#breaking: melbourne voted most livable city in the world

On By StephanieIn lists in all caps, melbourne

AGAIN. Fifth year running. Speaking as someone currently oppressed by our train system, how is this even possible? Is it the water?

Things that make Melbourne the most livable city:

  • trees that answer emails
  • trams
  • copious amounts of good coffee
  • brunch everywhere
  • donuts
  • Nutella donuts
  • SECRET TUNNELS under Fed Square and in fact the whole CBD
  • Liz really wants a Nutella donut
  • but only from the tiny Vietnamese bakery across the road from Footscray Station OMG
  • the Franco Cozzo mural in Footscray
  • Franco Cozzo

franco cozzo standing with his arms spread in front of a mural of franco cozzo

  • did we mention coffee
  • Little Red Trucks dudes all being hilarious hipster dudes who want to talk about what books you have in your heavy boxes
  • discussing the weather is not a topic for when you have nothing else to discuss, it is Very Important
  • the secret tunnels under the hospital
  • the blocked up below ground public toilets dotted around the city
  • that time Nicholas Cage’s Ghost Rider was filmed in the CBD and they edited out all the tram stops
  • cycling down Royal Parade in spring
  • the ACDC ‘Long Way to the Top’ video clip
  • the State Library Dome
  • the Cats of SLV tumblr
  • complete digital archives for The Argus
  • the Public Records Office of Victoria
  • Kino Cinemas beer + choc top dinner during movie festivals
  • the tram stop noise that Rockwiz uses as a buzzer sound
  • burgers and cider during Rooftop Cinema
  • little tiny bookshops that can’t possibly afford to still be in business BUT ARE
  • Captain Melville burgers
  • White Night
  • forcing Starbucks to downsize
  • lowest dropbear fatality rate of any capital city

! (The Linkspam Formerly Known As)

On By Liz BarrIn links

“Australians may or may not be making booze out of Vegemite” is hilarious right up until you realise that the rumour is about Indigenous Australians, and ties into a long history of government interference in Indigenous communities.

Important fatberg update: Fighting the fatbergs: how cities are waging war on clogged sewers.

From that link: Arne Hendriks is building his own fatberg.  I legit hope this comes to MONA.  I’ll go back for that.  I’ll even take the boat.

The cats of the State Library of Victoria tumblr.

When changing names means changing identities. Steph has so many feels about this.

That awkward moment when Our ABC briefly employed a Nazi spy.

A group of students have figured out a way to disrupt the period industry in low-income countries. Amazing brown girl innovation.

Remember that time Mark Latham almost became prime minister?  These days, he’s probably* a misogynistic and transphobic troll on Twitter, and causing some grief for the Australian Financial Review, which publishes his rants.

* “Probably” = the twitter account in question claims it’s run by an old school friend of Latham’s, which doesn’t explain how its tweets end up word for word in AFR columns, but obviously Latham can’t blame his nanny.

ETA: It’s most definitely Latham, so there goes that slender shred of doubt!

Koala on a quadbike. Probably a dropbear.

a jelly bean in a viking hat with blood coming out of her

Steph has a new housemate, proving that sometimes it pays to enter twitter competitions. (Stay safe around trains, quokkas!)

 

this week in: what has your government done to you

On By StephanieIn links, politics3 Comments

The politician Steph aspires to be, Penny Wong (queer, Malaysian-Chinese, left, yells in public) cuts Joe Hockey so decisively.

The Coalition party room voted not to allow a conscience vote on same-sex marriage. Tony Abbott has suggested it be put to a popular vote, or maybe a referendum, or maybe a plebiscite, terrifyingly demonstrating that some of our federal politicians don’t understand how our political system actually works.

Liberal Senator Eric Abetz suggested that because Dolce and Gabbana had never married, same-sex couples had no need of marriage.

The Prime Minister caught eating a whole raw spring onion whilst on site.

Liz asks: Is it possible that Tony Abbott just likes onions?  Is that a bad thing?  Should we as a nation be food shaming him for his unusual tastes when there are so many other weird and terrible things he does?  Is it just that it’s quite funny to watch someone eat a whole raw onion, French or otherwise?

An Asylum seeker who is married to an Australian PR was removed from her husband (and the centre in Brisbane where she was living, and the school where she was studying to receive her HSC) and is currently in a Darwin detention centre.

The state of Victoria’s new government logo looks like a map of Tasmania.  In every possible sense.

While the eyes of the world are on Ferguson, a Queensland police whistleblower who leaked a video of fellow officers assaulting a chef faces charges.  This forms part of a pattern of the Queensland police failing to investigate accusations of brutality from within its own ranks.

“Absolute revhead” and indistinguishable white man Tony Smith becomes Speaker.

Steph says: I know how white person names work. This man has a fake name.

Someone suggested that Indigenous Australians were making booze out of vegemite and so vegemite should be banned in remote Indigenous communities. Vegemite watch began, but has since been retracted.

The chair of the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security thinks Australia should bomb Syria.

Steph says: no. Also call them Daesh, cos it makes ISIS mad to be delegitimised in this way and cos actual Middle-Eastern people have suggested we do so – the Western media is the only media who calls them ISIS.

First Term at Malory Towers – Chapters 17 and 18

On By Liz BarrIn books, enid blyton3 Comments

Previously: Sally is desperately and mysteriously ill following an altercation with Darrell.  Darrell feels terrible about this — AS SHE SHOULD — and, after a day of moping, has written a letter to Sally’s mother confessing all.

Now, suffering from insomnia, she goes for a walk outside, discovering a Mysterious Visitor to the school.  The door to the Sanitarium is unlocked.  She enters… Continue reading “First Term at Malory Towers – Chapters 17 and 18” →

museum shops of the world: mona

On By StephanieIn Uncategorized9 Comments

This weekend Liz and a host of No Award staff writers visited The Museum of Old and New Art, or MONA, in Hobart. And so, a shop review in brief.

Liz wrote:

Too many postcards for old exhibits and not enough for current ones; no Ah Xian postcards, which is unfortunate because I love him and would have bought one.

Strongly book-focused, with jewelry that you can get from the NGV for the same price.

The cunt soap (actual name) was a highlight, except for the peppermint scented one, which just seems intrinsically uncomfortable.  Well, nothing about MONA is meant to be comfortable, but I don’t think genital itch is what they were going for.

TL;DR: two stars.

No Award staff writer Ashleigh notes: what I did appreciate was that the book collection was pretty well focused on artists whose work is or has been on display. that is surprisingly uncommon.

Museum: Museum of Old and New Art

Location: 655 Main Road Berriedale, Hobart, Tasmania

Items purchased: Liz purchased a postcard of “the Star Trek exhibit“; Noted Fatberg Zoe purchased a tote bag; Official Calligrapher Moya purchased “a fatcar postcard & a novelty blood filled syringe pen with which to creep out my new work frans.” Ashleigh purchased these things and also has a list of books she plans to purchase cheaper from book depository.

Getting There: Liz and the No Award staff writers flew to Hobart and drove to Mona because the boat is $20 a head and is basically there to disguise the lower middle-class suburbs that surround MONA.

Date and Time Visited: mid arvo, Saturday

ETA: Official Calligrapher Moya wishes to amend her review to give MONA negative points, as “the syringe pen is gross and blobby enough to not function as a pen at all”.  Unfortunate, though that is often the way with novelty syringe pens.

secret linkspam

On By StephanieIn art, australia, links, politics, racism1 Comment

Super important Fatberg update: Wet wipes cause massive issues for regional drainage systems.

Mr Raff said body corporate and property owners were footing bills of between $800-$1000 for the installation of cameras down drains in unit housing to determine who is responsible for clogging drains, should the problem arise.

Cameras to look at who is flushing wet wipes!  We hope the cameras are in the drains, not in the bathrooms.

Jax Jacqui Brown (well known Melbourne queer + disability activist) let down by VLine. Train shame: Disability advocate forced to sit in space reserved for luggage

Steph feels like the magic is gone, and it’s Buzzfeed’s fault: We Found The Guy Behind Australia’s Greatest Ever Meme.

Netball: The sport America invented, then lost.  Liz has a lot of complicated feelings about netball, mostly because it was compulsory for girls at her primary school, and the teachers just assumed everyone knew the rules.  Plus, she was tall (yes, really!) and much better at basketball.  However, netball as a cultural artifact is really interesting!

Derailing for Dummies.

What happens when cyclists actually obey all the road rules, haha, suck it.

Steph is having a lot of feelings about this tumblr thread on hippies as racism (which she agrees with, fyi, it’s just helped solidify some feels).

How snobbery helped take the spice out of European cooking. TELL STEPH ALL YOUR FOOD HISTORY FEELS.

The ‘N’ word through the ages: The ‘madness’ of HP Lovecraft. In case you didn’t know how racist he was.  (No Award’s new WordPress theme is called Lovecraft, because Liz was tickled at the idea of calling out our own theme as problematic.)

Liz went to MONA on the weekend!  Her feelings ranged from “Meh” to “Dislike”, with occasional pauses for things she actually liked.  Here is an article from 2012 that partially sums up her feelings.  The comments are also worth reading.

(MONA is not a great place to visit if you are asexual, have triggers relating to graphic depictions of rape, or have issues around cruelty to animals.  I mention this because it didn’t come up in any of my pre-trip reading, and I personally would have liked some warning.  Also, I can’t figure out why people were upset about the blunt knife in this piece, when the real issue is that the bowl is too shallow and the fish are hanging out in their own excrement.)

On the upside, I have yet to produce a museum review as terrible as this one.

Huw Parkinson of the ABC has found his calling: Australian politics and pop culture mash-ups.  The only aspect of this Bronwyn-Bishop-as-Lucille-Bluth clip is that Tony Abbott isn’t Gob.

On a related note, Friend of No Award Ash has drawn our attention to a highlight of Bishop’s Wikipedia page:

Bishop was educated at Roseville Public School, completing her primary education in 1954. Bishop undertook a five-year LL.B. program at the University of Sydney. However, she was deemed ineligible to continue after failing a number of subjects multiple times. Bishop failed a total of 11 subjects over six years. In her first year in 1960, she failed all four core subjects. In 1964, she failed four subjects again and repeated them in 1965, in which she failed three again. The policy of the University of Sydney at the time was that a student was required to show cause why they should be allowed to repeat a subject for a third time, and Bishop was deemed ineligible to continue.

…Bishop first worked as an articled clerk and played an acting role as a barrister in the 1960s Australian television program Divorce Court.

Finally, Liz had one ongoing problem in Tasmania: the underwire of her bra kept popping out and trying to stab her.  But Google has provided a solution!  (No, it’s not “don’t wear bras without underwires”.  They don’t exist in my size, and aside from the occasional stabbing, I prefer the support that comes with a bit of metal in one’s undergarments.)

This link has “borrowed” content and gender essentialism, but it also has more useful illustrations than the original source: How To Repair An Underwire Bra, featuring cheap corn/bunion pads.

the catch is the western middle class

On By StephanieIn australia5 Comments

If you chat with Stephanie for longer than about half an hour, you’ll probably discover her very loud opinions on capitalism. She has opinions. As a Chinese-Australian, from a South East Asian economy, from a variety of colonies, capitalism looms large and angrily. Capitalism is at the forefront of her mind when she rails against environmental degradation, against the injustices of our social system.

One of the major components of environmental action and changing the dichotomy in Australia is often about capitalism, and how we need to find a new paradigm. At No Award, we applaud anyone trying to engage with the capitalist storyline and changing it. We especially applaud anyone bringing other people with them.

And yet, it was with a wary and cautious eye that she opened this article at The Age: A cashless economy? Where’s the catch?

Here’s an email Steph got from Liz when she was like ‘maybe we should No Award about this’:

I THINK NO AWARD NEEDS FIVE POSTS AND THEN TO GATHER A CROWD OF VILLAGERS WITH PITCHFORKS AND TORCHES TO STAND OUTSIDE THESE PEOPLE’S SHACKS AND TELL THEM TO CUT THEIR HAIR AND GET JOBS.

(Please note, No Award is very fond of long hair and also not having jobs)

Continue reading “the catch is the western middle class” →