This weekend

Alison Harvey returned to England yesterday, after staying with us for a week. She's an old housemate of mine, and we stayed with her last year when we were in London. I'm missing her already. On her last day we went to see "I Robot" (review to follow) and then she got a cab to the airport. At least we're able to stay in touch via e-mail.

This weekend we're up at murasaki_1966's parents place near Lake Macquarie.

I hope to catch up on my writing (Brett and I effectively finished "Relics" last night - so I'm now free to work on some short stories.

Monday we'll be looking at a house in Five Dock (a friend's father is managing the property and she's offering the place to us to rent.)

We can at least see what it looks like.

We're doing this all wrong

I was just reading John Powers on Alternet about his new book "Sore Winners" - a study of the dominant culture of the Bush administration (and the Howard administration). He examines the fact that even though the Right are dominant they still feel they need to complain and brag about their status - i.e. that they are "sore winners". One of the best examples he uses is George W Bush being the first President to complain of jet lag when flying to Europe.

In an interview he's asked what the Left can do to counter the bullying from the Right, and in essence he says - Have more fun.

And I think he's right. We get too caught up on our consumerism (which I maintain will never go away and is indeed vital to western civilisation) on whether we're doing the right thing or not, and we're spending less time just enjoying themselves - the one thing that will really piss off the Right.

After all, it did the last time the Left were ascendent - back in the Sixties.

We should be looking at ways of making it fun to be unselfish, to enjoy ourselves without taking from others. We should be having such a good time, the Right will hate us more, and everyone else will want to be us.

With bands like Cerebral Posse, I think this is just starting to take off in Howard's Australia.