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I spend a lot of my time pondering the great mysteries of the universe. Sometimes I sit and ponder the relationship between causality, free will, divine predestination and chaos. Other times I ponder my persistent inability to get my chicken burgers right.
This week I’ve been considering time travel. I mean, not considering it in terms of whether I should do it or not, but more in terms of which literary expressions of it make the most sense to me. This is largely Kim’s fault. She made me read the Time Traveller’s Wife. I enjoyed bits of it, but as far as plot lines go it was one of the girliest science fiction stories I’ve ever read. I shouldn’t complain too much. It was a lot better than Jane Eyre.
It’s important that you understand that I really do take my devotion to this subject very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that I recently finished editing my second novella on the subject. I wrote it in November for Nanowrimo and I’m planning on doing a third at some stage, just as soon as I can find a spare plot and an extra November lying around.
And I’d hate you to think that this is just some rubbish I made up while I was bored at work because I wanted to get an extra post in for April. No no no. This post is the culmination of weeks of meticulous research. You can find my sources here, here, here, here, and here.
See. I totally know what I’m talking about. I’m planning on having awarded myself an honorary doctorate in the dual fields of temporal mechanics and goofing about on the internet at some point last week. Wish me luck.
Garry with 2 Rs
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When I was a kid I watched way too much Lois and Clarke. I don’t know what it was about the show that appealed to me at the time, but it really sucked me in. I used to make sure I could be at home to watch it on TV, and if I couldn’t be there I would make sure Mum taped it for me. On VHS. Yes, I’m that old. Shut up.
It was at about that time in my life that the idea of becoming a journalist started to appeal to me. It would be easy to assume that it was all about wanting to be Superman, but my passion for writing and for public information has only strengthened over the years, while my obsession with the Man of Steel has thankfully declined. A bit.
By the time I left Darwin to travel to university, I knew there was only one field of study for me. I had good enough marks from high school to study just about anything that wasn’t medical, but to my extended family’s despair I enrolled in a bachelor of arts program and signed up for a journalism major. As an extra side project for interest’s sake, I also enrolled in introductory linguistics. Nothing was ever going to come of that, it was just for fun really.
Five years later I held a Bachelor of Journalism and an Honours Degree in linguistics. Many of my colleagues from the school of journalism went on to cadetships and positions in regional dailies. Some have gone on to do some great things. One of my colleagues is now a political reporter for ABC TV in Canberra, and another has just become an editor at ABC radio in Queensland.
Me? I decided to put my job offer from the Border Watch (the local daily paper in Mt. Gambier) aside and entertain the strange idea of working as a professional linguist for a speech technology company in Sydney. I figured I could always become a journalist later, but the opportunity to work as a linguist was only going to come up once in a blue moon.
With the benefit of hindsight, moving to Sydney was an excellent decision, as it was in Sydney that I first met Kim. But that’s another story that everyone’s sick of by now.
When I returned to Darwin a few years later, the plan was that I’d be able to walk straight in the front door of the NT News and say “job please”. The weeks I had spent as an intern during my studies coupled with being a local boy were supposed to be a watertight guarantee. Unfortunately in the intervening years the entire management and editorial staff of the paper had changed (it does that about every six months) and no-one knew who I was anymore. My applications landed in the pile of applications from every journalism graduate in the country, and I slunk off to become a trainer at a locally run credit union.
Two and a half years, one promotion, and five applications later, I managed to wrangle myself another two week voluntary stint with my local newspaper. Perhaps this was finally my chance to put aside this project management nonsense and fulfil my destiny as a newsroom cadet.
Well, I was offered a “research position” with the Northern Territory Government instead, and for the last twelve months I've been once more managing recording projects in other languages, despite no such activity being found anywhere in my current job description, which is admittedly fairly vague. It seems my true destiny is to sit in front of computers in quiet rooms, listening to other people record languages I don’t understand. This realisation would be extremely depressing, if I hadn’t had an equally powerful revelation this week about journalism.
I don’t want to do it.
It came this week as our televisions, newspapers and computer screens were flooded with images of the Boston Marathon bombings. Twitter exploded with expressions of support, the news had images of the aftermath on repeat for at least a whole day and online news was full of opinion pieces about how this was further demonstration that no-one should ever feel safe and terrorists are lurking behind every corner. Let’s bomb them. Three people were killed, which is a tragedy. One of the victims was a child. Look at this nice picture of him.
Meanwhile in the same week, 39 Afghan civilians were killed by US armed forces, who blew up a wedding celebration for some classified reason. And as we prepare to pull forces out of Iraq, a series of up to fifty explosions killed 46 people in Baghdad and injured over three hundred. That one happened at almost exactly the same time as the Boston attacks.
But look at this picture of a dead American boy. It’s a tragedy.
Well, okay, yes it is a tragedy and my prayers are with his family. My prayers are also with the families of the Iraqis and Afghans hurt and killed at the same time, even if the media don’t give flying fig about them.
And it’s not just a symptom of our society’s general ignorance. As soon as people become aware of these facts, they are as shocked and disgusted as I am that we could spend so much air time lamenting the loss of three people, when almost thirty times that are being blown to bits overseas, some of them at our hands. It’s not that people don’t care about it; it’s that the mainstream media are telling us not to care about it. The commercial news values of every major media outlet have dictated that the loss of three white people in America is worth a full day’s uninterrupted coverage, but the death of close to a hundred people in the Middle East isn’t worth reporting.
That’s inhuman, inconceivable and repugnant. I want no part of it. I’d rather record notices in Kriol telling people to take their kids to school than walk within twenty metres of a newsroom this week. And so would Superman. So bollocks to my journalism degree. I’m going to go and do something worthwhile with my life.
Make of that what you will.
Garry with 2 Rs
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Modern technology is amazing. The power of social media is changing everything we know about communication and information dissemination, but even more than that, it’s actually convinced me to get a Twitter account.
I’ve had the thing for a couple of weeks now, and while I can’t say it’s changed my life at all, I’m sure it’s made a huge difference to the ten or so people who now eagerly follow the occasional deranged overflow of my overcrowded mind. Mind you, the ten people who follow me on Twitter appear, broadly, to be the same ten people who follow this blog. So I guess you already knew what you were in for.
Meanwhile, as we’re all well aware, the real point of social media is to make money out of people’s lives. The whole point of having a massive audience is, ultimately, to sell that audience as a commodity to advertisers. And if you have access to the personal data of millions of people in order to target that market to the desired demographic, well now you’re cooking with someone else’s gas.
I like to keep an eye on the targeted ads that Facebook sticks on the side of my news feed. I never click them on principle, but it’s interesting to keep an eye on what the algorithms in Facebook’s advertising database can determine about me based on the content of my profile. When it advertises local music or theatre events, I’m impressed, but not surprised. When it advertises protest events for left-wing political causes, I laugh and congratulate myself for having such a diverse and socially active group of friends.
This week it gave me a targeted ad informing me that ASIO (Australia’s intelligence agency) had job vacancies for linguists. I broke my rule and clicked the link, not so much out of a desire to be a secret agent, but more out of professional interest in career opportunities for academically qualif…
Yeah, okay. I totally want to be a secret agent.
It doesn’t take Q to realise that Facebook knows I’m a linguist because of my listed education and the groups I’m a member of. It’s possible it even knows I’m in the market for a new job because I work for the NT Government. Nonetheless, I was touched that Facebook thought of me when the opportunity came up.
It turns out that ASIO wasn’t after linguists so much as interpreters, which I’m not. So I closed the ASIO website and went back to Facebook. The ASIO ad had been replaced with a new ad.
Engagement rings.
A few weeks ago I informed the world (and Facebook) that my relationship status had gone from “It’s complicated” to “It’s even more complicated with Kirribilli Kim”. And to demonstrate how proud we were of the fact that we’d kept it a secret (not very well) for nearly six months, I even listed the not-uncontroversial start date of the relationship. And apparently the Facebook advertising algorithm has decided that eight months is quite long enough, thank you very much.
It’s possible the Algorithm came to this conclusion by first checking my religion, which is also listed. And I suppose that’s fair enough. Eight months is getting up there for a Christian couple these days. Fair play. I may have to add a note in the personal description field saying something like “frequently gets in trouble for not doing what the other Christians are doing”. That’ll sort it all out, I’m sure.
In related news, the humans in my life who seem to be arriving at the same conclusion, and asking similarly inappropriate questions can go jump in a very deep lake. But that’s a different post, which I’m probably not going to write.
Meanwhile, I think I’ll leave the sociological commentary on targeted ads to one side for now. Otherwise I’ll have to come to some uncomfortable conclusions about what the ads for Fitness First are trying to tell me.
Make of that what you will.
Garry with 2 Rs
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(Written for Happy Yess Comedy 4 April 2013, and posted here in lieu of anything else to write about)
Good evening ladies and gentleman and thank you very much for your attendance this evening. As you would no doubt be aware from the press briefing notes we spoon fed you this morning, our party is taking this opportunity to announce some bold, audacious and courageous new policy directions. These new policies are designed to give more Australians a fair go, and to more responsibly, sensibly, reasonably and responsibly spend the budget allocations for this sector.
Just like many Australians, our party has been disturbed, concerned, troubled and indeed disturbed by recent revelations regarding the transport of live creatures around Australian and to destinations in South East Asia among others.
It is the firm belief of this party that such wanton disregard for the value and dignity of life is unacceptable. To cram so many in to such a confined space, for interminable amounts of time on route to Asia is beyond reprehensible and cannot be allowed to continue.
Therefore under a brand new initiative, our party will be forcibly disbanding Jetstar, replacing it with a transit system that doesn’t leave at one o’clock in the freaking morning and placing a blanket ban on those stupid orange uniforms to go with it.
Our party is very cognizant that Australians are concerned about the state of our environment, about climate change and about Anthropogenic Global Warming. As a political movement, we want to reassure all voters that not only do we have a firm grasp on what these words mean, we take very seriously the science behind the debates and the entirely rational discussions that go with it.
As an extension of this, our party will be revamping the Carbon Tax. It will no longer be a flat rate tax on polluting industries, which damages our economy, but a more fairly, evenly, equitably and fairly distributed tax on all carbon-based life forms and their footprints. This is to ensure a strong and sustainable future for our country, free from carbon and the manifold problems associated with it. The science is clear on this issue; remove all the carbon-based life forms from our economy and we’ll remove the human causes of global warming altogether, for a cleaner future for all Australians.
Turning to the very complex challenges facing us in the area of immigration, asylum seekers, people smuggling and political refugees; It’s important to understand that issues such as these can only be addressed with very simple, straightforward, sloganistic campaign messages, and in accordance with this principle, Australia has a very clear approach to the development of appropriately populist immigration policies. As far as this party is concerned, if the immigration policy of this country can’t be summarised, satirised or debunked in a three line internet meme, then it needs to go back where it came from.
With this in mind, our party is committed to eradicating people smuggling by the year 2175. In order to take the first steps towards this realistic, measurable and accountable goal, we will not only abolish the Pacific Solution, but we are in active negotiations to abolish the Pacific Ocean altogether. We have put out a number tenders for sub contracts, and the consensus from the private sector is that complete elimination of the Pacific’s 622 million cubic kilometres of water could be achieved over a period of three years at a cost of three hundred kajillion dollars. We have therefore set aside the necessary 1.7 billion dollars and we are confident that the project will be delivered by Christmas.
Naturally some budget cutbacks will be necessary to fund this venture. It would irresponsible, reckless, careless and, frankly, irresponsible to make a huge sweeping promise like this without having any idea how to fund it, and Australians expect more. That is why we have elected to generate funds for the Pacific Dissolution by closing twenty seven hospitals across the country and completely disbanding the Department of Education. This is an important sacrifice that we are prepared to undergo on behalf of the Australian people, as we are firm in our belief that draining the entire ocean will stop the boats. Probably.
Our party is firmly committed to these policies, as a central part of our nation building platform; a platform which is engaging, sustainable, equitable, and – above all – engaging for all Australians. Full details will be available on our party website, just as soon as we get the NBN working.
Ladies and gentleman, I’m Garry Condoseres. I thank you for your time.
Make of that what you will
Garry with 2 Rs
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About nine months ago I started doing stand-up comedy with my friends at Happy Yess. We started out small and token, but this year we’ve launched a re-vamped and rejuvenated version with themes and headliners and organisation and everything. I’m really excited to be a part of it, and putting some time and energy into developing my own stand-up stuff. Having tried a few different ways to stand up on a stage and make an exhibition of myself, I can confidently assert that comedy is both the most challenging and the most instantly gratifying of all the theatrical arts.
On Friday night I took it to the next level. I decided to enter the Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s Raw Comedy, which is a national amateur comedy competition. It was a significant step up for me, having only tried out comedy in the comfortable shelter of Happy Yess, and it was certainly a much larger audience than I’ve ever tried to be funny for before. Apparently there were about 400 people in the audience. Not that I could see any of them for the bright stage lights.
A few of my fellow contestants were trying out comedy for the very first time. And I was surprised at how many of the others had never been backstage at the Darwin Entertainment Centre before. These days I’m as at home backstage as I am in a bar or a church, but I suppose not everyone has had the same theatrical background as me, or lived in Darwin for as long.
There were about a dozen contestants, all of whom did a pretty good job, and the crowd were, for the most part, really good and generous with the laughs. There were only a couple of instances of heckling, and they were reserved for those who could obviously handle it. And at one point a little girl jumped on stage and asked if we had any fish for her.
Phil had assured me that the best strategy with Raw Comedy was to do a musical number, so that was what I did. I’ve been writing little musical numbers for Happy Yes for a few months now, so it wasn’t a big stretch to write full song for the competitions. And it went over pretty well.
I really hadn’t been too fazed by the whole process, but when the winner was announced and it wasn’t me, I discovered I had wanted it a little bit more than I realised. I was a little disappointed, but no so much as to harbour any ill feelings.
In the wash-up, Phil asked me why I had done a song. “I’ve spoken to the organisers,” he said (apparently this is still the sort of thing that just happens to him), “and they told me they’re really not looking for musical numbers these days.” I don’t know… one of these days.
I think I’ll probably give it another go next year. We’ll see what happens.
Make of that what you will.
Garry with 2 Rs