Well it's still Vegetarian Week

"Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) has decided to reject Application A545 – Vegetarian Labelling. This information provides notice to interested parties of the rejection of Application A545. It is not an invitation for public comment."

- oh actually it is


"To propose to use an Australian and New Zealand domestic food standard aimed at
regulating the quality and safety of foods to fulfil needs based on moral and/or religious
beliefs and/or for environmental reasons is a purpose that goes beyond the intent of
Food Standards Australia New Zealand Act 1991."

- heaven forbid, food standards being moral, whatever next, Anarchy?

It's National Vegetarian Week

Vegetarian Society display at Belconnen Library, Canberra.



Events for the Week, can be found here.

Best website ever

I post this link to the Real Life Super Heroes website not to be funny, people dressing up as superheroes can be intrinsicly funny, but out of respect, awe and let's face it plain jealousy.

These Superheroes don't take on crime per se, but other social ills like 'the environment'. Fighting these sorts of 'issues' rather than Supervillians or crime syndicates may not seem very dangerous but they are none the less extremely challenging - as such I salute them.


Also they are hot!

Addendum

I forgot, am a Librarian (thus hero), so don't need a costume apart from my day to day workwear.

Trees - becoming somewhat of a motif

Fence

Birdman

Australian population forecasts ignored Edgar at its peril

News today - "The Federal Government has significantly upgraded its population forecasts for Australia to over 35 million people within 40 years.

The Government says its third intergenerational report will show the country's population is expected to grow by 65 per cent by the year 2049.

That is significantly higher than the Government's Second Intergenerational Report which predicted a rise to about 29 million people." - they forgot to count me

Adorno on Australia (written 1940s published 1951)

Nothing can be more touching than the worry of lovers, that a new person could attract love and tenderness – their finest possessions, just because they cannot be possessed – precisely by means of that newness, which is itself produced by the privilege of the older. But from this touchingness, whose disintegration would mean the simultaneous disintegration of all warmth and snugness [Geborgensein], leads an irresistible path from the aversion of the little child to its younger siblings and the contempt of the fraternity brother to the pledge, to the immigration laws which exclude all non-Europeans in social democratic Australia, all the way to the Fascist extermination of racial minorities, wherein in fact warmth and snugness explode into nothingness. It is not only, as Nietzsche knew, that all good things were once evil: even the most tender of these, left to its own momentum, has the tendency to culminate in unthinkable barbarity. - Theodor Adorno

Nick Cave

Have just seen the Nick Cave exhibition (http://www.nla.gov.au/exhibitions/nick-cave/). It was very good in parts. I was unsurprised to see in his bookshelves (partially on display) that he had collections of Larkin, Auden and Betjeman. Whilst his work is often considered to rely so heavily on American gothic (subject matter namely) I have always thought his poetic meter was actually really quite traditionally English.

Cave of course name checked the great Larkin in There she goes, my beautiful world

"Karl Marx squeezed his carbuncles while writing Das Kapital
And Gaugin, he buggered off, man, and went all tropical
While Philip Larkin stuck it out in a library in Hull
And Dylan Thomas died drunk in St Vincent's hospital" - Nick Cave

This lyric example, bears no relation to the English poetry of the above named, but if you look at the word structure of an earlier work like Mutiny in Heaven I think that shows what I mean.


I have checked, I can't find a Larkin reference to Cave, but then Larkin always favoured the Jazz (and its mags) to rock.

Richard Scarry gives us no hope

"So much does the realization of labour appear as loss of reality that the worker loses his reality to the point of dying of starvation. So much does objectification appear as loss of the object that the worker is robbed of the objects he needs most not only for life but also for work. Work itself becomes an object which he can only obtain through an enormous effort and with spasmodic interruptions. So much does the appropriation of the object appear as estrangement that the more objects the worker produces the fewer can he possess and the more he falls under the domination of his product, of capital." - Marx (1844)


Oh but hang on, see below, Scarry is clearly mad.

We are all embarrassed by this

"Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a LAW divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?" - Shelley

Something you never wanted to see

First Nijinsky, then Roy Castle and now this.

Learn more at MarsCandyKills.com.

Manifesto

Adapted from the Raver's Manifesto - obviously

Our emotional state of choice is ecstasy. Our nourishment of choice
is Love. Our addiction of choice is Technology. Our religion of
choice is reference. Our currency of choice is knowledge. Our politics of
choice is none. Our society of choice is utopian though we know it
will never be.

You may hate us. You may dismiss us. You may misunderstand us. You
may be unaware of our existence. We can only hope you do not care to
judge us, because we would never judge you. We are not criminals. We
are not disillusioned. We are not drug addicts. We are not naive
children. We are one massive, global, tribal village that transcends
man-made law, physical geography, and time itself. We are The
Massive. One Massive.

We were first drawn by the sound of a book page turning. From far away, the thunderous, muffled, echoing beat was comparable to a mother’s heart soothing a
child in her womb of concrete, steel, and electrical wiring. We were
drawn back into this womb, and there, in the heat, dampness, and
darkness of it, we came to accept that we are all equal. Not only to
the darkness, and to ourselves, but to the very sound of words slamming into
us and passing through our souls: we are all equal. And somewhere
around 027 (DDC22) we could feel the hand of God at our backs, pushing us
forward, pushing us to push ourselves to strengthen our minds, our
bodies, and our spirits. Pushing us to turn to the person beside us
to join hands and uplift them by sharing the uncontrollable joy we
felt from creating this magical bubble that can,protect us from the horrors, atrocities, and pollution of the outside world. It is in that very instant, with these initial realizations that each of us was truly born.

We continue to pack our bodies into depositories, or warehouses, or
buildings you’ve abandoned and left for naught, and we bring life to
them. Strong, throbbing, vibrant life in it’s purest,
most intense, most hedonistic form. In these makeshift spaces, we
seek to shed ourselves of the burden of uncertainty for a future you
have been unable to stabilize and secure for us. We seek to
relinquish our inhibitions, and free ourselves from the shackles and
restraints you’ve put on us for your own peace of mind. We seek to re-
write the programming that you have tried to indoctrinate us with
since the moment we were born. Programming that tells us to hate,
that tells us to judge, that tells us to stuff ourselves into the
nearest and most convenient pigeon hole possible. Programming that
even tells us to climb ladders for you, jump through hoops, and run
through mazes and on hamster wheels. Programming that tells us to eat
from the shiny silver spoon you are trying to feed us with, instead
of nourish ourselves with our own capable hands. Programming that
tells us to close our minds, instead of open them.

Until the sun rises to burn our eyes by revealing the distopian
reality of a world you’ve created for us, we catalogue fiercely with our
brothers and sisters in celebration of our life, of our culture, and
of the values we believe in: Peace, Love, Freedom, Tolerance, Unity,
Harmony, Expression, Responsibility and Respect.

Our enemy of choice is ignorance. Our weapon of choice is
information. Our crime of choice is breaking and challenging whatever
laws you feel you need to put in place to stop us from celebrating
our existence. But know that while you may shut down any given Library,
on any given night, in any given city, in any given country or
continent on this beautiful planet, you can never shut down the
entire Library system. You don’t have access to that switch, no matter what
you may think. The bibliography will never stop. The heartbeat will never
fade. The Library will never end.

I am a Librarian, and this is my manifesto.

Librarian X

Poetry tour

So the dead poets tour was also completed. I got to travel from Hull to Cornwall, taking in London and surrounds. I never made it Bournemouth to see the resting place for Shelley's heart, traffic and weather stymied that trip on the way down. I also stomped around East Coker (nr Yoevil) churchyard for an hour looking for T.S. Eliot's memorial, only to find later there were 2 churches in this tiny town, and I was at the wrong one. But I got to see Larkin's grave and his workplace at the University of Hull. Betjeman's graveyard was by an ancient church that was for years buried in sand dunes, and then dug up in the Victorian era and was as fittingly picturesque as should be.





I did get to see where Keats lived (above) and gosh right next door they have a lovely public library.


Just look at the ceiling of it.






I didn't get to Rome for Byron, but did get to see the most marvellous 'documentary' on him made by Rupert Everett. An interview with Everett here on it http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jul/17/g2-interview-rupert-everett. It is well worth finding and watching.

Sh'ma Yisroel

This year in Jerusalem



Finally among my own people. I give thanks for deliverance.



At Massada, where we rightfully chose death before slavery, I stood.



Even in our own land, we are among barbarians and so have still to be known by signs.



Yes, here we keep to the commandments thus the market is not open on Shabbat.