Category: Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Howl

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating accross the tops of cities contemplating jazz, who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated… – Howl, Allen Ginsberg It’s been a long time since I engaged with Howl in its entirety. Those first few lines, sure; if you’re into poetry in any way, there’s pretty good odds you can reel off the first line and half of Howl from memory. They’re among the most well-known in American poetry, and there’s no getting around the fact that they’re a brilliant opener (Although, I have to admit, in my head I

PeterMBall 25/05/2012
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Hanging with the Spokesbear: Avatar

Spokesbear: You awake? Peter: No. Spokesbear: You sure. Peter: Very. Spokesbear: And you’re paying utterly no attention to what I’m saying, right? Peter: None. Fuck off. Spokesbear: No need to be hostile. I just wanted to make sure you were docile before I told you this. Peter: *sleeps* Spokesbear: James Cameron’s said he’s going to make nothing but Avatar films until he dies. Apparently everything he wants to do, he thinks he can do inside that universe. Peter: *keeps sleeping* Spokesbear: Seriously, dude. James Cameron. Avatar. Peter: I heard you. Spokesbear: But you’re not ranting. Peter: No. Spokesbear: Come on. Peter: No. I’ve made my peace with Avatar, and the fact that there will be an Avatar 2, and that it will likely keep going, ad infinitum, until James Cameron finally passes from this world and into whatever fucked up version of heaven he’s imagining. Spokesbear: But people have been sending you links. They want to see a response. Peter:

PeterMBall 18/05/2012
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

In this post, I swear a lot for no apparent reason

I’m sitting here on a Sunday trying to remember what I was going to blog about. There was plan a while back – perhaps even a written one – but I’m afflicted with a curse that causes me to forget anything remotely plan-like the moment I sit down at a keyboard. Fortunately, I have a back-up plan: 4 Random Things where I place Fuckin’ in the centre of the entry title. 1. DENNIS FUCKIN’ LEHANE One of my favourite book stores is Brisbane’s Pulp Fiction, a speciality-store focused exclusively on Fantasy, SF, and Mystery/Crime fiction. When I first started patronising the store I stuck to the fantasy/SF side of things, revelling in the ability to pick up fiction from small presses and mid-list authors I wouldn’t ordinarily be able to track down. All that changed about…jeez, I don’t know, but a while back…and these days I tend to pick up a few things from the crime side of things. I’m a fan of the

PeterMBall 16/05/2012
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

6 Eclectic Thoughts

1. MY SECRET SHAME I’m going to share a secret: I actually like the taste of instant coffee. There are days when I prefer it to the real thing, especially since ordering the real thing can be a hit-and-miss affair that results in me drinking a horrible concoction created from burnt coffee grounds, urine, and the spiteful hate of people who kick puppies. Instant coffee is never great, but at the same time, it’s never really a disappointment either. It embraces the law of averages and settles for a long, slow arc of mediocrity and met expectations. This is not to say that I’m indiscriminate. There are some brands of instant than are better than others, and I’ll shy away from the worst offenders who seem to have taken the burnt-coffee-ground-urine-and-puppy-kicking-spite combination as their own particular flavour of choice. So yeah, me and instant coffee, we’re tight. In fact, I’m enjoying a cup right now as I type this, and it’s pretty

PeterMBall 11/05/2012
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Provocation

I’m flying out to Rockhampton at six AM tomorrow morning, so I really should be in bed right now. And I will be soon, I swear, but for this: earlier today I learned the latest Review of Australian Fiction is out, featuring stories by Kim Wilkins and Meg Vann. Perhaps this requires some context. Let me start again. One of the nice things about being a writer is meeting people you find yourself liking. This isn’t one of those things that happens immediately. In fact, it starts quite slowly: you spend a year or two meeting people you kind of like, or don’t like at all, and then suddenly you’re are a writing event of some kind and you stumble over a reader or fellow writer who you get along with quite well. And then you keep going to writing events, or you start hanging out with other writers, and these same people keep showing up again and again. This

PeterMBall 20/03/2012
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Ticking Things Off the To-Do List

I’m having something of a catch-up evening this evening. One of those nights where long un-answered email is finally responded to and long ignored tasks finally get ticked off the to-do list. On tonight’s list: book flights to Melbourne in two weeks; write up an invoice or two that needs to get mailed out; write a blog post. Two of three are done, and once I click post I get to parade around the house in triumph, confident in the fact that I have rocked the kasbah. Sadly, the presence of my flatmate means I’m no longer being literal when I say that. Still to do: respond to unanswered email; line up places to stay while in Melbourne; crit things; write things that are not blog posts. It’s a busy, ramshackle kind of evening, but it’s been a ramshackle kind of month thus far, so all things considered that makes a kind of sense. # I watched Midnight in Paris yesterday. Only,

PeterMBall 12/03/2012
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Let me put this out there from the beginning: I’m a totally fucking cranky cinema goer. I find it very hard to discuss films, even films I like, without veering into the territory of ranting. It’s not that I dislike film – quite the contrary – but the result is this kind of terminal disappointment as I encounter film and after film that just doesn’t quite excite me. It gets me into considerable trouble when I discuss films with people at work, because it frequently looks as though I dislike everything, when really I’m just perpetually disapointed by films that take no chances or lack a visual aesthetic or even, god help me, decide to go 3D. Also, I’m not a huge fan of realism. The more a film tries to simulate reality, the less interested I am. I will watch  some utter dreck and adore it simply because it’s trying to do something interesting, even when the story fills me with towering

PeterMBall 13/02/2012
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Stories told, Stories Consumed, and a link to Cats Sleeping

There was no story unlocked when I walked across the Kurilpa bridge this morning, which is a matter of some sorrow to me. I was counting on that moment today, since I’m looking askance at the second chapter of Claw and trying to figure out what’s going to go in there. I know some things, yes: corpses, cheerfully gloomy coroners, a modicum of angst. It’s just the details that go around that I’m struggling with at the moment, writing a paragraph or two before thinking, no, that’s not right, and going back to the well for a new idea. I’m sure there’s something coming, sooner or later, but it isn’t quite there yet. Everything that’s been written thus far is weighed down by the burden of history, calling back to Horn and Bleed, and the thing that made me happy about the draft of chapter one is how much less of that it does than the last time I tried to write

PeterMBall 09/02/2012
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Revisiting The Cure

Several years ago I owned The Cure’s Three Imaginary Boys on vinyl and it was one of my favourite things ever. I owned Faith on vinyl too, at least temporarily, although I suspect it got traded away in one of those poorly thought out relationships that sustained itself on angst, the novelty of having sex, and the trading of meaningful gifts instead of actually liking one another. Maybe it didn’t get traded, I can’t be sure, but if it did there would be some other treasure among my collection. There is paranoia that sets in at a certain stage of those types of relationship, a lingering fear that you’ll be the one who gave less and thus become beholden to someone you no longer really like. It’s only worse when you’re young and stupid and trying very hard to be intense about things, because intensity seems like something worth chasing. But I digress: we were speaking of the Cure. Albums

PeterMBall 06/02/2012
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Mostly About Things I’ve Read Online

I met Laura Goodin several years ago at a writers workshop. She was forthrightly American in many ways, despite being expatriated to Australia for several years now, and we frequently found ourselves coming from stories at very different angles. Despite her handicap as a non-native Australian, she wrote one of the finest SF cricket stories I’ve ever had the privilege of reading. Since then she’s been busy doing a series of impressive things – writing plays and opera’s, for example, and enrolling in PhD programs. She’s also published a story over on daily science fiction titled The Bicycle Rebellion and it’s rather sad in a sweet kind of way, and it’s perhaps one of the more intriguing stories I’ve seen from Laura over the years (which, considering her knack of publishing SF stories about Demon-pigs in BBQs and Futurism gone mad in magazines that don’t generally publish science fiction, is saying something). I first met Angela Slatter about…well, six weeks or so before I met

PeterMBall 07/12/2011
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Twenty-Six Hours of Melancholy

A Sweet and Pensive Sadness When I was in my second year of university we studied Hotel Sorrento, a play by the Australian playwright Hannie Rayson that was later turned into a film. One of the themes running through the play – one of many – was an exploration of melancholy, and two lines in particular remained with me some fifteen years after I first read it. The first was a female character asserting that men do not feel melancholy, that it’s a particularly female emotion. The second was the definition: a sweet and pensive sadness. A sweet and pensive sadness. I mean, fuck, how do you go past that, eh? It’s a beautifully expressed idea when you hear it at nineteen, and I was immediately smitten. I don’t remember how it happened, or where it happened, but I fell and I fell hard, in a very, melancholy, fuck yeah, that’s the stuff for me kind of way. I still

PeterMBall 24/10/2011
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

The Final Stage of the Long Goodbye

I put in my notice at the dreaded dayjob today. In eight days time, I shall be free. Free I tell you! I mean, sure, there’s a new dayjob coming, but I’m fairly sure I wont actually dread this one. # I’m still spending time away from the computer (and the house) in an effort to force myself to a) write, and b) mark assignments for the not-so-dreaded-and-sadly-almost-done dayjob. My absence from the internets will continue apace for another week, but to keep you amused here’s  a grab-bag of stuff to go look at. First, Christa Faust’s Hoodtown has just been made available on Kindle. I picked up a copy of this book several years ago and it immediately became one of *those* books. You know, one of the ones you adore with a fierce and hardcore love that makes you skittish about recommending it to anyone, because if they don’t love it you can no longer respect them as

PeterMBall 09/06/2011