Once upon a time I nurtured a furtive dream of playing in a rock and roll band. It was way back in a time when rock music was still the dominant youth art form. I immersed myself in a world of records, rock barns (all the popular pubs were rock barns at that time), guitars, Beat literature, tatty photocopies of Jerry Rubin’s anti-establishment rant, A Yippie Manifesto…
I spent all my money – and I was earning better than average bucks at that time, having fast-tracked to a Clerk Class 4 position in the public service office in which I resentfully spent the working week – on records, hifi components, beer to accompany weekend and mid-week attendances at pub gigs, a constant supply of marijuana I do confess, and virtually every big-name rock concert that made it to Perth.
My first – at Beatty Park in 1971 – was incredible value: Chain, Free, Manfred Mann and Deep Purple on the same bill. I was so excited by the finale of the show I passed out in the exit queue and ran head first into a stone pillar, splitting my forehead open to the bone – the scar a souvenir that remains to this day (note: no drugs involved; I was only 15 at the time). Continue reading Please Sir, Can We Have Some More?→
To weak pretenders like Brendan Nelson who was forced through overwhelming political pressure to take a bipartisan stand on apologising to aboriginal people for the wrongs of the past perpetrated by past parliaments of this land and its non-indigenous majority
To fuckwits like Wilson Tuckey, who absented himself from Parliament for today’s speech of apology
To fossils like John Howard who held up cultural and social progress in this country for the long, wasted years of opportunity of his time in office
To the mean-spirited, simplistic and emotionally retarded minority who are blind to the symbolic importance of a formal apology to the indigenous peoples of this country and who protest indignantly that they weren’t responsible for the actions of previous generations (talk about missing the point!)
To the writer of the bitter, skewed and ignorant statement entitled Australian Apology To The Aboriginal Population and all the sheep who circulated this piece of shit in email form or whose thinking is trapped within its parameters
To anyone else not covered above who did not support Rudd’s formal apology
The reaction of the indigenous people to the Apology justifies every word.
If you do not understand why saying sorry was vital both to the aboriginal people and our society and Rudd’s speech a political and social landmark in Australian history, it doesn’t matter. Your views on this issue are irrelevant.
I’ve got a love-hate relationship with blogging – or is it writing? Whatever, when I get into it I love it. It inspires and stimulates me, sets off new trains of thought…but if I absent myself more than a few days, those trains rattle on their way without me, disappearing into gloomy tunnels of lost opportunity, leaving me sitting idly at some station of inertia. I know these barren platforms too too well.
My inactivity begins to gnaw at me like some inner rat, but perversely I routinely choose to tolerate the discomfort – it’s almost as if the act of writing is some authority figure I engage in a contest of wills. I’m James Dean, writing’s my father. And he wants to keep me home while I wanna go out. So I grab me coat and slam the door and kick in me grandma’s portrait on the way out. Then when I’m “out” I realise I’m restless with inactivity. So back home I go and the old man looks smug so I go out again just to spite him… Continue reading When Is A Blog Not A Blog?→