Orange Juice & Ryvita

Food, politics, underemployment and the consumption of time and leisure

Category Not Even Food

  • UBI et orbi

    ‘CURSED IS THE GROUND BECAUSE of you,

    Says God to Adam, after he and Eve have eaten the fruit,

    in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
    thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
    and you shall eat the plants of the field.
    By the sweat of your face
    you shall eat bread
    until you return to the ground… [Genesis 3:17—19]

    The story of the casting-out or ‘Fall’, in which humans are given their divine punishment for knowledge, is one of our most familiar creation stories, in which God sets the terms of human existence unilaterally. Like a boss making a workplace agreement with themself, the story of the Fall is the original greenfields enterprise bargaining agreement. It’s a powerful morality tale which has informed our attitudes and assumptions about work for a very, very long time.

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  • Voting

    VOTING IS FULL OF ironies. It’s a social activity of selection and choice between alternatives, a functional process so totemic that it’s often confused for democracy itself. When we vote we express a value anonymously in such a way that no one person’s vote is any more worthy than anyone else’s. But it’s not the same as power.

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  • Cooking without eating

    NOT ALL COOKING IS for eating. In fact some of the most satisfying and useful recipes don’t involve food at all. Mixing two-stroke oil and petrol, let’s say, or concrete, sand and water, these are two favourites of people who like putting together or deconstructing the built environment. If you want an article for The Australian, mix fear, uncertainty, and doubt; for the Sydney Morning Herald, property prices, Sydney Grammar’s first XV, and a beach; for the Daily Telegraph, hard working mums, Muslims, the welfare system, and any given arterial roadway in western Sydney. Much, much, easier than cooking. It’s a source of national shame that our apprentice chefs and bricklayers’ labourers are paid less for their routine mixing than the trowel-wielding wordsmiths of our newspapers. But to the recipes! Here are two old favourites I’ve put together recently.

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  • Carbon Tax Information

    LIKE MANY OTHER AGL customers I’ve recently received a very strange text message:

    AGL estimates average electricity savings of 7.8% off NSW AGL residential bills by removing the carbon tax. See agl.com.au/carbon for details.

    When I queried it, AGL’s twitter account informed me that the law required them to send it:

    @AGLenergy: @liamvhogan Hi Liam - these are courtesy SMSs on upcoming price changes to your account. We're obligated by law to advise you ~Thanks, Matty

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  • Moderation

    INSTEAD OF READING THIS article by Julia Baird on ‘trolling’, read this essay by Jason Wilson on industrial moderation.

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  • Liam corresponds

    I’M PROUDLY A MEMBER of the NTEU, because on and off, I’m a casual academic, amongst other places, at the University of NSW. Generally they’re a pretty good union, but every now and then they drop some piece of communication to their members which sets me off. Boom! Papers go flying around my ‘office’, cups of tea get drunk, drafts get drafted. This morning the following made me breathe deeply and try to imagine calming blue surf while I was on my bus:

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  • Voting for Albo

    I VOTED JUST NOW for Anthony Albanese in the Australian Labor Party’s leadership ballot.

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  • Reheated Leftovers

    THERE ARE NOW, WITHOUT a doubt, young people studying sculpture at Central Saint Martin’s College who are younger than Pulp’s infamous song.

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  • LaTeX and BibTeX

    HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES writers and researchers, a great secret is being kept from you. You know about C.P. Snow’s Two Cultures, and you’ve probably encountered scientific and technical types on the Internet, recognising them by their ferocious militant atheism, their communication through image macro memes, and their irrational fondness for light rail projects. When you sigh, minimise your web browser and get back to work in MS Word, though, their laughs are on you: it’s a horrible platform for writing, a worse one for presenting lengthy text, and there’s a much better alternative.

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  • My Mum Doesn't Work For The Australian

    WHEN MURDOCH PAPERS ARE MENTIONED in class its always with an undertone of sarcasm. I don’t understand why. After all, my mum works for The Australian and she likes her job.

    Pity poor Max Maddison, first year journalism student, whipping boy of the week for everybody like me in Australia who disdains not just the Murdoch press institution but the entire sordid establishment of our media. If I have a hobbyhorse I like to ride, then at least I know there are many more like me: we are an angry, sarcastic cavalry of dissatisfaction.

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