Dried up

When I was in the US, I started getting a lot of Google surveys again. Now that I'm back in Australia, they've stopped. The US economy is like the Australian economy on steroids. It's really hard to tell how much is smoke and mirrors. It's a weird thing going from giant empty grocery stores (after hours - open 24/7) with a zillion strange products (many of which you'd be ill-advised to consume regularly), to my neighborhood IGA in Australia, where for some reason, there's currently not even grape juice on the shelf. Did Australia make all of its grapes into wine? What the hell is with this country?!

Broken, painful system

Readers may have noticed, I spent the last two months in Indiana. It was not related to the highly contested Senate seat of Democrat Joe Donnelly; it was due to the death of my father. Of course the television was on during much of my time in Indiana, up until the 3:45 a.m. viewing of Fox News while waiting for the airport shuttle to ferry me out of Trumpistan.

The first hint that I was in a political battleground didn't come through The Tube, but via YouTube. Apparently the location detectors of my devices indicated I had entered a zone flush with advertising revenue, and so it began. Prior to my visit, I didn't know that Indiana had a Democratic Senator whose name was Joe Donnelly. My last update of Indiana politics was around 2013 when long-time Republican Senator and Obama mentor Richard Lugar was thrown out of office in favor of someone from the Tea Party. That'll teach anyone with political experience to mentor a young (black?) Senator from a neighboring state. Look where that went?!

And so, as if political ads weren't already abundant enough, the Supreme Court had ruled in Citizens United v. FEC that even more money should be available for political speech. Imagine: you're sitting in your easy chair, watching news about the latest shootings, home invasions, freakish weather, and foreign threats, and you're eagerly waiting for the commercial break so you can learn about a new medication for depression or better adult diapers to replace the uncomfortable ones you've been wearing. Oh, and those delicious menu items - the crunchy lettuce, tasty tomatoes, and 100% American beef that's piping hot and ready to be cooked on demand just up the street. Ah, domestic bliss.

But no. No commercials about depression; no adult diapers; no crunchy lettuce and juicy ripe tomatoes floating in space ready to land on a succulent burger. No, no, no. What you get is an ad for candidate A - CANDIDATE A! CANDIDATE A!!!! No. No time to think - with micro-second precision, you jump to the ad for candidate B - CANDIDATE B! CANDIDATE B!!! And just as you start to think, "huh - Candidate A says, but Candidate B says" NO! Another ad. CANDIDATE A IS UNAMERICAN!!! And another... CANDIDATE B BEATS HIS WIFE! - commercial breaks seem to be long enough for four - two on each side because... fair!

Does the hammering of FOUR carefully engineered, emotional political ads enamor you with either candidate? While initially amusing and falsely illuminating, carry that forward to every commercial break for two months and what do you have? Wow - candidates sure need a lot of money these days to bludgeon the voter into thinking that democracy is awfully smelly. Come election day we have a citizenry that holds its nose, voting at emotional gunpoint, and longing for commercials about the latest depression medication and adult diapers. Please. PLEASE NO MORE POLITICAL ADS!!! I'll vote! I'll do anything - JUST MAKE THEM STOP!!!

Breath - the movie.

Per Fay's choice, saw the movie Breath last night. It is a) a surf film and b) a male adolescent coming of age story.
Unlike some other surf films I've seen, this one gives you a lot more feeling of being in the water - not as a heroic conquerer, but more being tossed at the mercy of the forces of nature and "do I really want to get into that roiling mess?" The time spent in that ambivalence is greater than the time spent showing someone gracefully carving a wave. There was a point where Fay said "I can't watch this" and that wasn't about someone wiping out on a wave, but someone deciding to jump into water where they could very well drown.

The cinematography and Australian scenery are classically stunning; the water is displayed in more moods than most surf films. The scenes could have been anywhere along the coast, but happened to be around Peaceful Bay Western Australia; turf of author Tim Winton. The coming of age part is described by Junkee's review as "...A Movie Made For Middle-Aged White Guys And Literally No One Else" Awww... it wasn't that bad, but as a slightly post-middle-age White Guy, it's hard for me to judge. I was a bit disturbed at the inclusion of a dangerous sex kink, but it did help fill out the melancholic depth of one of the characters, as well as the overall sometimes sadness of life.

I was wondering how much was actually in the book; Variety says "...the sexual initiation feels a tad formulaic in narrative terms, even if Winton labors a bit too hard to avoid cliche, introducing a kinky aspect to Eva’s neediness that perhaps introduces more grown-up mess than this story really needs." Although since Winton wrote both the book and contributed to the screenplay, that still doesn't reveal whether the book has a more integrated plotline. In spite of the film being set somewhere radically different from my youth, the interplay of characters was very familiar and, yes for an, um, older white guy, provoked reminiscing. I had to explain to Fay what BB guns were (not from the movie; from my childhood). Sidenote: I think the Junkee review was written by someone who has no appreciation for water.

Noticing the invisible

I just hung up from a phone call, and a few seconds later, thought "wait a minute! That person didn't have an Australian accent?!" When I lived in the United States, I'd notice if someone had a strong regional accent. Now that I've been in Australia for five years, when I run into someone who might have an American or Canadian accent, it doesn't even hit my consciousness until later. My doctor doesn't have an Austalian accent. Her name is Indian, and she's mentioned relatives in the UK, but her accent isn't British either (and I haven't even thought to ask). On my last visit, she used a word or two that had a tiny hint of Australian, but not enough to indicate immersion from birth. There's a guy I met through volunteering who grew up in the same Sydney neighborhood as my wife, but his Australian accent is so thick I frequently have to ask him to repeat himself. My wife's parents spoke Greek, but her accent isn't Greek, it's only mildly Australian.