Benjamin Hourigan

Mood: Inspired
Soundtrack: Something for Kate, Beautiful Sharks; The Killers, Hot Fuss, The Bravery, The Bravery.

Today, I went on a long bike ride from my apartment in Shimanouchi to the Osaka bay area and back. Halfway there, on a bridge, I took my phone out to take a photo of some factories on a river, and found it out of juice. So I have only words to give you.

I rode by factories, and was showered by water droplets coming from one… I rode up a towering coil of a ramp up to a bridge that ran through the air and over a river. Over more bridges, I rode over islands, and on tree-lined (and rubbish-strewn) sidewalks to the World Trade Center area, where I walked on a palm-tree-lined boulevard by the water, saw a ship called “Asian Genius” at dock, and watched majestic yellow elevators travel their shaft to and from the Cosmo Tower lobby. I was waved away by a toll-booth operator at a massive freeway bridge from the WTC island to the Tempozan Harbor Village island, and had to ride back the way I came, all the way south to Nanko, north up Taisho-dori, and back home east along Sennichimae-dori. Riding down around the coiling bridge-ramp was a beautiful, smooth and speedy roll…

It was a pleasant, warm afternoon, and a combination of endorphins from uphill bridge-climbing and the sight of sea and majestic factories left me feeling much happier than I usually do here in Japan. Walking in the malls near the Cosmo Tower, I remembered the much greater material comforts of home, in Melbourne, and thought just how much like heaven life in the rich, Western world really is. I’m really looking forward to going back, and I’ve only got 53 days to wait. Japan’s not so bad, materially, but heaven’s a hard place when you don’t speak the language and you’ve got few people to talk to.

Today I posted a comment on some recent discussion of writing on virtual transvestitism at the Terra Nova blog. My comment is here, and the text is reproduced below:

The “fact that people are studying and talking about these ideas” (gender studies and queer theory) would not be objectionable if it had not reached the level of an extremely tiresome obsession.

And that, my friend, is sheer intellectual dishonesty.

Thanks to Joystiq for bringing this to my attention.

James Franklin, Corrupting the Youth: A history of philosophy in Australia (Sydney: Macleay Press, 2003), 465pp. ★★★ (3 stars)

This lively and opinionated history of philosophy in Australia is a good read, but lacks overall structure.

This book has more of a personal intellectual story to it than most, for me. In late 2004 I was decisively turning my back on the academic post’isms and looking for an alternative intellectual framework that I could base meaningful, readable research on. I’d been reading Keith Windschuttle’s The Killing of History, one of the Australian books written against post-ist nonsense, and decided to write to Windschuttle asking for some advice and reading recommendations. That it was taken as implicit in my department that one should revile Windschuttle was among the reasons I sought him out: if such misguided minds as those found in my department hated him, he probably had something worthwhile to say. Windschuttle passed my inquiry on to a friend of his, and somehow, in all this I found out about Jim Franklin, another of Windschuttle’s friends.

On Franklin’s webpage, I saw he’d written a book about philosophy in Australia. It was something I knew practically nothing about, and I was interested to pursue the intellectual connection, so I ordered it online. As with many books, it’s taken me months upon months to finish, but I’m glad I have.

What will forever stick in my mind about this book was that when I mentioned it, and Jim, in the postgraduate common room, Alex Murray (whose list of influences is a veritable shopping cart of obnoxious continental theory) picked up on the conversation from the other side of the room and chimed in, “that man is evil!” Upon asking why, I received an answer that I think had something to do with him being a Catholic. My further revelation that I’d heard about the book by writing to Keith Windschuttle probably earned me permanent suspicion from several people in the room.

But that’s by the by. I was pleasantly surprised to find that a scholarly work of this kind was in fact written as a rather good story, packed with scandal and incident. Franklin is full of opinions on philosophy, and his prejudices are very evident in the way he makes fun of particular figures and positions. While this tarnishes the credibility of the book in the deadly serious, scholarly sense, it’s a pleasure to see someone writing with a personal voice for a change, and taking a stand against or for particular thinkers while letting all speak through extensive quotations, such as this one:

Defects of empirical knowledge have less to do with the ways we go wrong in philosophy than defects of character do: such as the simple inability to shut up; determination to be thought deep; hunger for power; fear, especially the fear of an indifferent universe. (388, quote from David Stove, The Plato Cult and Other Philosophical Follies)

As with most such surveys of ideas, the chief value of Corrupting the Youth is that it may serve to acquaint one with great and beautiful writing and thinking. Stand-outs here are the moral sensibility of Raimond Gaita (405-408), the wit and wisdom of David Stove (i.e. 388), and the prose of Donald Horne (277). Franklin’s history is also valuable in chronicling some of the unsavory dealings and motivations that contributed to the rise of Marxism and the various post’isms in Australia’s academic humanities from the 1970s onwards.

Though an enjoyable read, Corrupting the Youth ends on a weak note, trailing off with a discussion of the euthanasia debate. It would have benefited from a conclusion that tied up the story into a cohesive whole, and guessed at future directions for Australian philosophy or issued some final judgement on it.

Diana Wynne Jones, Castle in the Air (1990; London: Collins, 2001), 285pp. ★★★ (3 stars)

Pleasant but insubstantial sequel to Howl’s Moving Castle, with an Arabian Nights flavour.

This sequel to Howl’s Moving Castle begins at quite a distance from its predecessor’s very English setting in the Kingdom of Ingary. Its hero, Abdullah, hails from a world rich in the middle-eastern clichés of the Arabian Nights, and takes his sweet time making it to an intersection with the characters of Howl’s Moving Castle in Ingary’s capital, Kingsbury.

Castle in the Air has the same whimsical and random air as Howl’s Moving Castle, albeit with less sense of their being any substance behind it. There is, however, some beautiful prose, such as this description of the eponymous’ castle’s surroundings:

When the carpet bobbed up lighter and they had a chance to look around, they gasped again. For here were the islands and promontories and bays of dim gold that Abdullah had seen in the sunset, spreading out from beside them into the far silver distance, where they lay hushed and still and enchanted like a vista of paradise itself. The pellucid waves broke on the cloud shore with only the faintest of whispers, which seemed to add to the silence. (215)

It is sprinkled, too, with wry womanly wisdom such as the observation that “men who [eschew kissing and] do nothing but make fine speeches make very poor husbands.” (249) But although the feminine strength of Flower-in-the-Night recalls Sophie’s elderly tenacity in Howl’s Moving Castle, this book is far less rich in the wisdom department, and the poorer for being without the earlier book’s romantic triangles.

Yesterday I thought I should consider eating at Starbucks for breakfast instead of McDonalds. I was wrong.

This morning I tried Starbucks’ bacon and egg muffin, which was odd. The bacon was limp, and as with the ‘fried egg’ bagels at McDonalds, the muffin contained a fried egg that was certainly the product of human design. It was made of two distinct sheets, and in the middle was ‘yolk’ that tasted sweet rather than the usual salty. It at least had somewhat the texture of yolk, unlike that starchy goo to be found in the middle of a McDonalds bagel egg, but the taste was entirely wrong. What possesses the Japanese to think they can make a better egg than nature?

The muffin, too, was short of the crispness found therein at McDonalds, and the main texture to be had in the concoction was from the gritty grains of pepper that seemed to have been applied to the muffin in the midst of some kind of sauce or other condiment. As I ate it, I contemplated whether the whole affair provoked simple not-liking or active dislike; whether I ought to continue eating it or give up. I ate it, because I had paid for it, but I think active dislike just barely won the day.

The Starbucks latte I had with the muffin, however, was entirely satisfactory, and far better than the bitter filter coffee to be had at McDonalds. But Starbucks cost me 550¥ for the muffin and coffee. At 380¥, with a good muffin and a hash brown into the bargain, McDonalds is far better value.

Today I had the good fortune of being scheduled a lesson where none of the students attended. The room it was in had a computer and internet access, so I spent some time emailing and reading the news. I also came across “The Golly Files.txt” sitting on the desktop. The file is a series of satirical comments on my blog either written or collated by someone who has been making half-baked attempts to take the piss out of me at my workplace since late last year, by posting a series of odd and barely-sensical “Golly files” on a pinboard at work.

“Golly” is a name that this person has decided to apply to me, and comes from a photo posted on a board at work a while ago. In it, I’m teaching at a girls’ high-school in Osaka, and showing the class a teatowel made by my parents, with a design featuring golliwogs (gollies).

Quite a lot of effort has gone into these comments: someone delved as far back as my post on Japanese Story for #9, and #s 5, 7-9, 16, 21, 24 and 29 (see below) are all likely inspired by material from posts. I’m not quite sure why Declan McManus (a.k.a. Elvis Costello) is supposedd to feel “graphically abused,” although he has sung of others being “rythmically admired” (in “Welcome to the Working Week”), but hey, whatever… Observing the style and the range of literary references, I’m beginning to get a suspicion of who might be behind the whole thing.

It’s no mystery to me why someone moderately clever would amuse themselves here by making fun of me. There’s precious little to do here, and since a Western intellect will go to waste in Japan, it may as well be wasted on something truly inane. I am, I’ll admit, an easy target. Putting myself in an intentionally unflattering light, I am a short and skinny man with a deep sense of self-importance, a serious demeanour, and not much appreciation for irony or for typically masculine pursuits such as social drinking, sports, and saying unflattering things about women.

What’s slightly perplexing, though, is why said person would make fun so cryptically and without giving me any attitude to my face. Sir, you shame yourself by being such a coward. Be a man; if you dislike me, at least be an asshole about it. Insult me extravagantly and in public, while I’m in the room. Stand behind your words, as I stand by mine.

The contains comments on my blog, and so here they are, where they properly belong. Enjoy, readers.

Comments on Golly’s Blog here Please

1. Scintillating Wonderful prose :- Noddy
2. Compleat toss :- Big ears
3. Wakarahen :- Kenji tanaka
4.Full of sound and fury signifying nothing:-Jaques Derrida
5. lord luv a duck, leave it out guv !, ;-Ken Livingston
6. you misunderestimate us:- George W. Bush
7.How dare you quote me :- Matt Rusling
8. Pretentious crap:-Ben’s Supervisor
9.I was determined not to like this Golly’s blog, and so, unsurprisingly, I didn’t.:-end quote
10. Holy Metal!-batman
11. if you play this blog backwards it says”paul mc Cartney is dead.”;-John Lennon
12. i read this blog, and …:- lou lou on the bridge
13. i blog therefore i am:- little big man
14. I cannot answer this question as I may be arrested:-Ojima
shacho
15. This clearly proves that humans are an inferior species and should be exterminated;-Davros
16. we should be very afaid;-Canada Immigration
17. Will no-one rid me of this troublesome blog?:- Henry II
18. I cannot understand this blog-Stephen Hawkings
19. I was wrong-Charles Darwin
20. I sense a wrongness in the force-a latex puppet
21. ‘ere, who’s the git wot’s bean hackin’ me blog then?:- Golly
22.We should put these people in work camps..-hitler
23. Pure Unadulerated Filth:- Saint Andrew of Ashley
24. eye rub u golly-boy:- by Akiko
25. A shrivelled soul: Franz Kafka
26. Ods Bodkin!What manner of a man be this?:-W.Shakespeare
27.I boiled my head in the sea of tranquility and it still makes more sense than this Blog-S.Dali
28.I laughed I cried;-Dorothy Parker
29.I feel graphically abused;-Declan McManus
30.Pap;- God
31. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring….. ;- Alexander Pope
32.ANAL FAGGOTRY:- B. Baggins
33.I wants my precious-S.Gollum