Journalists: what can you do?

This title could also read "Politicians: what can you do?"

Marrickvillia is on the front of the Sydney Morning Herald News Review section today. Remember our party on election night?

I was contacted earlier this week to comment on Rudd's recent downward swing in the polls. I was happy for the SMH to use images from Marrickvillia, and to put the journalist in contact with other people who had been at our "Don's Party."

It's an ok article but I didn't say what I'm quoted as saying--but I'm not surprised that it's there. "Jilted" isn't in my vocabulary... and I'm fully aware that Rudd has kept some promises and that those he hasn't been able to keep have been somewhat thwarted by the shameless Libs in various ways.

We are still a thousand times better off with the ALP than with Abbott and his gang of losers.

Truth be told, at the end of the day, when all's said and done, I won't lie to you: politicians are primarily politicians, and we never really believe their "promises" in the first place. And journalists are primarily journalists, and we expect them to make stuff up. And I'm an academic and write a whole lot of theory-crap occasionally. It's all part of our rich discursive tapestry.

Our "Don's party" was a great night because we felt it was finally the end of the Howard era and because two powerful, fabulous women were suddenly in the forefront of Australian politics, not because any of us really thought that a consummate politician like Rudd would ever be anything other than exactly that.

Vegan Bake-Off at the Black Rose

Ruby's life-long friend Georgina lives with us now. It's wonderful - she's a gorgeous girl with interesting, eclectic tastes, amazing fashion sense and great taste in terrible 80s and 90s cult movies. Although Georgie isn't vegan she decided to enter the Vegan Bake-Off being held on Sunday at the Black Rose Anarchist Bookshop in Newtown. She made a red velvet cake with a vegan cream icing. Other people had contributed a strawberry & passionfruit pie, and some oatmeal & choc-chip muffins. I trailed along to check it out & was quite overwhelmed by the wholesomeness of it all - quiet talk, reading of books, munching of vegan treats - nobody was even smoking! Young people these days, my oh my. I hope they save the world, I really do. See more photos here.

aowh... the day after

we are not well we have a headache there was partying and screaming and joyous whoops and the house was chockers and we ate a huge lebanese feast and people dressed up and someone vomited and the dog ate it before we could stop her and everyone was glued to the teve and maxine looked so radiant and delighted, and julia so pinkly pleased & modest. One of them will be Australian Prime Minister eventually but kevin will do for the time being.

Oh God, I left the blog on the bus!

Not really, I've just been horribly busy. The end of semester rushed at me like a monster. Luckily my students were a ridiculously talented bunch and their final projects made everything worthwhile. Ruby finished her HSC exams on Thursday. She was incredibly well prepared but it was still quite stressful. I made endless cups of soy hot chocolate for her & helped a little with English preparation, but I'm useless with anything like Biology. Now she has schoolies and her year twelve formal coming up...

Toby the rat is all better. His foot will always be deformed but all the infection is gone and the skin has grown back. He lost weight while he was injured and his brother Billy is now nearly twice his size. We get Toby out on his own and feed him chocolate and nuts so he can get his strength back.

We're having a party! It will be on election night and the theme is "Don's Party" (although I hope the election outcome will be different to the one in the play). People have to come dressed in "Australian suburbia, 1969", hehehe. I'm searching for a crimplene pants suit for myself and a body-shirt for Richard. Fingers crossed there will be good reason to pop the champagne. Go Maxine! Go Julia!

Greens & Cheese

I found the modesty of the decorations very heartening.

These Greens practice what they preach.

Last night Richard and I ended up at a Greens function in the Marrickville Royal Exchange. We'd met some friends at the Hollywood Hotel in Surry Hills after work, then eaten at Spice I Am and later adjourned to the KB Hotel, so the function was almost over by the time we got there. I still got to talk to some great people though.

Derek Maitland & Margie McCabe.

Derek was the campaign coordinator for Marrickville in the recent state election. He told me "The T-shirt is a joke about being passive. Greens are very passive! I've done it in Latin so people ask me what it means. It's not a hostile thing."

Fiona Byrne, the candidate for the recent state election & member of Marrickville Council, with Colin Charlton from South Marrickville. We chatted for a while & they were both delightful.

John Kaye, Greens member of the Upper House

Richard, who was on his 99th beer,
with Hazel Blunden, the Greens Policy Officer

At the end of the night there was some leftover cheese - after a bit of discussion a few people divided it up equally, wrapped it up & took it home. This further endeared me to them.

And while we're updating things, I'm pleased to see that the English sign that Ms Li put up in October is slowly wearing off the front of her Jin Xin Chinese Video Rental Store in Illawarra Rd.

Election Day

We wandered down to Ferncourt Primary School to exercise our democratic rights this morning. I love election days. Everyone is so polite, there's that good feeling that change is in the air, and you never know who you might bump into at the polling booth. Today I saw my favourite bus driver and a dear friend's girlfriend.

The liberals didn't even bother with any signs at our polling booth... which is safe ALP and usually has the biggest Greens vote of anywhere.

I was impressed by the Greens' multilingual signs - Greek and Vietnamese at Ferncourt School,

and later in the day I spotted Arabic outside St Francis' in Illawarra Rd. None of the other parties seemed to have bothered with anything other than English.

The parents and citizens association at the primary school was selling flowers.

And they had a sausage sizzle, which I really love the smell of although I'm vegetarian.

Signs of Life

Some members of Marrickville council want to make English language signage on our shops compulsory. Dean blogged about a similar thing in Campsie earlier this year. Apparently, "at the end of the day, we live in Australia". Um, yes. And we live here with all sorts of people. Some of them - shock - don't speak or read English. As readers of this blog know, I LOVE the signs along Illawarra & Marrickville Roads. I don't feel in the least alienated by them, even though all I really understand is a bit of the Greek. And that's not because I'm of Greek heritage, but because I grew up in Melbourne's Northcote, which in the 1970s was full of first generation Greeks and Italians. Macellerias, Orthodox churches, Bombonieres & Greek signage were all part of my landscape and part of my cultural education... along with getting drunk at my friend Angela's 13th birthday party on her dad's home grown wine, and learning to keep away from boys who called girls "putta" or "poutana".








I popped down to have a look at the Chinese video store singled out by the Mayor, Morris Hanna. On the way I passed a Tongan/Vietnamese Church, a Vietnamese Grocer, a Vietnamese Chemist, a Greek butcher, a Fijian mini-mart, a Greek Patisserie, a Chinese herbalist and two Lebanese delis. I noted that all of them already had English signs alongside alongside their native language signs (in the case of the Chinese herbalist who can treat "anal fissure" I'd probably have preferred not to have the translation). It was very clear what each shop was.

Approaching the video store I saw that a new sign had been hastily manufactured out of pasted-on sheets of A4 paper saying, surprise, "Chinese Video Rental". How Mayor Hanna couldn't tell what this shop was before is a mystery to me. There was a crew from Chinese PayTV there, interviewing the owner, Ms Li. The journalist happily translated my questions. I asked Ms Li why she'd put up the new English sign. She replied that she knew her shop had been in the paper and is scared of getting into trouble with the council.


I've also noticed in the past few weeks that street posters all over Marrickville are being whited-out. Is there a council conspiracy to make our streets as bland as possible?