Again, I've been neglecting the blog - for some good (and one bad) reasons.

Firstly, lots going on in my life right at the moment - looking for a new housemate (one day I'll build the housemate tester app that I've always idly thought would be fun), bringing in the money (got a new job, yay) and generally filling in the days.

The bad reason is that I can't figure out how to archive my previous posts so I'm trying to keep it under some sort of control.
I follow the instructions to the letter, set up a folder on my website to put stuff in but my screen seems to be missing the crucial archive button when it all comes down to it. One day I'll get it.

Been thinking about putting another blog together about my experiences in the online dating world as well. Sad but true. I've been doing it for a few weeks now though so the backtracking might make it all a bit hard.

The media is still pretty much the same, enjoying (guiltily) the new Big Brother series and it's little twists and turns. Frustrated by the random acts of programming perpetrated by the regional commercial networks in Canberra - anything after 10.30 is shunted every which way. (Except perhaps Buffy and Angel, Channel 7/Prime seem to be somewhat more on the ball - but still screw around endlessly with Futurama so shouldn't be too smug)

Channel 10 - the network that plays The Simpsons - had a cute technical difficulties sign come up last night when they were having problems.
It was simply the 10 logo with the word Doh underneath

Hmmm, I've been a little lax in the old blogging department - mainly dealing with life stuff I guess (focussing on the quest for a new housemate and job), haven't even been delving into much media or pop culture lately.

Except films I guess - still making good use of the film group. Last week I saw The Tracker (Rolf De Heer tells a great story), Til Human voices wake us (beautifully shot and great soundtrack, at times I thought it took itself too seriously but then again, we don't make many films like this in Australia so why not), The Bourne Identity (not bad for a spy action kind of thing) and the other night finally got to see Spirited Away (some beautiful artwork and freaky characters).

Some very interesting links to articles about Google on Dee's blog of late, always worth a look generally but these link in nicely to the whole media blah blah point of Brown Couch so are particularly of interest.

I saw Spy Kids 2 yesterday - one of the great things about working for the ANU film group is being able to pop into screenings at will for nada - and enjoyed it almosts as much as the first one. Seriously. Robert Rodriguez (Think El Mariachi, Desperado, From Dusk til Dawn, The Faculty) has a great touch when it comes to kids films - high energy, fantastic imagination, incredible art direction and a great fun vibe.

Of course, I shouldn't give Rodriguez all the credit for this, film making is a hugely collaborative effort however society more often than not personifies the good/bad traits of something in one figurehead so I guess it's just something we are used to. Think Osama Bin Laden for example - now the worlds image of "terrorism", a simply defined evil individual making it easier to hate someone that look deeper into the issues of the day. (Not that I agree with anything that he or his crew are responsible for, of course)

As much as I hate spam, I'm finding the different ways the subject headings are used quite interesting, particularly the way they seem to be adapting to increasing viewer resistance. Fortunately (I think) I don't need to increase the size of my member or meet the horny housewife "next door", to claim my "free pda" (I've won hundreds of these, there must be a huge warehouse somewhere chock full of these prizes unclaimed by cynics) or find out about cheap ink cartridges (by far the most prevalent of my spam - they must know my mum) or finance options (the information age is really letting these people down if they think I'm worth giving a loan to). The obvious headers are, well, obvious - it's the trickier ones that I'm enjoying. I seem to be getting a lot more ones starting with Re: - just a shame that the rest of it is so completely unlike me. More on this another time anyway.

So I checked out David Caesar's new film (well not exactly new but most recent) - Dirty Deeds at my regular cheapo film hangout, the ANU Film Group (Well, it should be a regular hang out, it's where I work as a projectionist from time to time - incidentally, this will matter to no-one but me, but David Stratton said I was the most important person there when I was introduced to him last week at "David Stratton night" - so ner)

Anyhoo, Dirty Deeds is a great fun, ocker crime flick set in late '60s Sydney, revolving around the poker machine trade. Lots of crazy crash zooms, cool cars and people wearing pork pie hats (I believe people should wear more hats today). Definitely worth a look - though be warned of the pig shoot at the end if you are on the squeamish side.

It makes some nice comments about the Vietnam war as well - crazy gangster Sal has an interesting theory on who was behind it and why (all about selling smack) and there is a nice parallel drawn between Vietnam and the Sydney underworld of the day.

Four stars.

Haven't caught much media of late (depending on how you define it - conventional media I guess) - so for me it's all a bit War? What war?.

Interviewed for a great job with an educational multimedia company on Wednesday out in Deakin (a couple of buildings down from Sasha's work ironically).Would be a dream job and hopefully I'm in with a shot however my lack of commercial experience doesn't help so much. Fingers crossed.

Projecting My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Birthday Girl tonight, I've seen ...Wedding but hope to catch most of Birthday Girl.
I'll tell you about the Projectionists life another time - it's not simply sitting watching movies though.

Well I finally found a reference to the death of the ABC cameraman (Paul Moran) which mentioned the fact that he was one of five people killed when a taxi pulled up at a road block and exploded - it was in the Canberra Times.

It's a little depressing looking at the media at the moment, just pages and pages and hours and hours of war war war. The traditional media maxim of "If it bleeds, it leads" (which really is quite disgusting when you think about it - check out Bowling for Columbine to put this into perspective) is getting quite the workout.

On other media matters, I've just finished reading a very interesting book by Andrew Olle, the late and great ABC journalist on the art of interviewing. It is a mixture of transcripts of interviews that he did with people ranging from Brett Whitely to Bob Hawke to Anita Roddick and his thoughts on the process as well as a running commentary of what he was thinking at different stages of these interviews. Fascinating stuff.
It's called Andrew Olle on interviewing and is published by ABC books. (1992). I picked it up at Dickson library here in the ACT but there are probably other copies floating about.

Keeping to the war/invasion news theme - it's been interesting (though perhaps not so surprising) to note that in all the coverage given to the death of an ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) cameraman in Iraq at the hand of a taxi driving suicide bomber (which is a horrible thing, don't get me wrong), I have seen no mention whatsoever in Australian coverage of the fact that four other innocent people were killed as well. That bit of information I had to glean from BBC coverage.

At what point in our cultural history did the role of the media become so important in the stories that they cover? I blame postmodernism.

Well it seems like there is so much going on at the moment I don't know where to start however this blog is supposed to be about rants and raves and the world at large so perhaps I'll start global and move to the local and more personal in time.

There's a "war" on if you didn't notice (I'm not normally one to use quote marks to signify that I dispute something's title but I'm feeling pretty confused about this whole thing so they seem somehow appropriate). I'd always thought of wars as something that the so-called good guys didn't make it their business to start. Yet here we are. I know it's not entirely an issue of American imperialism - though this is what most people object to deep down at the end of the day (well that and the needless killing I guess) but it is certainly symptomatic of some screwed up thinking over there.

There is a fair case to put that Saddam Hussein is a genuinely nasty person - what with the chemical attacks on the Kurds in Northern Iraq and the fact that his people would probably be better off without him. Is this enough of a reason to justify invading one country and not another though - Zimbabwe, Burma and probably another 20 or 30 that don't have the world's second largest oil reserves. There are too many questions to ask and given the foreign policy (to put it nicely) of the US in the last 100 years, the answers don't look good.

As for the matter of supporting troops but opposing the war - this I don't particularly get either. Just because someone believes that they are doing the right thing for their country doesn't excuse acting in opposition to common sense and morality. No-one is forced to join the military and no-one is prevented from leaving on principle - if an invasion is wrong and you participate, you are equally wrong. Harsh words, perhaps but that's my 20 cents.

Media coverage of the war has been interesting - it's always easy to sit and watch the blanket coverage, flicking from channel to channel when it is at it's peak (much quieter of late now that it is apparent that this is going to last much longer than expected) in the quest for some new insight or information. How stage managed does it all appear? The western military really appears to have learnt lessons from the last few conflicts in the impact media coverage can have on public support. Minimal footage of death and maiming to be seen, lot's of "Aren't we so big" military hardware and bombs going off in Baghdad. No-one seems very interested in political ramifications in surrounding countries either, something which I would've considered fairly important given that at the back of most peoples mind is how much this is going to (understandably) piss off a lot of Muslims who have dealt with Western Imperialism for the better part of 200 years.

The Oscars were interesting as much in what was not said (for fear of losing some very nervous advertisers) as in what Mike Moore had to say. Media coverage of the reaction to his speech - referring to the fictitious war of a fictitious president (check out his website www.michaelmoore.com where there will no doubt be more info) - focussed heavily on how he was booed off the stage but from where I was sitting, it seemed to be 50/50 boos to cheers for the most part.

Moving on, as no doubt your mental diet is already bloated with war rants and raves - Well done Australia for trumping the cricket World Cup . It almost got to the point of making proceedings a little dull but you have to respect the work of Ricky Ponting and the Aussies- the greatest thing to come out of Tasmania since Bob Brown and Boony - in not losing a match.

Having a bit of mental meander, as one does watching the cricket, it struck me that format for scoring in cricket and the differences therein between Australia and other cricketing nations may in someway reflect something of the ethos of each nation. To be clearer, the format is either X runs scored for Y wickets (players) lost (the case in England, Sth Africa and I should've checked my facts as to where else) or it is X wickets lost for Y runs scored (as is the case in Australia and New Zealand). To my mind, the former suggests that the runs scored are the most important factor and that the players (and how many you have left) are secondary. Ultimately the team is dispensible in the pursuit of the wealth of runs. The Australian system of focussing instead on how many wickets have fallen stands as a reminder of the importance of each member of the team in amassing the runs and seems much more in keeping with concepts of mateship. It seems to me a format more grounded in the working class (if you want to apply some kind of Marxist analysis) while the English system is rooted in the bourgeois. (And people think cricket is boring)

Getting to the personal - the weekend also marked the breakup of one of my longest relationships, that with Sasha.
Not sure how much I want to say about this right now, still feeling a bit odd about the whole thing really, it was no real surprise to me as the candle had been dwindling for some time and there wasn't even that much passion in the denouement, suggesting that although it was quite saddening, it had simply run out of puff. Perhaps I'll say more later.

So, why Brown Couch?

If you've glanced over the Brown Couch website you'll have some idea of what the show was about but there's more to it than that. (I like to think)

There's an ideology, a purpose of sorts - well there are probably quite a few but that's neither here nor there.

The name came about at a time when I was in my early twenties, living in a string of mildly shabby share houses with a bunch of other young twentysomethings with similar interests - namely sitting on the couch, drinking, smoking, watching crap telly and listening to good music, talking shite and having fun. Perhaps it was mostly a Melbourne thing but pretty well every share house I visited at that time (and many times since) seemed to have a brown couch. Given the dynamics of share housing - young relatively poor students, unemployed, etc move out of home and inherit whatever furniture they can from where-ever it is no longer wanted - I guess it makes sense that there was a surplus of Seventies furniture floating about. (Brown must have been huge back then)

There is another side to the Brown Couch name - it is rooted much more in the wanky just started uni and learning about cool new stuff vein.
In discovering the Dada art movement (a post World War One antiart kind of art), I loved the fact that the name of the movement (Dada, in case you have a memory like a goldfish) came from a child's word for Rocking horse. In some way, Brown Couch seemed to have a similar feel.

There are probably other reasons for the name (there usually are) but none leap to mind right now.

Brown Couch is about looking at the world and the ways that we look at (and listen to ) it.
It's about being able to have a laugh and put things in perspective
It's about celebrating ideas and provoking thoughts (at it's best - sometimes it's just about bad taste and having fun)
It's about the media and communication, where we get our ideas and our information and who controls these things and what we can do about it

It's about time I took my medication and had a liedown

The Brown Couch tv show lasted only ten or so episodes made over a couple of years (though we were one of the first programmes to air) on Channel ThirtyOne in Melbourne but the dream lives on and there is still lots more to say and do.

In time, Brown Couch will be a website with information on media, politics and other stuff which is interesting, fun, amusing and hopefully meaningful. Brown Couch will also be behind tv shows, radio, film and whatever else comes along - including this blog. (Thanks to Dee for the inspiration to start blogging - check out her day at her blog )

This is the plan.

Hello and welcome to The Brown Couch

Hmmm, where to start - do I begin with some well worded and mildly provocative yet ultimately thin one liner a la Carrie Bradshaw or perhaps instead try to sum events in my life up with a cheesy homily in the great Doogie Howser tradition. So many cliches to live and so little time.

Perhaps something along the lines of - I've enjoyed reading blogs for a long time now but I always thought they were made up - until recently that is...

Here's a novel thought - maybe I'll just be myself
I'll get back to you on that.

Col.