1) Is Australia racist? Following the Harry Connick Jr Blackface Outrage (see here) and the ill-fated release of Oreo rip-offs entitled “Creole Creams” (evidence), Australia finds itself being asked that question. As a completely unqualified outsider, I’m going to answer it right now. On a whole, no more so than anyone else. In specific clusters, perhaps in a greater percentage than other places? Yes. Part of the Aussie aesthetic seems to be tactlessness. They come out and say or do things without real regard for consequence. They charge forth recklessly and hope to laugh it off later. It’s an interesting personality
On the one hand, they have great humor and seem like laid back anything goes types. On the other hand they also wax hateful about “Abbos” (Aborigines), “Wogs” (everyone who ever immigrated here and isn’t white) and various other groups that seem to irritate them. Or simply seem dumb. Which I find a little funny, as Australia’s international reputation pegs them as drunk and horny, not Nobel winners (this past year excluded).
This verbal diarrhea that seems inherent in Australian life isn’t bad in and of itself. The problem is that there are many thoughts, regarding how much your life sucks because of someone you’ve never met (in particular), which oughtn’t really be aired. Just saying. As for the above examples, the first was a bad joke and the second was a marketing faux pas. That’s all there is to it. It doesn’t prove Australia racist, but I would argue that Australia kind of is. It’s still got the vibe of a group of white people trying to keep out others. And that kind of sucks.
2) Earlier tonight I watched a program on the forensic investigation of King Tutankhamun(done by the 8th Earl of something or other, whose great-grandfather found Tut.) It struck me as amusing that he had inherited his “life’s passion” as he would an antique pocketwatch. Then I started thinking bigger, and decided the following. Why is Egypt the only country that has an entire branch of Academic study based on it. “Egyptology” is such a crock. It’s archaeology, or I suppose sometimes physical anthropology, with an unwillingness to compare cultures or step out from behind years of tomb-raiding colonialist claptrap. I just don’t dig it. Egypt’s fascinating, don’t get me wrong, but why does it get a whole “-ology” suffix?
I think it plays into the whole British aristocrat-turned-adventurer schtick that became popular in the 19th century. Dr. Livingston and all that crowd. The problem is that nowadays, it’s not. Nowadays it’s actual people with actual doctorates that they scraped hard to get (some of them even *gasp* EGYPTIAN) doing fine work on a fine subject that might be better funded, shared, and appreciated (comparitively, no less) under the purview of a different discipline. Not one set up 150 years ago for some rich inbred jackoff to get his jollies and see the world. Perhaps I’m overly cynical.
The other option is that every country with a vast archaeological history gets its own discipline. Babylonology, Greekology, and Romeology will all have to step up, to say nothing of the plentitude of -ologies we’ll reap from the heart of the Holy Land, which will be a fused blend of Israelology, Palestinology, Egyptology, and Romeology. It’ll get confusing. HolyLandology might be the way of the future.
I’ve been rambling, but I did it to make a point. It gets silly after a while. Egypt is exceptional in its gold and arbitrarily valuable artifacts, but it lacks the written history of the Sumerians, or the political interest of the Greeks, or the faith-based interest of the aforementioned Holylandology. It is one old empire amongst a bunch (and by far not the oldest). So, in short: Egyptology is bullshit. Take that, Lord Fuffington the Seventeenth of New Fancyshire.
3) Staring at the stars can blow your mind. I know, I know, this sounds like something that someone who takes drugs would say. I don’t do that, but I do occasionally have moments of lucid insanity during my normal life. At least that’s my personal prevailing theory.
The point is, the stars here are different. I see some of the things we see on our natural orbit around the sun, but in a totally different orientation. Dim memories of constellations go out the window. Orion I found because of the belt, but he doesn’t look right to me. Latitude and longitude being totally different, it actually makes sense (in that cold logical way), but from a the perspective of random dude it’s weird. Random dude is my usual perspective, by the way. Except in matters on which I am an expert, which is approximately none.
At any rate, this got me to thinking. It’s fairly widely accepted that at some point, human beings will once again begin thinking about traveling outside of Earth’s kind-hearted, life-giving boundaries. It remains to be seen whether or not a Doomsday scenario is required to ignite the second space race, but it’ll happen. If for no other reason than because of that monkey-brain instinct to see what’s in the next tree. Or the other side of the mountain. The scales change, the instinct remains the same.
This got me to thinking about perspective, and how radically different it could be if space travel was a reality. Rather than thinking about the Earth as a flat map of continents, poorly projected and distorted, or even as a globe, we would think of it as a central sphere in an everchanging three dimensional field of stars. People would walk around with that in their heads. It would be taught in school and fade into common knowledge, the way gravity, electricity, and all those other crazy concepts from past years have.
Imagine driving a vehicle capable of moving in three dimensions. A real three dimensions, with a Y-axis, basically. Think about the number of subconscious semi-instinctive decisions you would have to make. Think about the processing power required in our heads. That’s pretty nutty stuff.
Imagine really understanding that you are stuck on a rock hurtling through space so fast you can’t tell. Or you can’t tell because you’ve never been anywhere else. Yet. That gives me both heebies and jeebies.
So, through painfully amateurish astronomy comes another shift in perspective. Imagine what it would be like if I was really on drugs. Damn.
That’s all I got for tonight. Hope all is well with whoever’s reading whereever they are reading. Comments are more than welcome, and in fact encouraged.
RJC
