all i know is you’re my favourite linkspam

On June 15, 2015 By StephanieIn art, australia, links, melbourne5 Comments

It is Monday! And today is particularly Mondayish, here at No Award.

REMINDER that there is now a No Award twitter.

ICYMI, apparently the Australian government has literally been paying people smugglers to take asylum seekers back to Not Australia, in a complete inability to understand the impact of MONEY in SUPPLY and DEMAND. Prime Minister Tony Abbot dodges questions on people-smuggler payment claims (SMH) (SMH!!!?!); Tony Abbott refuses to say whether Australia paid people smugglers (The Age).

Spook Magazine writes about our national tragedy, the fact that David and Margaret left us and we’ve no one to replace them. Will there ever be another Margaret + David?

Yesterday Steph and Liz, in the grown up company of Noted Fatberg Zoe, visited the Qianlong exhibition at NGV:I. We also detoured into something something embroidery of England 1600-1900. Highly recommend a visit; “A Golden Age of China: Qianlong Emperor” ends 21 June and includes many small necked outfits, much to Noted Fatberg Zoe’s delight; drunk people in English embroidery runs until 12 July.

embroidery of a lady with excellent hair feeding some sort of four legged creature — i don’t even know what’s happening here

THE PAST: Fitzroy before it was gentrified, with words and pictures at Our ABC.

Pozible for LittleWren, a mago for young ladies

In No Surprises (sometimes I think we should have called this blog “No Surprise” except that’s a bit too Radiohead), How can a mini-series about British settlement show no Aboriginal people? The answers are a) Australia likes to believe there are none; b) Australia likes to believe there were none; c) Racism; d) This is a trick question, who do you think you are, the answer is all of the above.

By contrast, the ABC’s adaptation of The Secret River doesn’t sugarcoat the violence driving the spread of white people through Australia. No Award hasn’t read The Secret River, but the Australia Council for the Arts’ Protocols for Producing Indigenous Australian Writing highlights it as one of the best examples of a non-Indigenous author writing about Indigenous history.

(Also, that document is an amazing resource and starting point if you are a non-Indigenous person interested in writing about Indigenous issues or characters. It was published in 2007, so unless there’s been a new version and I need to update my bookmarks, it’s a bit out of date. But as I said, it’s a good starting point.)

On a slightly related note: former Continuum Guest of Honour and novelist Ambelin Kwaymullina wrote Walking Many Worlds: Aboriginal Storytelling and Writing for the Young.

Indigenous peoples are unlikely to ever use the written word in the same way as those to whom the English language belongs; we reinterpret and subvert to make someone else’s form communicate our substance. In the end, we are not writing. We are speaking, singing, laughing, crying. And we know it is desperately important to be heard.

At Crikey, why don’t many more train travellers bike and ride? Feel free to ask Steph this one in detail, because the answer is ‘VLine hates cyclists’ and passively does everything it can to discourage bikes on trains. (Liz adds, also, bikes on trains at peak hour are just really inconvenient and everyone stares at you with hate in their eyes.)

Look, I’m not saying that winters are only going to get worse in Our Climate Dystopia, but for a little while we’re going to have some more severe cold weather events, and it’s well noted by people from countries where it actually gets cold that Australian houses are shit in the weather, so it’s nice to have an article to point to about that. Australian houses are just glorified tents in winter.

a chair made out of antlers and other horrifying things — tianzi, no

The Evil Reign of the Red Delicious – Liz is perplexed by the way this article frames the scourge of the Red Delicious as a uniquely American problem, but nevertheless, she’s always up for hating on the world’s most terrible apple.

Phil Tippett was demoted from Dinosaur Supervisor to Dinosaur Consultant for Jurassic World. He did a terrible job at that, too. THIS ISN’T AMATEUR HOUR, PHIL.

Link to Linkspam: as usual, Natalie Luhrs provides an excellent round-up of reading material in general, and in particular, this week, to the responses to Tor’s decision to throw one of its leading creative directors under a bus after she dared call noted white supremacist and misogynist Vox Day a white supremacist and misogynist.

The first comment expresses something Liz has been thinking since it happened, that publicly reprimanding an employee is unprofessional and bullying.

(Note: the top picture on the linked post is from Eliza Bennett’s A Woman’s Work Is Never Done series, in which the artist embroiders her own hand. I find it deeply upsetting and horrible, and I don’t even have self-harm triggers. It also makes me angry, in that it’s meant to be a statement about the lives of women who perform menial and manual labour, yet it’s something that only someone who doesn’t perform that sort of work can do.

But honestly, I just find it so upsetting and grotesque that I suspect I bypass common sense and go straight to I Don’t Like It, Therefore It’s Problematic And Also Objectively Terrible. Which is ridiculous, because like I said, I bypass common sense. For example, I had to stop typing this three times so I could get up and take a walk around the office and flex my un-injured hands for a few minutes. Seriously, it makes my hands so tense, they get muscle spasms and a week of arthritic pain if I see it and don’t block it fast enough.

My point being, I guess: warning, trigger and otherwise.)

unusually devoted, isn't she? for an ex-wife

stephanie + liz question things: miss fisher’s murder mysteries

On June 11, 2015June 13, 2015 By StephanieIn media, melbourne4 Comments

Many years ago, the Phryne Fisher books were Steph’s travel reading. She’d pick them up in the airport and read them on the plane, back and forth across Australia. She’d end every flight with a book full of bookmarks and, sadly for you all, no No Award to vent her anger upon, until finally she gave up and refused to read any more.

Liz, meanwhile, spent several years hate-reading Kerry Greenwood’s books, both the Phryne Fisher series and the contemporary Corinna Chapman series set in a twee Melbourne bakery. Why? Well, when you work in bakeries and bookstores, you have a lot of time to read terrible novels about how gluten-free bread should be banned. Plus, she was under-employed and therefore broke, meaning that her main source of entertainment was (a) reading library books and (b) making fun of them on the internet.

Liz spent so much time ranting on LiveJournal about Greenwood’s terrible writing that one of Greenwood’s contemporary novels featured a villain … who used … LiveJournal.

Liz regrets nothing. If you are going to have an omniscient narrator tell the reader at length about how brilliant and competent your heroine is, she should at least be reasonably okay at being a detective.

Steph and Liz recently started watching Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. They’re set in Melbourne, where all of No Award is based! We can play Spot the Australian! (Spoilers: They’re all Australians, except for Miriam Margolyes, and she became an Australian citizen a couple of years ago.) It’s pretty! Steph spends the credits charlestoning around the house! The clothes are fun and magnificent!

There are still some issues.

Please note that this post will contain spoilers for both the television series and the books. Continue reading “stephanie + liz question things: miss fisher’s murder mysteries” →

Imagining Australia’s Climate Change Dystopia (a science fiction essay)

On June 9, 2015June 9, 2015 By StephanieIn science!1 Comment

It’s been over a year since the last Climate Change Dystopia Australia notes, and science has progressed and so has the books being published. So following on from Continuum, at which I spoke at length and unstoppably about climate change dystopias in Australia, and in light of the fact I’m going to be speaking on climate change and science and science fiction at the NSW Writers’ Centre Speculative Fiction Festival in July (!!), here is an update from the original (which you can find here in the Toast).

You can download the new and improved updated article on stephanielai.net: Imagining Australia’s climate change dystopia – a 2015 update.

The main points of the updates, if you don’t want to read it all again:

Ballooning will increase. I know you already love spiders, but you’re going to love them even more when areas that experience flooding are covered in ballooning spiders, sending out cobwebs in order to escape the rising waters. Once caught by the wind, ballooning baby spiders can travel up to 3 kilometres off the ground and so many kilometres along the ground.

The solar power battery storage is great, and where we assumed we were going, that ability to sleep and charge during the day with minimal electricity use, and then let that electricity out during the night when we’re awake and doing things. Maybe we’ll even still have air-conditioning, or at the very least, fans! But storage is going to be expensive, at least for a little while, even though the cost payback period will decrease. So it’ll still be focussed on the richer communities, on the larger businesses. Electricity, despite this technology leap, will still be a resource primarily available to certain groups.

There will still be gated white people communities, with their guards and their electricity and their carefully hoarded water.

There will be electricity theft, a connection running to a cable as carefully and subtly as possible.

There might still be public transport – trains run on solar, on wind. Trams run on solar, probably not wind.

In the near future, how our tourism works will change. An increase in cycle tourism will see a change to the structure of country towns. V/Line will still be a jerk about letting your bike on the train, though. This will help as we transition to a bicycle transit community, but it won’t help enough; cars will still take a long time to disappear off the landscape.

Our deserts will, at times, still be green. Australia isn’t like the European climate tradition – when will we decolonise our understanding of the seasons? – and neither will our climate change dystopia be.

Non-fiction reading:

The CSIRO climate projections. FOREVER THE BEST. ILU BoM and CSIRO, please don’t get (more) defunded.

SFF Australian Climate Change Dystopia Reading list:

The Courier’s New Bicycle, Kim Westwood. I am currently reading this. No opinions as of yet.

The Bride Price, Cat Sparks. I bought this on the weekend and haven’t read it yet, but Cat is great so I have high hopes.

A Town Called Dust, Justin Woolley. Read recently. Loved the world-building and a lot of the concepts, really great sense of place and climate and dystopia. When you get to the thing I got mad about, call me – I ambushed him in a panel we were on, but I have been sufficiently reassured.

Nightsiders, Sue Isle. FOREVER RECOMMEND. Gender stuff, medical stuff, Perth, the tyranny of distance, all in our climate change future.

Clade, James Bradley. Generational fiction, unexpected but fun. I saw Bradley talk recently and he spoke about how it was less about climate change and more about family, and it is, but it was also a lot about climate change and I liked it.

A Wrong Turn on the Way to the Office of Unmade Lists, Jane Rawson. This book is fantasy in many ways but still an interesting exploration of Australia (and Melbourne’s inner city) in the climate change future.

SELF PIMP: The Dàn Dàn Miàn of the Apocalypse, by me, in the Review of Australian Fiction, 14:4. Only $2.99 and comes with bonus story by Tansy Rayner Roberts. 😀

Continuum ramble:

We touched on why we write dystopias in the Unrealistic Dystopic Futures panel. I’d meant it to be a lols panel, shaved underarms and easy access to showers, that sort of things – I originally called it ‘I know what babies taste like’ because of the ridiculousness of Snowpiercer – but we ended up going a more serious route, and looking at why we write dystopias. I write them because my work is in climate change adaptation, and my passion is in saving the world, and my reading of the science is that we have to or we’re doomed. Sometimes my job really gets me down, those days when I worry there’s no chance of survival. So my writing is about processing that. There’s always hope, there’s always a future to survive in. Otherwise what am I even doing, I may as well go and drink more coffee.

Linkspam is a place on earth

On June 9, 2015June 9, 2015 By StephanieIn links

We here at No Award have been busy running a convention, but now it’s over and we can dedicate ourselves back to you again.

We have a twitter! It has nothing on it yet because Steph is too hungover to save that photo of a tram onto her phone, apparently, but: No Award the twitter. Stand by for tweets.

Stephanie has had a story published! The Dan Dan Mian of the Apocalypse, in the Review of Australian Fiction, 14:4. $2.99 for 8000 words of climate change Australia dystopia fiction by Steph, and 12000 words of fake magical geek girl by Tansy Rayner Roberts. DO IT.

Here are some links, some of them old. We’ve been busy!

This totally amazing post of oral interviews about Clueless.

End of the car age: how cities are outgrowing automobiles.

The complete business case for converting street parking into bike lanes.

‘Reclaiming Australia’ from Islam is really about reclaiming whiteness.

At Bluntshovels, ‘wellness’ is not about health.

Masa Vukotic had the right to be in a park alone.

SHARKS: sharing the sea with sharks. An interesting perspective, mostly about Australia’s relationship with sharks, in the New Yorker.

MAPS: The fake places that exist on maps only to catch copycat map makers.

Ben Wilkie, the Clash of Symbols, on the anniversary of the 1967 referendum.

Baltimore’s peace-keeping rollerskaters. ADORABLE.

hashtag invisiblespeargate

On June 2, 2015June 2, 2015 By StephanieIn australia, racism2 Comments

Hey quokkas. How’s Tuesday going? Yeah, me too.

Anyway so it’s been four days since Adam Goodes, Indigenous Australian AFL player, celebrated a goal he kicked during the Indigenous Round by doing a bit of a dance taught to him by the Under 16 Flying Boomerangs. An Indigenous Australian celebrating his achievements during the Indigenous Round by acknowledging young Indigenous Australians, as it were. Which was then greeted with boos, and racism. Sounds about right to me.

Aamer Rahman’s post at New Matilda, Aamer Rahman On What Adam Goodes’ Invisible Spear Shows Us, is probably my favourite response so far. He gives great, incisive summary:

Dermott Brereton, who has openly admitted to systematically using racial slurs against Black players, was quick to defend the crowd. Surely the people booing Goodes “…couldn’t all be racist? He might not be liked by that many people.” Brereton also offered some deep cultural insights: “To actually run at somebody in a war dance… it actually signifies ‘I want to be violent against you,’” he said, with all the conviction and authority of someone who may have read a book about a thing once. “I didn’t like it. No good could come from it.”

I’ll show you a bloody violence against you, you tosser. Dermott Brereton has always been a wanker. One of my other favourite responses is also from Aamer: Racism in Australia is everywhere and it’s terrifying, and the knowledge that there are people in Australia who don’t consider this racism makes me really angry.

Other things: Indigenous when he’s winning, at Overland, by Morgan Godfrey.

Waleed Aly speaking some good stuff (video). F

irst Dog on the Moon: Thanks a Lot, Racists. Now I can’t boo Adam Goodes.

Adam Goodes’ twitter, if you want to tell him he’s all right.

The Flying Boomerangs share their war cry (note: Steph hasn’t watched this yet cos she’s at work).

Also this is a reminder that Indigenous voices are always welcome on No Award, and any attempts to silence them will always be met with sternness and disapproval. They way to fuck with racism is always to yell and point at it.

Best Australian Kids’ Show Themes

On May 29, 2015May 29, 2015 By StephanieIn lists in all caps, media7 Comments

Best Australian Kids’ Show Themes DEFINITIVE RANKING IN ORDER, WORST TO BEST, NO ARGUMENTS

MULLIGRUBS

A terrible song, bookended by the nightmare face of all Australian childhoods. Mulligrubs me. Mulligrubs you. Come and be a Mulligrubs too

GENIE FROM DOWNUNDER

Please try not to ask too many questions about why the Genie from Down Under and his son are white and not Indigenous Australian, since if an Australian Genie is released from an opal they should surely be Indigenous? I mean, who am I to ask these totally relevant questions. This theme tune is ranked worse than the next one because it’s so terribly out of tune and flat and poorly sung. Rhys Muldoon, we expect better of a Play School presenter.

AGRO

What a dull, lifeless bathmat of a song. Perfect.

BLINKY BILL

So long, so boring. Plus every quokka knows that Blinky Bill is a bit of a wanker.

OCEAN GIRL

Time for some meditation.

THE BOOK PLACE

Such a creepy worm, but I’m happily bopping along right now.

MINTY

I remember the show but somehow not this totally perfect dance track theme song.

LIFTOFF

REAL FRIENDS ARE UNDER THE SKIN!? And of course minus points for EC the creepy doll. How did this song get so high on this list?!

Mr Squiggle

Excuse me whilst your judge goes off to have a bit of a cry.

SHIP TO SHORE

It’s so jaunty! DOOP DOOP DOOP DU-DOOP-DU-DOOP-DOOP. ALSO THERE’S A CLUB REMIX

ROUND THE TWIST

HAVE YOU EVER EVER FELT LIKE THIS Ominous and therefore everything you need from an Australian childhood. PS now available on Netflix, much to our joy. No Award will shortly be engaging in a rewatch and review, so stay tuned.

JOHNSON AND FRIENDS

How am I supposed to get anything done when my heart is full of such joy?

THE FERALS

A call to arms.

PLAY SCHOOL

Only the anthem of an entire lifetime, of three entire generations. Read this Junkee visit to the set of Play School, watch this video of Noni and Simon performing Humpty the Opera, remember the lyrics you used in primary school that were totally dirty and terrible and yet somehow still hilarious now at 32. Attempt not to cry at a large complement of past and present presenters and the audience of the Logies singing the song, after thanking the stars of Play School (the toys – including Diddle! And Morris!). Play School was always going to be the very last thing you found on this list, No Award. Because Play School was always going to be the best of these theme songs. NO ARGUMENTS.

*not documented, Humphrey B Bear because I couldn’t find something from the 90s only some sort of hideous modern animation, Cheez TV, Feral TV. The Silver Brumby (not in the list because I literally can’t remember this song).

No Award Writes Books (and gives one away)

On May 25, 2015May 25, 2015 By StephanieIn books5 Comments

No Award is coming to a bookshelf near you! Of recent months, No Award has appeared in two books. Liz was critical to the development of them both.

Cranky Ladies of History

Late in 2013, Liz blogged about noted Cranky Lady of History Tsaritsa Sophia Alekseyvna. First it was a Tumblr post, and when that exploded, she figured it was maybe worth preserving, and cross-posted it to her blog.

It got a tiny bit of attention on WordPress, but attracted a lot of retweets, at which point someone said (to Tansy Rayner Roberts, if memory serves), “Hey, this would make a great anthology.”

Said great anthology then came into existence.

(Despite Liz’s best efforts, nothing else she has ever posted has ever and will ever achieve this level of success. All those Tumblr ramblings about how Lin Beifong is great, and no one wants to turn Cranky Middle-Aged Cartoon Superheroines into an anthology. Which is frankly weird.)

Crowdfunding took place, pitches were submitted, and, miracle of miracles, both Liz and Stephanie had stories accepted.

Stephanie wrote about her favourite pirate and yours, Cheng Shih, Fierce Lady, Pirate, Total Ratbag. There’s not a lot of documentation out there about her, either in English or Chinese texts, so Steph did the best she could (in both English and Chinese, as a noted polyglot) and then wish fulfilled where she couldn’t.

The greatest new thing Steph learnt about Cheng Shih during research for this story was her potential linkages to the start of the Opium War, and her working relationship with Lin Zexu, who started the Opium War. Fighting the British because of opium would have been totally Cheng Shih’s jam, so it sounds legit.

Cheng Shih, like Noted Asian Lee Lin Chin, is one of Steph’s heroes, and if she were to grow up to be just like Cheng Shih, that would be acceptable.

Liz wrote about Queen Mary 1 of England, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, burner of Protestants and all around cranky lady. But first, she read half a dozen biographies, one of which turned up a truly amazing anecdote.

From memory: Late in Henry VIII’s reign, when Mary was in her late twenties or early thirties, living as far from her family as she could get without actually running away to Europe, Henry-via-retainer sent her a rather shirty letter to the effect of, he had heard she was entertaining “strangers” in her home, and could she not do that?

Mary replied, effectively, “Surely the king doesn’t want me to abandon the principles of Christian hospitality? I will continue to act as my conscience dictates, thank you.”

And apparently nothing more came of it, because those letters are published in a rare book, of which only six copies exist. Suffice to say, Liz’s library didn’t hold it. (David Starkey owns a copy, but somehow it seemed unlikely he’d lend it to anyone.)

What piqued Liz’s imagination was this: who were these “strangers”? English aristocrats wouldn’t be strangers. English peasants wouldn’t come to the king’s attention. So … time travellers? Aliens? ALIEN TIME TRAVELLERS? (The Doctor?) Faeries?

None of these questions are answered in Liz’s story because it takes place many years earlier, in the weeks before the downfall of Anne Boleyn. This was particularly fun because Boleyn is remembered as a light-hearted, witty lady — at least, that was how she interacted with men — whereas Mary quickly went from being a happy, gifted child to a dour young woman with an undefined chronic gynecological complaint.

You can purchase Cranky Ladies of History (please do).

Companion Piece

You might not know this, but Liz loves Doctor Who, and Steph knows that time travel is terrible and no one should do it. Liz says:

Cover of Companion Piece - a pale brown background with a young woman clambering out of a box. This all started back at Aussiecon 4 in 2010. Liz and future-co-editor L M Myles were in the bar, as often happens at conventions, and they got to talking about the curious lack of substantial books about Doctor Who companions. A couple exist, but they’re more promotional than analytical, and at least one is best known for the terrible would-be sexy photos it contains. (Tumblrs that should exist: Unsexy Photoshoots Featuring Sci-Fi Actresses Who Deserve Better.)

Fast forward a couple of years, and Liz Myles had co-edited the Hugo-nominated Chicks Unravel Time, a follow-up to the Hugo-winning Chicks Dig Time Lords. Liz contributed to Chicks Unravel Time, and publisher Lars of Mad Norwegian Press liked her work enough that when we met at ChicagoTARDIS in 2012, he was willing to give them a chance with a companion book.

Fast forward some more years, in which Liz Myles became a podcasting queen and Liz discovered that programming/chairing a convention and editing a book at the same time is a really bad idea. And we have, at last, got a book. An actual book that the two Lizes made, full of essays we’re proud of. Which brings us to…

Steph wasn’t going to submit anything to this anthology. Liz enticed her in with ‘How would you like to write about the least feminist companion and say something nice about her?’ And you know what? Did Steph ever. Steph mainlined hours of Five and Six, and then wrote several thousand words about how the Doctor is terrible and men are terrible and you should all feel terrible, and misogyny is the thing that keeps Peri from embracing her innate awesomeness. Steph is living her best misandrist life, okay? You should, too.

You can purchase Companion Piece from Amazon and similar places. (If you do, please feel free to throw a review up on Amazon, GoodReads, etc!)

Alternatively, leave a comment here, and you might be RANDOMLY SELECTED to receive a copy. IT’S THE FIRST NO AWARD GIVEAWAY!

And if that doesn’t work, we’re also giving away two (!) signed (!) copies at Continuum — go buy yourself a membership, then turn up for the closing ceremony. Guest of Honour Tansy Rayner Roberts is just one of several contributors attending, so it’s not just Liz and Steph writing their names in the book. (And drawing. Steph will be drawing in books)

No Award in Books: The Live Show

There will be panels about both of these books at Continuum, a speculative fiction convention, of which Liz is Chair and Steph is programmer. Continuum is held over the Queen’s Birthday weekend in Melbourne, Steph uses it to push an agenda, and because this is our blog you’ll be hearing more about it over the next two weeks.

Sunday June 7 6pm, Cranky Ladies of History, including editors Tehani Wessely and Tansy Rayner Roberts. Monday June 8, 2pm.

(PS Don’t try first programming and then chairing a con while co-editing a book. Learn from Liz’s mistakes. Sleep is a wonderful thing that you will one day miss.)

practical suggestions for riding to work in winter

On May 21, 2015 By StephanieIn transport2 Comments

Here in Melbourne it’s raining, it’s gross, it’s easy not to cycle. Steph didn’t cycle today because it just all seemed a bit much. But winter riding is GREAT. Team No Award is all about the cycling. So here Steph, along with BFF Danni, bring you practical tips and suggestions for winter cycling. They commute all winter! (Yesterday they got more wet than expected, but it was still great)

Continue reading “practical suggestions for riding to work in winter” →

Urbanspoon reviews by Paul Mercurio

On May 20, 2015May 20, 2015 By StephanieIn Uncategorized4 Comments

NOT A JOKE: Superdancer of No Award’s childhood, Paul Mercurio, has an Urbanspoon account and he really, really cares about your food. Paul thinks every dining experience is the Pan Pacifics, and it’s great. He just wants you to be happy!

He wants what’s best for you!

He doesn’t want to tell you bad news, but he’s just so disappointed and all he wants is for you to do well!

He knows that when you’re doing work you can still find time for a nice meal.

He used to own a restaurant called Merc’s Bier, and he totally supports you if you need to be alone – Paul would never shame you for dining on your own.

His Urbanspoon account is a delight:

Look at his excitement! So great.

See more from Paul on Urbanspoon or Twitter. Nobody quote Strictly Ballroom at him or I’ll be very disappointed in you. (You can quote it at me though. Never get tired of NEW STEPS)

motorcycle cop is a sweet nothing

On May 14, 2015 By StephanieIn lists in all caps, movies4 Comments

When Steph is sad, she watches a Henson production. When Steph is happy, she watches a Henson production. When Steph sings, she sings a Henson song. There’s some Muppets in her life, is what we’re saying.

There’s a new trailer for Muppets! It’s not a movie (ps, Walter is the worst new Muppet of the last twenty years, pass it on).

And so Steph, lifelong devotee at the altar of Henson, brings you her most useful Muppet quotes.

When you need to give someone something:

“This is for you” in Clueless Morgan’s clueless voice is one of the greatest gifts I have ever been given. That and “But it’s not even his birthday.” Also this is the greatest Muppet movie ever, I will fight you.

When you need to ask questions or approve of things: