Tuesday, May 30, 2006

HELPFUL HINT$$$

(1) Itching from mosquito bites driving you mad?
Rub lemon juice directly onto the bite.
(2) To deter ants, sprinkle a line of cinnamon or talc powder at entry points.
(3) Remove chewing gum by placing shoes in freezer, frozen gum is easier to scrape off.

These were three of the eight helpful hints that arrived in a friend's mail box the other day, courtesy of...a bank!

Not advice from his mother or favourite aunt. Not taken from the CWA Cook Book, nor even from the ABC's modern cleaning sensation, Shannon Lush.

"Why is a bank sending him handy hints?" I wondered.
"Because they want his (and my) money, Stupid!"

This, I suppose, is the same reason that the manager of my wife's rental property, utility companies, The Salvation Army (I'm sorry to say), and every other commercial Tom, Dick or Kate includes a recipe or 'tip-for-a-better-life' with their glossy newsletter or appeal.

I'm sick of it. Sick of corporations and corporate-style entities trying to win business (i.e. get money) by intruding into areas that have nothing to do with why they exist--and trying to sound as though they care. Who are they fooling?

I am also sick of non-corporate entities--charities, Christian organisations and the like--who think they must ape businesses' marketing techniques in order to survive.

What I'm saying, or should I say, yelling, is that the intrusion of business and corporate-style agendas into what might traditionally have been called the realm of the 'citizen' drives me mad.

Does anyone else share this or a similar concern?

PS I'm aware that the above presents me with two problems at least: (1) If I were to place one of my sneakers in our tiny freezer, it would leave very little room for frozen dinners for the next week. (2) As I sometimes take work as a copy writer (i.e. writing brochures, ads, websites and the like), I directly contribute to the trend I am screaming about, which is another of life's terrible tensions.

posted by Sauntering Walker at 8:27 PM 4 comments

Monday, May 22, 2006

Ouch!

Some tough words for would-be writers from Ayn Rand:
If you have nothing new to say, no matter how brilliantly you can say it, do not do it. An article stands on its subject and theme. Those "brilliant" essays that say nothing (which The New Yorker is full of) are mere finger exercises and a waste of developed style (The Art of Nonfiction, p. 15).
Tell us what you really think, Ayn.

Two comments:

(1) As one who has been relishing some of the 'brilliant and empty' pieces in The New Yorker (I picked up two old copies for 50c a pop--paid for by my "travelling relative"--in a secondhand bookstore), I'm shocked. Surely the magazine would have returned Rand's jab with some right hooks of their own?

(2) Perhaps the fact that Rand never actually wrote the book quoted above goes some way toward explaining. Rand gave a series of talks to a small group and a devotee decided to transcribe and publish the talks after her death. Interesting editorial policy to leave in swideswipes at big targets like The New Yorker.

Nonetheless, so far the book is a great read.

posted by Sauntering Walker at 9:25 PM 3 comments

Monday, May 15, 2006

Tour Guides

For the last few days we've had relatives from interstate staying, which is a sure-fire way to get to know your home city.

Near Leighton Beach. I think it's the Duyfken replica.

We visited the mandatory Fremantle, Cottesloe, Kings Park &c, but for me Guildford, Mundaring and other Perth 'heartlands' held most interest. For example, did you know that Guildford once made a push for WA's capital to shift from Perth to its better-suited locale? (Which shows that Western Australians have always had a secessionist streak.)

We did Freo by foot, wandering around the older precinct near Notre Dame University (the amount of buildings the Uni owns is staggering.) The pics below are from the gallery in the Moores Building.
"Longevity" by Rob Boulden; these are (Buddhist?) metal household altar sticks.





My sister-in-law,
taken by her fiance.





One day we had lunch at the Mundaring Weir Hotel, a rambling old two-storey place that houses some wierd relics and has luxurious grounds. David Helfgott, James Morrison, and Kate Ceberano have played their this year, which is impressive for an out-of-the-way Perth pub.

One thing to beware of: the parrots are far too friendly. These were our wedges!


posted by Sauntering Walker at 9:26 AM 5 comments

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Coffee-Roasting Popcorn-Makers

Some friends recently discovered that popcorn-makers are a cheap way to roast coffee, and last weekend they gave us a demonstration. Mmmmm, freshly roasted coffee. Pics of our three roasts are below (clockwise, from the top: dark, light and medium). The beans were arabica.


The unanimous favourite was the dark roast. Needless to say, after the tastings our collective mood spiked dramatically--thankfully it was morning.


NB: if you buy a popcorn-maker, try to roast some coffee, and it tastes like sink water, please don't shoot the messenger!

posted by Sauntering Walker at 7:04 PM 9 comments

Sunday, May 07, 2006

For the Love of Penguins

Luc Jacquet's March of the Penguins is a visual feast. The exotic setting of Antarctica ensures the feast is rich: from the white snow covering every centimetre of ground; to the turquoise of looming icebergs, whose sharp edges are set against a clear sky; to the striking emperor penguins with their sartorially elegant 'suits' of black tails, white shirts, and swirling orange collars.

However, one thing troubled me about the film. It's a feature that is common to Hollywood films with animals as subjects, namely that the animals are often portrayed as if they were humans--i.e. they are anthropomorphised.

My suspicions were raised in the first few minutes of the film when narrator Morgan Freeman announced this was a love story. The 'love' angle is played out by shots of male and female parnters caressing each other and by the emphasis on their being monogamous. Note: the sole mate is kept for one season only--come next season, the field is entirely open.

The Weekend Australian carried a thoughtful piece by Imre Salusinszky on the film ("Rear View", Review p. 40). His question in the third-from-last paragraph is on the money:
If the parents can abandon their children, confused and shivering on the edge of the Ross Sea, isn't the story of March of the Penguins more one of self-sacrifice to preserve the genetic inheritance than of anything we might call love?
Salusinszky is also right to draw attention to the staggering devotion of Jacquet and his team to their subject--filming in minus 80 degrees celsius being just one example of this. Although I can't go the whole way with his conclusion that this film is about the unique, grand love of humans for nature. Spending a year or two to make a doco seems more an act of artistic adoration (worship?) than love.

Yet this still leaves me with a question: if it's misleading to portray the love of animals for their own as completely like the love of humans for one another, then what is the nature of animal affection? When a bitch feeds her pups or when a hen broods over her chicks, what sort of love is this?

Any biologists out there--or well-informed non-biologists--who can inform me?

posted by Sauntering Walker at 1:13 PM 4 comments

Monday, May 01, 2006

Dear Author: Please Include Me

In March, Frankly, Mr Shankly posted on "Should Theologians write clearly?" (21st and 23rd March). As is the way in blogland, it provoked some brief and interesting discussion. (Someone suggested to me that the average blog-life of a topic is two to three days. Although, even that long may be generous.)

I'd like to lengthen the blog-life of this topic. Yes, I'm climbing onto a soapbox.

My soapbox text is a colourful and provocative essay by the translator, author and former ABC broadcaster, Robert Dessaix. The essay is titled, "Showing Your Colours", and it's in a collection of his called (and so forth). A quirky title.

As the time at which I'm typing this is late, well past clear-thinking time, rather than build my own argument, here are a few slabs from Dessaix's essay:
...you need to be very aware of what kinds of signals various common stylistic devices send. At one end of the scale there are ways of writing and talking which totally empower the writer, granting him or her total authority, virtually nullifying the audience (p. 123).
Dessaix calls this the excluding end of the scale: it excludes or minimally considers the audience.
At the other end of this scale, the including end, as I would call it, there are ways of writing which appear to give the audience all the power. Normally, of course, we write and talk somewhere in between (p. 123).
Can you elaborate, Robert?
At the excluding end of the scale, the writer appears to be saying: 'I know the truth, and you don't. In fact, you probably won't grasp it even when I tell you what it is.'...The including voice, by way of contrast, is a power-sharing voice. You're likely to hear it saying: 'Here are some of the questions lots of us are asking ourselves at the moment and some of the answers people have come up with' (pp. 123-4).
Dessaix claims that excluding writing is, among other things, unemotional, impersonal, uses verbs in the passive voice, and latinate nouns (e.g. 'residence' rather than 'house'). The including voice, he suggests, is more emotional and personal, uses stronger verbs that are in the active voice, and uses concrete nouns.
To put it another way, the excluding voice says: 'I'm now going to eat my dinner. Watch me.'...The including voice, according to this analogy, says...'Let's go shopping, shall we? Let's go and buy something together, then come home, cook it and eat it.' (pp. 124-5)
Although excluding and including may be overly loaded terms to describe differences in writing styles--at first glance, formal and informal seem to come close Dessaix's catogeries (although, of course, they don't as clearly refer to the 'all important' power relations)--I have seen the characteristics each of these terms describe clumped together in pieces of writing. And, yes, I do think they can make a topic more or less accessible to the reader.

And what has all this got to do with clarity?

Firstly, it reminds me that the aim of clear writing is to be clear to the reader. It's to help them grasp, laugh, marvel, tremble at the subject in view. To use Dessaix's word, without as precise a meaning as he does, clear writing should include the reader.

Second, in the realm of theology-- journals, PhDs and other academic stuff aside--I think the circle of readers that is sought should be as wide as possible. Let's be as clear as we can, so that as many as possible can be included, so that many can 'dive in' to this wonderful subject.

I hope this spurs a few to climb their virtual soapboxes and comment. If you would like to read Dessaix's essay but can't track it down, let me know, I'd be happy to send you a photocopy.

posted by Sauntering Walker at 11:46 PM 1 comments