Wormhole

I

Or...
This Blog is Rated P for Perturbed.
Yes that's right...there's a fair amount of perturbation going on around here.

On the weekend I was waiting for a takeaway coffee and while I waited I happened to glance at the front page of a certain Sydney tabloid rag.

What caught my eye was the headline which screamed something like
"A Victory for Decency" accompanied by a shot of the burly butts of some police officers disappearing up the stairs of what I recognised to be a highly esteemed art gallery.
Well, of course my interest was piqued. (They don't call the gutter press sensationalist for nothing).
Turns out that the cops had raided an exhibition of Bill Henson's work after "complaints" it was "child pornography".

Now... censorship in the Arts is nothing new, so the fact that this had happened was only part of what saddened me, no what truly disturbed and depressed me was the language of moral outrage that was being used:

"Victory for decency"? ?

What the?

For a moment I thought I had slipped through some awful wormhole in the space/time continuum and had reconstituted in the early 50s with J.Edgar Hoover as head of the Australian Police Force heading up the good old Vice Squad.

I would like to think as a supposedly civilised society that we are beyond such reactionary rhetoric, but apparently we are instead going backwards.
It really does depress me. Bill Henson is undeniably one of the finest artists currently practicing in Australia. His profoundly intuitive grasp of highly charged emotive imagery coupled with his sheer technical brilliance is beyond comparison. I can only hope a good civil rights lawyer steps in to protect his freedom of speech.

More here for the interested.



If you've just joined needle's edge after Lucy very kindly awarded me this . . .
well, you're probably feeling horribly alienated by now!

I don't usually get up on my soapbox and rant about such issues, but in this case I felt moved to.

There's probably some rules associated with this award thingie, but I'm not sure what they are (like which way to wear the tiara and sash, and so forth...) so if anyone knows, fill me in and I'll be happy to oblige.




A big thankyou to everyone who commented on the dog bed.

As I was making it a low-wattage light bulb did indeed begin to dimly sputter above my head. I'm considering this one a prototype, so even a modest production run would be a while away yet. Until then I'll be looking at a few elements including how it stands up to wear and tear, and most importantly how it copes with repeated laundering. I'd love to hear back from anyone who would seriously think of buying one (in the future). Watch this space while the R+D continues...



- a belly button in the rock, or worm-hole, taken at a harbour rockpool a few minutes before it started raining. For vessel wednesday. Yes it's still going!