It has been suggested to me on more than one occasion that carrying out such an exercise will do a number of positive things for my journalistic aspirations. The idea here, is to not actually think all that much about what one is going to write, nor be particularly concerned with the quality of the end result. Rather, it is to simply let one’s mind flow freely, while one’s fingers simply act as scribe for whatever random thoughts leap into one’s consciousness. This, it is said, allows one to practice the art of writing on a routine basis, which as with all activities, generally betters one’s ability at such tasks. It is also said however, that this particular writing exercise (at least for journalists, authors etc.) can often lead to the formulation of ideas for ‘stories’ or articles,  without so much as ‘trying’.

Glancing down at the word count below however, I notice that I have currently written a total of 185 words. And yet, nothing of any particular interest seems to have come to mind, which consequently means that nothing of any particular interest has found it’s way into this blog. Nevertheless, I shall persevere.

University has after all, at long last, returned for the year this week. So I suppose doing this can only be a good thing. I have signed myself up for two subjects on campus, and am yet to secure an internship with a media organization which shall act as my third. So that’s that. Broadcast Journalism is likely to be the interesting subject of the two that kicked off this week, whilst Media Industries has already turned off most of the 3rd year journo kids. With a first assignment being an annotated bibliography, it’s not hard to see why most of us in the course have already put the next 12 weeks of this subject down to yet another waste of thousand or so bucks.

The ability to research, and find source material, or texts, is no doubt a useful task for a working journalist. Yet one does wonder, with newspaper articles or any other forms of general media not permitted to be used as sources in the assignment, if this is really contradicting what most journalists will be required to do when in the field. I’m not sure, but neither am I going to waste any more time thinking about it this evening.

With 450 words already written for my first 500 word a day exercise challenge, I am content this evening on settling for a blog that fails to really raise any issues whatsoever, and certainly not solve any. With an an interesting book open at the fourth chapter beside me, written by the former editor of The Age – Michael Gawenda – and it being 10.30pm at night, meaning either Tony Jones or Leigh Sales is on ABC’s Lateline, it’s time for me to hang up my boots on this one.

Over and out.

They were talkin’ ‘bout all this back in the ’6os though, babe. Yeah an’ the Fab Four took a spiritual (acid) trip to India in ’68 to find their voice; then a year on and we’ve got John Lennon and Yoko and the Plastic Ono Band and a bunch of other kids with golden imaginations of a sunshine and lollypop society, all hollerin’ ‘bout peace and politics from the timber deck of Lennon’s New York City crib.

But forty years on and Lennon’s been shot and dead for two point five decades, and red-winged politics and ‘peace please!’ and all in ‘tween are still ideals yet to be realized and, to this day, still drum keen debate for hipsters, hacks and all the other hoi polloi.

And down here, ‘Down Under’, in down town Melbourne, we too’ve got our own proper problems and strife and the like.

So that’s why on this day of September, sitting cross-legged on an Indian rug, is another gentleman called John, too with fair intentions and a pleased smile, and too a peep of the politically inclined. We’ve got here Premier John Brumby, and he’s looking to spread a similar message to the great ‘Imaginer’ himself. All in all the two men move(d) to different beats – Brumby hardly sitting here on the brink of self-realization by shunning the ‘top job’ of this great state of Victoria, for an enlightened existence of 2-week bed-ins, nude art and dope. But alas, he’s doing what he can, promoting the cause.

Victorian Premier John Brumby

John Brumby’s taking a leap of faith into cultural empathy and he’s wandered himself down to the Victorian Sikh Temple in Blackburn. He’s taking the sunken eyes and learning to see, babe, and is looking more like a Sergeant Pepper protege today than a Labor wig. But he’s going all the way – Indian style.

Here we got a necklace of flowers around the neck, kind of affair; a blue headpiece on the cranium, kind of affair; a bowing, kneeling, praying and smooching the ground, kind of affair. And what a way to juxtapose the sharp suit and neat necktie and a swish ol’ polly comb-over generic. This was never gonna be a run of the mill PR doo for a politician on the back foot, after all. No, this would be a coup in the name of value and diplomacy, cooo-eeeee!

‘Cos the Indian folk living here in the nation’s multi-cultural melting pot have had enough. Xenophobia! They’re shouting it from the tramlines of Flinders Street. Xenophobia!! They’re shouting it from televisions in New Delhi. Xenophobia!!! Oh that splash of evil that’ll tarnish our great diverse city and all her good-minded ‘citizens’. Oh and the headlines, read them and weep: “Melbourne attack reignites Indians Fears” says the ABC; “India Fury on student bashings” drums The Age; “Australia, Land of Racists” an Indian newspaper announces in bold font.

Alarm bells are ringing and so here’s our man Brumby, down here at the Sikh Temple in Blackburn, doing what he can to calm the calamity of this racism beast. He’s talkin’ bout  ”long, enduring and strong relationships” between Victoria and India, and pushing for “the harmony of (our) society and the security of our community…”

Thus Victorian Premier sits here on the rug, and isn’t it good (Norwegian Wood)…  But his little adventure down to Blackburn aint gonna do much in the way of taming the thugs. The show just keeps on rolling and the song remains the same…

So later on, hearing whispers about a swell joint in Melbourne’s inner suburb of Collingwood, I flagged a tram. I shot down the line and round the bend, aiming the mission toward the great parade that is Smith Street.  Along the way we picked up sports fanatics, drunks, men with odors of homelessness, and women with long legs and too much lipstick: all shades of humanity in a boxcar, a circus of sardines in a steel can. Indeed. Ah but there was soul to be found in these parts, and I was glad.

I pulled the cord and the tram halted, and me and the gang jumped off with happiness and high spirits. We took to foot, skipping down a blue stone alley that’s a chunk of history in its own right. Soon enough the pub on the corner drew near, shining brightly on the edge of darkness; a glimmering pearl snug amongst the dreary flats and tired-looking warehouses that are the last breath of working class glory. Collingwood: fighting the tide of SUVs and soccer mums, and BMW boys with plastic perspectives on pussy, property and the almighty dollar! And there she stood, The Gem Hotel: a bona fide establishment of yesteryear, too a chunk of history like the blue bricks that had shown us the way. “Come on in gentlemen” she seemed to imply.

But I was stopped short in my tracks. Out front, strewn up over the curb, wheels to the footpath, sat a proud couple of classic Hot Rods. Images of outlaws of the old country, rebels without causes, and the maniacal ghost of James Dean hooting GO! GO! GO! from his Spyder in the sky, came to mind. Boy were these road beasts something special: sparkling chrome-bumpers, white vinyl interiors and wireless radios of way back blearing the likes of Wanda Jackson, Johnny Kidd, and Carl Perkins.

The spell of my Rod-gazing was broken though by tones of surf twang and big bass, seeping out on to the belt-buckle streets under the worn front door. I’d been thrown back to my childhood, with memories of three-inch Matchbox models in sandpits: me but a boy, playing with my toys and a whole world of promises ahead. And two scores later, little had changed but my age – and the cars before me were now the real McCoy. This was the pocket of ‘Kulture’ I’d been looking for, and I was Gung-Ho!

I entered the pub, swimming through thick scents of sweat, hair grease and burnt tobacco and found myself surrounded by Greasers, Pink Ladies and Cowboys with boots of hide and checkered shirts with sleeves rolled to the elbow.  ‘Leave yours guns at the bar’ demanded a sign on the wall.
And as I ordered a beer, Rockbottom James Maloney fisted the air, and The Detonators broke into their second track.

This is how I stumbled across rockabilly and Melbourne’s vintage rod and custom scene.

Perhaps we should just leave it to the professionals, shall we? The last thing the already rapidly declining medium of journalism needs is a creepy novice with no credentials in a prime-time news reading gig 5 nights a week. They’ll switch off in droves… Or they should.

Over and out.

But hang on, before i throw in the towel here, I could always talk about Peter Garrett…Yes! That’s what i’ll do. This guy definitely warrants a blog entry.

Why? Because surely Garrett is a man who knows a thing or two about political ‘spin’. Now in saying that, I sure as shit aint accusing our dear friend ‘lurch’ of necessarily dishing up ‘spin’ himself – never! But by joining in on K-Rudd’s 24hour media-cycle circus, he’s obviously had to toe a few lines here and there – this is part and parcel stuff in the great ALP parade that demands ‘good politics’ and ‘good politics’ only.  Long gone then are the days of Garrett chaining himself to a giant Tasmanian ‘Plumpton’ (tree), and so too has he ditched donning the black T’s with words such as “sorry” or the like splattered across the front (ok so the apology’s been made but you get my drift). But worst of all, in his bold political morph, Garrett, in my view, lost a little faith and a little pride in himself for a period there, and may have even wound up scratching the back of that cue ball head of his at times, wondering what, by Jesus, all that activism back in the ‘Oils’ days had now amounted to. And so after just a few years under the pump of Labor-correctness, he was showing signs of being a dead weight; a chunk of driftwood floating about in a stagnant dike while the rest of the team shot off to play hard ball.

Crusading Kev kicked a winner by signing the Kyoto Protocol, then a month later pranced around the House of Reps with Dr. Nelson, in a bi-partisan lap of honour, you might call it, following his delivery of the ‘apology to end all apologies’ – yes the one to the (indigenous) stolen generation that was about 60 years in waiting. Jivin’ Jules too got to step up to the plate to deliver a fastball in her grand, ‘revolutionary’ plans for the Education sector. And, good God, even Wayne ‘slap-on-the-back-for-trying’ Swan – who’s like the kid on the bench that you put in the game cos he just tries so bloody hard – has been pulling out all stops since taking over the ‘treasury’ reins, to show the big boys that when it comes to business, he means… economics (or is it the other way around Wayne?)

But as for lurch, well, he hasn’t been able to say or do a whole lot at all. A few blunders in that tiresome campaign back in ’07 and his expected porfolios were given a bit of a downsizing – basically he was given all the ones that require little dealings with the media (or anyone really). A hardhat photo op. with Kev down at the local energy plant was about the biggest gig he’d be seeing in a day’s work.  Of course there’s that sticky pulp mill number – ‘to approve, or not to approve’ – which Garrett affirms “will not be granted until detailed studies on the potential marine impacts have been completed”, but in the end that’ll all just get passed up to the bigger and better (or longer serving) players – who will ultimately base their decision on ‘labor-correct’ principles.

Alas! Garrett’s ok, babe. Better! He’s nestled his niche. He’s struck a chord. He’s settled right on in. That big ol’ seat with the words ‘Peter Garrett – Minister for Environment, Heritage and the Arts’ inscribed is his for the sitting, and finally it seems, he’s totally cool with that. He’s re-discovered his voice, babe, in more ways than one. He’s in the zone, and he realizes now how far that zone he can safely call his, stretches.

And thus, as he returned to his roots and recharged that energetic mojo of his on stage recently for the Bushfire Appeal concert at the MCG, reunited once more with Midnight Oil, I’ll bet Garrett not only felt like the hippest kid in the squad (ALP), but that as federal Minister of the ARTS! he was playing his part, doing by Jesus, the duty bestowed upon him by the great Commonwealth of Australia.

And so…. ’10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1′… Garrett rocks. And let’s not forget that. ‘Spin or no ‘spin’. I have a renewed faith in the man. He is ‘the olive branch man’, and ‘he’ll press it any way he can’.

Over and out.

Let’s flick to it in the Macquarie sitting to my right shall we… ah yes, here ’tis…

Entry 3 calls it “a prohibition on the publishing of news about a particular matter, often until after a specified date”. The best (recent) example of this one being Prince Harry. European media outlets made an informal pact last year not to reveal to the public that the British Royal was carrying out military service in Afghanistan. Safety first, obviously. This was called either a ‘media blackout’, or indeed an ‘embargo’. And it worked, until an outsider, unaware of the pact, spoiled the party, Derr! Harry was then sent home.

Entry 4 though, in the Macquarie sitting to my right, calls an ‘embargo’ (simply) “a restrait or hindrance; a prohibition”.

So there you go folks, SPIN + EMBARGO (entry 3 & 4). I do hope this clarifies any concerns.

And on a final note, can I steer your attention toward the insightful material contained in the blog of my dear old chum Innika La Fontaine. You can find her at: http://innikaslf.wordpress.com/  Go say hello and see what she’s all about.

Over and out.

There are some outrageous fortunes out there though, that are a helluva lot more serious. You know what i’m talkin’ about here too don’t you… executive bonuses. OK so this is big news at the moment, with our new best-pal Obama dropping in on the scene and putting in his two bob worth over the AIG fiasco, so i’m not raising anything new here, but it’s still worth having a gripe about. And let’s face it, this is grade-A ‘Spin Embargo’ stuff.

In my most recent blog (see below) I dedicated about 12-hundred words to comparing ‘that Pacific Brands company’ to a fictional girlfriend that had popped up in a recent dream (or nightmare) i’d had. And to use the tone of an ‘Outrageous Fortunes’ character, this fictional girlfriend had been a cheating little skank. Now, by making this comparision, I had launched a scathing attack on Pacific Brands indeed, and as an aspiring journalist, I knew this was a venture into that forbidden territory known as ‘subjectivity’… GONG! But shoot, the whole thing smelt seedy to me, and i’ll tell ya what, a few weeks on I’m sticking to my guns.

This surfaced a few days after writing my last blog: despite giving 1850 workers the axe, Sue Morphet (CEO of Pacific Brands) had only a few months prior, accepted a tripling of her salary. That’s 3 times $686 000… per year! Now sure, we’ve all heard of your boss giving you a bit of a nudge up the ladder in exchange for some good, hard work – that stuff is ‘quintessentially Australian’. But earning $1.9 million a year at the expense of 1850 of your workers, who are now wondering how they’re gonna scrape together enough cash for next week’s groceries, well that goes beyond flashing your bum and yelling “suffer in ya jocks” in my book. No, there’s nothing fun and cheesy about all this at all – that’s just being down-right dirty. K-Rudd called the move “sickening”.  And i’m with him.

Over and out.

I’ll set the scene: my girlfriend (of this dream) is dressed in nothing but a slinky see-through singlet draped over some racy black lingerie. She momentarily flashes her ‘holiest of holies’ to her dripping, whistling male-beast audience. Soon she’s kissing all the boys, and there are fingers and feet and licking and hands involved, and she’s exchanging keen, suggestive winks. And finally, as if all this is not enough to make a dismayed boyfriend a mere shadow of a man, I see her sitting on a strange oriental-looking bed, with a tall, toned bloke with blonde locks, standing beside her in nothing but his jocks and a ‘beater’, ready for action. She laughs…

Now, after waking from a nightmare as vicious in subject as this one, it took more than the usual few moments for the sweat to cease dripping down my forehead and for my pulse to return to a semi-normal resting rate. And figuring out what the hell provoked such mental mayhem seemed like a pretty reasonable response to the shit that had just gone down. I lay there alone in the dark, and tried to nut this thing out. Becoming calm, I then allowed myself a few hours of a more peaceful ‘sleeping-on-it’ slumber. And in the morning, whilst tucking into a Nutri Grain and coffee breakfast and giving ABC2’s morning news program my usual 20-minute or so look-in, it finally dawned on me what all this meant.

My nightmare, I realized, was simply a metaphor for a Morphet. I’ll explain. It was not about some deep-seeded mistrust in women. Nor was it an overt manifestation of some insecurity in my masculinity. This was about Sue Morphet damn it, and that ‘morally questionable’ company she is the Chief Executive of – Pacific Brands. I had watched her ‘perform’ in a Lateline interview before drifting off to sleep that night. So the slutty antics of the girlfriend in this dream were merely a symbol for the actions taken by the infamous Aussie company that has effectively just sold about 1850 loyal factory workers up the creek for the sake of a few bucks. And the guy with the golden locks – the one who was about to ‘screw’ my girlfriend – a literal personification of the Bonds Singlet icon, that cartoon fella with the big biceps and the buck-toothed grin.

“…The manufacturing that we do in clothing (in Australia)”, Sue Morphet said as she squirmed in her seat on Lateline that night, “is no longer a competitive advantage to us”. Only hours before she had delivered a press conference where she steadfastly argued that despite the company’s decision to move its manufacturing off Australian shores, household brands such as King Gee and Bonds would continue to remain “quintessentially Australian”. Given that Pacific Brands will soon be importing their socks, jocks and the rest of their product line from Asian sweatshops, I find it pretty hard to wear that the company could be so naively optimistic about this. Oh how “quintessentially Australian” we will all feel to wear a pair of knickers stitched up by an exploited 12-year-old Vietnamese girl, working her bum off for about 80 cents a day. On that sort of wage she wouldn’t be able to afford to buy the panties she’s pinning together for 14 hours a day even if she wanted to. No, this all sounds more like ‘quintessential’ spin to me.

In a further justification of PB’s abhorrent decision to close down the seven, nation-wide factories run by the company, Sue Morphet told Lateline, “…by removing (these) complexities, we’ll be able to add more value to [the] brands and… we will all be much better off as a result”. Who, Sue, might I ask, will be better off for this? Me? Hardly. I don’t buy Bonds. Enough said. Perhaps Pat Rafter will be better off as a result, or Michael Clarke for that matter. But only of course if Bonds continues bank-rolling these boys in exchange for more of the lame ads they’ve both been appearing in recently (and this is at least plausible). But when sleazy ol’ Sue refers to being better off, well come on, whose eyes does she really think she’s pulling the wool over here? Oh Sue! It seems to me that about the only aspects of the company’s ‘new and improved’ product line that will be coming out in ‘flying colours’ are the bank balances of the Pacific Brands’ stockholders and executives. But hey, selling out for a chunk of cash is a tough gig.

I want to leave you with one last quote from Sue, and remember, these words must be considered in the context of the 1850 workers she just laid off: “We have to take the fat out of our business”. Yes, she actually said that on national television (but no, I don’t believe there was a metaphor for this comment in my dream!). I do wonder how the other vultures at PB felt about that particular comment – it’s not exactly a golden moment in public relations is it? And here’s the thing. Pacific Brands’ share prices have plummeted since the annoucement, and despite the wet, wintry conditions in Melbourne last Wednesday, thousands showed up in the CBD to support the sacked workers and voice their outrage over the PB decision. It looks like the great boycott has begun. And the fat is indeed in the fire.

Over and out.

Over and out.

I have called my blog ‘The Spin Embargo’. Now this might suggest that I’ll be steering this thing towards media and politics. That’s partly true,  but partly not too. But lemme say this kids: no rock shall be left unturned, unless I decide to do so or i’m being silenced through large amounts of cash. And heck, that’s my business, and that’s all that need be said on the matter. Goodie gum drops.

Over and out.