.... joining the blowhards

Shane at his new desk

G’day petals

I’ve got a new desk and had a bit of a make-over but more of that later in Wombat Droppings.

Here is some new ballet stuff from the rehearsals and mid-year performance from Ballet Theatre Australia.

Being the first ballet shoot since returning it was interesting to me, at least, just how different it felt after six weeks of shooting landscapes, candids, architecture and other tourists.

 

It felt nicely fresh and I was a little surprised …very relaxed.

The performance shots are in B and W as I found the lighting disjointed and the colour, well, garish…. Sepia suits the rehearsal stuff…

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Question: How long can you look a “Gift-Horse” in the mouth?

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Wombat Droppings

or  Australia’s slide from egalitarianism into fascism.

…or if you want to watch it on video, here’s the address… and the reason for the make-over.

https://youtu.be/z8VF2zyilnw

It seems that our Prime Miniature, Rabid-the-Hun Abbott is motivated solely by the need to destroy Labor’s Faux-Leader Bill Short-Stuff and pretend he’s securing our borders as well as shirt-fronting “Death-Cults” abroad. 

This seemingly punch-drunk ex-university pugilist appears to know nothing except is how to start a fight and if you think it’s a good idea to have Rabid sideline the judiciary and have some-one with the intellect of the ex-Copper “Dodo” Dutton deciding who can or can’t be Australian… be afraid Petals, be very afraid.

The Ruling Rabble apparently poll quite strongly amongst the unaware on the issue of national security so all Rabid has to do is campaign hard on the promise of Keeping-Australia-Safe, so in constantly talking up terrorism it really suits his political objective to make most Australians feel very, Very Unsafe.

But given that Rabid-the-Hun’s record of NOT keeping promises is, the only exemplary point of his rabble’s administration; feeling safe from this English liar’s plans to create a sort of Fourth Reich Down-Under, is a problem in itself.

It’s horrifying to think that all this was planned…(well, the detail …. in the past 5 minutes) was from the “Coots-With-Queer-Ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe” (the IPA) Handbook.

It was some 2 years ago that I wrote of this rabble’s possible election and postulated that their following of “The Coot’s” Policy-Thought-Bubbles would result in the degrading of “Civil-Society”.  Well the rabble’s been elected and, Voila!

 Now we have to look on as we suffer a further diminution of the nations humanitarian standing as Rabid–the-Hun is “open for business” like people smuggling which brings us closer to a genuine and serious Diplomatic confrontation with Indonesia whilst the rest of the world sees us as being morally bereft.

It seems too, that our Prime Miniature, can't hear his Pope’s encyclical on climate change for the noise of the Wind Turbines.

Having “discussed” Joe “Toyota-Killer-Eleventy” Hockey’s acute aesthetic revulsion of these symbols of the future with Sydney shock-jock Alan “Toilet-Boy” Jones, Rabid decided in another dictatorial “captain’s call,” that we shall have a Commissioner for Wind Farms.

This commissioner, probably as impartial as the Speaker of the House, “Kerosene-Pompadour” Bishop, will, likely only listen to the 12 or so people who complain of the imagined deleterious effects of these “aesthetic monstrosities”, and then, ignoring all 23 previous studies into this alternative energy source will, one by one, close them down; thus keeping faith with the Coal miners who funded so much of the Liarbrils election.

In an effort to distract the public from these first two “droppings,” Dis-Education Minister, Chwissie ”The Whyne-and-Perfect-Prat-of-a-Prefect” Pyne has laid a third by indicating that the government believes it has a particular responsibility only for independent schools and no time for public schools.

“The Whyne,” implied that, in returning to a medieval model of education it would save us from having to soil our dainty fingers counting out the pittance public schools get and it would also give the States something to do in their spare time. Only the privileged should be funded by the taxpayer!” 

Besides, as the poor don’t drive cars…. Only have to get a good job to buy a house and obviously don’t need medical attention or pharmaceuticals, why waste money on educating them?

Let them eat cake!”

What pile of droppings, eh?

Hoo-roo, Possums.

Shane

..with the Ides of March

G'day Possums,

Shane contemplates the Ides of March

Interesting times in Oz presently  but more of that later in "Wombat Droppings."
















The book I'm compiling of the last ballet performance photographed is nearly finished and has afforded during the lengthy post process, selection and lay-up, time to consider the value of books in comparison to individual or video images as a method of presentation.

Obviously I favour the book having produced and self published some 12 of them over the years.
I find that the photo-book falls into categories of A/ Collection or Album, B/ Collection/Record, C/ Narrative or D/ The subject/object itself.

Each book is without question an amalgam of all these categories but each should, I think, be looked at within the general category framing them.

Nude: Themes And Ideas is very much in category “A” as a collection of images taken over many years with the individual subjects grouped by theme or concept.

http://www.blurb.com/books/4001005-nude-themes-ideas

or

http://www.blurb.com/books/4450730-invitation-to-the-dance 

Invitation to the Dance may be seen as partly “A”, “B”, slightly “C” but mostly “D”.

The visual delights of cinema are many but ephemeral. 

As with the actual performance, all you retain in your memory is the sense of your response to discrete moments and the totality of the whole.

Video, (well the bog-standard, single viewpoint record of a performance, that is) contains little or no emotional engagement with the subject and is really just a very plain record that the event actually happened.

The book on the other hand by the very nature of its post performance process can elucidate an essence of a performance and bring together the overall “feel” of the whole in its discrete selection of images that are cropped and adjusted to enhance the moment. The disadvantage of movement being reduced to “stills” is more than compensated for by those “stills” being able to be read at leisure within the performance narrative.

Shooting video or film for cinema is a wholly complex creative business of another form but books contract that event into a more accessible one.

And this little meme from   http://bookriot.com/   says it perfectly.

I have just been notified of having been short-listed as one of the 25 images selected from around 100 entrants for the Kingston Arts Lens Mist 2015 Award at the end of February..... image below.

St Kilda Beach, Melbourne

Wombat Droppings 

or the chronicle of Australia's inexorable slide into Fascism.

Rabid-the-Hun’s constantly foolhardy “captain’s picks” have landed him like Julius Caesar, facing the Ides of March or more appropriately from his “Team Australia” rabble, a  (k)”Night of the Long Knives.”

According to Rabid, the “Far Northerners” of Queensland were being as “absent-minded” as the “Tardis State” Victorians, in their historic turnaround of their political landscapes by voting out in a single term, Conservative, right-wing, free-market oriented governments.

That people in this country look like they are awakening  that the agenda promoted by “The-Coots-With-Queer-Ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe” (IPA) and being implemented by the Liarbril Office-Boy  rabble under Rabid-the-Hun is not to their communal advantage at all is a welcome change.

Attempting to salvage his badly listing, barnacle encrusted ship, SS Liarbril, Captain Rabid made one of his few forays to the Canberra Press Club to reset his now poisonous narrative.

Unfortunately, all he could do was reiterate the lies, slogans and blame of the 2013 election campaign with stuttering repetitions that the aforementioned public have really ceased listening to.

The most ludicrous of his assertions was that, "We've never been a country that's ripped off generations to pay for today. And under my government, we never will."

He forgot to mention the years of plenty under “Little Johnny” Howard when instead of investing in infrastructure it was all given away to middle class welfare for short-term political gain.

He forgot to mention his “Climate-Change-Is-Crap” idiocy; and in extolling the “virtues” of repealing Carbon Pricing and ruining the development of Alternative energies, he is inevitably condemning future generations to far greater expense and hardship.

He forgot too, to mention the dismantling of a “world’s best” National Broadband Network to satisfy the business plans of IPA Donor, Rupert “The Ugly American/ Phone-Hacker” Murdoch or that reducing wages and stripping penalty rates, introducing $100,000.00 University fees and dismantling one of the worlds best health systems is actually not conducive to a prosperous or civil society.

In short, with this mongrel Prime Miniature still ranting about Labor being a shambolic rabble is, as I said years ago, only a projection his own rabble’s incompetence and complete lack of ability to lead or think creatively about a vision for the nation other than destroying it.
They have to rule as they have no capacity to lead.

The Ides of March are on the 15^th of that month… will he last that long?

Hoo-roo Petals,

Shane

..as the Sharks circle

The Sharks are circling

G’day Possums,

And… just when you thought it safe to go back in the water this IPA led loopy rabble are having another attempt at destroying one of the most effective and affordable health systems in the world.

That this obscene, mongrel lot are determined to make Australia a fully “Free-Market” Gulag is now beyond all doubt. 
Their first 500 Days has seemed like 500 years....

Troubling times ahead, Petals.

But first some more Ballet stuff...

Ballet Theatre Australia, 2014 Performance

Wombat Droppings

....or the chronicle of Australia's inexorable slide into Fascism.

A new report finds exploration by coal and energy companies is subsidised by Australian taxpayers by as much as $US3.5 billion ($4 billion) every year in the form of direct spending and tax breaks…..

…..but we have to pay more to see the Doctor

$45 billion a year just on superannuation tax breaks. Who gets the bulk of that? The wealthy. (And it certainly makes the $7.5 billion spent on Newstart look paltry in comparison)….

But we can’t afford Medicare.

Medicare, will this year cost us $20 billion

$18 billion in lost revenue over the next four years from the abolition of the ‘mining tax’,        $1.6 billion of that was “purely a gift from Mr Abbott to the miners”.                                Scrapping the mining tax cost us $5.3 billion and who gets that? It will go mainly to the biggest mining companies:

Then there’s the $2.4 billion a year the government gives back to property investors

But we can’t afford a Public Health system  ….….because Joe “Cereal-Toyota-Killer” Hockey thinks that we will soon all live to be 150 and how can we pay for that?

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/joe-hockey-raises-prospect-of-australians-living-until-150-to-justify-budget-cuts-20150119-12t3m1.html

That Hockey is the country’s Treasurer is more than a little perturbing.

Free Speech Is Brandised  again with Mandy ”Il Patrone” Vanstone lauding the efforts of “Blot-on-the-Landscape” Bolt and “Bookshelves-for-Bogon-Bigots” Brandis to repeal 18C and lower everyone’s public speaking standards to the levels of that of the Liarbril Party.

Apropos this; John Lord (AIM) asked,
“Why is it then that the likes of Abbott, Bolt, Jones, Brandis,  Bernardi and others need to go beyond common decency, and defend others who cannot express themselves without degenerating into hate speech?”

The answer is simple really. 

Because hate is all they have.

They are cruel because they lack courage.

They are not progressive as that implies creative thinking.

They are not builders as that implies constructive thought.

And they are not Democrats as that implies an acceptance of others.

They hate, destroy and wreck because they are limited in real intelligence and talent and jealously despise those with that humanity.

They do not understand the complexity of humanity, hence their world is reduced to slogans and pre-pubescent “Libertarianism.”

Timmy “Twat-$7,500.00-Freedom-Man” Wilson says he is going to “….advance the Government’s freedom agenda…”

I wonder where he found it?

Ohh, that right, it was in the “How to Govern” handbook written by the “Coot’s-With-Queer-Ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe” (aka IPA), Timmy's old employer.

Then there was this nice essay on Class….

http://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2013/december/1385816400/tim-winton/c-word

Rabid-the-Hun

And then this on how this shambolic Government has made Oz at 44^th in the world rankings for internet speeds. The mess they have made with the NBN is not only going to cost Australia intellectually and productively but also financially when it has to be upgraded at huge cost in 10 years time. That these mongrels did this to satisfy The Ugly American, “Phone-Hacker” Murdoch’s interests rather than further the capacity of the nation speaks worlds of their real but small-minded agenda.

http://sortius.net.au/no-it-really-is-turnbulls-fault/

Not a pretty picture is it?

I'll leave the last word to Samuel Clemens

Hoo-roo, Possums,
Shane.

Seeing people of privilege…

Shane at ballet Studio

G’day Petals,

Japanese Photographer Moriyama Daido has said the photographs are memories of light and deposits and traces making up a kind of archaeology and he likes Tennessee Williams' thought “….that worthwhile memories lie somewhere between fact and non-fact.”

Photos taken recently at class and rehearsal for Ballet Theatre Australia... They have a performance soon.. check their facebook page for details... https://www.facebook.com/BalletTheatreAustralia

These are not documentary photographs, yet they are…

They are a fiction but still true.

A dance performance is ephemeral, it is always enjoyed after the event.

 They are not “staged” images but manipulated truth.

Wombat Droppings

Scott “The Drone “ Morrison has used refugee children on the Manus Island concentration camp as bargaining ploys to get legislation passed through the Senate under the pretence that it is “humanitarian.”

Rabid –the-Hun with his usual warped values applauded this a fair and honourable thing to do.

That he has a brain is without doubt.... but it must be very small, hence the repetitive simple three word slogans. They’re repetitive because it’s almost as if he's trying to convince himself of their "rightness" and viability.

What a bastard nation we have become. What a venal, selfish, intolerant and stupid people; a Nation so without a set of moral values that we are going to be easy pickings for the next huckster that comes along.

A young cricketer got hit on the head with a ball during a State match and tragically, died.
A young woman with severe physical disabilities who was a forceful advocate for seeing disability for what it is died, suddenly.
The Australian Cricket Board and its cricketers had the cricketer's funeral televised (politicians of all persuasions attended) and "Milked" at every opportunity the situation.
I don't think the disability advocate will get the same attention.
Advance Australia ...where?

Then there was the rather sad spectacle of our newish taxpayer funded $330,000.00 p.a. ”Freedom from Something” Commissioner, Timmy “Twat/Freedom-Man” (ex-Liarbril, ex-Coot-With-Queer-Ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe”, aka IPA) bouncing around the set of “The Chasers Media Circus” on the soon to be financially gutted, ABC.

Looking, according to Mrs Wombat’s analysis, like a dippy school–girl invited to a party where she knows no-one and senses she is not liked but is so, so desperate to be involved, Timmy offered little of substance but seemed blithely happy to be a clapping wallflower to everyone else’s contributions.

Perhaps more than a real civil servant working for the betterment of the nation’s civility would do?

Me?   I thought Timmy looked more like a dim-witted Labrador dog happily sniffing new bums in the hope a being accepted by the peer group.

Timmy’s previous employment was with that rancid organization the IPA  which in its paid advocacy role espouses abolishing the very commission for which Timmy is now being paid by the nation to speak for. That is the real problem and his appointment rather, foisting, without tender into the role, by pretend Federal Attorney General, “Bookshelves” Brandis, makes a mockery of Democracy.

He can never be trusted in this role.

 Almost on cue as the wheels begin to fall off their ramshackle government; we are treated to more news “shock, horror, feel afraid”,  70 or so Australian Muslims are fighting with ISIS in Syria & Iraq and Mandy “Il Patrone” Vanstone bounces up to opine how hard-done-by her rabble are being treated by the press and Labor.

Geez, Mandy do you now sympathise with the viciousness your lot meted to Gillard and Rudd in the past few years? Do you think Mandy, that your rabble’s top level infighting is the press’ and Labor’s fault?

The infighting is getting worse as their wholly unfair budget is in a mess, their ludicrous tertiary education dismemberment is stalled in the Senate and Rabid-the-Hun’s popularity deteriorates.

Julie “Death-Stare” Bishop then has a hissy fit when told she can’t go the Climate Change talks in Lima.

They weren’t going to have Australia attend as “Ozone-Hole” Hunt is useless as Environment minister and besides “…climate change is crap…!”

 “Death-Stare” with one look, irradiated a cabinet room of colleagues and gets her way but is further informed (probably by Rabid-the-Hun’s most favoured partner, “Commissar” Credlin) that Andy “Reboxetine” Robb was to chaperone her, lest she swayed from the righteous doctrinal path of  “…climate change is crap…” and not hinder the de-railing of the talks.

It was reported that “Death-Stare, “…went Bananas…” Not, that she was Bananas.

That Julie “Death-Stare Bishop’s star is in the ascendant is not disputed but that is a bit like a flag being run up the mast of the Titanic as it sinks.

“People of privilege,” said the economist JK Galbraith, “will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.”

And so it goes Down-Under.

Hoo-roo Possums,

Shane

..perchance to Dream..

a Budget..... for in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause...

but more of that later in Wombat Droppings.

Shane and New Bio.

G’day Possums,

We’ve been to a book signing.

Dame Margaret Scott (Maggie) has had her biography written by Michelle Potter.

A Life in Dance…. one of the most important people in the history of Australian ballet, Maggie was in good form, starting with ” I’ve nothing to say… It’s all in the book.” But then proceeded for another twenty minutes with “thank-you’s”, anecdotes and observations which were wry, funny, pointed and as always, on the mark.

Maggie commented that she was always being asked what was her vision for the ballet school?  “I had none” she said, “I just got on with it and did what I had to do.” 

Graeme Murphy was there and as with others of his innovative talent and success was the evidence of Maggie’s perspicacity for evaluating capability and potential.

I have some very early photos in the book and it was good to meet Graeme again and others from early ballet school days, all of us there celebrating this publication and thanking Maggie for her intelligent forward thinking in her development of “The School” and the important part she played in our careers and our “..chance to dream.”

Michelle Potter and Maggie Scott

and to finish some more recent shots of rehearsal from Ballet Theatre Australia…

Wombat Droppings

or

the chronicle of the demise of Australia’s egalitarianism and descent into Fascism

The long awaited “shirt-fronting” bout between Rabid-the-Hun and Vlad Putin was like all Liarbril policy action, a “Fizzer!” 

“I’m not talking to him when he comes to the G20” our Prime Miniature sulked after his 15 minutes of “confrontation.”

Pathetic.

Y’know Petals, we’ve never had a leader in this country who walks like he’s recently pooped his pants, claps like he has a intellectual disability, is always poking his tongue out and who keeps channelling Mrs. Malaprop!

It’s now being said to excuse his “shirt-front” gaff that he mis-understood the Aussie Rules Football connotation.

Hmmm like he didn’t think he was “….the suppository of all wisdom.”

Pathetic

Illo: Peter Grace C/O Facebook

Perchance to Dream a Budget, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause...

Poor old Joe “Cereal/Toyota Killer”Hockey…. Looks like we have a budget emergency after all: and unsurprisingly it’s not Labor’s fault but another of the Liarbril’s malign projections manifesting itself as a wrathful reality from Joe’s ideologically fuelled incompetence.

James Paterson (Dep. Dir. “Coots-With-Queer-Ideas-from-a-Parallel-Universe,” aka IPA) then popped up on Q and A .

Paterson, role playing.

I’m not sure whether he was there as a stiff, arrogant repeater of ideological business cant or perhaps as a target for the intellectual disdain of the bubbling and intelligent loquaciousness of Baroness Susan Greenfield or then again, just as an added embarrassment to our pretend Environment Minister, “Ozone-Hole” Hunt (he of Wiki research fame) who did such a good job himself of making the case for Carbon Pricing and climate change, eloquently real, and consequently a shambles of his ruling rabble’s environment policy.

Somewhat disturbingly I kept seeing “Unterscharfuhrer” Paterson in SS costume… and more disturbingly… secretly, I don’t think he would mind dressing like that.

The election in “The Tardis State” “Where-All-Goes-Backward” is not going at all well for Pretend Premier “Do-do” (Genus: Inutilus Rusticus) Naptime. 
Seems his much vaunted "Tunnel to Nowhere" is going to cost 3 times what he’s telling us, that is: $15,000,000,000,000.00 which caused his Piggy-Bank minder “Boggles” O’Brien to froth at the mouth about CFMEU, leftish plots and Academics with Agendas.

Well let me tell you something Michael-me-lad…. Not everyone likes either Dodo's or your agenda; particularly the one where the taxpayer does the $3,000,000,000.00 refurbishment of National park infrastructure and your lot to lease it off for business development. Stinks that does.. almost as much as Matty “What’s-a-Green-Wedge” Guy’s  costly folly at Ventnor.

But it is good the see that “Dodo” can hold to a script and train of thought ….…repeatedly…repeatedly… repeatedly, about the zillions and zillions of trains we can import for Cranbourne.

A prognostication Petals: in about five days ( around two weeks from polling day) the Public Prosecutor will bring down a finding that based on the Police evidence submitted, certain Labor Party members close to leader Dan Andrews will be charged with the theft of a reporters tape machine.

A molehill that will have the proportions in all the Ugly American, Murdoch's press of a Krakatoa!

Where’s Geoff ”Fiddles” Shaw in all this… off scot free and running as an independent!

Ohh Petals ….Perchance to Dream of people of Maggie’s quality and not dismal apparatchiks with very limited imagination.

Hoo-roo,

Shane