Wondering: Is good spelling just a form of social control?

Riding to work this morning past a government building known by some as Galactica, I noticed some graffiti on the side that said "gang-bang your colleages".

Now I charitably assumed that the graffitist was talking about a completely consensual act and was in fact being somehow intelligently subversive - you don't generally see the word "colleagues" in low-brow graffiti after all - and inwardly bemoaned the fact that this subversion was diminished by the fact that they had misspelled "colleagues"

Which started me thinking - sure, good spelling is a key component of communication and sharing ideas and information as it helps to avoid confusion over the intended word. But what if near enough is good enough?

It would be easy to introduce a slippery-slope argument here and ask where does it end (and this is something I don't have an answer for) but surely intent is sometimes just as important as correct use of language and grammatical structure? What are we losing out on by diminishing our view of someone's ideas because they missed a letter or two?

Is there, underlying all this, some unseen, unspoken pressure to conform? Maybe we need to have a fair degree of commonality to function better as a society but what if this stifles new ways of seeing things?

This lead on to thoughts about how people have been eternally complaining about the deterioration of language - the rise of text speak and leet-speak, Americanisation of vocabulary, the "verbing" of nouns and so on. Much of which suggests a natural evolution of language - partially emerging from the expansion of ideas that the cyber-sea of information has brought us, partially coming from a need to be seen to have new ideas and perhaps also consciously coming as a form of rebellion, a rejection of the forms that have come before. (Thinking particularly about leet-speak here I guess, with it's heavily keyboard oriented shifts and the substitution of numbers for letters and randomisation of capitals)

Is leet-speak freer or is it bound by the same rules and conformities - if you started bandying around terms like nube instead of newb or n00b, would you be ridiculed or rewarded?

Funny the way the mind wanders on a bike ride. (Personally I like good spelling but I can't help wonder if it's something I've been conditioned into)

Playing: songs for Lost Highway

Adelaide Paul Kelly A to Z master - A & B 3:53
True Believer Silver Ray This Is Silver Ray 8:14
Still Alive Portal The Orange Box 2:56
The Money Train Nick Cave & Warren Ellis The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford 2:38
The Shape Is In A Trance Thurston Moore Trees Outside The Academy 4:39
Fortune Teller Robert Plant & Alison Krauss Raising Sand 4:31
Gubu II Muyngarnbi Songs from Walking with spirits 2:37
Memory Lane Elliott Smith Acoustic 3 2:28
Pocket The Clouds Penny Century 2:21
Cormina The Devastations Coal 3:54
Hold on, hold on Neko Case Acoustic 3 2:41
Hotel California Gipsy Kings The Big Lebowski 5:47
Free You Art Of Fighting Runaways 4:27
I'll Fly Away Alison Krauss & Gillian Welch O Brother, Where Art Thou? 3:57
Stagger Lee Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Murder Ballads 5:15
Unguarded Moment The Church El Momento Descuidado 3:35
Helpless k.d. lang Like A Hurricane: A Tribute to Neil Young [Uncut] 4:16
The Man Who Couldn't Cry Johnny Cash American Recordings 5:01
My Heart's Reflection Yo La Tengo Electr-O-Pura 6:01

Enjoying: You suck at Photoshop tutorial

This video offers a bittersweetly funny take on the usual online tutorials that are appearing all over the web.

What starts out as a straightforward enough seeming tute descends quickly into the sad revenge fantasies of a sad, cuckolded man.

Watching: Radiohead - Scotch Mist

Ok technically I don't have time to check it out right now but I like the fact that this exists at all.

Radiohead have put a full 52 minute video up on YouTube that they did for New Years Eve which features every song from their neato new album In Rainbows.

Celebrating: Paul Kelly

RRR radio personality Stephen (The Ghost) Walker paid a nice tribute to Oz music legend Paul Kelly in his blog in The Age recently that I've just come across.

Walker describes Kelly as "the quiet achiever" and a "storyteller of timeless human tales". He goes on to say

A man, a microphone, a piano, a guitar and his harmonica. A stark reminder of his ability to create songs in everyday speech, no convoluted imagery or obtuse symbolism, his stories becoming our shared stories, attached to simple direct folk melodies that bury themselves deep in our communal consciousness. A deceptive simplicity.

I've liked Paul Kelly ever since I first came across his music in the mid 80s, when the track To Her Door seemed to be all over the radio.



I remember doing work experience in the city at the time at a lawyers - it was a quiet time in the legal calender and he'd just told me to go to court and watch cases. After a few hours of this I got bored and ended up in Myer where I dumped all the money I had on the counter for a copy of Under the Sun on cassette.

This of course presented a problem as it meant that now I didn't have train fare to get into town for the rest of the week (and couldn't/wouldn't ask Mum or Dad for the money - knowing it would never happen) so I rolled up to the lawyer and asked if I could have my work experience pay in advance. (Which was, on average, the princely sum of $15 for the week in those days.) Planning ahead wasn't particularly a strong suit back in those days.

Unfortunately, his plan was to give me some law book - probably worth well more than the money but not entirely working with my plans at the time and I ended up more or less quitting. I told the folks there was nothing to do or see at the job and I'd be better off working on some upcoming assignments.

There was a bit of yelling at me when I got back to school (hadn't quite gotten around to telling them that I'd quit) but somehow that manage to convert to what passed for street-cred at the time, so it all worked out in the end.

And I still had my precious Paul Kelly tape.

It's been hard keeping up with the man's output in recent years, he just keeps on coming and perhaps familiarity breeds a certain apathy but old Paul has dropped off my musical radar a little in recent times.

Interestingly, in December last year he did a series of concerts called Paul Kelly's Songbook - A-Z, where he played 100 of his songs in alphabetical order over 4 nights. He's now taken the best recordings of the songs from each letter of the alphabet from these concerts and is making them freely downloadable from his website - www.paulkelly.com.au - at the rate of one letter every month over the next 2 years.

Up at the moment you can check out:

• Adelaide


• After the show


• Anastasia changes her mind

Cheers Paul.

Playing: Songs on the radio - 2007 highlights

This is the selection of tracks I'll be playing today on the show (4-6pm - 2XXfm 98.3 in Canberra). It's a mixture of some of the most interesting stuff I came across in 2007 - not just new releases but also music that I managed to discover and then there are also just a few old faves for good luck.

There are a few tracks from a now perennial fave that comes out around this time of the year - Best of Bootie 2007. (The whole album is freely downloadable from their site here)

Even though it wasn't released as a song in it's own right, I've included what is possibly my favourite song of the year as well - Still Alive from the Xbox game Portal.



Sunrise Lambchop No You C'mon 4:10
Ghettochip Malfunction (Hell Yes) (8Bit Remix) Beck Guerolito 2:39
15 Step Radiohead In Rainbows 3:57
I Heard It Through The Grapevine The Slits Nouvelle Vague Presents New Wave [Disc 2] 3:50
After All David Bowie The Man Who Sold The World 3:55
Stray Dog And The Chocolate Shake Grandaddy Sumday 3:43
Still Alive Portal The Orange Box 2:56
Galvanize The Empire (Chemical Brothers vs. John Williams) Party Ben Best of Bootie 2007 3:32
WHITE STRIPES Icky thump (DJ Zebra whole lotta funk remix) DJ Zebra Best of Bootie 2007 4:08
Sympathy For Teen Spirit (Rolling Stones vs. Queen vs. Nirvana) DJ Moule Best of Bootie 2007 4:56
Falling Nick Cave & Warren Ellis The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford 2:54
Challengers The New Pornographers Challengers 3:31
Snow Peas Minimum Chips Kitchen Tea Thankyou 3:33
The Shape Is In A Trance Thurston Moore Trees Outside The Academy 4:39
Rosa The Devastations Yes, U 5:10
Frozen World Angie Pepper Born Out Of Time - The Australian Indie Sound 1979-88 3:29
7/29/04 The Day Of David Holmes Ocean's Twelve 3:11
Electric Worm The Beastie Boys The Mix-Up 3:15
Last Nite The Detroit Cobras Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before... (25 Years Of Rough Trade) 2:35
In The Red Love Of Diagrams We Got Communication 3:36
Brazil Xavier Cugat & His Orchestra Ritmo Cubano: Gold Collection (Disc 2) 2:29
Hold on, hold on Neko Case Acoustic 3 2:41

What I first met your Ma Donagh Quigley & Bill Grose Tell her I was 4:01
God's Gonna Cut You Down Johnny Cash American V: A Hundred Highways 2:38
Under the Milky Way The Church El Momento Descuidado 4:51
Whenever Beth Orton Trailer Park 3:54
The Only Way Gotye Like Drawing Blood 4:49
Millay Millay Muyngarnbi Songs from Walking with spirits 3:59
New Day Of The Dead Beasts Of Bourbon Little Animals 5:17
Roscoe Midlake The Trials Of Van Occupanther 4:49
I Want You Back The Spazzys Various - Stoneage Cameos 3:17
Hoodoo You Love The Drones Various - Stoneage Cameos 2:47
Airport '99 Philippa Nihill A Little Easy 4:00
Girl And The Sea The Presets Beams 4:46
Tesco V Sainsbury's Trans Am Now Hear This! 48 February 2007 2:54
Theme From "Shaft" Isaac Hayes Greatest Hit Singles 3:19
Ladyshave Gus Gus This Is Normal 3:58
Boner Grand National Kicking The National Habit 4:20
In The Year 2525 Visage Nouvelle Vague Presents New Wave [Disc 2] 3:37
Perfectly Ordinary Rastawookie Perfectly Ordinary 4:01
Object Ween La Cucaracha 2:36
You Took My Thing C.W. Stoneking King Hokum 2:50
Pink Moon Nick Drake Pink Moon 2:06

Playing: Team Fortress 2 on Xbox Live

Having done the Portal thing, I was ready to move on to other games in The Orange Box on the weekend and given that I'd (finally) managed to get hooked up on Xbox Live, the online platform for playing Xbox games with nerds from around the world, it seemed like the thing to do was to jump into Team Fortress 2.

(Yes I realise that it was a nice sunny weekend, I was just excited about being able to connect the 360 to my computer and also the web for the first time)

So anyway, TF2 is an online only game which looks a lot like something out of The Incredibles. It consists of 6 locations (or maps) divvied up between a red and blue team of up to 8 people each. There are a few variations on the missions involved - either to capture territory markers by standing on them for long enough or to break into the other team's base and steal a briefcase full of intelligence. (All the while trying to blow nine kinds of crap out of your opposition with your various weapons.)

I had hoped to be able to play the game offline separately first, giving me a chance to wander around the maps and get an idea of where to go. This not being an option, the best bet was generally to just follow the other guys as they hare into the other base - although I did realise later than some of the maps have gigantic flashing arrows in your colour that tell you where to go. (But it's easy to miss the subtle things :)

I'd heard horror stories of people playing Halo 3 having to deal with snotty 13 year olds pouring out unimaginative streams of invective, generally involving the words fag and dick, on Xbox Live, so I was mildly wary of putting on the headset (which allows you to chat to anyone on your team) but all was fine. Given that it was daytime, I think I was mainly left with the older stoners in the U.S playing in the small wee hours, when the bratz are in bed - or maybe this game inspires a higher level of classiness.

What I got instead was mostly the usual chatter you hear in networked games - there's a spy in the base, I need a medic, I've set up a turret/someone take out their turret, etc. There were the occasional exuberant cries of "did you see that - I'm a god" from time to time as well.

Is it overly sad that this reminded me of some research into games in education that looked at the way that players help new players learn and that these kind of online gaming experiences foster the development of collaboration skills?

This is what the game actually looks like.



I had been expecting this kind of online gameplay to absolutely chew through my broadband download allowances but all up I think it only used around 70Mb for a solid 3 or 4 hour session - peanuts really.

Lots of fun - moreso now that I'm getting more familiar with the maps and actually manage to live longer than the time it takes me to walk out the door of our base.

If you're on Xbox Live and feel like a game, just say hi to me - Singo the Dingo.