Freaking Out Bob Carr and Drinking Nudies

Gosh, I'm a natural with politicians. I attended the Voiceless Awards night at The Mint last week. All the usual suspects were there - Malcolm Caulfield, Katrina Sharman, Angela Radich, Stephen Lee, Rasha Skybey, John Mancy, Nick Patrick, Brian Sherman, Ondine Sherman and Maryland Wilson. The tight-knit group that is the Australian animal rights law community, and some of my favourite people. We stood around before the awards bit kicked off, drinking Nudies and chatting about live exports and kangaroo culling. You know, normal party conversation.

Hugo Weaving is the Voiceless spokesperson/mascot, so he hung around looking unshaven and famous and discharged his duties by shaking hands with the awards recipients.

After the awards were handed out Bob Carr launched the new Voiceless report From Nest to Nugget. His speech was impressive and he spoke of the 'killer facts' in the report that ultimately win the animal rights debate. Some time after that I was waiting outside for MBH to pick me up when Bob Carr sauntered outside to wait for his driver. I said 'Good speech Bob' but I didn't expect him to come over and strike up a conversation. Unfortunately, I immediately developed a bad case of blathermouth and said many, many irrelevant, embarrassing and downright weirdy things. He looked deeply relieved when his carr (geddit?) arrived and he sprinted into it and off into the night.

For The Love Of A Two-Faced Kitten ?

Yesterday a two-faced kitten was born in Perth (see above, in case you didn't already notice). Apparently it eats out of only one mouth but meows out of both simultaneously. What a plucky little blighter!! (or blighters).

The second most interesting thing about this event is that the vet nurse who assisted in the delivery of the kitten remarked "I have seen cats with two tails and extra legs, but not this." Apparently Perth, WA is the place to be for feline deformities.

Sculpture By The Sea

I invited MDM and MBH to Sculpture By The Sea this weekend. For some reason I misremembered that the exhibition ran from Bondi to Coogee. Finally, I'd have an excuse to catch the 370 bus! I happily endured the 60 odd minutes wending our way through Newtown, Alexandria, Rosebury and Kensington enroute to Coogee. I was a little surprised to note that there were no sculptures immediately in view. Must be just around the northern headland, I thought to myself. It turns out I miscalculated the start (or end) of the exhibition by five beaches (Coogee, Gordon's Bay, Clovelly, Bronte, Tamarama). Still, I haven't ventured to the beach for ages and it was all very Morrissey walking through Waverley Cemetery on a sunny afternoon. MDM was quite a slow walker, and one who required many rest stops, so we didn't see a sculpture until we had been walking for about an hour or more.

We rested briefly at Tamarama before forging into the throng of sculpture spotters. It was very difficult to take a photograph of a sculpture sans little kids crawling over it, but my impatient muttering was rewarded with a few human-less shots. Overall, the standard was good, but I was more interested in re-hydration than art by the time we reached Bondi. Art works that feature animals are always of interest of me, so I enjoyed the dogs roaming the hillside at Tamarama.

Perhaps another visit is in order during the week, in the hope that the crowds will be thinner. 

The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill

I've always resisted saying that I like Banksy. It just seems like such a wank. I mean if Angelina Jolie has done it, it's definitely not cool anymore. But my hat well and truly comes off to his new project, an installation work which critiques our exploitation of animals, called The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill. Banksy explores the inherit hypocracy of the human relationship with animals using animatronics in a faux pet store scene. There are animatronic fish fingers swimming in a fish bowl, chicken nuggets pecking at a container of tomato sauce, hot dogs in terrariums, a rabbit applying cosmetics at a mirror, a chimp listening to head phones while watching television and a miserable, old, featherless Tweety-bird in a cage.

Check out The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill online and today's SMH article on Banksy's New York show.

Oh, to be in New York this October!

Henry Beston Quote

I just received this fantastic quote from one of my animal rights buddies and thought I should share it as widely as possible:

“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”

If you are interested in finding out more about Henry Beston, I have included a link to his Wiki entry: Henry Beston