Fight Fire with Sapphire!

More disgraceful treatment of non-human persons, fellow travellers!  In Blackpool, horses are being forced to wear nappies.

As if reins, saddles and whips were not humiliating enough! 

Appalling.  Just appalling. 

As Jocelyn, myself and our fellow travellers in the arts community have often said, when we go to the cinema or the theatre we want to see ourselves represented.  We want to hear our accents.  We want to see our stories being told.  We want our playwrights and film-makers to celebrate the vibrant, tolerant and confident nation that we know Australia actually is!  And most of all -- most of all -- we want other countries to give us official recognition for this. 

And so it has happened. An Australian film called The Long Walk has won first prize at the Asolo Art Film Festival!  (No, it's not about fellow traveller Mao and his own Cultural Revolution -- although, of course, that would have been nice.  It's actually about a dog's travels through France in search of Arthur Rimbaud.)

Of course, Jocelyn and I are not entirely happy. The character was an appalling canine (most perturbing for Jocelyn!), and a dupe of Big Tobacco.  It also appears to be male.  Not the most empowering message to be sending out to viewers ...

Still, it did win an international award!  Very impressive.  And it is heartening to know that in the fascist, phillistine dictatorship of John Dubya HoWARd the creative spirit lives on. 

Appalling conservatives will be using their favourite old excuses for this latest outbreak of violence on a Sydney beach.  They'll say it's caused by single mothers, unemployment, the breakdown of "values", etc.  But the cause is obvious:  It is the name of the beach itself. 

"While at Manly, be manly!" is the unwritten, but nonetheless undeniable message implied by this title (illegal though that itself is -- but that's another matter).  This is an exhortation to violence to all testosteroids; to adolescent ones most of all!

If only 18th century British "culture" had been less phallocentric and women had more say in the naming of locations we wouldn't be seeing these appalling acts happening today.