Waiting is tedious, but exciting Only 12 days left to go before we leave. Man this is tedious. I just want to go. We've finally booked a place to stay for the first month - it's a serviced apartment in the Mid-Levels. We're staying at the Lily Court apartment (building #3 on the map). So for the first month in HK we'll be riding the escalators.  ¶ 7:41 AM (0) comments links to this post

  Mythbusters! "Mythbusters" is a great show - and if you want to know a bit more about it, read Adam and Jamie's answers to questions sent in by Slashdot readers.  ¶ 7:08 AM (0) comments links to this post

  Racist SMS spam Since the riots in Cronulla the other weekend, there have been reports
of people in other states receiving SMS messages urging them to take part in similar actions in their own states. Tonight I received one. It came from someone called "CVG". This is what it said:

21/12/05 08:00PM CALL TO ARMS, join supporters of Cronulla Youth Gang by showing presence at StKilda beach, Saturday 1pm. This is your right to retain your land. *** End ***

Now, obviously I have no intention of going and doing something as obviously shit as attend a racist rally. I have to wonder though at the reasoning behind choosing St Kilda beach as the venue. For a start St Kilda isn't a very big beach. It's usually very crowded, but not many people go in the water because basically it's filthy. Walk around in bare feet and you're a good chance of picking up a needlestick injury. A lot of the most enthusiastic users of the beach in summer are European backpackers, and the rest of the beach population is VERY multicultural. Not exactly the most conducive environment for fostering blind hatred and fear. I suspect whoever sent that message has never been near St Kilda beach in their life.

So what's the right response to this kind of crap? I suppose there will be some people who will try and organise a counter-protest, and in fact last week I also got an email from someone trying to organise an anti-racist rally at St Kilda. Counter-protests are all well and good, but in the end I tend to think that the best thing to do is get on with life. Bullies always look for a reaction, so the best thing to do is not give them one. I can't think of anything more disheartening for a fascist than being ignored. They spend all their lives getting ready for a race war that never comes. No wonder they all freaked out when the Cronulla thing happened. For once they seemed to be getting somewhere. It must have given them the shits big time when the Bra Boys and Keyser Trad met up on the beach the next day and said "Everybody - cool it."

So this Saturday at 1pm I won't be going to St Kilda - not because I'm afraid something will happen, but because I don't want those idiots to feel that something IS happening. Everyone stay away, and they can have the entire beach to themselves. They won't know what to do with it and after a while they'll get bored and go home, feeling slightly foolish and embarrassed. Idiots.  ¶ 7:37 PM (0) comments links to this post

  Anyone want a cat? Well, not long to go now. In 20 days we will be in Hong Kong. Here is a list of the things we haven't done yet:

• pack;
• rent out our house;
• organise storage for our stuff;
• book a place to stay in HK;

And last, but most importantly:

• find a new home for our cat, Milly.

She's very cute, and she's very well-behaved. Anyone want a cat?

  ¶ 11:52 AM (0) comments links to this post

  Trolling Alan Jones In the Fairfax papers today there's an article by David Marr describing the role of Alan Jones (2GB talkback radio host) in promoting the day of action at Cronulla on Sunday 11th December.

Marr notes that a lot of the emails Jones read out were anonymous, but designed to grab Alan's attention so he'd read them on air. So he did. And over the week people got fired up enough to go and assault anyone who didn't look white enough. Meanwhile another article describes the role of racist groups in encouraging and fomenting the violence. I don't think it's too much of a jump to conclude that some of the anonymous email Jones read out on air were sent to him by those same racist groups.

Alan Jones - you were trolled.  ¶ 6:40 AM (0) comments links to this post

  First democracy, then fish Hmm, turns out there is a downside to living in HK - poisoned fish. Still, there is also an accreditation scheme now, so perhaps things will get better. I wonder if this is possible because HK is partly democratic?  ¶ 12:03 PM (0) comments links to this post

  Democracy Looks like we've picked an interesting time to move to Hong Kong - 100,000 people turned out on Sunday to demand full democracy in Hong Kong. Of course estimating crowd size is quite hard and depending on who's paying you to count, your total might vary - EastSouthWestNorth has a detailed analysis of crowd estimates.  ¶ 8:09 AM (0) comments links to this post

  They only knew three chords Bah - the Sex Pistols have been inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame (which is a ridiculous concept anyway), and today in The Australian an editorial resurrects the old saw that "they only knew three chords" (near the bottom of the page).

I'm quite tired of seeing this written about bands, and so I sent the following to the editor:

Dear Editor

It's time for this silly phrase to stop - "they only knew three chords". You used it today in your editorial about the Sex Pistols being inducted into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame, and I've seen it used elsewhere about the Ramones, the Clash and various other bands. It's a neat way of describing simple music but the truth is somewhat different. Sure Sid Vicious was pretty inept BASS PLAYER (not guitarist as you wrote), but by the time he was in the band they'd stopped writing songs anyway. Glen Matlock was actually quite musical, and his Beatle-esque basslines gave their songs the pop hooks that carried them into the charts.

For the record:
"Anarchy In the UK" = chords G, F, E, D, Em, Dm, Em7, F#m - that's 8 chords.

In addition - pretty much all of the rock music of the late fifties and early sixties only used three chords - 1,4 and 5 in any key. This was because all of that music was derived from the rhythm and blues 12 bar pattern, which only used those three chords. This includes Elvis. Later the Beatles started introducing passing chords, which is why their music was a bit more complex and 'poppy'.

It would be nice if journalists stopped being so lazy, but hey, that's what they're paid for I suppose...  ¶ 8:48 AM (3) comments links to this post