It’s 11.20 on Tuesday, the day of my Networked Media tute, and I haven’t written a blog post in 2 weeks. To be honest, after finishing the essay, I lost quite a bit of motivation to blog. But I know I’m meant to, so here’s a post.
When I woke up this morning I discovered P!nk and Dallas Green had announced an album overnight. The two have paired up to become You + Me, and their first song, You and Me, has been released. It’s great. But I’m super biased. Judge for yourself.
At first I thought that Shield’s writing was linear, and the numbers were just a strange way of breaking up paragraphs. But as I read on, I realised that this was more of a chain-of-thoughts type of writing. Like in English class in High School when your teacher would tell you to write down everything that goes through your mind for five minutes and you just ended up talking about how your hand couldn’t keep up with your brain and how loud the person sitting next to you was breathing.
There is meaning in Shield’s writing. I understand the idea he is trying to get across about collage writing. But it just seemed to come about in a more round-about way. Shields has sources and examples, but they seem to come out of nowhere. The ideas are there, but it just takes a while to grasp them as you try to follow Shields’ thought process. It’s an interesting way of reading and writing, and certainly not too difficult, but I’m also not sure it’s how I want to read everything.
One of my favourite times of year is August. Not only is it pleasantly cold, windy and rainy, but Melbourne’s film festival is on, which means I can spend all my money in just a few short weeks.
Unfortunately this year I haven’t been able to see as many films as I would have liked, given that I’m trying to work 21 hours a week around my uni schedule. But I was always going to find time to see The Skeleton Twins. Directed by Craig Johnson and staring two of the funniest actors to ever work on Saturday Night Live, Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader, The Skeleton Twins was hilarious without taking away from the darker undertones. I’m not a reviewer, and I love Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader too much to be unbiased, but in my opinion, The Skeleton Twins is a masterpiece.
So far this MIFF, I have only seen two films, the one mentioned above, and a Jean-Luc Godard film which was an amazing experiment of overlapping 2D and 3D cinema. Tomorrow night I will see probably my last film of the festival, a documentary concerning a group of American soldiers who killed Afghan civilians before planting weapons on their bodies so that they looked like terrorists. This film will be especially interesting given that I am currently half way through Hillary Clinton’s latest memoir, where not a single criticism of America’s foreign policy has appeared thus far.
For me, MIFF is a perfect opportunity to see films I know I will love, and a great way to expose myself to the type of cinema I wouldn’t normally be seeing. If you haven’t experienced the festival yet, pick up a guide and pick a film, otherwise you will be waiting for winter to roll back around again.
The image above belongs to Duplass Brothers Productions. All copyrights go to the original owner.
I love to pirate. I’m not really ashamed of it either. I believe that there’s not much wrong with a bit of illegal downloading, especially in this country of horrendous prices and excruciating wait times.
I am a television addict. I watch so many programs that I have to use a specialised website to know when my favourite shows are going to be airing. I watch NBC shows, ABC Family shows, HBO and BBC programs. I watch American, British and occasionally other European television. I don’t know how I would access these shows without the help of a torrent, or at least a livestream.
I pirate because I can’t access my favourite television any other way, unless I buy a Foxtel subscription (with no guarantee that the shows I watch will be aired on any of their channels) or wait months, years or forever for the shows to play on free-to-air. This is why I don’t view my torrenting as a problem. If I was stealing something that I could easily actually pay for, it would be an issue.
What the suits at Foxtel need to realise is that nobody wants to pay $80 a month for a bunch of channels they’re not interested in. They don’t want to pay extra for an ‘entertainment package’ or the movie channels. They don’t want to fork out so much money when the service does not even offer them the freedom of streaming on demand. And Foxtel doesn’t really broadcast the vast range of television shows that Australian consumers are asking for.
The Australian government now seems to be in the pocket of Foxtel and network executives. They want ISPs to be responsible for consumer actions. In a nutshell, they have a broken and outdated business model, and instead of fixing it, they’re asking other businesses to change their working model.
To me, it seems that the most logical solution is for Australian consumers to have access to an affordable and reliable streaming service, such as NetFlix. Such a service could host a diverse range of programs, and could stamp out a lot of piracy. People could watch what they want, when they want, and they would be paying for it.
But that’s the thing. In the US, Netflix costs just $8.99. That is $71 cheaper than Foxtel. If such a streaming service were to work on Australia, it would need to be kept cheap. If consumers are going to pay for something they can get for free, it needs to be cheap. We are willing to pay for the ease of access and instant satisfaction Netflix offers, but only to a certain price.
A few of my friends already have access to Netflix, which is technically illegal. They have used and paid for proxies in order to access Netflix as if from the US. They then pay $8.99 for a Netflix subscription. They are trying to do the right thing. They are paying for this service, and apparently that’s not allowed. To me, that is ridiculous.
If piracy is made harder in Australia, I will be angry. I will be disappointed and I will probably find a way to keep torrenting.
But maybe the Australian government, maybe Foxtel, and maybe Netflix will listen to the Australian people, and maybe they will give us an affordable way to pay for the content we love. If not, we’ll just keep loving it illegally.
I guess this is my first blog post. I’m still not sure what exactly I’m meant to be doing with this thing, or even if I’m meant to be doing anything yet. I have a lot of questions, like, is it okay to make my first blog post about making my first blog post? And does my theme even look good at all? What am I meant to talk about? Will anyone ever read this, ever?
My blogging experience is confined to tumblr (where I just laugh at Kristen Wiig impressions and tag things with lots of swear words) and an attempt at a travel blog that didn’t work out. I’ve always figured that I ever made a ‘proper’ blog, it would just be me expressing my anger about anything and everything online, rather than to my mum who is now at a point where she tells me at least once a day that I’m ‘far too young to be so cynical”.
But this is my first real blog, and since it is a uni thing, I’ll try and be calm and collected, and maybe I’ll even proof read and edit.