I am so pleased that the miners finally got rescued the other day.  Because I am frankly sick of all the media attention it’s been getting.  You know what?  They are not heroes.  They did nothing heroic.  They survived – they are survivors – and that’s good in itself. They did not, however, doing anything heroic.  Argh.

The other thing that has narked me in the news recently is that soldier she got killed in Baghdad.  First, he wasn’t the first Aussie to die in Iraq – there was an Aussie on that Blackhawk helicopter that went down a while ago.  The other thing is that for Johnny H and whoever important else to got to the funeral is just dumb.  Will they do that for the next Aussie soldier who dies over there?  And did anyone bother to do that for the 600-odd Aussie soldiers who died during Vietnam?

Turns out he was a Kurd!  And born in the same city as Saddam Hussein!  History really does serve up some lovely ironies, doesn’t it?

I got that info from a TV programme on the ABC last Sunday, Holy Warriors, about Richard and Saladin.  I was taping it, and watching Stargate… and then at 8.15, the tape rewound (the show finished at 8.25).  Having finally watched it today, I think I pretty much would have got all of it IF I had started the tape at the start of the show, rather than believing the TV programme (I got the news at the start), and if those pesky miners hadn’t been found to be alive and necessitated a ‘Breaking News’ event in the middle.

Anyway.  He was a Kurd!  Brilliant!

Having just finished watching this with the kiddies (comparison between the movie and the myth, don’t you know), I am struck once again by the differences between Akhilles and Hektor.  I am sure people have made these observations before, but they are so different…

Akhilles: the extreme.  The greatest warrior, the immortal, the orphan (basically).  Extreme in grief, ignoring the gods, disrespectful to rulers.  Fights by himself, in front of everyone else, not waiting for them.

Hektor:  the moderate.  Good father, good husband, good son.  Excellent warrior, but also a responsible leader – he doesn’t leave his army.  Respects the gods and his ruler.

Yes, I know that I am probably muddling up the movie with the myths, but eh; tis all grist for the mill.

And Akhilles is “Greek”, Hektor Trojan – yet Hektor seems to embody all the values of the polis… maybe it’s a hero-generation thing; Akhilles is the old-style, outside-the-city-hero, vs Hektor the city-hero.

Think I might have to read Iliad again.

I’m watching SBS’ programme, Insight, with people talking about multiculturalism and Muslim and democracy and Australian values.  The Deputy Mayor from wherever (Ashfield; his name is Nick Mason) is a KNOB – “Australia is a paradise”??  Please!!  Bob from One Nation calling Pauline Hanson a political prisoner of the Labor Party nearly made me fall off the chair laughing.  Get rid of multiculturalism?? How does that work?  And what does it mean?  The suggestion was to replace it with integration… how boring!  What makes you Australian?  The values they’re espousing could be called the values of at least most Western democracies!  As one woman said, how jingoistic of us to call those ours!  I liked Libbie Gorr’s metaphor of Australia no longer being the nuclear family, but rather a blended family that needs to change its ideas. 

Yes!! Someone has just mentioned needing a Bill of Rights – hurrah!  Bring it on. 

I love that we can have this discussion – and I can write that Nick Mason is a slimy, self-satisfied fatcat – and no one is going to kick my door down.  Healthy discussion and democracy; oh yeh.

So sad that ‘mateship’ has been politicised; darn you Johnny!  I don’t like it for the mythologised ANZAC history – since I beleive that blokes at that stage wouldn’t have called their friends mates – but I like it because it implies a friendliness, but you don’t need to know the person.  It makes me think of Eddings’ Sparhawk, always calling people “neighbour” but it’s shorter.

I like the range of people in this discussion.  Long-time Aussies and immgirants; politicians, reporters, ad men, comedians (Mikey!  Libbie!), Mustapha (he’s cool – from some Muslim group, responded very well to Nasty Bob from One Nation), other totally random types.

One Aussie value?  Tolerance… commitment to equality… “a fair go”… embracing each other, indeed, instead of just tolerance – yes!

Nick Mason is truly slimy and nasty.

I’m reading four different books at the moment.

I’ve just started Firestorm of the Lord, bu Stuart Piggin – it’s a historical and theological look at Christian revival; I’m reading it for a history reading group a friend of mine has set up.  I have to read it by Friday night…

Fly by Night, by Frances Harding – one of the books sent to me by VATE for review for next term.  I’m loving it.

The Struggle for Mastery, by – someone – it’s about politics and relationships in and between England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales between 1066 and 1284.

The Cross of Christ, by John Stott – which I’ve been reading bits of for most of the year; it’s just so dense!

It’s all a bit overwhelming.  At least with one, I’ve got a very near deadline – that makes some of decision easier to make.

How exciting – my first meme!  yeh yeh, sad I know… bold=seen, *=loved.

“2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) Stanley Kubrick*
“The 400 Blows” (1959) Francois Truffaut
“8 1/2” (1963) Federico Fellini
“Aguirre, the Wrath of God” (1972) Werner Herzog
“Alien” (1979) Ridley Scott*
“All About Eve” (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz
“Annie Hall” (1977) Woody Allen
“Bambi” (1942) Disney
“Battleship Potemkin” (1925) Sergei Eisenstein
“The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946) William Wyler
“The Big Red One” (1980) Samuel Fuller
“The Bicycle Thief” (1949) Vittorio De Sica
“The Big Sleep” (1946) Howard Hawks
“Blade Runner” (1982) Ridley Scott*
“Blowup” (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
“Blue Velvet” (1986) David Lynch
“Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) Arthur Penn
“Breathless” (1959) Jean-Luc Godard
“Bringing Up Baby” (1938) Howard Hawks
“Carrie” (1975) Brian DePalma
“Casablanca” (1942) Michael Curtiz*
“Un Chien Andalou” (1928) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali
“Children of Paradise” / “Les Enfants du Paradis” (1945) Marcel Carne
“Chinatown” (1974) Roman Polanski
“Citizen Kane” (1941) Orson Welles
“A Clockwork Orange” (1971) Stanley Kubrick
“The Crying Game” (1992) Neil Jordan
“The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951) Robert Wise
“Days of Heaven” (1978) Terence Malick
“Dirty Harry” (1971) Don Siegel
“The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” (1972) Luis Bunuel
“Do the Right Thing” (1989) Spike Lee
“La Dolce Vita” (1960) Federico Fellini
“Double Indemnity” (1944) Billy Wilder
“Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” (1964) Stanley Kubrick
“Duck Soup” (1933) Leo McCarey
“E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982) Steven Spielberg*
“Easy Rider” (1969) Dennis Hopper
“The Empire Strikes Back” (1980) Irvin Kershner*
“The Exorcist” (1973) William Friedkin
“Fargo” (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen
“Fight Club” (1999) David Fincher
“Frankenstein” (1931) James Whale
“The General” (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman
“The Godfather,” “The Godfather, Part II” (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola
“Gone With the Wind” (1939) Victor Fleming
“GoodFellas” (1990) Martin Scorsese
“The Graduate” (1967) Mike Nichols
“Halloween” (1978) John Carpenter
“A Hard Day’s Night” (1964) Richard Lester
“Intolerance” (1916) D.W. Griffith
“It’s A Gift” (1934) Norman Z. McLeod
“It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) Frank Capra
“Jaws” (1975) Steven Spielberg*
“The Lady Eve” (1941) Preston Sturges
“Lawrence of Arabia” (1962) David Lean*
“M” (1931) Fritz Lang
“Mad Max 2” / “The Road Warrior” (1981) George Miller
“The Maltese Falcon” (1941) John Huston
“The Manchurian Candidate” (1962) John Frankenheimer
“Metropolis” (1926) Fritz Lang
“Modern Times” (1936) Charles Chaplin
“Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam*
“Nashville” (1975) Robert Altman
“The Night of the Hunter” (1955) Charles Laughton
“Night of the Living Dead” (1968) George Romero
“North by Northwest” (1959) Alfred Hitchcock
“Nosferatu” (1922) F.W. Murnau
“On the Waterfront” (1954) Elia Kazan
“Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968) Sergio Leone
“Out of the Past” (1947) Jacques Tournier
“Persona” (1966) Ingmar Bergman
“Pink Flamingos” (1972) John Waters
“Psycho” (1960) Alfred Hitchcock
“Pulp Fiction” (1994) Quentin Tarantino
“Rashomon” (1950) Akira Kurosawa
“Rear Window” (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
“Rebel Without a Cause” (1955) Nicholas Ray
“Red River” (1948) Howard Hawks
“Repulsion” (1965) Roman Polanski
“Rules of the Game” (1939) Jean Renoir
“Scarface” (1932) Howard Hawks
“The Scarlet Empress” (1934) Josef von Sternberg
“Schindler’s List” (1993) Steven Spielberg
“The Searchers” (1956) John Ford
“The Seven Samurai” (1954) Akira Kurosawa
“Singin’ in the Rain” (1952) Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly*
“Some Like It Hot” (1959) Billy Wilder
“A Star Is Born” (1954) George Cukor
“A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951) Elia Kazan
“Sunset Boulevard” (1950) Billy Wilder
“Taxi Driver” (1976) Martin Scorsese
“The Third Man” (1949) Carol Reed
“Tokyo Story” (1953) Yasujiro Ozu
“Touch of Evil” (1958) Orson Welles
“The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948) John Huston
“Trouble in Paradise” (1932) Ernst Lubitsch
“Vertigo” (1958) Alfred Hitchcock
“West Side Story” (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise
“The Wild Bunch” (1969) Sam Peckinpah
“The Wizard of Oz” (1939) Victor Fleming

Quite why I bothered with this I don’t know, since there are so many here that I haven’t seen!  Lots that I do want to see, though, of course… even Gone with the Wind, since there seem to be so many parodies.

My nasty J has introduced me to RSS feeds, originally because the sister has been talking to us largely by a LiveJournal blog.  So, I downloaded the program, and got her site on it.  Then I thought, “I wonder what sort of other blogs are out there?”  And you know what?  There are lots of interesting blogs out there.  Lots and lots of history ones.  It’s great.  If a little scary sometimes, simply because it means there is an awful lot more stuff I feel like I should read now, because it’s right there at my fingertips.  It’s great!