Just hope that as we remember Servicemen and women today we remember the Australia they fought for – wasn’t gay marriage and Islamic!

After a considerable barrage of angry responses, he tweeted:

Ok you are right my apologies this was the wrong context to raise these issues. ANZACs mean to much to me to demean this day, not intended

The Australian Christian Lobby are on the beige side of the Westboro catapaulting cranks. They want a net filter, to reduce the rights of homosexuals, to act as an influencer in the “corridors of power” and restore a booming voice for family ethics in Australia.

They also want to tell you that your grandfathers killed for and were killed because they were fighting for an Australia free from muslims and gays.

The Australian Christian Lobby is lying to you and insulting Australia’s contribution to the world.

World War 1 was a terrifying slaughter. Forget your mythologies, forget your jingoistic patriotism or declarations that World War 1 meant we have democracy, are allowed to talk like jerks and hate with uncorrected impunity.

The shy 18 year old boy from Numurkah, my Grandfather, didn’t fight for any of that. He didn’t fight for your politics or mine. He fought because his father told him to.

Much has been made of the Anzac myth, the towering silhouette of the digger. Those rakish boys filled with cheeky irreverence and bravery.  They didn’t fight for the right to make Australians’ feel more Australian, they didn’t fight for the right to make sure I never had to become a muslim, German or Japanese. They fought because they were told to. They fought because they wanted to. They fought for England. They fought because it was adventure, adevnture away from the farm and the local mechanic’s institute.

To the victors came the spoils and many Australian men returned spoiled from the War. The men who were never recovered. The men who returned with unimaginable injuries and diseases. The men who came back looking fine but were forever mentally altered, medicating themselves with drink and drugs. The women they bashed, the children they abused. The War didn’t end in the trenches. It came into our homes and continued to fight for decades.

These were the men deserted by us. The soldiers who needed greater rehabilitation than we knew to give. Spare me your Anzac pride and joy. Give me your shame for what we put them through.

Today is a day of collective mourning and understanding the true tragedy of the Anzac myth – that it has been hijacked by Right wing fundamentalists who abhor difference and cannot understand the value of working together for the greater good.

Goddamnit, we just love talking about sex.

We also love reading about sex memoirs, wherein women chronicle their laundry list of indiscretions and adventures or, in a strange new turn for the sub-genre, chronicling their abstinence. When reading a book about sex, one generally expects some titillation. Working on that assumption and the trend of “Literary ladies gone wild” sex memoirs, you could surmise that there is a steady market for these forniographies, a term which I’m sure will never take off but was better than my previous effort, shagoir.

It’s interesting to note that these sex memoirs are generally only ever from the female perspective. Perhaps it’s more titilating for a reader to discover that women enjoy sex or that the thought of a woman engaged in some sort of sexual activity still shocks. Perhaps there is no art left in a man listing his exploits, unless it is some relatively edgy fetish.

With all this in mind, I recently read ‘The Sexual History of Catherine M’. It’s French, the author is suitably impressive and the book features lots and lots of fucking – threesomes, gangbangs, swinging, casual encounters, monogamy. If nothing else, there could be action on every page.

However, ‘The Sexual History of Catherine M’ is relentlessly banal. Sexual exchanges, no matter how grandiose in scale or exotic unfamiliarity, lack any of the excitement expected from twitchy readers. In between her trysts, there are trite pontifications on sexuality and relationships that barely mask the vacuity of the author. In an environment where everything is discussed with detached pseudo-intellectual torpor, any activity appears welcome no matter how rote, no matter how it merely goes through the motions.

Is it a fundamental problem when it comes to writing about sex? Are writers today stuck between the nauseatingly pretentious bodice rippers or empty French fucking? Are these the only options?

Perhaps the problem is with sex itself. Though an unlikely example to cite, there was a passage from ‘Red Dragon’ that seems particularly relevant. Francis Dollarhyde, serial killer with an incredibly complex ritual for slashing his way through perfect family homes and videoing the process, noted his movements started with grand, powerful sweeps before degenerating into base pig fucking, all sense of grace lost in his own mounting pleasure.

There is some truth to that. No matter the location, kink or beauty of the participants, sex often comes down to those grabs of overloading pleasure that often don’t convey outside the union. I’ve watched others and been struck with the banality, choreographed routines that bore.

I am most likely being overly harsh, vexed by the rote approach to erotica. Add two tattooed girls with piercings and tube socks and you have 68% of Tumblr. A woman with a corset is suddenly a burlesque performer. Pole dancing is an exercise routine. A French author dutifully notes how many cocks she can take at once.

Is it just me or are women still defining their sexuality via male approval?

Shameless plug: I wrote about hysteria surrounding porn over at the Drum.

It’s one of those things that I day dream about. Me, a tousle-haired firebrand of a lass, trying the patience of my Governess who dreams only of an awkward kiss with nice Mr Shackleton the barrister. Trussed up in a corset and mood, storming the British Museum before nipping over the road for a nice cup of tea at elevenses. Yes, I have put some effort into this 19th Century daydream, in fact more than that one where I star in an Interpol music video as the object of Paul Bank’s smoky attentions.

There have been attempts at acquiring said education. I studied Latin alongside my Archaeology (aka Arts) degree. My French was once passable enough to read Baudelaire in the original French but as an upcoming post will show, is no longer smooth enough to order a drink at a Parisian bar. I have read some of the classics but have struggled or snored (and occasionally been scintillated). My debating skills are patchy, I am awkward with grammar and let’s not even discuss logic. In short, I’m a pathetic dilettante with a long way to go.

I’ll be following the trivium, also known as the three ways. I will also delve into a rather daunting reading list. As part of this, I’m going to revive an old tradition which has some connection to the modern art of blogging: the Commonplace book.

The Commonplace book was a way people used to compile their knowledge. They would summarise novels and worthy tomes, note down quotations and relate their new-found knowledge to their own life in some way (see EM Forster for more). As such, from time to time, this blog will turn into a Commonplace Blog – a modern way for me to discuss what I’m learning and my response to it. Feel free to join in between tweets and tumblrs.

The desire for a classical education is undoubtedly an exercise in bourgeois narcissism and a sincere desire for self improvement but also a reaction to the non-stop information that assaults us. The never-ending vitriol of editorialising, the shifting shadows of spin and the cacophony of facts, events and opinion is disorientating. I need to navigate my way and hope the pursuit of classical education will provide that map.

Generally, I try to avoid being naked in front of other people and it’s not just because my ears are sensitive to high-pitched screaming. Sure, the Hague has issued some rulings but, one cesarean and life-long affair with butter later, I just don’t really feel comfortable baring my vulnerable body to others. That the inner 14-year-old-Catholic-School-student I suspect lurks inside everyone will see my body and compose dark curses.

This isn’t the hair-flicking cry of a size 8 ingénue, terror-stricken and without a thing to wear. I’m larger than most, often unapologetically so. It’s enough to make buying clothes a saga worthy of Norse legend and make my health-obsessed sister twitch uncontrollably. It also adds drama to my existing curves and fills cups that were previously empty. I adore and agonise over my flawed body in equal measure.

However, it makes some moments awkward. Especially the first entry into a Japanese bath house, also known as sentos or onsen. A communal bath house separated for each gender, the routine is to drop trou, kneel by the showers, scrubbing and rinsing your skin to Silkwood levels before serenely plunging into the boiling hot bath.

It wasn’t the first time I have visited an onsen, nor will it be the last but I have always done so solo. Stepping into the sento’s inner sanctum with a tiny towel and a few friends just seemed to up the volume on my inner crazy. At one point, the crazy was not just loud, it was driving and muttering about entering bat country. That was when I wondered if the dire quality of my abs or grooming would quite understandably compel my friends to never speak with me again. Because, quite obviously, I have dancing tentacles in lieu of labia.

Together we all lounged in steam rooms and melted in baths. The chatter was easy and we all stared off in the middle distance. Our voices said “oh sure, I hang around my friends naked and chatting breezily all the time” while the eyes said “if I stare at that tile over there really hard and not at my body, it’s like I’m wearing clothes. Clothes made of ceramic tile.” The presence of friends removed the transient anonymity I was normally afforded. I was exposed to so many people, exposed in a way I find vulnerable even with my partner.

Naturally, I broke the rule I fervently hoped others wouldn’t and looked around. Around us, Japanese women of all ages milled about, chatting happily with their friends and family. They were relaxed in their conversation and in milling about the baths.

Slowly it dawned on me why the women may have been so relaxed and at ease. They weren’t comparing themselves to one another. In the sento, one is surrounded with the evident proof that advertising and popular culture hides: women are a staggering array of different shapes, sizes and beauty. No physical one ideal as splashed across the pages of magazines.

It’s amazing the power of a bit of communal nudity. Realising the physical diversity within the room instantly ameliorated my barking neuroses, a harder bomb to defuse than anything shown in the Hurt Locker.

There was no shame, no feeling of needy comparison – just different women, all looking utterly beautiful and relaxed. It wasn’t a voyeuristic thing nor alienating, if anything, the sense of community and solidarity was enhanced. Our bodies aren’t just markers for sexual desirability or fashion fillers – they’re just bodies, astounding physical collections of function.

Via Dooce

Together we will roam the lands, solve mysteries and scream profanities. I also hold deluded plans to write while I am away. Whether or not this will amount to anything is unknown but it is also a particularly useful (if pretentious) excuse to lie on a bed for a day.

I won’t do a daily update as I have with previous trips but will collate for each destination. I was going to take photos as part of a casual brief/arrangement I have with a photo agency but am so burnt out I’ve decided not to. Instead, I will concentrate on a rather rambling story I have in my head, mainly so I have more opportunities to sit at my lap top with a smoke and a coffee.

While doing a bit of publicity for the book last year, I was lucky enough to be interviewed by Kelly Higgins-Devine from ABC Brisbane. I made with the jokes, she made with the giggles and as one thing lead to another that wasn’t a restraining order but a regular segment talking about television and popular culture.

Think of it as field dispatches from my couch, which has been renamed Paul McGann so I can airily tell people “Oh, last night? Not much, just a quiet night in lying on Paul McGann”.

But enough of my tales of monogamous lounging. Here’s an mp3 of me prattling.

http://blogs.abc.net.au/files/khd–amy-gray.mp3

But she’s an attention seeking pest that delivers to brief. She is hired for her ability to polarise opinion and, no matter how sloppily it is done, consistently shocks a reactionary audience that begs for indignation, perceiving apoplexy as a cardio workout. She delivers what is asked of her and has spent innumerable time developing herself as personal brand, the celebrity of spite.

One of the areas Deveny hones this is on Twitter. Her bite-sized chunks of bile target everyone and anyone. Over Anzac Day,  she stirred controversy with her incendiary attack on what she perceives as a misogynistic, battle-hungry culture of rapebots braying for carnage.

And then she picked on Bindi Irwin and Saint Belinda Emmett at the Logies via Twitter.

Great bastion of intellectual discourse and near-Scandinavian logic, Neil Mitchell savaged her “bitter, pointless humour” on Twitter. Apart from proving he has never read Twitter in any depth, Mitchell may be surprised to learn that “bitter, pointless humour” is responsible for 60% of tweets on Twitter, the remaining 40% spent deconstructing the dreaminess of Justin Beiber’s bangs.

Deveny was not hired by the Age to tweet. She was not using an account registered as representing the Age’s view. The twitter account was for her own use to promote her work as a stand-up comedian and writer, as well as a platform for her particular style of commentary. A style that the Age paid for, a style that the Age often profited from.

As of yesterday, Catherine Deveny was sacked from the Age with Editor-In-Chief, Paul Ramadge, opining that “We are appreciative of the columns Catherine has written for The Age over several years but the views she has expressed recently on Twitter are not in keeping with the standards we set at The Age.”

What is exceptionally curious is that Deveny had not deviated from her usual schtick-rationalised-as-atheist-feminist-discourse. She was sacked for being her consistent self on Twitter, not for work submitted for publication to the Age. She in no way defamed or slandered either the Age, it’s staff or any of the celebrities attending the Logies. She did not attack the race or gender from either group. Even curiouser, Deveny’s tweets didn’t accuse performers of having sexually-transmitted diseases, unlike Wil Anderson’s posts from the same event.

This raises a few interesting “standards”.

Your employer apparently owns your online identity: if you put your voice online under your real name, expect to be monitored and penalised if you transgress any written or unwritten rules. The hark back to pseudonyms for anyone wanting to engage with online opinion is not too far away.

I love the smell of outrage in the morning: From the same Age article, it was claimed 200 responses were received by 6:30pm yesterday. To put this in perspective, measure the 200 responses against the population of Victoria, the ratings from the Logies and then match that against Catherine Deveny’s followers on Twitter. Basically, a lot of people who didn’t watch the Logies and don’t follow Catherine Deveny felt outraged enough to protest a woman’s observations they don’t read on a tv show they don’t watch. Nothing churns the bile in our bellies or fires the blood in our veins like outrage. Ironically for Deveny, her ability to do that well lead to her dismissal. Which leads us to…

Pitchforks will always be wifi: to borrow from Charlie Brooker’s analysis of the Jonathon Ross/Russell Brand/Andrew Sachs affair, the public has been drilled into interactive-response expectation through years of talent shows, online polls and talkback  - when something displeases them, they believe they have the power to remove people from  their jobs. If we can choose an Idol or potential Supermodel, we can control who else we want in media and entertainment.

The Andrew Bolt paradox: Andrew Bolt’s controversial views on immigrants, academics, politicians, social classes and other individuals who flare his nostrils with indignation are regularly broadcast online, radio, tv and in print. Additionally, he is given the sheen of a hardened journalist which promotes an air of credibility and authority. Going through archives of his work in those formats, Andrew Bolt has published material which, though doesn’t idiotically ponder on the sex life of a ubiquitous 11 year old, does impugn his targets with increasing ferocity and decreasing factual basis. And yet he still has a job.

So what’s Catherine Deveny’s problem? She was a brand formed by the print media’s need to combat online media’s popularity, only to fall to earth singed from using online media to deliver 140-character jokes. I am no fan of Deveny but the problem isn’t with her, it is with the broadcasters and the audience for seeking to control what they should not.

We’d sit there every Sunday overdosing on Bowie, Kiss and the Clash and let worlds of symbolism inject into our brains. Big film clips were an event – INXS and Duran Duran would binge on neon, grit and sex. At it’s height, there would be hour long special to debut and deconstruct Michael Jackson’s latest. I’d crouch by the tv, obsessively taping clips played overnight on Rage and Mtv and discovering the joys of Fugazi, Dead Kennedys, Nick Cave, L7 and Silverfish.

It still happens from time to time: no matter what you think about the band, “Welcome To The Black Parade” is an impressive work. Radiohead, Bjork and Jack White have fun exploring the medium. There are always lists of the best music videos online and they’re good. Some are epic, some are Russell Mulcahy-esque splodge-fests, some are just a cavalcade of bouncing arse cheeks. But none of them move me to a point of frizz-haired insanity.

So, it was with some interest I read about Lady Gaga’s new video. Though I’ve never sat through one of her songs/videos, Kottke said it might be “the last great music video” made.

I don’t hate La Gaga, I understand where she’s coming from. In fact, it’s increasingly easy to see where she’s coming from because she is playing colour by numbers diva. She’s playing an aggressive and accelerated game to become immortal, to become an icon, but from the outside for those engorged from popular culture’s teat, it’s a tame though well-produced touchdown. I can’t feel the spirit or substance in her work.

Admittedly, strutting along some 50 years when the great cliches began to form is a hard task. The cycles and the stereotypes formed long before she thought of duct-taping the milk ducts. Taking the tropes, spinning them, reacting and pioneering while still connecting with an audience is a musician or aesthetic performer (which I think best describes Lady Gaga) best chance of cultural immortality.

True music icons descend like gods. Occasionally, they take the form of mortals travelling along the hard, lonely roads with us. Their power will comfort you from life’s lulls, and can drag you out of torpor. True music icons straddle the divide between the mundane and the exquisite – their perfection reaching into your day and morphing into a conversation.

I’m not giving up hope.

I was attending as a pretend girlfriend to a fabulously talented friend, Claire Halliday, so she could research her latest article. It wasn’t too strange a request to receive given she knows I’m currently working on a book about sex and, frankly, my life is crazier than a spinster with 47 cats named Gary Busey.

We sat in a bar to get our story straight. We were girlfriends in an open relationship who wanted to try swinging though I was gunshy due to Herman Rockefeller’s recent swinging-related murder. We needed to bring up the story casually to gauge reactions and collect information for her article.

I was anxious beyond belief and smoothed my dress in an OCD-frenzy. Not about being discovered as a fraud which is, quite frankly, a regular fear of mine, but of being rejected. I had no idea what I was walking into. Would they ignore me? Would they consider me too fat and frumpy to be considered as a disposable shag? Would I be standing there, hopping from foot to foot and biting my lip like a not-shag on a rock? What happens when you’re rejected by people you would consider freaks and can’t get a shag in a place where it’s a free-fuck-for-all? Even if you’re not there to fuck?

A few dejected Indian males sat apart in tub chairs and silently watched everyone milling at the bar. Some Henry the 8th lookalikes marinated in a spa up the back. The bar at the front of the club (hidden above shopfronts on a suburban main street) would have looked like a small RSL, but with porn projected onto a wall where the pokies would be. Technically speaking, there was still poking happening watched through glazed eyes.

Claire  got us drinks while I stood back a pace. A lady chatted with me briefly, filled with soft kindness and bright, inquisitive eyes. I immediately took a liking to her and could imagine her as a family friend, the sort who serves tea in crappy affirmation mugs as you share a fun conversation over a kitchen table. We discussed the practicality of different lingerie and she gave us a conspiratorial flash. She’s the sort you always want to hug, the sort you would seek out at every family party and would sigh happily over as you drove home. You wouldn’t think of her at a swingers’ party. Though perhaps it’s fair to say your immediate impression would suggest she was a woman who really enjoyed a spit roast was correct on every score.

We quickly scootered over to the smoking area, a small screened area where my small-talk opening gambit was commenting on a woman’s shoes. I soon realised how timid that was in this environment in comparison with others (e.g. “I’ll be fucking you later”). When you’re at a swingers’ party, it’s safe to assume that most people are a sure thing and won’t base their decision to fingerbang you on your ability to weave a witty pun. Mind you, the puns don’t get me any shags either.*

A quick tour of the venue showed two things:

1) Shagging-rooms were spartan cubicles with vinyl upholstery and a caddy stocked with lube and condoms. Handy. I was longing for soft mattresses with fresh linen until the realisation hits that it is a communal mattress.

2) Some men truly believe that if they follow you and hang around, without saying anything, you’ll drop trou for super-happy-porno-time. Please. Some things will never work. Even at a swingers’ party.

I actually really liked or felt a protective warmth for some of the people I met. They’re just couples who’ve found something to do on the weekend other than Bunnings or tawdry markets looking for dreamcatchers. Sure, when trawling through the bedding section of Ikea, they may have different ideas but they’re just normal people with a different take on intimacy and relationships.

In the labyrinth of cubicles and lurking men, we discussed our plan. Claire had enough colour for her article and we both shared a concern we were stealing attention from people who should have been lining up prospects who were a sure thing. It was time to go.

For the record: we were non-participants.

* Who am I kidding? Nothing gets me a shag. Or a date. I could tie a remote control, six pack, copy of FHM and steak around my neck and not only not attract anyone, but also lose a “most pathetically accessorised” competition.

Please read Claire’s unedited and superior article at her blog.