So I’m crossing full time blogger off the potential career list.

And thing [...]]]> So I’m no longer writing regularly for the USSC blog.  Strangely, as soon as blogging was a “job”, I found it amazingly difficult to do.  I wasn’t nearly as inspired, and not at all articulate.  The moment it became a must-do, it was something un-fun.

So I’m crossing full time blogger off the potential career list.

And thing have changed. I’m back at uni this semester. I got promoted. I’m busy. And I’ve been thinking differently- less focused on the short term, and more trying to focus on some big ideas  That’s required a lot of learning and a lot of thinking.  So I haven’t been much one for writing, or even much one for reading short-form writing… I’ve been losing myself in books about history, politics and philosophy.  And it’s been great.

But I’ve missed Naysayers, and so I’m back. Hopefully with some interesting new ideas…

Watching the soccer tonight made me realise, I’ve never told the story of me, the Sydney Swans, and 2005. Regardless of what has happened in the interim, that year was more important to me than I could imagine.

My parents- nay, my whole family- moved overseas when I was [...]]]> Sport matters. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.

Watching the soccer tonight made me realise, I’ve never told the story of me, the Sydney Swans, and 2005. Regardless of what has happened in the interim, that year was more important to me than I could imagine.

My parents- nay, my whole family- moved overseas when I was 19. I was alone, and yearning for community.  All the communities I’d known- my friends, my local area, my church- failed to meet me where I was.  I needed a sense of belonging, and none of them provided that.

And then, not long after they left, I found the Swans.

I’ve actually written about it in a book, of all things, about Collingwood.  About the day I found footy.  I was lonely and sad.  I’d been to games before, but that day, at Telstra Stadium, I was sadder than I could imagine. The Swans losing meant a lot to me. I cried in the car, waiting for the rain to be light enough for me to drive home.  I wasn’t sure if I was crying for the Swans, or for me.

Dad came back for the preliminary final. Well, not for the preliminary final, but he came with me, to Telstra Stadium, and gave me a nice new gortex jacket to wear to games.  We lost. I was sad.  Later, I was kind of glad we didn’t win that year, because I wouldn’t have understood it.

We lost, but I decided it would be the Swans. I invested.  I became a member- and bought a spare membership- in 2004. It was a fairly successful season.  We did ok. But I didn’t quite find the community I needed.   Our success was fun- as was my first trip to Melbourne for our unsuccessful elimination final- and I learnt.

But 2005 was the year.  I made friends with the delightful Bec, through uni.  We’ve since largely grown apart, but her friendship and companionship that year was invaluable.  I moved seats, closer to my friends, and Bec came to sit near me.  It was an amazing year.

Early, it was disappointing. We didn’t have many early wins.  But that was when I met Bec, who’d recently lost her Grandfather.  I introduced her to my not-so-famous footy cookies, biscuits designed to herald the Swans’ success.  I decided the two were linked.  Bec joined me.  Rapidly, we developed a tradition that was real and meaningful.

We did enough to make the finals.  Despite the power of the biscuits, we lost at Subiaco to West Coast.  The next week, we faced Geelong at the SCG.  With three quarters down, we looked sure to lose.  I’d planned my off season in the 3/4 time break.

But then magic, and Nick Davis, came to save us.  We won.  We made it to the preliminary final.

The next week was the preliminary final.  If we won that, we’d make the Grand Final.

Now Grand Final tickets are rarer than Hen’s Teeth.  Despite a membership, I had preferred, not guaranteed, grand final admission.  I knew such tickets would be like gold.  So, at 4pm, before the Preliminary Final even started, I lined up for Grand Final tickets.

It was the perfect time.  I was third in line.  The first had arrived at 9am, the second at 10am.  I got there at 4.  Fifteen minutes after I arrived, the fourth rocked up.  Perfect timing.  By the time the game began, at 7:30, there were about 40 in line.  By the time it ended and the Swans had won, it had swelled to well over 100.  We spent the night celebrating and singing.  It was community.

We sat all night, waiting to claim our tickets.  It was easy to do.  We were happy.  It was a happy time.  Since 1933, we hadn’t won a premiership and had played in few finals.  Two days later, we secured our tickets.  It was bliss.

I flew down on Thursday.  I cried when I met Bec in Melbourne.  We went to the Parade and did all the thing fans of a Grand Final team should do.

And then the game.  I remember little.  I remember the nerves. I didn’t see Leo Barry’s mark.  I didn’t hear the siren.  But I cried when I knew it was over.  I sobbed. It was more than I could bare.  After 73 years, we had done it.

And then the party started.  What a party it was.

I woke, from the reverie, some weeks later, an honours thesis due frightfully soon.  But it was magical.  Every second was magical.  My pitiful Hons mark was more than compensated by the greatness of the weeks that followed the premiership.

Things have changed, that’s for sure.  But that premiership will live forever in my memory, and the memory of thousands of others.  It was special.  What an extraordinary privilege it was to witness the 2005 premiership.

So sitting here tonight, I have to echo the fact that sport matters.  It matter because people chose to invest in it.  And even though Aussie Rules is clearly a superior game, people around the world have chosen to invest in soccer.  And that means that it matters.

Long before Association Football was codified, Australian Rules set down its laws and made the code official.  And it was a peculiarly Australian code: one that allowed for ambiguities and differences.  It didn’t even have a standard field size.  Nor does it, to this day.  The beauty of [...]]]> I love Australian Rules Football, because it is the Australian game.

Long before Association Football was codified, Australian Rules set down its laws and made the code official.  And it was a peculiarly Australian code: one that allowed for ambiguities and differences.  It didn’t even have a standard field size.  Nor does it, to this day.  The beauty of Australian Rules football is its very ambiguity.

And so I watch the Football tonight, and I’ll likely watch it when the Socceroos play early in the hours of Monday morning.  I grasp its vastness and its significance.  But I can’t love it, they way I do Aussie Rules, because Aussie Rules is our game. It’s not a game adopted from an imperial power. It’s not a game adapted from a foreign force.

It is our game. It is what we do best. It is what we did first. And forever, God willing, it will be our game.

Those of us with computer skills equivalent to those of a second-grader will still be able to access what we want.  The word is still out on whether it will massively slow down our internet (though I suspect it will).  And while the range of things [...]]]> Let’s face it: Conroy’s proposed internet filter is unlikely to work.

Those of us with computer skills equivalent to those of a second-grader will still be able to access what we want.  The word is still out on whether it will massively slow down our internet (though I suspect it will).  And while the range of things the board is allowed to filter is astonishingly vast, chances are there won’t be a huge amount of overreach.  There is some validity in saying there has been a fair amount of fear-mongering around the filter.*

What has been so enlightening about the filter debate, and what is so frustrating about the policy, is what it illustrates about the Australian party system and how it undermines representative democracy.

The proposed filter is deeply unpopular: that much is abundantly apparent.  And its unpopularity is bipartisan.  Despite the fact most of the electorate, and many of the Labor party politicians themselves, are against the filter, the party has walked in lockstep.  I have winced, watching my own MP, Tanya Plibersek, straining to support a policy she clearly does not believe in, and which is clearly unpopular with her electorate.  The dog whistle “I don’t really support thing”, which Labor supporters have been parroting, is completely redundant when the policy still gets the votes from those doing the whistling.

Because a faction of the Labor party has gained a certain amount of power, and that faction -or one member thereof- has decided the internet filter is the way to go, the party as a whole is alienating many in its natural voter base, assuming they won’t go elsewhere.   And such is the nature of our party system: loyalty to party has trumped loyalty to the voters, and the parties have smugly ignored the clearly-expressed will of the people continually.  They have enacted or sought to enact major reform on which they did not campaign- providing no mandate- and have failed to enact the reform on which they did campaign, which is clearly the will of the Australian public.

The party feels free to pursue its own agenda, with little reference to voters.  In seats such as Plibersek’s, which have been largely safe for a long time, this didn’t seem dangerous.  But with Independents and the Greens picking up votes, its increasingly evident that this approach is alienating voters.  As the coalition government learnt through WorkChoices, you can’t bulldoze an unpopular policy through and keep winning.  The voters looked to Labor instead.  And now they’re looking somewhere else.

It is not so much for the voters to expect representatives to actually represent them, rather than simply toeing a party line.  Party discipline ought to be secondary to representing the best interest of the electorate.  For all its many problems, the US House of Representatives does have members who are far more closely connected to their own electorates.

At the moment, Australian national politics is fundamentally non-representative.  It minimises the capacity of electorates to persuade their local member to vote one way or another.  It also robs members of their capacity to use their discretion, rendering moot the point that one can vote for a representative because one trusts their decision-making and their values.  Rather, Australian politics allows voters to choose between two national party platforms, and even then, those platforms are often ignored.

The internet filter has shed light on what’s really wrong with Australian politics.  Given the recent polling, perhaps the major parties should sit up and pay attention.

*Don’t get me wrong, I’m still fiercely against it, and believe it to be unconstitutional as it restricts political speech, but I’m less worried about what it would likely do as opposed to what it has the potential to do.

First is a google search story:

And this was my Party In The USA photo montage. Because I [...]]]> I forgot to post these! Here are two videos I made about doing UCWIP in DC.

First is a google search story:

And this was my Party In The USA photo montage. Because I had to.

So to celebrate:

I didn’t need these things I didn’t need them, oh The point was hard to pass A mediocre past So I shed my clothes, I shed my flesh Down to the bone and burned the rest I didn’t need these things I didn’t need them, oh Took them all to bits, turned ‘em outside in And [...]]]> Epic closure tonight. And pfft, I so win.

So to celebrate:

I didn’t need these things
I didn’t need them, oh
The point was hard to pass
A mediocre past
So I shed my clothes, I shed my flesh
Down to the bone and burned the rest
I didn’t need these things
I didn’t need them, oh
Took them all to bits, turned ‘em outside in
And I left them on the floor and ran for dear life for the door, oh

Sometime, waay back in 2006, a friend of mine emailed me and invited me to come and see her band.  I couldn’t actually go that night, I was working, but I did go along to their next gig, with my little brother.  It was at a dodgy, smelly [...]]]> Stop me if I’ve told you this story before…

Sometime, waay back in 2006, a friend of mine emailed me and invited me to come and see her band.  I couldn’t actually go that night, I was working, but I did go along to their next gig, with my little brother.  It was at a dodgy, smelly pub, somewhere near central station.  They were opening for a weird cover band.  There weren’t many of us in the room.

And I think they’d played about two songs before I realised they were amazing.

Since, I’ve morphed from friend to fan.  I’ve been to so many gigs, I’ve genuinely lost count (there are at least 20 I can remember).  But more than that, I have measured out my life in Cloud Control songs… So much has happened, so much has changed, and each song is pegged, to me, to a time and place along those years.

Mexico makes me laugh and sing and think of my lovely Mexican housemate, Yvonne, whom I lived with for a year in 07 and 08.  Ashes is the song I listened to, from the bootleg, in the Summer In Which I Had No Direction.  In Your World is a road trip with friends that I took in early 08. Vintage Books is a boy who hurt me. Buffalo County is the night I wore my new shoes to a show at the Hopetoun, that made me tall and my feet bleed, and gave me the scars on my ankle.

And Death Cloud.  Well, Death Cloud is 2009, which is at once the best and worst year of my life thus far.  New friends, old friends, incredible opportunities.  Pretty shitty lows, tears. Going to the White House (though that, technically, was 2010). Throughout, “It’s a pattern, baby” has been both a literal and metaphoric refrain.

Their debut album was released today. It’s not without a note of pride that I can say it’s amazing.  Like, mind-blowingly so. Every song is fantastic.  I’m amazed at how many of the words I know just from going to shows (or maybe not so amazed…).  The ones I didn’t know were a new delight, though.  The play count on There’s Nothing In The Water We Can’t Fight is already frighteningly high.

I can’t wait to hear all these songs, old and new, at the album launch tonight.  It’s going to be amazing.