I've been writing, which means everything else in my life is in disarray.

I did manage to get to the theatre on the weekend to see a play that reminded me why I never go and see mainstream theatre. Thirtysomething dollars to see a tortured metaphor and some heavy symbolism flogged to death on a very expensive and very contrived set. I don't like saying bad things about theatre, but my Lordy, that show I saw at Black Lung for ten bucks a few months back (which is what inspired me to get out more to see shows) really was the best theatre I've seen in ages. They have a new show on at the moment. Check it out here. Miles more interesting than anything you'll be overcharged for in the CBD.

Anyway then I checked out an exhibition at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, which I couldn't hear any of because the acoustics were so bad. Seriously. You can stand as close as like to the little TV screens and all you hear is screaming and wailing from the other room. So you think, "I might go into the other room", and you go into the other room and all you hear is talking and shouting from the exhibition you just came from because you couldn't hear it. Generally, though, it looked like it was probably quite good. I like the more political art that's out there at the moment. It's a good sign. Or, well, it's a sign. What it means for the future of the depressing things it's critiquing, I'm not sure. But at least someone is noticing.

Speaking of depressing things and critiquing, I'm also five chapters into Crime and Punishment , which is like saying you're a hundred metres into a marathon, but I'm enjoying it very much. Which is a good thing because I also purchased another book on the weekend. John Banville's The Sea , which he read from at the Sydney Writers' Festival and which was lovely, or maybe his accent was lovely and he was reading Spot Goes To School , I probably wouldn't have noticed. The task is not to start it before I finish the Russian. Yeesh.

And last night I saw the film version of Everything is Illuminated , by Jonathan Safran Foer, one of my faves. I enjoyed the film, actually, more than I thought I would. It must be hard to make a film from such a beatifully constructed first person narrative that relies so heavily on the voice of the person - or people - telling the story. If you get it on DVD, check out the deleted scenes. Sometimes I think the DVD menu should divide the deleted scenes into "DELETED FOR A REASON" and "OUT FOR REASONS OF LENGTH, DEBATE WITH PRODUCERS, RESULT OF AUDIENCE POLLS ETC". Most of the deleted scenes on DVDs would fall squarely into the first of these categories. I would go so far as to say that most of them would fall into the WHAT WERE WE THINKING menu as well, but that's unfair. I'm being a bit unfair today.

Perhaps this is why. On my way to gym this morning, a sign on the side of a Church. You know those ones with the messages? The well-considered, often topical, questions of faith they put up outside Churches?

Go past the one in North Fitzroy and witness the following blunt threat:

GOD EXISTS. OTHERWISE EXISTENCE IS MEANINGLESS.

Er... okay.

This weekend, after seeing Oliver Twist , I promised myself I would read more "classic" novels, at which point I purchased a distinctly non-classical novel from the new releases section, Blue Water , which I am now half way through. To make up for the obvious disregard I have for my own conviction in these matters, I then purchased the appropriately titled Crime and Punishment , which was six dollars and which had on the back cover "the most readable of the classics". Shut up, I am at least trying.

I saw four movies this weekend, including The Chumscrubber , a movie they're saying is quite like American Beauty mixed with Donnie Darko and as a result it's derivative and boring, but I liked it. It had a sense of humour about itself - a rare thing in films about "young people" being "disenfranchised". I also could ignore its slight misjudgment of things at times because of the acting, which I thought was excellent. That Billy Elliot, I tells ya, he's orright (also, Glenn Close was brilliant, and CJ Cregg from The West Wing should probably be in most films). I took it as a satirical movie - not just a satire on contemporary America (which I agree is getting kind of boring), but a comment on films like the ones it's being compared to. Perhaps I was being too generous, for once, although I doubt that.

******
I visited my Grandmother. She said, out of nowhere, "What are you proudest of?"

My Grandma is a modern-day Shakespeare character. She speaks in simple, considered prose. She looks at you directly. She asks questions that could unravel a kingdom in a day. Then she offers you a cup of tea with a shortbread.

******
I also saw In The Shadow of the Palms this weekend. It's a documentary about Iraq before, during and after the first attacks by the USA. If you would like to know what Iraq is actually like, and how people live there, and precisely how ignorant the media is enabling us (in the west) to be, then check it out. I think I thought of Iraq as just this kind of empty desert with blood and anger and death. The filmmaker, Wayne Coles-Janess, an Australian, has just used footage to make an overall picture, really. No "plot", no cohesive "message", except that Iraq is a country just like where you live, except someone started dropping bombs on it and all the Christians and the Muslims and the pro-Saddam and the anti-Saddam Iraqis were suddenly rushing from crumbling building to crumbling building to haul people out of the rubble. It makes you realise that, as the brilliant chain-smoking school teacher in the film says, "We are under the control of liars". The politicians, all of them, were leading people into a war that the people had no control over but that would change them forever. It's obvious, but it's horrible. Watch the footage of the bombs dropping. Nothing precise or targeted about it.

Actually, I recommend, to really feel the full force of how ridiculous the world is, that you go and see this movie alone, as I did, and then emerge to see a huge TV screen broadcasting photographs of Nicole Kidman's marriage to Keith Urban.

*****
Later on Sunday, I stood in a shop that sells nuts from the counter. They're served hot and in a paper bag. I was waiting for the guy in front of me to order some cashews. His five or six year old son was with him. Their conversation was lovely:

Kid looks slightly perplexed. Peers in at nuts.
- Dad?
- Yep (slightly pre-occupied with nuts)
- Is salt a chemical?
- Ah, no. No, I don't think so. Not a chemical, exactly.
- What happens when it dries up?
- Salt?
- Yeah.
- I guess it gets dry and crystalised. You know, if you took all the water out of the sea, it would just be salt left. Crystalised salt, I guess.
- Yes... What's it for?
- Some people say it makes food taste better. But you can't have too much because it's not good for you.
- (Kid looks at salted cashew nuts for a bit)
- (Dad watches kid watching nuts) Speaks to kid again:
- Do you know what salt tastes like?
- Yes.
- It's kind of bitter, isn't it?
- Yes.

Kid and Dad leave. I tried to get a picture in my head of the kid so that one day I can send him a congratulations letter when he wins the nobel prize in twenty years. Was seriously five. Maybe six, if you squint.

*****

Then last night I saw Richard E Grant's film, Wah-Wah , which was brilliantly performed. As usual, I couldn't cope with the romanticisation or the melodrama that the film sometimes tipped into, but maybe it was necessary in this case.

In keeping with the sublime/ridiculous dichotomy of today, check this out - a most amusing and very brief article about the presents George Bush has been receiving from people since he became president. Yes the presents. The gifts. What would you get President Bush for his birthday? Nothing? (Tony Blair) A gun? (it's on the list) A whip? (same) Booze? (that one makes me laugh).

*******

Lastly, I found out today that the line in the Bright Eyes song I have been listening to in the car in fact refers to the protagonist having a "head full of pesticides" rather than to his having a "head full of pasta sauce". This disappoints me, as I had very much empathised with his position in regard to the pasta sauce. Life is full of disappointments such as these. Go here and check out a website full of them.

In The Weekend Australian this weekend, there is a full page advertisement in the glossy weekend magazine. The advertisement is "An Australian Government Promotion". Its purpose is to encourage eligible persons living in Australia to apply for Australian citizenship "so they can fully participate in this great nation of ours" (to quote Andrew Robb, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs).

The hook? "Australia's spirit and beauty prompted the 2003 Nobel Literature Laureate, John M. Coetzee, to become an Australian citizen".

Presumably the rationale behind this "promotion" is that people who read The Australian will be spluttering into their morning coffees and saying aloud at the breakfast table, "J M Coetzee did it? Where do I sign?"

A "literary crowd" at Coetzee's ceremony this year apparently "witnessed the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Senator the Hon. Amanda Vanstone, lead Mr Coetzee in his pledge of commitment to Australia", which must have been a singular joy.

Coetzee is quoted saying that taking on Australian citizenship creates responsibilities and duties. Robb (would you believe it) agrees, saying, "In Australia we value basic rights, such as democracy, equality under the law and equality of treatment and opportunity".

For reports on how well things have been going for the Aboriginal communities up North, you'll have to sift through the rest of the paper and try and find the words "basic rights" and "opportunity" in amongst the words "third world living standards", "infant mortality" and "paternalism". If you'd like to know how the asylum seekers who are about to have the law changed on them (again) feel about "equality of treatment and opportunity", you might have to wait a teensy while longer.

Still, why complain? The soccer seems to be going rather well, and a millionaire North Shore Sydneysider who lives in the United States is going to put a frock on and get married tomorrow, so that should be fun to read about until August.

I'm going for a walk.

Want to get a different perspective on a really stupid news story?

I never thought I'd end up having an opinion about Brad and Angelina's baby, but there you are. Check it out here.

In other news, almost finished my Aleksandar Hemon book, which is addictively beautiful, especially now that I have his accent in my head. The character in his book is always talking about being painfully aware of his accent, so now I retrospectively want to reassure Hemon, the author, at the Writers' Festival, while he's signing books, that in fact his accent is lovely, and so is his book, and so is he.

You would think that by now I would understand that the author and the character are not the same thing, but somehow (J K Rowling excluded) I can never quite draw the line...

The online version of The Age (yes, I know, dead horse, we've covered this) was last night running with the whacky headline, "Mother's Fury at Body Bungle" to describe one of the more repulsive stories of the week, namely that an Australian soldier died in Baghdad under mysterious circumstances and the wrong body was brought home to Australia.

Mother's Fury at Body Bungle. Really. Sounds like a story about surgery gone wrong.

Still, at least this morning they've realised it's serious. "How Could This Happen?" demands the front page of The Dead Horse this morning. And just below, there's a VOTE where you can HAVE YOUR SAY.

For real news and interesting articles, check out this.

By the way, I finished two of the essays by my bed by Alistair Cooke. Look out writers' festival, here I come...

I went to the Commonwealth Games last night. I went with Melanie Howlett, Standing There Captain of Industry and our Production Manager on People Watching, whose initial comment when we got there was, "Wow. Imagine production managing this".

Excellent point. First of all, imagine organising the schedule for an event where there are half a dozen things going on at a time and one of them involves hurling an enormous pierced plank of wood through the air.

Production Managing Highlights included:

1. The teensy little remote control car that drove the javelin from one end of the track to the other.

2. The 10 000 metres race. If you saw any footage of this on the TV, congratulations. There were no Australians in it, so the antics of the crowd got more coverage than the astonishing performance of everyone in the race. Weren't the antics great, though? Some of them were even wearing face paint!!

3. The extremely excited Kym Howe, who managed somehow to applaud herself on the way down from the pole vault after breaking a games record. Whereas I'd be concentrating on not doing a face plant, she virtually poured herself a beer and called her mum with the good news on the way down.

The downsides would have to be:

1. The empty Sierra Leone lane. I hear we're revoking their visas now. Nice to hear Ray Martin telling us all on the telly that The Games are all about hospitality, though.

2. John Howard waddling up to present medals to the poor buggers who just won things. There's an endurance event joke somewhere here but I'm feeling nauseous so I'll move on.

3. I wonder who wrote the opening ceremony? My favourite line so far was in the thanks to the volunteers: "You are the Paris End of Collins Street". Meaning, for those of you not from Melbourne, "You are the posh bit where no one goes".

So, now Melbourne gets to refocus its attentions on the real theatre scene. Hopefully there won’t be as much shooting, although conversely there’ll be less John Howard. About the same amount of lycra, though, if we factor La Mama into the equation.

Hey so I've found a new hero.

Her name is Helen Thomas. She's an American journalist who sounds like an Auntie asking how you're enjoying school.

I heard this on News Radio this morning. Imagine it as a scene in a movie. A press conference in which George W actually thanks journalists for their questions... and then...

QUESTION: I'd like to ask you, Mr. President -- your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime.
Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is: Why did you really want to go to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, your Cabinet officers, former Cabinet officers, intelligence people and so forth -- but what's your real reason? You have said it wasn't oil, the quest for oil. It hasn't been Israel or anything else. What was it?

BUSH: I think your premise, in all due respect to your question and to you as a lifelong journalist -- that I didn't want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong, Helen, in all due respect.

QUESTION: And...

BUSH: Hold on for a second, please. Excuse me. Excuse me.

No president wants war. Everything you may have heard is that, but it's just simply not true.

My attitude about the defense of this country changed on September the 11th. When we got attacked, I vowed then and there to use every asset at my disposal to protect the American people.

etc... Full transcript of him backpeddling is here.

Sometimes, scripts for future Hollywood films just write themselves.

Another great piece of politics this morning was also a little gem on News Radio. The Premier of Queensland, Peter Beattie, was talking about the hurricane in that State, when he was asked about support from the Federal Government. Now I'm paraphrasing:

"No it's been great", he said, "Everyone's been great. We've got the Prime Minister, John Howard, and the Deputy Prime Minister Kim Beazley coming up today. I look forward to meeting them both".

One of the more accurate Freudian slips.

Anyway. Carry on.

Thought I'd spice things up with some politics.