Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Flu run amok

Symptoms of swine flu-esImage via Wikipedia
You think the swine flu has got everyone concerned in 2009? Well, just wait until 2010. Mid-term elections will be on the horizon then and we have delved into the future to discover that homeland security secretary Janet Napolitano will be posting us on the latest . . um . . . health crisis. You thought the Swine Flu was bad? Get ready for the Super Duper Swine Flu!

And the fact that its coming during election season? Just pure coincidence . . .


OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE TWITTER ENTRIES
POSTED BY: JANET NAPOLITANO
MAY 5th, 2010


10:00: At the request of Pres. Obama, I am live twitting today to keep all of the twits on the internet up to date on the latest threat to our American way of life! Last year, we dealt with the Swine Flu epidemic. This year, we are dealing with the latest and greatest epidemic – the SUPER DUPER SWINE FLU, also known as Rhinovirum 2 Derivatium 2, or R2-D2 for short. Already, we have one suspected case in Peoria, Illinois in a Mexican mother of two. And, folks, I do want to emphasize that this is a Mexican virus. M – E – X – I – C – A – N, just in case anyone wasn't paying attention. And yes, I am implying that this is all their fault, not Darwinian evolution or any kind of crap like that. M – E – X – I – C – A – N.


10:45 New is developing fast. It now appears that we have a second confirmed case, that of the 15 year old son of the Mexican woman. M – E – X – I – C – A – N. He too appears to be sick and stayed home from school with mild FLU LIKE SYMPTOMS! Serves him right for jumping across the border!


10:55: I've just gotten an update from my assistant. It appears that both the boy and his mother are citizens. Darn. And here I was, wanting to ship them to Guantanamo Bay with the rest of their Cuban-Mexican-Communist kind. M – E – X – I – C – A – N.


11:15: I've been asked by panicked American to publish a list of warning symptoms that may go along with this new virus. After consulting with our top scientists, it is hard to reach a consensus. Some of them feel that this illness is completely made up and we're just trying to scare people for economic gain. STUPID M – E – X – I – C – A – N SYPATHIZERS! They have now joined their kind in Cuba! The rest of them, seeing what happened to those who oppose us, have come up with the list of following symptoms.


1.

Feeling Sick
2.

Light Headedness
3.

Nausea
4.

Vomiting
5.

Sneezing
6.

Acting Dopey
7.

Grumpiness
8.

Being Bashful
9.

Sleepiness
10.

Feeling Happy
11.

Frequent Doctor Visits
12.

Farting
13.

Explosive Diharrea
14.

Lack of Sex Drive
15.

Too Much Sex Drive
16.

Any Sex Drive at All
17.

Driving in a Car
18.

Falling Asleep on a Bus
19.

Frequent Nose Picking
20.

Terror
21.

Insomnia
22.

Tooth Decay
23.

Having Fun at the Opera
24.

Fear of Red Headed People
25.

Rooting for Onions
26.

Wallowing in Mud
27.

Snorting
28.

Squealing
29.

Grunting to Attract Potential Mates
30.

Anything Not Listed Above


If you have any of the above symptoms, if you feel sick but don't have any of the above symptoms, if you don't feel sick but do have the above symptoms, of if you don't feel sick and don't have any symptoms, YOU PROBABLY HAVE SUPER-DUPER SWINE FLU! Realistically, you have very little chance of recovery, so you should probably slit your wrists and be done with it. Go ahead. You know you want to. Just do it already.


12:00 Good news. Pres. Obama has just approved a new scanning system to detect the presence of swine flu. Plans are to install it by the end of 2015 in all airports, seaports, land bridges, rail stations, public arenas, immigrant homes, and on random street corners throughout the United States. It will cost 700 billion dollars to build and will likely cause America to lose 10,000+ jobs, well worth it for security, in my opinion. Some scientists have questioned the sanity of installing such a system for a mild illness that affects only a very small percent of the world's population. They say that we should focus on things like Malaria and AIDS that kill millions of people every year. Pshaw! Those diseases only kill poor people. Also, the ACLU has questioned the legality of subjecting Americans to randomized virus screenings and racially profiling Mexicans for most of the screenings. I say that Cuba is going to get a lot more house guests before the day is through!


1:00 Oh no! It's confirmed! Ther is now another case in the United States! A 16 year old friend of the 15 year old how lives across the street has also become ill with the new swine flu! This makes at least three known cases in the United States alone! Will the spread of this disease ever be halted?


1:30 In an effort to stop the spread of this new disease, which the World Health Organization is already calling a Pandemic, government buildings across the country are being set on fire. Citizens everywhere are ordered to take any potentially infectious items, including clothing, old food, furniture, pets, and small children, to the burning buildings for incineration. Also, nuclear strikes have been authorized against Russia and China to prevent the possible spread of the disease to those nations.


2:30 Well, it appears that the sicknesses in Illinois were, in fact, not swine flu but rather food poisoning from last nights lasagna. Both the mother and the 15 year old are feeling much better, even though 16 year old is still feeling mildly dizzy. Hopefully he'll die. Then we'd have something!


Economists predict that the rioting and looting that have already started from the new swine flue will take weeks to die down and cost the country 100 Billion dollars in damage and lost revenue. Still, it's a small price to pay for security.

Your nurse if you get sick:


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Sunday, May 3, 2009

tom fool: production shots*

fear of flying: chris bunworth


get a job: liz mccoll & glenn van oosterom


new tricks, old dog: glenn van oosterom & chris bunworth


  happy families: liz mccoll, chris bunworth & glenn van oosterom

*all shots: tim williamson
 titles: tony reck

Saturday, May 2, 2009

tom fool: tough love



Otto Meier, the central protagonist in Franz Xavier Kroetz's play Tom Fool, has a fear of flying. A slave to the paralysis invoked by an involuntary commitment to industrialised domesticity, he tempts freedom in a workshop situated beneath the stairs of his aspirational home. While tampering with his one true love in life, a model airplane, Otto interviews himself and subsequently fantasizes about becoming a world champion pilot; a tragic hobby that will never be realised. Desperate for release from his semi-skilled employment at a BMW plant, he makes the best of a deteriorating domestic situation while longing for the stratosphere. Taking great pride in his beautifully crafted flying machine, he dabs at it with a paint brush in order to accentuate its meticulous red and yellow colour scheme. But his model plane will never get off the ground and even if it does, Otto himself is forever condemned to an earth bound existence among car parts and dysfunctional sex with his caring wife, Martha. Add to this domestic bliss an unemployed teenage son of ambiguous sexuality and this family is primed for loving itself to death; one essential requirement for the beginning of a tumultuous decline into a landscape of tough love. 

The Meiers exist within the same problematic familial structure that many families do: money is tight, employment is uncertain, there is too much television and social and personal rivalries are prevalent. Drawing on Brecht, while in no way imitating that playwright's desire for an alienating device, Kroetz's script skillfully elucidates the social circumstances resulting in the annihilation of the Meier family unit. As sole breadwinner, Otto must continue to work in an unsatisfying job in order to maintain the family's aspirational lifestyle. He cannot escape the production line, so his wife Martha is similarly entrapped by the business of living. Without any choice but to support the sole breadwinner, Martha's confinement occurs in the home. She cleans and cooks and provides the required sexual relief while all the time dreaming of unsurpassed royal weddings and other delusions. Besieged by parents enslaved by a system of work that is selective if not unequal, son Ludwig is systematically subjected to an implicit demand to join the ranks of the suppressed. Of course, the reverberating insight that is an important yet often stultified characteristic of adolescence allows for Ludwig to see the tragic monsters his parents are becoming. Consequently, he resists demands to get a job and steals fifty marks from the family budget to attend a rock concert. However, what Ludwig is really looking for is admiration from his father; which he will achieve in the most undignified manner. But only after Otto is retrenched from his position at the BMW plant and the family's reliance on an arbitrary system of productivity is exposed. 

Kroetz's script does not look for easy scapegoats. It does however illuminate the destructive tendency permeating all families and how this tendency is accentuated by difficult economic circumstances. Sexual dysfunction, unfulfilled dreams, involuntary entrapment, and an inability to articulate feelings of loss and disappointment are forever waiting to germinate and breed. In 2009, the relevance of this play should not be lost upon lower middle class Australian families subjected to a global economic downturn. Just like the Meiers, we ourselves will have to confront the hot rasp of ghosts licking at our feet. 

Hoy Polloy's Tom Fool is a fine production of a timely play that is essential viewing for all those people who continue to believe that a consumer society will care and support families when they most need it. Meticulously designed, great care has been taken in using simple theatrical devices to elicit from Kroetz's script the damning interplay between social disadvantage and personal psychosis. All three performers smoking at the kitchen table prior to an explosion of violence, or the subtle shifts in temporal exposition expressed by the many costume changes in the play, are two examples. However, there are some problems with the second act. Kroetz himself appears to have written a play about economic damnation, while wishing to fulfill a desire by mainstream theaters for overlong productions that must have an interval. Plays with episodic structures are always in danger of becoming a sequence of vaguely connected episodes, and Tom Fool's second act lacks the impact of its first. Even so, I would like to be in the audience two or three shows into this production's season. As a harrowing tale of social disadvantage prompting personal disintegration, in my experience Tom Fool is without peer. 


Tom Fool

Writer: Franz Xavier Kroetz

Director: Beng Oh

Performers: Chris Bunworth,

Liz McColl & Glenn Van Oosterom

Design: Chris Molyneux

Light: Ben Morris

Sound: Tim Bright

Costume: Mark Young

Stage Manager: Ness Harwood

Mechanics Institute, May 1- 23, 

Melbourne