Imaginary Landscape

22 December 2005—This is the time of year when advertisers, store managers, neighbours, strangers, and any number of organisations and people start sending cards, communicating messages, and passing wishes that involve snow and snowmen, holly, mistletoe, Christmas trees, singing White Christmas and Let It Snow, visiting department stores to chat with overweight men dressed in wool and fur…but wait a minute! As I write, it is nearly 102 degrees outside. If I were in the city, rather than the country, I’d be at one of Perth’s beaches , slathered in sunscreen (because I’ve been burned in less than 30 minutes), and splashing in the Indian Ocean. It’s summer, snows only in the Stirling Ranges south of here on occasion, and any obese man in a big red suit would drop from heat stroke in no time. The Northern Hemisphere traditions of the Silly Season were carried here to Australia, along with meagre possessions, household goods, leg irons, or whatever transported prisoners and immigrants wer

Whilst I was trying to force an alert state this morning over my second cup of tea, I abandoned playing Zuma Deluxe (reflexes just not fast enough yet), and resorted to something a bit less stressful, my newest obsession, Firefox Stumbling , whereupon I came to the web page with lists for the top science fiction stories, books, movies and television shows, according to the website’s visitors’ votes. Perusing these lists reminded me of pleasures long past that stay with me even now, some of them so obscure as to be relatively unknown. Granted, some of these books / movies / TV shows / stories are obscure because they are bad; I will admit that. But some are obscure because they are too serious, too upsetting, or somehow outside that Hollywood ‘blockbuster’ mould of happily-ever-after, moralising, all-American wholesomeness that seems to do so well with the movie-viewing public. I began a list of books and movies that did not appear on these lists or that appeared so far down as to hav