Postcard from Castlemaine.

Firstly, apologies for being MIA in the Formica Minding blogosphere of late. It sure has been a busy few months.

It is currently about five thousand degrees outside (and people say climate change isn’t real!) and I have just moved into a house that is not located in the city or the metropolitan area at all.  Greetings from Castlemaine.

Apparently if one moves to Castlemaine as my partner and I have just done, we are living a cliché dream, which did worry me at first. Would I be coerced into fire twirling lessons and begin to dress in clothes made purely out of hemp? I then realised though that most of the negative commentary comes from people who are living in converted warehouse spaces in Fitzroy and comment that the area in which they live is “great because it hasn’t been gentrified yet.” Pffft and I’m the second coming of Jesus Christ!

Cliché or not cliché, what I can tell you is that I have no regrets so far about trading a life of smog, rude people and getting to know strangers on a packed tram intimately through no choice of your own, for stars and fresh air.

As the year gets into full swing and I begin to juggle study, work and other commitments which shall present themselves, I am sure the sense of total relaxation I feel at the moment will be tainted slightly, but I have a feeling that life in the country will enable me to say goodbye to the highly strung city version of myself and appreciate the little stuff around me without risking a heart attack.

Wish you were here,

Heart,

Jimi D 

Why Universities operating like big businesses ruined my romanticised image of what Uni would be like

Sometimes I wish I could go back in time, not even particularly that far back, to compare what attending University looked like, in comparison to what it is today.

I am the first one to admit, I have had nil interest in University life in the three years I have been a student. Socialist Alliance rallies, music festivals with deafening music and drinking to the point of spewing down a college corridor whilst partly naked and sporting a G-string on my head never rated highly. What could possibly be enjoyable about drinking on a couch at the Uni Bar, where all sorts of unsavoury body fluids could be easily identified by a blue light?

No, I’m just talking about the basic, boring actual content and quality of what is being taught and discussed in lecture theatres and tutorial rooms around the country.

Perhaps I had a completely romanticised view of what a tertiary education would be like, but I for one, cannot help but feel like a part of a giant corporate money making machine, whose primary objective is to ‘churn us through,’ rather than teach us how to think and encourage personal growth.

The course I am enrolled in was offered for the very firs time the year I began University. Instead of completing an arts degree then another degree or masters in the discipline of Social Work, I will graduate with a Bachelor and Masters all within 4 years and without actually having to really earn a place in my final year which I am set to embark on in a few months time.

As much as the title of my degree and masters will probably look quite nice on my resume, I cannot help but feel as though we are cheapening the meaning of a Masters and that any future employers expectations of me maybe far too high.  More importantly, I cannot help but feel I am a little sheep being churned through a system. ‘Bums on seats’ is how I see it.

The delivery of much of the program is mechanical and doesn’t teach people to think critically and analytically and also contains (at least to this point) zero in the way of politics and advocacy, which I would argue are very important components to the Social Work profession.  I see many young, compliant people undertaking my course and this worries me.

After recently attending a number of seminars at a rural campus of my University whilst completing a Field Placement in that same town, I was inspired to hear lecturers actually discussing the importance of advocating for political change in the region as a major component to Social Work.  Three years of university in Melbourne and political advocacy had never been mentioned? Strange.

With one year of University to go, I am finding the mechanics and conservatism of University quite stifling and wonder what the experience of other disciplines even generalist degrees like Arts must be like?  What sorts of Human Services employment will those who do not think analytically or critically end up in? I worry that the compliance taught by University will set many of my fellow students up for a career of compliance whereby systems (particularly government funded systems) will never change thereby letting down our clients- some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

Although I have no desire to revert back to the 60’s and smoke giant joints on the University grasslands whilst burning my non-existent bra, I really hope that our Universities can somehow balance the need to be viable businesses and still somehow teach students how to think and not what to think, once more.

Hipsters. Discuss.

PREFACE:

I am currently sitting on a rock on a beach on the Coffs Coast of NSW. I thought the beach would be a nice place to try and write.  The rock I am sitting on however, is slowly wedging itself fair up my ass and is becoming uncomfortable. Explain that one to the paramedics!  Anyway, the topic of this blog entry is something I have been wanting to articulate for a long time and I think it is only possible to do so, whilst I am out of the city and somewhere like this beach as it is about something that grinds my gears profusely and is mainly set where I live in Melbourne. I needed some distance, lets put it that way.

HIPSTERS. DISCUSS. 

I wasn’t going to say anything but I just can’t help myself.

Hipsters! Yes, they may appear to be an easy target and I am certainly not the first to voice an opinion on them but I feel the need to vent about the unhealthy level of rage I feel by the very sight of a hipster.

For those of you who don’t know what a hipster is, you may need to do a Google Image search of the term, as it would appear you have been living under a rock. Quite frankly though, you will probably be quite grateful for that rock once you have completed your Google search.

Whilst there have always been the ‘mega cool,’ subcultures in our society, it would appear that the narcissistic, individualistic, ‘right-here-right-now,’ culture which we have socially constructed in recent years, has given birth to the most infuriating and apartheid ‘uber cool’ subculture yet; The hipster.

I have jut returned from a three-month stint in Mildura, in northwest Victoria. I was completing a Social Work Field Placement as a part of my University degree and thought a stint back in my regional hometown might be a good idea.

Mildura’s not so stellar socio-economic indicators, conservative leadership and isolation from the state capital, (and perhaps its giant Stanley Wine Cask and high levels of Mafia activity in the 1980s) have given the region a rather embarrassing reputation over the years. Part and parcel of telling people you are from Mildura, is sitting through -or contributing to- jokes about teenage pregnancy, welfare ‘dependency’ and essentially any gag about people or activities which are considered uncultured.  This reputation, to be fair -or perhaps unfair- carries a fair bit of truth.

Words cannot express though how nice it was to be in a region where hipsters make up less than 1 per cent of the population (unlike the 97.76% where I live in Melbourne) and people are still actually able to form a personality on their own, without fitting the rigid pro forma set out by the exclusive and judgemental (or individual and down to earth, as they would describe themselves) hipster set.

I recently met a friend’s sister, Lizzie, who, although now a full time city slicker, said of Mildura, something along the lines of “If you go to Mildura and act like a pretentious hipster wanker, the locals will pull you back a few notches and call you on your bullshit.’  I think I am struggling with the very presence of hipsters in Melbourne even more so since my recent return, as it appears that as Lizzie says, no one is calling them on how ridiculous, exclusive and judgemental their posse is.

Aside from my urge to set all of their vintage bikes, spew pattern bulky knits and thick-framed glasses on fire, I do have some level of compassion for the hipster as my fellow humans. I find it saddening that we live in a world now, that in order to be an ‘individual,’ you have to follow a inflexible handbook, sacrifice almost as much as Nuns entering the convent used to and essentially transform every part of yourself into something that you are not.  Contradictory much?

My stint away from Melbourne and the culture shock I received on my return was quite the eye opener as to how shallow our culture has become. Yes, I was more likely to see people in reflector jackets and tracksuits than people in skinny leg jeans whilst in the country, but the interactions and relationships I had with people felt more meaningful and mutually beneficial than many I have had, here in the heart of ‘Hipster-villia,’ over the years.  People, felt and made me feel like I was a part of something with them.

This begs the question, are hipsters in such disproportionately high volumes in cities as it is one of the few ways to feel included in something?  It would appear people feel we have nothing to identify with anymore. That rather than ideals and values, we subscribe to something that doesn’t exist?  Something shallow.

I for one am jack of it and am looking forward to moving to a country town next year, where like those of you who needed to do some Google Image searching earlier in this piece, I shall find a hipster free rock to hide under for a while.  

Gay marriage and how its a kin to beastiality, a Christian perspective.

For those of you out there in internet land who are either from Mildura or have ever read the letters to the editor section of a University newspaper anywhere in our great big country, you will be all too familiar with Dr. Arnold Jago.

Dr. Jago, apart from being a very well respected General Practitioner, is a fundamentalist Christian who is an avid letter writer to local, university and national newspapers. (Something we do have in common… the letter writing that is, not Christianity) The letters range in content, from how morally wrong homosexuality is, to how anti-Christian homosexuality is and sometimes for something totally different he will throw in a letter about how bad it is for people to be homosexuals... you see where I am going with this, yes?

With the large amount of discussion currently happening around same sex marriage and the ALP changing their tune on the issue, Dr. Jago today has written to the ‘Sunraysia Daily’ newspaper with this absolute corker of a letter, drawing parallels between the marriage of a man and his dog and same sex marriage.

Need I say anymore?  Happy Reading:

“More than just man's best friend”

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

20 Dec, 2011 04:00 AM

THE other day, Brisbane Times newspaper reported the marriage of a man, Joseph Guise, and his dog, Honey, in Toowoomba, Queensland, on November 30, 2011:

“Thirty of the couple’s closest friends and family were in attendance for the emotional ceremony, held at dusk”.

“You’re my best friend and you make every part of my day better,” Mr. Guise’s vows read.

(www.brisbanetimes.com.au /Queensland/Toowoomba-man-marries -dog-20101201-18g5o.html)

At present, most people would not want the law to recognise such a “marriage”.

But anybody who supports same-sex marriage is logically obliged to support man-animal marriage.

For those who don’t believe in Natural Law (eternal laws written in the heart of every man by God) there are no absolutes – nothing is absolutely right or absolutely wrong. Our guide to behavior can only be to do whatever turns us on.

This is the perverse world, which the Australian Labor Party and their friends, the Greens, plan for your children to live in.

Arnold Jago, Mildura.

(Source: Sunraysia Daily, Tuesday 20^th December, 2011) 

http://www.sunraysiadaily.com.au/news/opinion/letters/general/more-than-just-mans-best-friend/2399160.aspx

The unrealistic pressures imposed by gay and mainstream media and why it shits me.

I remember sitting through numerous VHS recorded 60 Minutes stories at Primary and Secondary School in the 1990s about the impact that mass media – mainly Women’s Magazine’s -was having on the body images of teenage girls. As tacky and tabloid as these stories about young women with eating disorders were, it did help me at a young age, resent how much power the media, in all its airbrushed and over sexualised wisdom, had over women.

The toxic impact of mass media on women is perhaps even more of an issue than it was when I was a teenager and the conversation needs to continue, but I think we have failed to recognise that being told you are essentially an overeating worthless ugly lump of shit by the media no longer just applies to heterosexual women. The rise (or should I say ‘creation’) of the metrosexual in the early 2000’s and the popularisation of the really superficial and awful bits of gay culture (i.e. Queer Eye For the Straight Guy) paved the way for men, women, gay and straight to cue up together and throw up their lunch in unity in pursuit of the body that Women’s Day/ Men’s Health/ DNA Magazine dictated was now the standard for us all.

As a gay man, I have a pretty high level of disrespect for much of the gay press and media, which claims to give gay people a voice.  When I first left my regional home town and moved to the city, I was interested in reading some of the Australian gay newspapers as I thought – especially as a sheltered teenage gay male– these outlets may help gay people like me, make sense of our sexuality and feel comfortable in our own skin. Quite the opposite.  Yes, stories of civil rights movements, political changes and adds for GBLTI counselling were printed, but all somehow seemed to be drowning amidst pages full of imagery of unachievably buff porn actors, airbrushed within an inch of their own lives and milky skinned waif like 19 year old boys dancing in tight shorts in night clubs.  The 60 Minutes stories played in my head again when I first read the gay press and instead of feeling reasonably comfortable with gayness and myself in general, I became quite the cynic. Perfectly healthy for an 18 year old to be so bitter!

As much as I was and still am a huge advocate for calling ‘bullshit’ on the unrealistic expectations the media and pop culture throw our way, whether you are gay straight male or female, I do worry about how impacted myself and others can become by it all.  Gay media and gay culture in general over the years has been about as good for my self-esteem as the Boxing Day Tsunami was for Thailand.  It saddens me though to know that many of my peers have been completely pulled into the rip of every aspect of superficial gay culture, with the drugs, the clubs, lack of meaningful relationships, fitting a gay stereotype along with waving goodbye to any self esteem and personality that may have been left. To me, it predominantly comes down to the mainstream and so-called independent media construction of ‘what it means to be gay.’

After years of inequality one would think the gay community would be well versed at inclusiveness and ‘looking out for their own.’ Instead, from my point of view, aside from my handful of wonderful gay and lesbian friends I generally have only ever felt judged and inferior within the majority of the gay world.

The gay press need to take at least some responsibility for the damage they are causing to many gay people, under the false pretence of helping the gay community socially and politically progress. To me, it is not that difficult. Lay off the 237 page spreads of worship for unrealistically chiselled gay porn stars and begin to focus on what matters again, like in days gone by, when gay and lesbian people were fighting for basic human rights, not internally competing with ourselves as it now would appear.  Helping to foster a positive sense of self for young gay people, encouraging to them feel the passion about moving toward human rights such as same sex marriage, is to me, what the gay press should see as their role.  As it is now, it would appear the main aim is to cause inferiority complexes on a weekly basis. Will I ever look like Zac Efron or Hugh Jackman!?

Perhaps my one pack stomach and slight case of psoriasis might make a great shirtless cover shoot for the next edition of the local gay rags here in Melbourne? I doubt it.

Over.