The Null Device

2001/8/9

I just came back from the Isosceles Film Night at the Glow Bar; it was quite interesting; this time, the films weren't drowned out by the chattering of trendy idiots, as they were on the first one (when a bunch of tossers with expensive haircuts showed up, not invited by the organisers). They had some interestingly odd films. There was a cheerfully morbid documentary about vampirism in nature, in which surrealist Jean Painleve introduced a live guinea pig to a vampire bat (the guinea pig, twice the size of the bat, just stood there as the bat licked its face and proceeded to suck out its blood); Thanksgiving, a stop-motion animation with a creature made from an uncooked turkey carcass, its body cavity a gaping maw, dragging itself around a house by the drumsticks, and The Fly, a meticulous Hungarian animation from the point of view of a housefly; the sort of thing that seems all the more impressive when you recall that it was done without computers; not to mention a Winsor McCay classic from 1914 and an amusing Tex Avery animation which opened the bracket.

I was also surprised to discover that I went to school with one of the people running the film night; he's now a landscape architect and runs film nights on the side.

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Friday 24 August is National Slacker Day, which is sort of like Phone In Sick Day for non-anarchists. If you're not keen to overthrow corporate-consumer capitalism, but just want a socially sanctioned excuse to vegetate in front of the TV all day, this may be for you.

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Drinking water supplies in Melbourne are running short, with rationing due to come into force in weeks. Meanwhile, more than one million litres of water are being poured, each day, into the foundations of that monument to the glorious Kennett régime, the CityLink tollway tunnel in Burnley, to stabilise the ground. Not to worry though, the company is in the early stages of "scoping work" to find more economical sources of water, which it had been asked to do last November.

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Some choice answers people probably put down for the "Religion" question on the recent Census:

  • JEDI -- favourite of fanboys and Penguinheads. Undoubtedly closely trailed by Star Trek, Babylon 5, Buffy, &c., references from rival fanboy groups.
  • COLLINGWOOD or CARLTON. Or, if you're an anglophile, Arsenal or Man U.
  • SORRY, REPUBLIC, FREE DMITRY and other statements of political belief were undoubtedly popular.
  • And surely some sad person somewhere must have written ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US in the box.

As for me, I just wrote what I did five years earlier: "DISCORDIAN".

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This morning on 3RRR, I heard a song by Prop, a band I had the good fortune of seeing in Sydney last year. Prop are a pretty groovy six-piece band, featuring a marimba, a vibraphone, drums, bongos, analogue synths and a bass guitar, and they now apparently have a CD out, titled Small Craft Rough Sea (which doesn't seem to be in the shops yet). Also, they are playing somewhere in Melbourne next weekend. I can vouch that they are well worth seeing.

Speaking of Sydney bands in Melbourne, post-rockers Sealife Park are playing at the Empress next Thursday, and indie-popsters Swirl are playing somewhere this Saturday.

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Quelle surprise: A community consortium's bid to take over the Esplanade Hotel, the famously grungy St Kilda band venue, has been rejected, and the hotel's owners are now looking for a commercial buyer. Which probably means it will be cleaned up and renovated into a more upmarket venue (gotta capitalise on those million-dollar views of the bay), where moneyed stockbrokers and football identities can sip their chardonnay in style.

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An interesting piece on the state of audio software under MacOS X, and what's being ported. Tellingly, there won't be an OS X Cubase for a while. (Also, interesting to note that MacOS 9.0.4 is supposedly more stable with audio than 9.1.)

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