I made a playlist at the beginning of the year that consisted of about eight songs, and this one was on it twice. I listened to the playlist (appropriately titled ’2012′) on average probably every second night as I went to sleep, plus this song at least once every couple of days during daylight hours. It’s definitely the song I heard most last year. I’ve always loved it, but for some reason this past year it really slugged me in the chest. Best Van Morrison song ever from the best Van Morrison album ever (followed closely by His Band & the Street Choir), and probably the most hope-filled love song ever written.

I defy you not to be in love by the time the vocals kick in.

Further to my previous post and on a lighter note, please enjoy the musical comedy stylings of the genius Roy Zimmerman – as ever, shining a most hilarious spotlight on ignorance and prejudice.

“Oh! That’s wonderful news. How lovely! So he’s found a nice girl at last?”

“No.”

“Oh.” <Disappointed sigh.> “I shouldn’t have asked.”

“He and his fiancé have been living together for four years. They’re a wonderful couple. They even have a baby. She’s a pug; her name’s Lola. They’re very happy. I’m over the moon for them.”

“Oh. How can they get married?”

“Queensland now recognises same-sex unions.”

“Oh.”

“I’m very happy for them.”

This is an actual (paraphrased) conversation I had yesterday. It’s not the only one I’ve had recently with somebody who was excited to hear that one of my dearest, oldest friends was getting married… until they realised he would be marrying another man, at which point their excitement visibly and vocally diminished.

(I should note that the person I had this particular conversation with is a very lovely, kind-hearted person, a very close friend of my family and somebody I have a lot of time for. They just happen to be homophobic.)

When I told some friends this story today, they of course agreed that it is wonderful news and they are as happy for my friend as I am. But they also thought I was trying to be provocative by having such a conversation with somebody I knew to be homophobic, and that I probably should have left well enough alone.

Of course, I wasn’t “trying to be provocative” at all. What they meant is that I wasn’t actively concealing potentially provocative information.

This is something that has come up a few times recently, the idea of “leaving it alone” when it comes to talking about marriage equality and gay prejudice. Not just in personal conversations but in the media – for example, it was suggested to me recently (by someone who ostensibly supports marriage equality) that it would be too controversial for anyone to publish gay marriage-related content in a traditionally “straight” wedding magazine, even now that civil unions are recognised in our state.*

I vehemently disagree.

Why do so many purportedly liberal, unprejudiced, broad-minded, rational people cower like beaten housewives at the idea of open conversation about contentious topics?

Why are we so afraid of upsetting the status quo, or of being impolite, or of being seen as argumentative and opinionated when it comes to the idea of marriage equality?

Exactly how deep does our social conditioning go, that we think sharing the happy news of a dear friend’s engagement or writing about legally recognised gay weddings is being “too provocative” or “stirring the pot for the sake of it”?

It’s difficult for me to talk about this without becoming really angry, and then having to justify my anger to people who perceive it as aggression. It’s an important issue to me and I therefore have a tendency to speak passionately and vociferously about it. I’ve tried not to. I’ve even tried being apologetic about how intensely I argue the point, but frankly? Fuck that and the horse it rode in on.

You don’t need to get so angry about it.

I am tired of hearing this and variations thereof. So here is my official response:

Yes, I’m angry.

Of course I’m angry.

Of course I’m speaking with passion, because I’m fucking furious.

I am enraged that people think it’s okay for them to not only disapprove of somebody else’s sexual identity, but to actually play a part in legislating their personal life.

I am incensed that people are so offended by the idea of my friend and his fiancée finding happiness and making a life together, that they would actively work to prevent them from doing so – despite the fact that they will probably never meet or interact with this man, never be personally affected by his lifestyle in any practical way, and never have an interest in his life beyond the vague, ultimately passing offense they may feel at this one aspect of the way he lives it.

I am infuriated that this offense they feel, these hurt feelings they get at the very idea of a man being in love with another man and wanting to have that love recognised as equally worthy and important as the love they feel for their own husband or wife, are actually given any kind of weight in a political or social arena.

Who cares if you’re offended?

Who cares if it shakes your world view to think that the love between two men or two women might be equally important, equally valid and equally real as the love between a man and a woman?

Who actually cares about your feelings on the matter, when it doesn’t affect you – personally, physically, practically, financially – in any real way?

This isn’t about feelings or belief systems or taking offense. This is about people’s lives. It’s about the lives of our friends, family members, neighbours and co-workers.

It’s about the lives of your friends, family members, neighbours and co-workers, unless you are living in a magical remote commune of happy homophobia which doesn’t allow queers within a hundred-mile radius.

You know these people. They are real, and they have real lives that exist outside of your hypothetical, theoretical ideas about whether or not it’s okay to be gay. The argument is over, because they are gay, they are operating as functional gay adults who work, live, pay taxes and spend money in this country just like you do, and they’re trying to get on with their goddamn lives and be happy.

So how can anyone worry more about the feelings of somebody having their outdated belief system questioned than about the actual, real-world lives of the people who are affected by this issue? I mean really affected, not just affronted or offended or challenged, but properly impacted in a practical, significant, living way. In a way that says, specifically, “You are not worthy of one of the basic civil rights that are afforded to every single other person in this country, because some of those people don’t like who you sleep with.”

Why am I so angry at the idea of “leaving well enough alone”?

Well… why aren’t we all angry? Why aren’t we – the supposedly inclusive, fair-minded, “fair go” Australian people – in a heightened and sustained state of rage about this issue?

If you say that you believe in marriage equality, that you “have loads of gay friends”, that you think they deserve to be happy, that you want to support them and that you oppose the aggressive and rampant homophobia in this country, then why should you be quiet about it? Why shouldn’t you share your hope for a truly egalitarian society every fucking chance you get?

Not just by signing e-petitions or by voicing your support only when you are amongst likeminded people, but by speaking up and standing by your beliefs even if – especially if – the conversation happens to be with somebody who could potentially disagree with you. If the topic comes up, why clamp down? Nobody deserves to have their prejudice go unchallenged forever, especially not when that prejudice has an impact on other people’s lives.

Your actions and words matter. And the actions you don’t take – the words you don’t say – matter just as much as the ones you do.

So say something, for goodness’ sake.

Get angry.

[*In case anyone who personally knows me is wondering, the person who suggested this is in no way affiliated with my sister's excellent wedding website, The Bride's Tree. In fact they're not actually in publishing at all. But I presume they read a lot of wedding magazines.]

I don’t really know where to start. It would be ridiculous to comment on the fact that I haven’t blogged here since almost a year ago. Ridiculous and unnecessary. I may do better in 2012. Let’s see. I have a good feeling about this year.

I wanted to write about Jonathan Harris, one of my favourite artists. He calls himself a storyteller, but the New York Times calls him “a renaissance man for the information age”. I think they’re probably both right.

You might have seen some of his work without realising it. His We Feel Fine project (co-created with Sep Kamvar) is maybe his best known work. You should take a look – it really is incredible, and a lot of fun to play with. The website is an exploration of human emotion, a database of millions of feelings and micro-stories pulled from the internet every few minutes – statements beginning ‘I feel’ or ‘I am feeling’ – published on millions of blogs, message boards and social media feeds all over the world. We Feel Fine identifies the emotion expressed in each sentence, as well as the age, location and gender of its author. Based on that information it extrapolates other data, such as the weather at the time the emotion was expressed. The playful, colourful interface lets you interact with the stories and understand the data in meaningful ways.

It’s basically brilliant.

Even better and more impressive – I think, anyway, in terms of ingenuity and user experience – is The Whale Hunt, another storytelling experiment that documents Jonathan’s experience with an ancient tradition in the Inupiat Eskimo community of Barrow, Alaska through a constant sequence of photographs taken at five-minute intervals over a seven-day period. The result is what he calls a “photographic heartbeat”, where at moments of adrenaline as many as 37 photographs were taken every five minutes, so that the rate of images increases to mimic the quickening of his own heart in those moments. Like most of his projects, The Whale Hunt is about data collection and interpretation. You can see the images in a linear fashion or apply filters to isolate sub-stories within the larger narrative. Jonathan describes The Whale Hunt as “a choose-your-own adventure book crossed with a data visualisation project crossed with a slideshow”.

It’s basically brilliant.

But one of my favourite Jonathan Harris projects might be the simplest one, called Today. When he turned 30, Jonathan began the ritual of taking one photo every day and posting it online with a short story. He continued for 440 days, ending up with a kind of tapestry-like portrait of his life at age 30. He describes the project as a “crutch for memory”.

I’ve had a few friends who have embarked on this sort of project and I’ve always found it a rather lovely idea. My friend Brusca took a photo on his iPhone every day for a year, embracing the Chase Jarvis philosophy that “the best camera is the one that’s with you”. I loved it – it’s nice having these little window insights into a friend’s life, just tiny snapshots of his day.

When I saw the short film Jonathan and his friend Scott Thrift made after the Today project ended, I just found it really moving. I love the simplicity of the idea, and the way that each image by itself is just an image, but put together and watched in a linear way, you get this kind of understanding of a person and their life. A shallow understanding, of course – it’s a bit like sneaking a peek at their family’s home movies. You’re never going to get the full story, but you do get an overall picture and a sense of forward movement, even though they’re just still frames – a microsecond out of a whole day.

Anyway, I loved it so much that I’m unashamedly ripping off the idea. I’d like to make a video of my own at the end of the year. I guess I’ll see how I go.

If you’d like to follow the unimaginatively titled Digressica Project, you’re very welcome to. I’m mostly doing it for my own satisfaction, really – a sort of experiment in memory – and maybe for my family and friends who might be interested. Maybe you’d like to do something similar yourself. Tell me if you do; I would love to come and nose into your world.

I won’t link to every photo on here because that would be absurd, but I might try to choose one every week. The one at the top of this post was taken at twilight at Currimundi Beach on New Year’s Day. Here’s one from today.

Photo courtesy of SummerTomato's photostream on Flickr

Every time I have ordered bruschetta in a restaurant or café – every single time in my entire life – I have had basically the exact same conversation with the waiter or waitress that served me.

It usually goes a bit like this:

Waitress: Hi, what can I get you today?
Me: Hi there. Can we please have two iced teas and… um, let’s see. I think we’ll share some broosketta too. Thanks!
Waitress: Blank look.
Me: Blank look.
Waitress: Sorry, what was the last thing?
Me: The broosketta, please.
Waitress: Sorry?
Me: Broosketta?
Waitress: Sorry, I didn’t quite… Holds up menu for me to point at.
Me: Pointing. The broosketta. Just there.
Waitress: Loudly, with barely contained laughter. OHHHHHHHH. You mean the BROOSHETTA!
Me: Silent, impotent rage. Um… yeah.

But this is how it would go if this were an alternate universe in which I wasn’t irrationally afraid of making waitresses dislike me:

Waitress: Hi, what can I get you today?
Me: Hi there. Can we please have two iced teas and… um, let’s see. I think we’ll share some broosketta too. Thanks!
Waitress: Blank look.
Me: Blank look.
Waitress: Sorry, what was the last thing?
Me: The broosketta, please.
Waitress: Sorry?
Me: Broosketta?
Waitress: Sorry, I didn’t quite… Holds up menu for me to point at.
Me: Pointing. The broosketta. Just there.
Waitress: Loudly, with barely contained laughter. OHHHHHHHH. You mean the BROOSHETTA!
Me: Rising slowly from seat. No. No, I don’t mean ‘brooshetta’. I mean ‘broosketta’. You know why? Because it is YOU, feeble human child, who is pronouncing bruschetta incorrectly – not I, as your patronisingly instructive tone suggests. And maybe – just maybe – if you’re going to work in an ITALIAN restaurant, and serve ITALIAN dishes, and read out the ITALIAN specials, perhaps it would interest you to know that in the Italian language, the letters CH are pronounced as a HARD FUCKING CONSONANT, YOU SMUG PIECE OF SHIT.

Other oppressed diners in restaurant applaud. Music swells. Close up on me looking triumphant and a bit crazy.

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.

I’ve found this, the opening paragraph of Richard Dawkins’ Unweaving the Rainbow, to be a source of unspeakable comfort and inspiration since the first day I read it. These are the words I want spoken at my funeral when I die, and they’re the words I try to carry around with me while I live. They bring a lump to my throat. They make me want to go further, see more, do better. They make me grateful that I showed up at all. They make me want to shake hands with everyone I see, congratulate them on just being here. Well done everyone, we made it.

Image courtesy of mcdlttx‘s photostream on Flickr.

Such was the best piece of advice I ever received, although I didn’t realise it at the time. My friend Polski told me one day that he won’t make offers or promises to anybody. If a mate is moving house, he won’t offer to help. If someone needs assistance in his particular area of expertise, he won’t volunteer. If an old friend is flying into his city, he won’t promise to pick them up from the airport.

At first I was appalled. How cold! How heartless!

It didn’t take long, however, to recognise the intelligence of this seemingly cruel policy. Polski’s reasoning is faultless. It’s game theory.

If he doesn’t offer and doesn’t deliver, he has broken no promise and nobody gets hurt.

If he does offer and doesn’t deliver, he has broken his promise and let somebody down.

If he does offer and does deliver, he has merely met expectations and fulfilled what is already anticipated.

If he doesn’t offer and does deliver, he has pleasantly surprised somebody and exceeded their expectations.

Although the idea of never offering to visit a friend in hospital, babysit their kid when needed, help them with a problem or take them out for dinner sort of makes me cringe a little bit, an honest review of the many broken promises that litter my past has actually got me thinking. This policy isn’t about being cruel or uncaring. It’s not about letting yourself off the hook and never helping your friends, it’s about striving to be the kind of friend who is reliable and helpful, but not feeling like a total deadbeat if you don’t always deliver.

Polski, I apologise for calling you a selfish jerk. You might actually be a genius.

Photo courtesy of Discoodoni‘s photostream on Flickr.

1. When I listen to my iPod on the train or while studying in the library or while running or writing or working or whenever: approximately 70% of the time I’m listening to the Dixie Chicks. 20% of the time it’s Broadway musicals. You may not think so, because usually on public transport I have my hood up or I’m wearing dark sunglasses, and I tend to look a bit broody so as to frighten off any strangers who might try to mug me or – god forbid – engage me in light banter. But guess what? I’m listening to ‘Goodbye Earl’. And if it were socially acceptable I would be singing along. Loudly.
2. I have glow-in-the-dark stars on my bedroom ceiling. I’m 25. This has to end some time.
3. I don’t “club”. I don’t “go clubbing”. I never have. I probably never will. The thought of it makes me want to put the kettle on and look for my slippers.
4. I’m not obsessed with shoes. I know it’s meant to be cool for women to be obsessed with OMG SO FABULOUS shoes, but I’m not, and I can’t seem to manufacture a false interest. I like a nice pair of peep-toes, sure, and I prefer my footwear to look appropriate with the outfit I’m wearing – it’s not like I wander around in Ugg boots or those weird Forrest Gump-looking comfy clogs that old ladies buy from the pharmacy. But most of the time I’d just like to wear one of my many pairs of Chuck Taylors, or better yet, some Havaiana thongs*. IS THAT OKAY? Sheesh.
5. I have a Wizard of Oz poster on my bedroom wall. I didn’t even have the decency to frame it and surround it with minimalist white furniture. It’s laminated, and actually a bit crooked at the moment. I also own the Barbie special edition Dorothy Gale and Wicked Witch of the West dolls. Not from my childhood. They’re fairly recent acquisitions. I keep them in their boxes. (Gosh, if you’re reading this and you’re actually a friend of mine in real life, I’ll completely understand if you’d like to call it quits.)
6. Somewhere in the back of my brain, there’s a very stupid part of me that sort of subconsciously still believes that inanimate objects have feelings. Yes, intellectually I realise this is impossible, but my animal brain doesn’t. I blame all the TV shows and movies from my youth in which the child protagonist would leave his bedroom and all his toys would come to life… they’d just been pretending not to be real, but actually they all had little personalities and foibles and FEELINGS. (Pixar, you’ve got a lot to answer for.) Unfortunately, somewhere along the way this idea spilled over into objects other than dolls and teddy bears, and now if I use one of my toothbrushes more often than another one, I start to worry that I’m hurting some little toothbrushy feelings. Or if I take a book off a shelf in a bookstore but I take it from somewhere in the back, and not the first one in line (because the first one always has creases or dog-ears), I feel bad because I let the one from the back jump the queue when it was CLEARLY the turn of the one in front to be taken home by a nice customer. And if I don’t take the one at the front it will get self-esteem issues (which are only compounded by the fact that it’s already dog-eared and creased), and all the other books behind it will start to doubt its ability to lead. Oh look at Creasy, they’ll say. Passed over again. Right at the front of the queue and still can’t get picked up. And finally, when the umpteenth customer has failed to take Creasy to the cash register, the other books will rally behind his back and stage a coup d’etat. Books can be so cruel.
7. I love M*A*S*H. Like, I really love it. There may or may not be DVD box sets involved.

*Flip-flops, for those of you playing in Britishland.

There are some things that are cooler than all the other things. It’s undeniable, and if you disagree I will fight you.

Pirates. Pirates are cooler than most things. They have scars and eyepatches. They talk funny. They live on ships. They plunder.

Robots. Robots are awesome. Any kind of robot is awesome, whether it’s fictional, like C-3PO, or actually exists in real life, like R2-D2.

Dinosaurs are cool. Unicorns are REALLY COOL. Especially angry, vengeful unicorns that impale other creatures on their horns, e.g. Unicorn, Destroyer of Ponies.

Unicorn, Destroyer of Ponies (artwork by Devon McGrath)

But the  coolest of all these things by far is the zombie. Zombies are cooler than everything, including people. Including you.

So for the final assignment in my photography class last semester, which involved creating a 20-image narrative, I obviously had no choice but to stage my own zombie apocalypse. Anything else would be completely uncool.

It was kind of fortuitous that at the same time I was studying photography, my sister Sally was completing a make-up artistry course that involved a lot of special effects make-up (or SPFX as they call it in their fancy make-up business lingo). Zombie Apocalypse Day was a joint effort between me, Sally and Sally’s make-up artist friend Taryn. Sally and Taryn did a pretty amazeballs job on the SPFX make-up. If you ever need a make-up artist to gruesome you up, they are definitely the girls for the job. Be sure to check out Sal’s beauty blog, My Eyes Are Up Here.

It was an awesome day, mostly because I had the most enthusiastic and hilarious zombie models who donated their time to groan, moan and shuffle spookily for me and my camera. Big thanks to Jeremy, Chloe, Nick, Bruce, Jan, Michelle, Teena, Jewels, Adam, Roxy and my little nephew Jonah (who played Cute Little Boy Running Away From Big Scary Zombies – BRILLIANTLY, I might add. Four stars). And of course thanks to Sally and Taryn for their behind-camera artistic genius. Can’t wait for Brisbane Zombie Walk – we are going to be the best zombies in Brisvegas.

Er… slightly worried about the election next week, especially given results of last UK election. Choice seems to have been: smug Tory nobody particularly wanted, or boring, squishy Scot nobody particularly wanted*. Similarly, Australia’s current choice seems to be: creepy, completely unfunny, old-fashioned chap of questionable bathing suit preferences, or Australia’s first female Prime Minister, whom people unfortunately perceive to be a bit of a two-faced bizatch** for her mutiny of K-Rudd.

So I was thinking, perhaps for next week’s Australian federal election, in the spirit of true democracy, we could all nominate whomever we please to be our Prime Minister, and then choose between the people who get the most nominations. That seems a far fairer and more democratic process than being presented with only two people to choose from, especially when they’re both politicians. (Honestly, who really wants a politician running the country?)

Here are my nominations:

John Farnham

“What about the aaaage… of ree-hee-eeason?”

When the world is in crisis, when the threat of terrorism lurks ever nearer our shores, when the economy is a mess and we’re all floundering helplessly in a sinkhole of credit card debt and unemployment (we’re not really though)… what we need is a leader with a three-octave range who can belt out a high F.

John from Play School

“Tutti Frutti, oh Rudy…” I really used to love John when I was a kid. He had a very reassuring, grandfatherly sort of presence, and yet he was wildly funny (to four-year-old me, at least) and wasn’t above playing with rag dolls or making sailboats out of toilet roll holders. That’s the kind of down-home DIY ingenuity this country needs. I also quite liked Philip (Quast, who went on to be a super huge West End star, playing Javert in Les Miserables) and Benita. And Noni Hazlehurst. Look, I think anyone from Play School would do a great job.

David & Margaret from The Movie Show

You couldn’t separate these two, because I think they only really work as a double act. David would be the deputy, obviously, because Margaret’s a bit more hip and down with the kids. And, you know… awesome earrings.

Doctor Who

Yes, I know he’s British. Yes, I know he’s a 907-year-old timelord. Yes, I know he’s fictional. Still a better candidate than Tony Abbott.

(Also, yes… this was just an excuse to post an image of David tennant on my blog. *swoon*)

Alf Stewart

Stone the flamin’ crows! As Kevin “Fair Shake of the Sauce Bottle” Rudd has shown us, every Prime Minister needs a catchphrase or two. Get off the grass. Don’t come the raw prawn with me. Etc.

John Jarratt

Nobody – and I mean NOBODY – is going to mess with a country whose leader is that guy from Wolf Creek.

I’m painfully aware there is a severe shortage of female candidates listed here. Sorry. Post ‘em if you’ve got ‘em.

*Sorry, Mr Brown. I actually quite liked you. If I were a UK citizen, you’d have had my vote. Although I think I’d vote for a jacket potato if it had a Scottish accent.

** I actually quite like Julia Gillard also. I’m just a bit bummed out that our first ever female PM was sort unceremoniously dumped on us overnight, depriving us all of the opportunity to rally behind a decent female candidate and feel some sense of communal ownership of this big, historic moment for our country. Where’s our Obama moment, Julia? WHERE IS IT?!