Robert says that Zooey is playing Trillian in the Hitch Hiker’s movie. Hooray for Zooey! Hooray for everyone! And just so you know: this is bigger than Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Rings doesn’t matter crap next to a movie of Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (even though the Guide TV show will probably still be better). So blah.

Oh, and if you’re bored and have some bandwidth to spare, check out All Girl Summer Fun Band. They’re an indie band, so it’s nothing earth-shattering, but they’re cute and they sing about Jason Lee, who really does deserve more attention than he gets… wait, how can I say that in a more heterosexual way?

Ah, we’re having a big celebrity-love day, aren’t we?

Now, a Geek Note:
For all of you using WP blacklist, I think spammers are now sending in weird URLs to corrupt our blacklists. You can probably stop it by turning off auto-harvesting of URLs, but I’m trying Spam Karma instead, which seems more sophisticated. Now I’ve done that though, I’ll probably get hit massively.

*Sits back to dream of Zooey*

I went back to the State Art Gallery today. I had to see this painting again, ‘The American Dream’ by Brett Whiteley. There was something written on it which was driving me mad so I absolutely had to find out who said it. It was a quote, you see. Now that I’ve seen it again, this is what I think it says:

If we give art a moral aim it ceases to be art because it is no longer useless… Art is always unintelligible to the crowd because it [the crowd] is not disinterested + knows only purpose.

E+J de Goncourt

‘The American Dream’ is a mural-type painting twenty metres long and covered in pictures of Bob Dylan, stuffed birds and other junk. It even has a big red flashing light, but it’s still pretty crap. It’s a juvenile and melodramatic take on 60’s nuclear paranoia. De Goncourt (whoever that is), however, has a good idea.

1st level: he/she/it wants to protect art from stupid critics and bad artists. The fear is that art will become part of someone’s agenda, trivialised and vulgarised. Art is above politics and moralising. In this sense, de Goncourt is a puritan of art - a kind of formalist (the value of art lies in the relationships between the internal parts of the work; symmetry, harmony, dissonance.)

2nd level: It wants freedom. The crowd knows only purpose; everything has to have a place and a use or it’s not worthwhile. Everything is a means to an end - survival, reproduction, simple joy, money. BUT: art cannot be stuck in the realm of the merely useful. There is no freedom there, where everything that exists has an assigned, essential function. Art must be elevated beyond everyday life into a realm of decadence, of freedom from necessity.

(This elevation, strangely enough, is what some philosophers did with morality at the same time.)

3rd level: Nihilism in purpose.
Why are works of art worthwhile?
Because they teach us to see the world through another’s eyes.
Why is that a good thing?
Because we understand things we might not have understood otherwise.
What good is knowledge?
So you can live a long and happy life.
Why do I want a long and happy life?
…Isn’t that what everybody wants?
But why?

If you ask for the purpose of everything, life will soon seem cold and bare. It wants freedom from the vicious circle of asking why, so it can enjoy what exists for what it is. Nietzsche and Arendt understood this.

I think, though, that the argument against purpose works on questions like ‘what is the purpose of art?’ (‘there is no answer’), but doesn’t necessarily work on questions like ‘what did you mean by this painting?’. As long as our aims are not unified, I don’t see why aim itself should be problematic. In fact, if I have my art history right, it could be argued that strict formalism is far more unifying/nihlistic/untenable than the position outlined above. It - de Goncourt - can be read up to this point as defending the worldliness of art and the plasticity of the concept against aesthetic generalisations.

This has been an excerpt from a slightly longer train of thought.

I’m setting up a site on my server using textpattern, which is a flash new bit of blog software. The back end works well, but it’s not so much better than wordpress that I can be bothered swapping over to it. So if anyone wants to set up a new site / work on a collaborative blog / etc., just comment or email me with ideas.

Not that I won’t change my mind about it tomorrow.

//So, like, it was a boring day. I read a book. If anyone feels like coming to the Rosemount for New Year’s Eve to see Little Birdy, Snowman and some other bands, I’ll be there. I think it’s twenty bucks on the door.//

• A DVD drive and extra fans for my box.
• That litte blue 20 Questions gadget.
• ‘Simulacra’ prints from the Supermart Exhibition by Kattyb.
• Boardshorts that actually fit.
• An Angus & Robertson voucher.
• Various items of smiley-face merchandise bearing the slogan ‘Jesus loves you’.
• Heaps of chocolate.
• And cash from Dad (Thank$!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We are living in a material world, and I am a… Well, Christmas was fun - let’s put it that way. Although I did accrue a large number of encumbering material possessions, I think I gave as good as I got in most cases. This is testament to my growing maturity (something I’m still quite ambivalent about) and to my currently healthy finances (which I love to death). I feel, at least in some respects, balanced and at peace with the world. It could be the chocolate cake talking, though.

So MERRY CHRIMBO to all & a HAPPY NEW YEAR. Big Luv. Peace out. Free Tibet.

“We welcome you to this very special Australian Bush Virgin… er version, of the Nativity story.”

-Lord Mayor Peter Nattrass introducing the Nativity Play in Forrest Chase. We loved those scantily clad Roman soldier babes, by the way - tits at Christmas are so classy.

Location: Perth or Sydney, Australia. pls bring some water if you come visit

Age 24. I’m studying for my PhD in philosophy and looking forward to the many job offers that will inevitably arrive after I graduate. Did a science degree but decided it involved too much standing in the sun. And I was in a couple of pretty lame bands, but I had to move to Sydney for uni so I’m suffering from long-term rock deprivation.

My spirit animal is the Cookie Monster.

I like Nirvana and the Violent Femmes, but nowadays I usually listen to stuff like Be Your Own Pet, Joanna Newsom and Yo La Tengo. I think the Shins are cool but they haven’t lived up to their potential, you know? The best movie ever is American Astronaut (but the best movie that people have actually seen is SFW) and the best book ever is not actually To Kill a Mockingbird but Catch 22, or perhaps Morvern Callar or The Loved One or something.

Stuff I like: Food, books, singing off key, Zooey

I dislike: Witty button badges, David Boreanaz (David Boreanaz rocks!), early mornings

WRITE ME, PEN PAL! My email address is: mark at this web site.

How’s it hangin’?

For fun, here’s a picture that Clare drew of St. Mark:

Listening: Prince - Cream

Hmm, university application notices are coming in now - it looks like University of Queensland and University of New South Wales both want me, but I’m holding out for Monash, which is at least in Melbourne, a place where I can scam accomodation, food and other goodies off my relatives. But I’m preparing for the worst, as is my habit. I will console myself with the fact that they pay you more in Queensland - presumably because there is nothing to do there but nail syphillitic hookers in the alleyway behind Uncle Pete’s Adult Bookstore (an expensive pastime to say the least).

No, I’m only kidding. It can’t be that bad.

So, like, where the hell is Saint Lucia, and how many camels will I need to travel there?

Copyright, snot, boredom, wiggaz, Grok Magazine, smokers, the Garden Gurus, nu-metal, Spongebob Squarepants, airconditioning (not that I’m completely against it), the Third Reich, bus fares, crappy photocopiers, pizza surcharges and let’s not forget, the bane of my existence: sobriety.

You can’t think outside the box. You don’t even know where the box is.

When I first started blogging I wanted to make sure I did something interesting and exciting every day to write about. Sometimes that seems easy, and sometimes it’s hard. It just depends.

At the moment it’s hard. I read a lot, and when I’m not reading I’m wondering ‘why aren’t I reading?’ so everything is questioned in terms of its contribution to some kind of academic productivity. (Yeah, I see how dumb that is now it’s on paper.) Also, I’m in that same arrested position of waiting for next year’s prospects that I’ve been in for at least the last six months, if not most of my life in one way or another.

(Really I have never deviated from whatever path I’m on. I failed no subjects in high school, I took no a gap year on holiday, I showed none of the aimlessness at uni that’s so fashionable for people my age. I just did my work, and it proved to be fairly easy. I don’t know what it means to be lost, or uncertain, or simply living the life without waiting for something better. That is what I’m like. Limited. It occurs to me that thinking you know what path you’re on can be an aspect of lostness.)

So as a result, there is nothing much to write about. I try as always and with varying degrees of success to do things that are worth doing. Often though, I just sit here and wonder about what sorts of things actually are worth doing.

Here are some photos of me and my girlfriend Laura.

Laura and me on holidays in Augusta.

Laura rocking out with the band.

Laura and Barry watching TV.

And, um, this is from my private collection…