Scratchings in the Cyberverse

Happy New Year everyone.

I'm working on streamlining my social streams and getting my blogging arse into gear - I know starting blogging in the new year is like reviving a gym membership but I'm determined to stay away from the ontological cancer that is Facebook.

I've been using the new iOS app Journal for capturing brief notes, locations and photos of each day. It's not increasing my word count though.

Have caught up with some friends whilst in Canberra - had a good Xmas with the family and we've gone for drives in the surrounding countryside, so all in all a good holiday.

It's Mum's birthday tomorrow and then back up to Sydney the day after. God how I'm missing it.

 In two days this goes live, but there are trailers available in the interim.

Based on a play written by Brett Danalake and me in 2007.

This was what I call a maintenance weekend - this one had not just a visit to the podiatrist (which is every six weeks) but a visit to the dentist as well (nothing that needs to be extracted or filled, back again in six months.) L cleaned the bathrooms and kitchens, and finally got the whipper-snipper powered up to tackle the lawn, I reduced the size of the ironing pile.

To get me through the ironing I finished off Hit Monkey (one of the oddest Marvel series on Disney+ - tucked away on Star away from the kids) and finally watched The Cars That Ate Paris (chock-filled with Australian character actors like Bruce Spence, Chris Haywood and, of course, John Meillion.) Cars was very much on a line that leads to the Mad Max Quadrilogy with a cobbled together pioneer chic that presages the standard post apocalypse apparel of dust coats, leather straps and metal implants. It's not a great film but you sense Weir's youthful anger at a type of Australia that still exists.

Our Saturday night film was Girlhood by Céline Sciamma (director of the wonderful Portrait of a Lady on Fire.) A study of relationships between young black girls in Paris, it has many delightful moments which only lead to an ambiguous ending

Which is here - if you want to give yourself the willies.

I subscribe to a growing number of newsletters - this was from a group newsletter Nothing.Here

Most of the newsletters are about the future, the near future, in some cases even the present. I'm so old I remember the APA scene. Fundamental to science fiction fandom at the time (the internet as we know it now was 30 years away - hints of its coming would occasionally poke through) APA zines were compiled from individuals and distributed as compilations, with responses to previous APA zines. This mode of asynchronous communication prepared the users and readers for the electronic version. After the initial explosion of content formats like blogs and e-zines and forums, there appears to be some level of stability, even if it's just flinging the content into the gaping maw of Facebook to be extruded to a myriad of datastreams.

Newsletters have come back to give not just a level of context to the weblinks (such as a blog would do) but a sense of personality and place. Blogs are all very well (and that's kind of why I"m returning to this one after what seems like decades) but newsletters, like podcasts, are the new jam.

How easy is it to post from my iPhone (of course, I’m using my (not so) portable keyboard.

The answer may be to type out the post in plain txxt and then copy it into the website.

If you see this, say hello

I'm off to Dreamwidth

to my lovely murasaki_1966



Love you forever, my Phoenix

Originally posted by alexandreev at Город П. Купол

in all the kerfuffle last week, I forgot to mention seeing Gayby Baby at a special screening at Broadway (the shopping mall, not the New York theatrical district.)

Those of you outside of NSW will probably not have heard of it, or the controversy surrounding it and, indeed, if / when you see it, may wonder why there was any controversy at all.

It’s a documentary about four children with gay parents - and it follows each of the children through a challenge in their life and shows just how they, and their parents, navigate it.

Ebony wants to get into the Newtown School of Performing Arts. She lives out west with her two mothers and they would like her to go to school in the inner west where her parents relationship is accepted. As the mothers are both on welfare and Ebony has a much younger brother with serious health issues, they are making a lot of sacrifices for her, which she is well aware of, and just increasing the pressure she feels herself under.

Matthew wants to play Aussie Rules but one of his mother’s is a charismatic Christian, who wants to keep Sunday free for worship. The fact that her fellow congregationalists considers her a sinner, changes Matthew’s ideas about faith.

Gus just wants to go to the WWE

Graham is the saddest. His natural family had prevented him from speaking until the age of 5 and his adoptive gay parents are doing their best to help him catch up with the rest of his peer group. This is not helped when the family is forced to relocate to Fiji (where homosexuality is even less accessible than the western suburbs of Sydney.)

The focus is squarely on the kids, They can clearly speak for themselves (though Graham, of course, has a little difficulty) and they do.

And that’s the point. If anything, the awareness of their parents’ non-compliant relationship makes them even more aware and sympathetic. Ebony even talks about her own homophobia until she adjusted to have two mothers.

GB is gripping. The director, Maya Newell, keeps a sharp focus on one particular thread in these families complicated lives and has a great cinematic sense. This is not a dry polemic, this is a warm human account, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking of four non-traditional families and how they deal with very traditional challenges. It is made with great sensitivity and artistry and gives us the good fortune of the acquaintance of four wonderful children: Ebony, Graham, Gus and Matthew.

For further information (including forthcoming screenings - and it is worth seeing in a theatre) check the website