The festival wave

Music festival season is here – tis the time of year where we fret about timetable clashes, get covered in sunburn, and dodge the drunkard and drugged.

I went to the wave rock festival – and as it has been in the past, it was delightful. Only 800 tickets get sold, and you need to trek three and a bit hours to get there, but it is such a payoff when you do. I take delight in standing at the base of the rock, facing it and listening to the music reflected back from its surface in stereoscopic wonder, as though the band itself was entombed within, condemned by some ancient curse to play for their escape.

Without fail, I’ll bump into someone I know at a festival like this, and many, many more who I remember, but I am a stranger to. Yet another symptom of the always sober; re-introducing yourself to the same drunken friends of friends that you did last year, and the year before.

So in response, I have perfected the technique of the festival wave – waving to someone I recognise, and when they look at me in intoxicated bewilderment, I simply pretend I was waving to someone behind them but that person didn’t see me. It relaxes me, and saves me from the awkward, “yeah, we’ve met but…”

The bands were all fantastic – particularly the always splendidly ragged Kill Devil Hills, and – much to my surprise – Abbe May.

Call me a cynical jaded nothing-nice-to-say-Mike-Wafer-wanker, but I find it positively vertiginous that this young beautiful Bunbury/Perth white woman can so authentically channel the spirit and soul of old black American bluesmen, but she can. “She takes you on quite a journey” my delightful companion remarked.

Speaking of companions – it has been said that a true test of a relationship is to travel together. I say the truest test of a relationship is to travel to a music festival together. The anxieties of the journey. The compromises and questions of taste. The discomfort of the sleeping arrangements. The at-odds biological needs. Differences in diets. Potential distractions everywhere. Emotions running at a continuously high level. Fatigue. And that’s without taking into account alcohol or amphetamines…

One or more of the factors above has led to my loathing every single festival I’ve been to with a partner before. But not this time. This time, aside from a couple of moments when I was a whingy little arthritic biatch, we had a wonderful time.

I’m a bit smitten, I am.

Pundit Kitchen

There is something about the imminent destruction of the monetary system as we know it that, when combined with an imminent US election, equals absolute hilarity (provided you have some pictures to caption.)

All come via Pundit Kitchen – the political wing of icanhascheezburger

Most of these don’t even require you to be a political nerd/junkie to find them hilarious…

Stalker

I have one. Sort of.

I am hoping that immortality on teh interwebs is all they’re after, so after seeing this, they’ll go away.

It isn’t anything exciting, sadly. Just repeated calls from a private number – at very strange and unpredictable times of the day. Sometimes he/she/it hangs up immediately. Sometimes I get breathed at for a few seconds. Sometimes I’m treated to a background cacophany for half a minute or so.

Just my luck really. Why couldn’t I – back when I was single for more than two years -  be stalked by some hot psycho woman that followed me home and shagged me senseless? I’m sure I saw that on a movie some place. OK, I might have downloaded said movie back when I was single for more than two years, but I digress.

It started when I first started seeing a new woman last year, so I thought at first it may be some embittered ex of hers. But since now I too am an embittered ex of hers, and the calls are yet to abate, this theory is no longer plausible.

It could be the insecure addled sometimes-partner-sometimes-ex of a dear friend of mine. Her – let’s call him fella – her fella has never been quite able to come to grips with the concept of a man and a woman being close, intimate friends with absolutely no sexual undertone whatsoever. He just assumes we’re having wild rampant nookie. For six months of the year. For the other six months of the year, he assumes another good friend is having such relations with “his” partner. Tool.

Still, the phone stalking thing isn’t really his style – he’s more the strong violent type.

I think that rules out aggrieved men (aside from the guy that sent me laughable threatening text messages for a short time last year – again, thinking I was sleeping with someone I’m friends with).

Being friends with women and not trying to get these women into bed seems to cause most men to malfunction. But I don’t think they’re doing the calling.

No, I think it is being done by a woman I was – or almost was – in a relationship with that I have upset. Which is pretty much all of them. It could be the woman I was in love with for a long long time and couldn’t let go of, but I couldn’t commit to either, so I hurt her terribly (but I doubt it – she just hates me).

It could be one of the women whose company I took comfort in during the aftermath of the fallout from the above situation, that I didn’t really connect with, despite trying way too hard in at least one case.

It could be one of the three women I had almost-relationships with but didn’t in the first year or so I was back in Perth. Well realistically, it could only be one of them (one I was really in love with), because the other two aren’t completely barking mad.

It could be a few other people. It could be the woman who I have so much in common with, but suffered terrible timing with.

So, dear unimaginative stalker, please feel free to leave an anonymous comment telling me just what I’ve done to trigger this behaviour, and then I’ll deeply apologise so you don’t interrupt my time with my wonderful new partner.

Who is much smarter, funnier, nicer, interesting and better in bed than you. Whoever you are.

Obama visits Bartlet

I love The West Wing. My favourite show ever.

I have all the DVDs and have spent a good deal of time and effort being a West Wing pusher, and a West Wing dealer. I’ve recently started watching them all again from the beginning, in good company, which is just lovely.

West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin recently wrote this piece – a meeting between West Wing President Bartlet, and not-yet President Obama.

Brilliant.

BARACK OBAMA knocks on the front door of a 300-year-old New Hampshire farmhouse while his Secret Service detail waits in the driveway. The door opens and OBAMA is standing face to face with former President JED BARTLET.

BARTLET Senator.

OBAMA Mr. President.

BARTLET You seem startled.

OBAMA I didn’t expect you to answer the door yourself.

BARTLET I didn’t expect you to be getting beat by John McCain and a Lancôme rep who thinks “The Flintstones” was based on a true story, so let’s call it even.

OBAMA Yes, sir.

BARTLET Come on in.

BARTLET leads OBAMA into his study.

BARTLET That was a hell of a convention.

OBAMA Thank you, I was proud of it.

BARTLET I meant the Republicans. The Us versus Them-a-thon. As a Democrat I was surprised to learn that I don’t like small towns, God, people with jobs or America. I’ve been a little out of touch but is there a mandate that the vice president be skilled at field dressing a moose —

OBAMA Look —

BARTLET — and selling Air Force Two on eBay?

OBAMA Joke all you want, Mr. President, but it worked.

BARTLET Imagine my surprise. What can I do for you, kid?

OBAMA I’m interested in your advice.

BARTLET I can’t give it to you.

OBAMA Why not?

BARTLET I’m supporting McCain.

OBAMA Why?

BARTLET He’s promised to eradicate evil and that was always on my “to do” list.

OBAMA O.K. —

BARTLET And he’s surrounded himself, I think, with the best possible team to get us out of an economic crisis. Why, Sarah Palin just said Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had “gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers.” Can you spot the error in that statement?

OBAMA Yes, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac aren’t funded by taxpayers.

BARTLET Well, at least they are now. Kind of reminds you of the time Bush said that Social Security wasn’t a government program. He was only off by a little — Social Security is the largest government program.

OBAMA I appreciate your sense of humor, sir, but I really could use your advice.

BARTLET Well, it seems to me your problem is a lot like the problem I had twice.

OBAMA Which was?

BARTLET A huge number of Americans thought I thought I was superior to them.

OBAMA And?

BARTLET I was.

OBAMA I mean, how did you overcome that?

BARTLET I won’t lie to you, being fictional was a big advantage.

OBAMA What do you mean?

BARTLET I’m a fictional president. You’re dreaming right now, Senator.

OBAMA I’m asleep?

BARTLET Yes, and you’re losing a ton of white women.

OBAMA Yes, sir.

BARTLET I mean tons.

OBAMA I understand.

BARTLET I didn’t even think there were that many white women.

OBAMA I see the numbers, sir. What do they want from me?

BARTLET I’ve been married to a white woman for 40 years and I still don’t know what she wants from me.

OBAMA How did you do it?

BARTLET Well, I say I’m sorry a lot.

OBAMA I don’t mean your marriage, sir. I mean how did you get America on your side?

BARTLET There again, I didn’t have to be president of America, I just had to be president of the people who watched “The West Wing.”

OBAMA That would make it easier.

BARTLET You’d do very well on NBC. Thursday nights in the old “ER” time slot with “30 Rock” as your lead-in, you’d get seven, seven-five in the demo with a 20, 22 share — you’d be selling $450,000 minutes.

OBAMA What the hell does that mean?

BARTLET TV talk. I thought you’d be interested.

OBAMA I’m not. They pivoted off the argument that I was inexperienced to the criticism that I’m — wait for it — the Messiah, who, by the way, was a community organizer. When I speak I try to lead with inspiration and aptitude. How is that a liability?

BARTLET Because the idea of American exceptionalism doesn’t extend to Americans being exceptional. If you excelled academically and are able to casually use 690 SAT words then you might as well have the press shoot video of you giving the finger to the Statue of Liberty while the Dixie Chicks sing the University of the Taliban fight song. The people who want English to be the official language of the United States are uncomfortable with their leaders being fluent in it.

OBAMA You’re saying race doesn’t have anything to do with it?

BARTLET I wouldn’t go that far. Brains made me look arrogant but they make you look uppity. Plus, if you had a black daughter —

OBAMA I have two.

BARTLET — who was 17 and pregnant and unmarried and the father was a teenager hoping to launch a rap career with “Thug Life” inked across his chest, you’d come in fifth behind Bob Barr, Ralph Nader and a ficus.

OBAMA You’re not cheering me up.

BARTLET Is that what you came here for?

OBAMA No, but it wouldn’t kill you.

BARTLET Have you tried doing a two-hour special or a really good Christmas show?

OBAMA Sir —

BARTLET Hang on. Home run. Right here. Is there any chance you could get Michelle pregnant before the fall sweeps?

OBAMA The problem is we can’t appear angry. Bush called us the angry left. Did you see anyone in Denver who was angry?

BARTLET Well … let me think. …We went to war against the wrong country, Osama bin Laden just celebrated his seventh anniversary of not being caught either dead or alive, my family’s less safe than it was eight years ago, we’ve lost trillions of dollars, millions of jobs, thousands of lives and we lost an entire city due to bad weather. So, you know … I’m a little angry.

OBAMA What would you do?

BARTLET GET ANGRIER! Call them liars, because that’s what they are. Sarah Palin didn’t say “thanks but no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere. She just said “Thanks.” You were raised by a single mother on food stamps — where does a guy with eight houses who was legacied into Annapolis get off calling you an elitist? And by the way, if you do nothing else, take that word back. Elite is a good word, it means well above average. I’d ask them what their problem is with excellence. While you’re at it, I want the word “patriot” back. McCain can say that the transcendent issue of our time is the spread of Islamic fanaticism or he can choose a running mate who doesn’t know the Bush doctrine from the Monroe Doctrine, but he can’t do both at the same time and call it patriotic. They have to lie — the truth isn’t their friend right now. Get angry. Mock them mercilessly; they’ve earned it. McCain decried agents of intolerance, then chose a running mate who had to ask if she was allowed to ban books from a public library. It’s not bad enough she thinks the planet Earth was created in six days 6,000 years ago complete with a man, a woman and a talking snake, she wants schools to teach the rest of our kids to deny geology, anthropology, archaeology and common sense too? It’s not bad enough she’s forcing her own daughter into a loveless marriage to a teenage hood, she wants the rest of us to guide our daughters in that direction too? It’s not enough that a woman shouldn’t have the right to choose, it should be the law of the land that she has to carry and deliver her rapist’s baby too? I don’t know whether or not Governor Palin has the tenacity of a pit bull, but I know for sure she’s got the qualifications of one. And you’re worried about seeming angry? You could eat their lunch, make them cry and tell their mamas about it and God himself would call it restrained. There are times when you are simply required to be impolite. There are times when condescension is called for!

OBAMA Good to get that off your chest?

BARTLET Am I keeping you from something?

OBAMA Well, it’s not as if I didn’t know all of that and it took you like 20 minutes to say.

BARTLET I know, I have a problem, but admitting it is the first step.

OBAMA What’s the second step?

BARTLET I don’t care.

OBAMA So what about hope? Chuck it for outrage and put-downs?

BARTLET No. You’re elite, you can do both. Four weeks ago you had the best week of your campaign, followed — granted, inexplicably — by the worst week of your campaign. And you’re still in a statistical dead heat. You’re a 47-year-old black man with a foreign-sounding name who went to Harvard and thinks devotion to your country and lapel pins aren’t the same thing and you’re in a statistical tie with a war hero and a Cinemax heroine. To these aged eyes, Senator, that’s what progress looks like. You guys got four debates. Get out of my house and go back to work.

OBAMA Wait, what is it you always used to say? When you hit a bump on the show and your people were down and frustrated? You’d give them a pep talk and then you’d always end it with something. What was it …?

BARTLET “Break’s over.”

Found via Crikey Blogs

tintinnabulation:

tintinnabulation

1. verb Kevin Rudd – please report to the House of Representatives chamber immediately to present your report.

2. noun A report to the House of Representatives delivered by Kevin Rudd