has upped and quit this week. I counted the weeks and it comes to 8 weeks that she lasted in the job. The official reason was that she took a post-doctorate position in Queensland - however I'm no dummy. I know the exact sequence events in which she had to participate, and the likely fall-out from those events. 

She would have been handed my 34 page handover document with tons of things to do; she would've been made to pick up all the loose threads which would have been arduous. She would have had to sit through and note-tale the Technical Steering Committee meeting in late June; the Advisory Board meeting on 11 July; and the Board meeting on 20 July. At each juncture her boss would have gone to town on her writing with Obsessive-Compulsive-disorderly zeal, and she handed in her resignation on the 24th July. 

You can't make this stuff up. 

Cyberpunk Chronicles

I Was A Teenage Cyberpunk

Back in the days before the internet and blogging and all the other things that make 21st century life so convenient and autistic, was the 1990s throughout which I was bumbling around with a bunch of dumb ideas from 80s science fiction. So I went to that prestigious film school and made a dumb little science fiction movie based on the same bad science fiction ideas and that led to me running into a guy who wanted to do this multimedia phantasmagoria electronic dance music act meets U2's Fly show which was a big thing after their Aching Baby album. They needed a guitar player and hey presto, I was their guy. 

And that led to a a bunch of songs being written and recorded and going in and out of record company meeting rooms in Tokyo, which, to be honest was a dumb fucking idea, but you had to see it from this outfit's point of view - you couldn't get closer to the future by operating out of Sydney. You want to be trans-orbital, global and a lot closer to the future, which, Tokyo seemed to be at the time. 

Anyway, that act eventually folded like all acts that don't quite get off the ground. I went and joined other bands and left that project behind. But that period also coincided with the recession we had to have, where nobody young got a serious look in at employment, and so I wrote a huge song book in my abundant spare time. That songbook sat in my drawer until well and truly into the second decade of the 21st century whereupon I figured it was time to see if there was any life in these songs.  

Then came the pandemic. 

When you're sitting around at home being almost halfway to unemployment working only 2 days a week, you tend to want to fill your time with finishing old projects - and this is how this damn record came about. I don't know what happened to the other members of that weird outfit from the 1990s. I've tried googling and facebook and what-have-you but I've not seen nary a peep out of them. I guess it's just one of those things where you recognise you meet people, you spend some important time with them and then you part ways. The chronicling comes way after the events.  

Quick Shots - 13/Jun/2023

The Unknown Unknowns

Australia's judiciary gets it wrong from time to time. Not to raise old stories or point fingers but the Kathleen Folbigg and Lindy Chamberlain before show the judiciary of this country to be entirely faulty in some cases and takes them years to self correct. In each of those cases, there was media mayhem. On the whole, a media circus portends terrible things for people caught in their spotlight of hateful attention. 

In that light, I want to point out something that's been vexing me a bit. The Bruce Lehrmann case that recently got thrown out and then decided that they won't re-try the case has left Lehrmann in purgatory forever. It's very troubling because let's face it, both Brittany Higgins and Lehrmann were Liberal Party staffers and that kind of subtracts just about all political sympathy from me, leaving just a he-said-she-said scenario of accusations. Both of them seem like well-heeled private-school-educated people who had an 'in' to work in Parliament, and this terrible thing happened to Higgins. So up to this point, I've not really cared what happened because a) I am a bastard when it comes to politics and make no mistake, this is politics; and b) I don't care about scandals out of parliament and; c) I'm inclined to dislike both these people based on their resume, so why would I care how the trial goes?

That said, I'm getting a little bothered by some fundamental things here. Lehrmann never got a verdict at his trial because a juror's misconduct ruined the trial. The prosecution decided not to re-try the case, so as Lehrmann points out, that leaves him as somebody who is not exonerated. In his words, 50% of people in the country think he is a rapist. Judging from the media coverage, I think he has the figure low there. I'd say it's more like 80%. I've never heard from anybody who has stood up and vouched for Lehrmann in the press. The media has not shown anybody who has stood up and said it couldn't have been Lehrmann, based on character or motive or modus operandi.

In other words, thanks to the media, Bruce Lehrmann's received a presumption of guilt all along. And now the prosecution and judiciary have decided to just let it go - in turn, he will never have the chance to clear his name in court. Surely people can see if all things being equal, this is more than a bit wrong. The media have tried the guy already and he has no recourse except defamation trials. If the prosecution really think he was the rapist, they would be well advise to bring that case back. This situation is not justice in anyway shape or form, let alone for Brittany Higgins. The media is a shit and the judiciary is, dare I say, unreliable. 

The Counteroffensive At Last

There are indications the Ukrainian counteroffensive is underway. It was originally mooted in winter for the northern spring, but leaks and waiting for the arrival of equipment as well as training for how to use them, has delayed the counteroffensive. It's nice to know it is finally underway. The business of Bakhmut was turning into a rather horrible little stalemate that was taking the world's economy with it. 

It would be nice if at some point Vladimir Putin could be removed, a peace settlement made swiftly and things go back to some semblance of normal. If there's one thing that is certain, it is that Putin is responsible for all of this mess and he needs to be brought to justice. He is a fugitive from justice, hiding out in the Kremlin. He started this war and is now solely responsible for its outcomes. The views to the contrary are is just propaganda. 

Get Back To Those Recordings

Paul McCartney says there will be one more Beatles song featuring John Lennon. 

In an interview with the BBC, McCartney said the record was a demo he and Lennon worked on.

"It was a demo that John had, and that we worked on, and we just finished it up," he said.

McCartney did not name the song that has been recorded but according to the BBC it is likely to be a 1978 Lennon composition called Now And Then.

The track — one of several on a cassette that Lennon had recorded for McCartney a year before his death — was given to him by Lennon's widow Yoko Ono in 1994.

Two of the songs, Free As A Bird and Real Love, were cleaned up by the producer Jeff Lynne, and released in 1995 and 1996.

Yeah that would be about right. It's hard to say if it would be any good as a song. It certainly will be going out to a world that is probably now indifferent to the charms of the Beatles. The Covid Pandemic killed  a lot of Baby Boomer codgers and codgettes. 

 

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.