 |
Monday, 27 May 2002 |
Today I was in search of pushpins, to pin up the print/s from A Poverty of Desire on the walls of the Artrage gallery on June 7th.
I used to have a big collection of well-made little products from Muji in London, and it included clear colourless plastic barrelled pushpins, as well as wonderfully-made little clothes pegs of a design like no other. I left all that stuff behind in London, unfortunately. Regular pushpins can be bought in art supply shops anywhere in the world. Except Perth.
I phoned all the Perth art supply stores and stationers, asked about pushpins, and found the only person who knew what they are was an English girl. The others thought I was asking about drawing pins and map pins.
Then I remembered that OfficeWorks has some superstores in Perth, phoned their administration, and they told me they sell black, white and clear colourless ones. And they knew exactly what I was talking about.
When I got there, I found that not only did they have said pushpins, but several other types of pins that were new to me. Amazing.
9:13:00 PM 
|
|
On the train into the city today to pick up some pushpins, I saw a sight that proves reality is stranger than fiction, although A Poverty of Desire does that to some degree already.
I would have made a photograph if the light wasn’t so bad, or if I had a flashgun and a Leica with a decent flash synch speed.
There in front of me, sitting directly across from each other, were two identical big fat baby men. Both were wearing black, except one was all spiffy in a suit with black shirt and tie, and the other was decidedly casual. They both had exactly the same face, and the same facial features, like a recently born baby. Undershot jaw, button nose, huge cheeks, mouth that is an inverted U-shape. Somewhere on the web is an Olmec baby figurine the spitting image of these two guys, but this is the one I laid my hands on fastest, and it is pretty close to how they looked.
I thought these guys were twins, but they had nothing to do with each other. One got off at one station, the other at the next. You would have thought that if they looked at each other, it might have been like looking into a mirror. But they were both oblivious. Incredible.
8:20:44 PM
|
|
I came across the link above which quotes me as a critic, on a page devoted to a book by artist Joyce Tenneson. I had almost forgotten that in the world outside Australia I was regarded as a critic. There are a few such web pages.
As the art press in Australia often states, the profession of critic barely exists here and yet is desperately needed. The problem is that you don’t get paid for it, and have to support it by other means. And find the time for it as well. That is why Robert Hughes left Australia for London, and then triumphantly went to America to be art critic for Time magazine, so many years ago.
I would love to be a critic again, but have to find some way of financing that.
3:09:29 PM
|
|
And here is what he asked them for:
1. Spell-checker web service.
2. Pings from CMSes for more currency.
3. Google On The Desktop.
4. An API to access page rank.
5. OPML and directories (instead of two or three directories, millions).
6. RSS feeds for their news flows.
7. Gnutella as a decentralized distribution method.
I vote for number 2—pings from my weblog built using UserLand’s Radio 8 CMS to Google every time I add an entry.
11:49:12 AM
|
|
I watch The West Wing every week at 10:30PM on Tuesdays on Channel 9 in Perth. Every episode has me saying wow! each time, at the writing and the acting. I never regret losing sleep when watching it.
What I do regret is the same TV channel sees fit to prevent us from watching what is reportedly an equally brilliant award-winning American drama/comedy that is on at 10:30PM Mondays, Six Feet Under. What bottom-feeder at the same organisation has denied us in the west the right to watch what the rest of Australia is watching, Six Feet Under, and replaced it with a brain-dead Australian Rules Football show, Cometti Live?
Actually, I know who the Channel 9 Perth Program Manager is, and I sent him a letter. If you want to do the same, email me and I will tell you his address. Channel 9 refuses to divulge email addresses, cunningly, as they know people are less likely to write and post snail mail these days.
11:45:02 AM
|
|
Every day up to a dozen yellow guavas drop to the ground from a little tree growing in the tiny backyard of this decaying 1970s-era apartment. The fruit flies love them, as do the slater bugs. I have a fridge full of them—the guavas that is. I suspect this tree is a Sweet White Indonesian cultivar.
My guavas are very different to the ones that produce the acid-sweet pink and fleshy guava juice you buy in 1 litre cartons in London, that I would often buy for lunch. Drinking that stuff was like drinking a sweetened liquid flesh. One litre filled you up for the rest of the day.
11:34:17 AM
|
|
Gripping, emotional tales of the last minutes of the World Trade Center towers and the people in them.
What kind of diabolically evil monsters would want to do this to other human beings? Oh, that’s right, God told them to do it. Are they sure it wasn’t the Devil whispering in their ears?
11:19:49 AM
|
|
© Copyright 2002 Karl-Peter Gottschalk.
|
|
|
