~ arm in python

I heard a story the other day about a girl who, being thoroughly wasted, passed out on the couch in an unfamiliar house - to wake with her arm swallowed to the shoulder by an overly ambitious pet python.

When people intersect with drugs, when the safe day-time world is penetrated by heavy-lidded Morlocks on Kronic or Crack, on Krank or Can-D, bizarre complications often ensue – a phenomenon I'm quite certain is news to no reader of this blog. At present, I'm trolling the far oceans of abnormality for the best and most unlikely pharmacological tales as I'm editing a few issues of Whack Magazine - 'Whack' being the official (and mischievously named) 'organ' of Harm Reduction Victoria, the drug-users' advocacy group.

If you have one of these stories (or any interesting drug-related writing - fiction or not) I'd love to see it. Email it to sam.sejavka@gmail.com. If you dare. I'm also seeking imagery on the same theme. Payment is on publication (etc) and almost - but not quite - at normal commercial rates.

On Friday next week, Polly and her friend Ocean are performing in Snatches at RMIT's Kaleide Theatre . It's just a small piece - but an important (perhaps even critical) continuation of The Goitre Bird Cycle - in which the girls, while innocently fishing beneath a sewage outlet, encounter the baffling Starched Penultipope, and proceed to divest him of a fabulous treasure ...

As for me, life writhes and slithers ... like a tunneling snake of quantum uncertainty. For every tragedy, there is a boon, and though I still have plenty of good reasons to crumple myself like a piece of used tinfoil, other more mysterious, more beautiful and bountiful influences have eased the general havoc of my life.

Take, for example, Henry, the estimable and very musky billy-goat pictured below (with myself and Heronymous Posh, photographed by Suzi Q P Dhol). The pupils of his eyes are disturbing to behold: uncanny, ur-satanic, horizontal rectangles, the like of which I'd never before encountered. What's more, in rutting season, the hairy rump of of every nanny-goat in the paddock is reliably worn to bare hide by this proud, insatiable beast.

nb: the art at the top of the post is by Jenny Gameson.

~ killer zombies

On facebook, my old colleague Robert Chuter recently posted some images from a short film of the mid 80’s called ‘Killer Zombies’ made by Zlatco Kasumovic. The prosthetic work, done largely by Vivienne MacGillycuddy, was first class, but for the zombies themselves it was a test of endurance. These are polaroids of a mould of my head being taken.





The process resulted in this souvenir - my old head, wrought in plaster, which I think I’ve shown on this blog before. It still sits in a corner of my office. Like a death mask. Like – as it gathers dust, chips and scrapes – the image of Dorian Grey.



One of the hardest things to throw out ... one’s own head ...

Onto this cast the makeup artists layered up prosthetic devices of ... latex, I think, then painted, textured them etc. Ultimately they wound up looking thus:




Activity on our set, I think in the decaying Herald-Sun building on Flinders St, was curious enough to attract the attention of the press. The following clipping appeared in the early edition of the now defunct Herald. Despite the mistaken spelling, one of my favoured appearances in the written media.

~ do you believe in the pink and plump?

This morning I heard Rob Oakeshott phrase something rather eloquently on the science of Climate Change. To paraphrase, he asked would you take your child to the doctor if they were sick? Wouldn't you be negligent if you did not? If your car was malfunctioning, wouldn't you take it to a mechanic?

This is to say that we rely, sensibly, on experts to inform and advise us on subjects in which we are not conversant.

Why most of Australia - seemingly - wishes to dispute the overwhelming evidence provided by specialist authorities on climate science and economics beggars belief. The well has been poisoned, that is clear. Fearmongers are at large, conspiring with other agents of unreason. I see sallow-faced pamphleteers smacking their thin lips in sordid anticipation. And merchants, pink, corn-fed, redolent of baby powder, lining their wallows with profit ...

All of it working to muddle our heads on this most critical of issues. For all her faults, I feel deeply for Julia Gillard at this moment. She is facing a storm of sheer madness, the outrage of the greedy, the vitriol of the hateful - yet she is refusing to back down. I wish there was more I could do.

Science is science. It is method not opinion. The science that gives us life-saving drugs, microwave ovens, iphones, sophisticated crash-restraints, plastic, podiatry, GPS systems, X-ray machines, Predator drones and Zhu Zhu pets is the very same science that has been advising us, firmly, for decades, to act on climate change.

The scientist observes, measures, experiments and records. He or she examines the data, shares it with other scientists, and may draw conclusions. An hypothesis may result. The process is then repeated as many times as necessary. If there is sufficient evidence, a theory may be presented to the scientific community. The theory is then subject to review by peers and, if it is a good one, may be published in a journal.

But, no matter how much evidence accrues to back it up, it will only ever remain a theory - for in science nothing is certain. Will the sun rise tomorrow? It is not certain. Just very very likely.

This is the scientific (or empirical) method. It has brought us from the dark ages of fear and superstition to unparalleled levels of civilisation.

If we ask ‘do you believe in climate change’ we are asking ‘do you believe in science’.

Do you believe in science?

~ lichen in the face of adversity

With the last of the light, we drove to Thompson’s Dam, that vast body of water which supplies most of Melbourne’s water. Particularly during the drought, one was repeatedly shown evidence of its declining volume in newspapers and TV. The slopes of dark broken rock and the installation’s various towers and structures were therefore instantly familiar - none more so than the exposed strata along its shore, which, if the lake was not merely 42 per cent full, would not be visible at all.

But there were also the looming, crowded forests - the overwhelming verdancy of nature, everpresent and pure; ferns swarming the sides of the winding roads - ferns which, I am told, need centuries to become so large. Above all, there were the rolling columns of mist - for it was very cold - settling over the surface of the water, propagating among the ancient gums, attenuated in some areas, congested in others; obeying the inscrutable physics of the invisible winds. At any point we could have become characters in The Shining or The Evil Dead, or, perhaps most disturbing of all, that recent adaptation of Steven King’s The Mist.

Of course my eyes were drawn, as always, to the little things. The marginal things. Here are some photos. Taken in the rain.

~ abhorrent

I was in the country yesterday. East Gippsland. With Polly, her friend Y and Y’s dad. There was a surprising coincidence that day [the meat of which was reported on the evening news and in the following morning’s papers]



On Wednesday, in Frankston [Melbourne] a woman, who was a Greens party member, had been invited to a community meeting on the Carbon Tax to be hosted by Tony Abbott. But it wasn’t really a community meeting. It was stacked with like-minded Abbottites.

Lately, in these days of divisive politics - of politicians so desperate for a vote, they will play carelessly, amorally, with issues so sensitive they could potentially crack open our society (consider the link between the refugee scare and the shameful Cronulla riots) - in these days, extremists, cranks, and fringe elements with dangerous potential have begun to believe that their degraded, ignorant views are suddenly acceptable in general society. Think of Lord Christopher Monckton and his Nazi wall-hanging. Think of Abbott caught sermonising before a banner reading 'The Witch is a Bitch' (or some such).



The meeting proved a perilous environment for a solitary Green. She stood out amongst the conservatively dressed faithful, simply because she looked colourful and a little interesting. She was given the microphone and made a very simple statement - that she voted green and approved the Carbon Tax. You may have seen it on the telly.



She was not only booed down, but threatened and literally chased from the venue. Frightened, weeping, she was informed by one liberal that, if he had his way, people like her would be lynched in the village square. ‘You’re not part of this community,’ spat one attendee (although she actually lived in the neighbouring suburb). Mysteriously, she was asked if she possessed a compost bin. A media pack followed her, perhaps sensing a developing story, perhaps fearing for her safety, since the police overseeing events had retreated without explanation. (Later, media elements did ask if she would like to speak out over her treatment, but she declined.)

A ghastly thing, no? Angry Australians, unable to distinguish truth from lies, or else bigoted, small-hearted and greedy, shouting each other down over supermarket checkouts, casting ad hominem attacks at our leaders - as if this was Bizarro World and such outbursts somehow constituted viable arguments - or else repeating the insufferable drivel they'd read in the Herald Sun, as if it were some universal book of wisdom.



The coincidence? The hapless Greenie was the mum of Polly’s friend. We four were watching telly, alone in a big cold room, deep in the country, eating our dinner - and suddenly there was mum: crying, leaning into a lamp-post as a form of support, desperately calling for help over her phone while Abbott’s bullies harassed and threatened her. And as the media filmed.



(Earlier, in the car going East, on a very patchy phone line, Y's father had been worried by suggestions that she ‘had been attacked’. His seven year old had overheard, as they do, and asked repeatedly who had attacked whom, until she accepted the truth of her father's ignorance.)



The sweet mystified innocent did not understand the details of the situation confronting her on TV, but could see well enough that her mother was weeping and that people, their faces made ugly and frightening by anger, were plainly upsetting her. I wondered if she thought the footage was live ...



The expression on her face was moving. Even heartbreaking. Her incomprehension was telling in a way that soared over the venal behaviour of the adults on screen. She did not cry, but immediately went to her father’s knee, and pushed her way into his arms.



He consoled her: Mum was alright now, she’d been a hero, had done the right thing - but had run into some bad people who, thankfully, were gone now....



But they’re not gone. Instead they’re recruiting. And for what? votes? money? hate? To find some way of justifying the righteousness of shitting in our communal beds? That expression - that expression on the face of a child with a lily-white soul - pointed right to the heart of it for me: not just to the shameful culture beginning to dominate our public discourse, but to something deeper, something worse.

(16.07.11 Some pages have cropped up since the events described above. Links: Declan Stephenson should be ashamed, Frankston Shame, Carbon Forum Handpicked? Woman Intimidated at Carbon Rally.)