New smoking legislation and more whinging

I wish the government would consider spending $100 million dollars on providing more public housing for the nearly two hundred thousand people on the seventeen year waiting list rather than spending it on an unnecessary postal plebisite to guage support for same-sex marriage when they already know there is strong support within the community for the proposal.

On the note of discrimination the new Tobacco law enacted on 2 August has meant that smokers can no longer smoke outside in the air where others are eating even though they were initially relegated to outside tables away from non-smokers eating indoors. Happily some establishments have decided not to discriminate against smokers and have placed signs on tables stating that no food will be served outside, enabling smokers to be able to meet socially with others. One wonders what new human rights will be eroded and where it will all end?

What if I started a campaign against dogs outside coffee shops? Richmond and in particular Bridge Road appears to be the doggie capital of Victoria. It's impossible to walk down the footpath without having to weave around dogs on leashes taking up most of the space and don't start me on the way owners treat their dogs like they are human. They sit on chairs and on owner's laps. Some bark loudly and attempt to fight with others and scratch their hair and dander into the air. I'm rather apprehensive of dogs and so the walk down Bridge Road can, at times feel like walking the gauntlet. It seems to me that it is potentially more dangerous walking past potentially aggressive dogs than to breathe in another's second hand smoke. But that's just one person's opinion.

I've already spoken in the past about having to travel in a crowded tram and tolerate the claustrophic air imbued with a mixture of perfume or the strong smell of after shave. I'm not the only person who finds it difficult to breathe under such circumstances. Should it be against the law to wear these substances in an enclosed space if it provides discomfort to others? I think I've managed to argue that there is always something that we could complain about but the non-smokers are a strong, conservative group that relies on health issues to support their argument and yet they are probably the greatest culprits when it comes to polluting the environment (use of large cars, excessive consumption of air-conditioning, heating and food).

And talking about public transport. It was once a law that no food was to be consumed in public vehicles, but now passengers must endure sitting next to those eating and drinking and the culprits often leave food packaging - paper bags, plastic and drink containers (cans and take away coffee cups) on the seats or floor of the tram when they get off. As a vegetarian I find it particularly offensive having to sit next to someone eating a meat product. And the list goes on. What if we all complained to the government, what if we all - not just smokers, had to curb our passions and human right to choose? The mind boggles.

Film Review - Unstoppable

Tony Scott's 2010 film Unstoppable (Twentieth Century Fox, 2010) stars Denzel Washington and Chris Pine as two downtrodden railway employees trying to stop a runaway train.

Frank (Washington) and Will (Pine) are respectively driver and conductor of a railway train on a routine journey. A mistake by the youthful and inexperienced Will puts him at odds with the experienced Frank and places them both in jeopardy when a driverless train is discovered speeding their way.

The monster locomotive and its load of toxic chemicals, accidentally unleashed from a railway yard by an underperforming worker, hurtles at breakneck speeds toward the small town where Will’s estranged family lives. As the remote and dysfunctional railway management unsuccessfully attempts to stop the half-mile long behemoth, the two workers must overcome the odds, their managers, and mutual antipathy, in a last-ditch bid to avert disaster.

Unstoppable is a film about working class heroes. With only days to enforced retirement the experienced Frank first saves his own train and then takes off in pursuit of the runaway. "You would risk your life for us?" an incredulous manager asks. "not for you", Frank replies.

The film presents a workplace - perhaps a whole economy - in chaos. Experienced workers are dumped a few years before retirement, on half benefits, and replaced by high-tech equipment and enthusiastic but inexperienced younger men. Under pressure, the inexperienced workers make a series of small mistakes with giant consequences that leave two trains hurtling toward each other on the same track. It is up to the divided workforce, symbolized in an evolving relationship between Frank and Will, to do what management cannot, and to save a small town from high tech disaster.

The characters are carefully drawn by writer Mark Bomback. Frank has two daughters, waitresses at a saucy Hooters restaurant franchise "working their way through college". Will’s estranged wife and young son are caught up in a fuss over suspected sexting, a hint of domestic violence, and an intervention order. New ways are colliding with the old, and the characters must accommodate those and overcome their own prejudices and fears before they can collaborate to stop the unstoppable.

The management types are barely drawn stereotypical offcuts from modern management manuals. A top company man speculates on the railway's share price from a golf course. Galvin (Kevin Dunn), the operations manager in a high-rise corner office, completely ignores his staff - including the competent but female local manager Connie (Rosario Dawson) - in favour of high tech outsourcing and expensive and big-noting contractors.

Hope springs only when the workers place their bodies between the runaway train and the small town it is hurtling toward.

Breathtaking stunts, stunning arial photography by Ben Seresin and seamlessly integrated CGI provide vivid panoramas for the story to unfold in. A half-mile train lifting its wheels from tracks as it speeds around a curve is a suitably impressive spectacle, especially with Denzel Washington leaping from carriage to carriage as Frank and Will attempt to avert catastrophe.

Unstoppable is a thoughtful film based in part on real events but in part also in the zeitgeist of modern economics and workplace restructuring and change. Those seem unstoppable, unless the old and new combine to produce something more. It is this something more that is evident in the story, and which lifts it above the ruck of the average disaster/disaster averted movie.

Private school girls + public transport manners should be on the currriculum

I caught a crowded tram in Camberwell yesterday and since I was carrying two heavy bags I asked one of the school girls if she wouldn't mind giving me her seat. She grudgingly complied. At the next stop an older woman got on and was struggling to balance with the movement of the tram, so I asked if she would like to sit down. She said 'No, I won't accept a seat from an adult, I want one of the rich, private school girls to offer one to me'! I turned around and looked at the girls occupying the seats. Most wouldn't have heard her, three were speaking loudly on mobile phones, their feet up on the seats opposite, their summer school dresses hitched up almost to their thighs, their bags thrown onto the floor beneath their feet, often in the aisle, which made it difficult for standing adults straddling available space.

She continued: 'One day they'll know what it's like, they'll be old with hip problems, they'll'..., and she broke off looking at their disinterested faces, 'No, they'll be in their four wheel drives, they won't have to take public transport, they'll be living in their million dollar houses'! 

One of the adults offered heir seat and she finally sat down, but I thought about what she said and I considered the fact that parents of these girls have paid up to, perhaps more than $200,000 in fees for their children to attend private schools and apart from scholastic achievement what the schools had produced was inconsiderate, selfish, loud, uncaring beings.
But I should be fair about this, I'm sure that not all private school individuals behave in this manner and admittedly, public transport is crowded, particularly so after 3.30pm when children are traveling home. The new trams don't have over-head luggage racks as they did in the past and so the large school bags that children/teenagers have to carry do take up a lot of space on the floor  inhibiting movement and creating dangerous obstacles. The older woman showed me a small red wound, she had just come off another tram filled with private school children and had tripped over one of their bags, scraping her wrist in the process! No wonder she was angry. At the age of 75 she shouldn't have to endure this.

The absence of tram conductors over the past decade has meant that behavior on public transport has worsened, indeed, teenagers (but not only them) have come to regard public transport as a site of social engagement, using the space to eat, drink, listen to music and talk loudly with their  friends, without considering that workers and others traveling on the tram may need a bit of quite time to read their book or just relax on their trip.

I'm not sure who to hold to account here, schools, parents, the government or the individual.? But when I think about it, we all have a responsibility for each other and perhaps if the message isn't being relayed at home where values are instigated,  then perhaps it should be considered part of the responsibility of teachers to instill in their students good manners and consideration for others.

Numbers

I found a faster route to Melbourne University today. Two short tram trips to Kew Junction and then the No. 207 bus that runs down Studley Park Road and Johnston Street. It was at least half an hour faster than taking the Burke Road Tram to Camberwell Junction, then the No. 75 tram to Flinders Street and then a tram up to Melbourne Uni. Sorry ~ so much detail and minutia, but really, moving to a new place means having to adjust your life considerably, especially if you are dependant upon public transport. It rained off and on most of the day and I didn't take an umbrella, because I didn't want to carry it.

It was nice and comfy having a coffee at Tiamos in Carlton, but I felt distant and disconnected to it, like it was so much of my past and I'm trying to leave much of that behind. It was cold and all I really wanted to do was get home after tutoring and it already feels like home here, so comfortable and warm. I've decided that when Spring has really made its mark and the days are consistently warmer I'll paint or draw whilst sitting on my balcony. I imagine that those Camellia's growing in the garden will make their way into the subject matter since they are so pervasive.

I had occasion today whilst discussing terror and the word terrorism (such a loaded term) in a tute session, to recall some of the events that impressed upon my life and altered my world view. Indeed, I'm sure that many people no longer perceived the world as a safe place to live. The first was when I saw moving images of the mushroom cloud caused by the explosion of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima and images of inmates in Nazi death camps during WW2. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and constant televised images for over a decade of the Vietnam War. The massacre by terrorists at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972. The destruction of Darwin by Cyclone Tracey in 1974. The Granville train disaster in 1977. The Sydney Hilton bombing by terrorists in 1978 ~ the 2002 and 2005 Bali bombings. John Lennon's murder in 1980. The attempted assassination of Pope Paul II in 1981. The Ash Wednesday fires in 1983 and Black Saturday fires last year. Unforgettable images in 1984 of starving children in Ethiopia and the consequential Feed the World tour. Julian Knight's massacre of seven people in Hoddle Street in 1987. The horrors of the Gulf War in 1990 and a decade later, images of the 9/11/2001 attack on the World Trade Centre. The Port Arthur shooting massacre in 1996. Princess Diana and Mother Teresa's deaths in 1997.

Every event affects people in different ways. My son was born in 1977 and I was extremely distressed with the news that the US space laboratory Skylab I ~ all 77.5 tons of it, was expected to fall back to earth and was anticipated to fall somewhere in Australia. I was worried that it would crash down on our house ~a little dramatic and paranoid I suppose, but I'd been brought up by a grandmother who continually told stories about the war and I adopted her fear about terror coming from the sky. However, most of my fear was fueled by media speculation about where the space debris would fall. When it tumbled back to earth on the 11 July, 1979, most of the pieces were scattered near Perth, Western Australia. The drama over, we could all breathe again.

Channel 9 is screening 911 State of Emergency on Tuesday night. It maintains 9/11 is the single event that changed the world. I'll watch, but I'm not convinced that it changed our world view anymore than many other events that have impacted on so many lives.

Steve Middleton Image

Computer-generated image by Steve Middleton, 2010.

Computer generated image about isolation, monotony and moments that never arrive. Life size experiments: large prints that refer to the photograph in colour, contrast range and detail but which synthesize those with irrational and unmotivated elements -perspective, shadow and reflection - borrowed from the hyper real. I am drawn to emotional contexts which are not well served by CGI. I am mindful of the transition in French Painting from David to Gericault. My work presently attempts to push some boundaries - ones not well defined and which may well exist only in my imagination - to realize private and emotional themes in the somewhat emotionless and public theatres of the virtual. (Artist statement)

Dr Steven Middleton has a PhD in the application of artificial intelligence and robotics in art from RMIT. He is an animator who has created interactive artworks and worked closely over the years with Stelarc and other Australian artists. I met Steve in 1994 and have followed his work with interest. But I want to pick up here on his reference to 'isolation, monotony and moments that never arrive'. There must be many people who experience this terrible state of being. I for one do everything I can to get out and see people and things and I think that most people attempt do this even if they are old or in pain. It does make me think though, that perhaps why we don't see many old people walking around Melbourne is because they are in hospital, incapacitated or that there is simply nothing for them to do. Of course, when I do see the elderly~ at cinemas or at the market, many are struggling to walk ~ using a cane, walking frame or holding tightly onto their shopping cart. I already find it difficult negotiating public transport ~ the lack of space, the crowds, the rudeness. People are so busy and in a rush these days. Perhaps those that choose isolation (as opposed to those who have no choice due to circumstance), do so, so that they don't have to deal with an uncaring public! I wonder what the master of irony, Karl Lagerfeld (blogger ~ not the real Karl Lagerfeld) would say about old age, isolation and monotony? He'd probably say 'get out there girlfriend! Buy a walking stick (fashionable mobility aid, if you don't mind, darling!) and use it to move those horrid people out of the way!