First Dog On The Moon Comic

Crikey's First Dog On The Moon comic for today. (Click for larger view)

 http://www.crikey.com.au/firstdog/

Read This

If you're anything like me you'll see a link in someone's blog and not bother to follow it, you're more likely to read something if it's shoved in your face... Read this, it's from The Age, link's at the bottom

If only we could all hear views of migrants

CATHERINE FORD

MICK the Syrian, as he's known, sells excellent vegetables at the Queen Victoria Market. Usually he's to be found smoking and flicking through wads of cash and flirting with customers, like the louche, art-house actor he so closely resembles, but last Tuesday he was reading from a darker script.
Lying almost prone over his leafy greens, he argued with a boy, a young student with a clipboard, sent to gather opinions on the federal government's policy on asylum seekers.
Perhaps the teenager imagined Mick, with his droopy, Dennis Lillee moustache and Driza-Bone accent, was the usual laconic, stuffed-if-I-know, stuffed-if-I-care type of Anglo-Celt, someone who could furnish him with quick, anodyne answers to drag back to the classroom.
''OK, get this down in your survey,'' Mick told him, shifting his weight to a pile of capsicums. ''The government has very, very seriously f---ed up on this.''
The boy blanched but began to take notes.
''These people aren't coming out here on leaky boats because they feel like a little holiday,'' Mick told him. ''They're coming here because they're terrified of what's going to happen to them if they stay. They have no future where they come from. Do you understand?''
The boy nodded and scribbled.
''Now, what I can't understand,'' Mick continued, his voice rising, ''is why we want to make them suffer all over again by putting them in such a remote place, way out in the middle of a frigging desert, where nobody can reach them, hoping that most of us will forget about them. Again, why are they doing it?''
The gathering shoppers, the schoolboy and I stood silenced, galvanised by his urgent, honourable, incandescent questions. The boy fielded them, literally, as it occurred to me every last one of us residing in this country should be made to. Impressively, he wrestled with the subject, and before an audience of impatient, attendant strangers.
''They put these people there,'' he answered Mick, uncertainly, ''because they have to process them. And a desert's probably a good place to process somebody, isn't it?''
''Processed?'' Mick cast around at his customers. ''Can you believe this? They've got kids talking like this now! That frigging word.''
He turned to the boy. ''You ever heard of Villawood?'' The boy shook his head. ''Villawood's in Sydney, mate, right near the city. It's a s---hole, and I'm not saying put them there, but at least people can visit it. Who's going to drive to the WA desert to check on these people?''
The boy looked befuddled. ''But we have to put them somewhere, don't we? They can't just come straight in off the boats. They're illegals.''
''They've brainwashed you!'' Mick barked. He'd forgotten, it seemed, the real object of his anger, or else, like those of us who are similarly provoked to frustration and despair by the uncertain fate this country has consistently dished out to asylum seekers, he'd lashed out indiscriminately. I felt for the boy, taking the weight for something so grave and serious, a matter that properly belongs, after all, with mature, compassionate and politically engaged adults, men and women who have agency enough and a sense of moral duty to act on the matter.
''I want you to take your survey away and have a think about this stuff, OK?'' Mick said briskly. ''Take it home, go into your bedroom, lie down, and think bloody hard about it, because it's not right how we're treating these people. We have to let them quickly into towns and cities where they can start working, start living again.''
The boy put his pen away, shaken. He murmured a hasty word of thanks to Mick and turned and walked. He didn't stop at any of the other stalls, I noticed, but made his way, dazedly, out.
''Jesus,'' I ventured, ''you've traumatised that kid for life. If he didn't eat his greens before,'' I joked, ''he certainly won't now.'' But this was cowardice speaking, a manoeuvre brought about by shame.
Too upset to answer, too affronted to laugh, Mick lit a cigarette and retired to the mudguard of his truck, from where, with a despondency I hadn't seen before, he watched his Indian staff serve those of us who had stood about listening awkwardly, shopping lists in hand.
Pissed off with surveys and done with talk, he'd made his message clear, and that message, it seemed to me, deserves a wider hearing than just those in the market for fruit.

The Age
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/if-only-we-could-all-hear-views-of-migrants-20100709-1040m.html 

Challenge Complete

I did it, a whole week without my precious Age. For seven days I have read nothing but The Australian and Crikey, and it was a massive failure. The Australian is a little better than The Age in its omission of junk but not as much as I was expecting, it’s just national junk as opposed to Victorian junk, and the layout makes it look a little more sophisticated. A lot of the national stories were scandal pieces that wouldn’t be amiss on A Current Affair, and if I wanted any Victorian news I was ushered to the Herald Sun’s website, and there’s no way I’m going to read that without several massive grains of salt. What I have come to realise though is that a lot of the news just doesn’t interest me; Australian politics is given more coverage than it deserves - although to be informed voters I suppose we need information, but that said a lot of it is just spin – and the few issues I am interested in at the moment are getting negative, brainless coverage that is making me angry. I think the general populace, and those in parliament forget their heart when it comes to asylum seekers. We have a (closet) mildly racist population who don’t take the time to think about the situations asylum seekers are fleeing from, or to look at the tiny numbers we actually receive. This is an area where votes should be completely disregarded and the right thing done by those seeking safety. This Wednesday's Hack on Triple J showed me this week just how insensitive and uninformed some of our population are.

I’ve just realised that in all this I’ve completely forgotten the ABC; they’re good for national news, but again not great for Victorian news. Maybe from now on I can read the ABC and Crikey and just check the Victorian section of The Age. Or not read anything and submit a very informed donkey vote at the end of the year, something I’m seriously considering since both major parties seem to be made up of heartless fools.

Challenge

Okay, I’m setting myself a one week news diet challenge of The Australian and Crikey only, oh and Arts Hub, but that doesn’t really count. News corp is evil, that’s for sure; but The Australian is pretty good and I am starting to loathe The Age, I just need to kick the habit. I shall report back next Saturday, or when I make my first desperate trip to The Age.

A Confusing and Messy Argument With Myself (for you to read)

I like a good read and I hope to read something of interest when I go to The Age’s website several times each day; increasingly I am finding myself dissatisfied. It doesn’t matter so much at the moment, since I have the attention span of an infant and can’t follow an article, but there are fewer and fewer articles I can even be bothered clicking the link to open. Below this post you will find screen captures from the sites of three major papers, plus Crikey, a news site I also read. If I were to rate these sites from the screen captures for tackiness and hype (and therefore lower interest from me) they would come in as such: 1st place:  As expected the Herald Sun for their football banner and ‘pig in heat’ headline. 2nd place: I am sad to give this place to The Age for still going on about those spies, for the Chaouk story (it seems like the people involved are begging for attention) and of course all the celebrity crap. 3rd place: The Australian, not too much hype there, there often isn’t.

Despite these results I just can’t seem to make the switch from The Age that I know I should. I’m not sure where to place Crikey on this scale, based purely off the screen capture it would have to sit between The Age and The Australian, but I prefer Crikey to The Australian since they are not owned by a major corporation and so can provide links to any site worldwide that has interesting, good or even especially bad/laughable articles. Crikey also host some great blogs, some of which I frequent. This is starting to sound like an ad for Crikey, it isn’t meant to... Months ago I proclaimed on facebook that I’d had it with The Age and was going to source my news purely from Crikey and The Guardian (I’d already decided that The Australian isn’t for me). I promptly removed my bookmark for The Age and stuck to my resolve for one day, if that. The problem is that Crikey only does one major update per day (I think) and The Guardian is also a little too fluffy, plus it’s hardly useful for local news. So then that takes me back to the question why the hell don’t I read The Australian?????   News corp, that’s why. Who can suggest a solution?

Mental Health Olympics

I don’t know about other fields, but certainly in the arts we see a lot of funding comparisons made between us and sport, the comparison is getting a little tired but it’s still telling of where we as a society place value. Today’s Croakey blog had an interesting comparison between mental health and sports funding in the most recent budget. I found it interesting, maybe you will too. I for one would be very glad to see elite sports funding slashed dramatically and for it to be redistributed amongst the many vital services (and the arts) which remain disgustingly under-resourced.

Another One

I promise this blog will not merely by me posting articles from The Age, but as I recline here on the couch snuggled in a beautiful warm blanket it just seems fitting to share this with my so far non-existent readers. I was brave yesterday; I didn't have much choice in the matter. I went to a crowded cafe, caught three trains and went to two shopping centre megaplexes, all without even a tiny meltdown. By the end, however, I longed to be only in the company of my lovely man and insane cat. Today I might go outside, or I may just stay snuggled in my pyjamas, wrapped in a blanket, it's currently 4pm!

Faith Restored

I just stumbled upon this article in The Age. The writer, Hugh Mackay, was speaking at the same conference Jessica Rowe was quoted from in the article I mentioned in my previous post. Bit of a difference eh?! Mackay is addressing a different topic to Rowe, but at least I now know there wasn’t an entire conference spewing forth the sort of nonsense we read yesterday. A little more acknowledgement from Mackay about the seriousness of significant mental illness and the dangers of avoiding treatment would have been wise, but that's not really what he was talking about so I can overlook it.

A Disappointing Read

I attempted to write a post yesterday, but after close to an hour I gave up. I fear being judged for my ill thought out ideas, poor grammar and the punctuation of a 10 year old; so I spend far too long reading, editing, deleting and re-writing my posts, when I doubt many people care if I don’t know how to use a comma.

So yesterday I was trying to have a little blog rant (which I deleted) about this article in The Age about Jessica Rowe's recovery from post-natal depression. The massive Life & Style logo at the top should have served as a warning of what was to follow. I disobeyed my better judgement and read the whole 208 words (yes, I’m nerdy enough to do a word count on it); by the end I was infuriated and so arose the previously mentioned rant. I first had to find out who the hell Jessica Rowe is -I don’t watch television and so am blissfully unaware of a good chunk of Australian popular culture - Rowe is an educated and experienced contributor to Australian television, she has inhabited the misogynistic world of channel nine and survived (just). Given her education, career development and personal experiences of post-natal depression and misogyny I would expect more insight from her than was offered in this article. I therefore direct my disapproval at the mystery Age columnist, and not just Rowe. I think it is demeaning to sufferers of a significant mental illness to have simplified and saccharine cures thrust in our faces. I acknowledge that this tiny article is in the insubstantial section of the paper/website, but its capacity to harm is present nonetheless, if anything it is amplified because it is more likely to be read by those least likely to analyse what they are being presented with.

Post over, who wants to count the errors?