The grand final of the Australian Rules football league was yesterday, the obsession of all Melbourne. I and Harry and Neddy and Paul and their friend Claire congregated in the living room hoping, despite lifelong aversion, for a Collingwood victory over the Brisbane Lions, a bunch of bastards. They're a Yankee-style commercial enterprise whose them song is a reworded version of the Marseillaise. Unfortunately they won easily in a dismal game, all the more dismal given that I was counting on it for my whole season's dose of footy.
The pre-game entertainments are always telling. This year the finalists of Australian Idol sang songs, and then the stars of the stage musical We Will Rock You lipsynched numbers from the production - other Queen songs before they shifted into a syrupy, pumped-up version of Waltzing Matilda. Harry and I by this point were exclaiming how completely an embarrassment it all was, for the league, and for the nation, but it went on and on for 45 minutes or so. The culmination, once the teams had run out through their huge walls of streamers built by fans, was a rendition of the national anthem by an appropriately multi-raced young woman.
This reminds me that I'm reading an extremely interesting and compelling essay by Germaine Greer who argues that the only hope for Australia, as it struggles terminally over how to implement a “multiculturalism” that has such effects as ushering in a reconciliation with aboriginal Australians, is for the majority to strive for “aboriginality,” itself. This would take the form of an acknowledgment that the great survivors of the country are the Aborigines, whose early vilification and now well-established denigration by white Australians overlooks the fact that the majority feels a deepseated abhorrence of its forebears' behavior towards the Aborigines, and also recognized, at some level, that its inhabitation of the country is very poorly executed - it doesn't acknowledge its own inadequacy, nor does it admit that it flies in the face of the country itself, and is starting to look very shaky because of that - in terms, for example, of environmental damage, and so forth. Embracing “aboriginality” would mean, as humbly as possible, listening to Aboriginal voices that have, if history is carefully considered, been reaching out to European Australia since the beginning of the colonial era in the late 18th century.
I'm supposed to be implementing the Dr Siddhu nutritional program (see below), but that isn't easy, without being at my own place. It's a simple regime, which he designed to provide a structure to me, who is rather structureless when it comes to eating, unless going out for every meal is a structure. The regime is: one Weetabix for breakfast, and a hot, caffeine-free drink (HCFD). Lunch: consommé soup, with some vegetables in it. Dinner: fish or chicken, cooked in own juices with garlic and ginger, or grilled. Some vegetables. That's it. Two big glasses of water before each meal. Between breakfast and lunch, and lunch and dinner: half a piece of fruit, HCFD. After each meal: brush teeth; close up shop. That's quite a challenge, but the simplicity and the potential for liberation from harmful substances are appealing, so it's being going pretty well, despite having to fit in with family dinners and the like. (Nonetheless, my success is, at best, middling, I'll admit it.)
Today Harry and I went to the last day of the annual Melbourne Show, which this year has been somewhat soured by three accidents on fun-rides, including a collision between cars of the rollercoaster, when a boy's hat flew off and jammed under the wheels of one carriage, stalling it, so that it was rammed by the following carriages. A few went to hospital. The upside of the event was that Harry proved quite uninterested in the rides, today, so that we were able to sit and watch cattle, llamas, alpacas, and Boer goats before shopping for “show bags,” which are the be-all and end-all of children's show attendance: They're shopping bags with a selection of the products of a particular company, such as Cadbury's Chocolates, or Japanese card companies, discounted slightly and sold for a fortune from parents', or amenable uncles', pockets. A few desultory music acts were at two stages at points around the showgrounds, an expanse of about 20 acres adjacent to the huge Flemington Racecourse. They were fairly sorry country acts, or rock acts doing covers of the worst of American 70-80s pop songs. In the large stadium, several rows of custom-altered pickup trucks and stock cars were parked amid strolling country blokes, and a few attendant sheilas, strutting about. The cars were liberally decorated with Southern-Cross and Australian national flags. Harry at a roo burger for his lunch.
The pre-game entertainments are always telling. This year the finalists of Australian Idol sang songs, and then the stars of the stage musical We Will Rock You lipsynched numbers from the production - other Queen songs before they shifted into a syrupy, pumped-up version of Waltzing Matilda. Harry and I by this point were exclaiming how completely an embarrassment it all was, for the league, and for the nation, but it went on and on for 45 minutes or so. The culmination, once the teams had run out through their huge walls of streamers built by fans, was a rendition of the national anthem by an appropriately multi-raced young woman.
This reminds me that I'm reading an extremely interesting and compelling essay by Germaine Greer who argues that the only hope for Australia, as it struggles terminally over how to implement a “multiculturalism” that has such effects as ushering in a reconciliation with aboriginal Australians, is for the majority to strive for “aboriginality,” itself. This would take the form of an acknowledgment that the great survivors of the country are the Aborigines, whose early vilification and now well-established denigration by white Australians overlooks the fact that the majority feels a deepseated abhorrence of its forebears' behavior towards the Aborigines, and also recognized, at some level, that its inhabitation of the country is very poorly executed - it doesn't acknowledge its own inadequacy, nor does it admit that it flies in the face of the country itself, and is starting to look very shaky because of that - in terms, for example, of environmental damage, and so forth. Embracing “aboriginality” would mean, as humbly as possible, listening to Aboriginal voices that have, if history is carefully considered, been reaching out to European Australia since the beginning of the colonial era in the late 18th century.
I'm supposed to be implementing the Dr Siddhu nutritional program (see below), but that isn't easy, without being at my own place. It's a simple regime, which he designed to provide a structure to me, who is rather structureless when it comes to eating, unless going out for every meal is a structure. The regime is: one Weetabix for breakfast, and a hot, caffeine-free drink (HCFD). Lunch: consommé soup, with some vegetables in it. Dinner: fish or chicken, cooked in own juices with garlic and ginger, or grilled. Some vegetables. That's it. Two big glasses of water before each meal. Between breakfast and lunch, and lunch and dinner: half a piece of fruit, HCFD. After each meal: brush teeth; close up shop. That's quite a challenge, but the simplicity and the potential for liberation from harmful substances are appealing, so it's being going pretty well, despite having to fit in with family dinners and the like. (Nonetheless, my success is, at best, middling, I'll admit it.)
Today Harry and I went to the last day of the annual Melbourne Show, which this year has been somewhat soured by three accidents on fun-rides, including a collision between cars of the rollercoaster, when a boy's hat flew off and jammed under the wheels of one carriage, stalling it, so that it was rammed by the following carriages. A few went to hospital. The upside of the event was that Harry proved quite uninterested in the rides, today, so that we were able to sit and watch cattle, llamas, alpacas, and Boer goats before shopping for “show bags,” which are the be-all and end-all of children's show attendance: They're shopping bags with a selection of the products of a particular company, such as Cadbury's Chocolates, or Japanese card companies, discounted slightly and sold for a fortune from parents', or amenable uncles', pockets. A few desultory music acts were at two stages at points around the showgrounds, an expanse of about 20 acres adjacent to the huge Flemington Racecourse. They were fairly sorry country acts, or rock acts doing covers of the worst of American 70-80s pop songs. In the large stadium, several rows of custom-altered pickup trucks and stock cars were parked amid strolling country blokes, and a few attendant sheilas, strutting about. The cars were liberally decorated with Southern-Cross and Australian national flags. Harry at a roo burger for his lunch.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home