"Do you remember the time?"

The heading is a song lyric.

Michael Jackson is dead from a cardiac arrest. He was 50.

That's too bad, but not bad in the way that Michael Jackson was bad or in the way that I am bad. It's just too bad.

Writing!

Writing Writing Writing put a new post up: "What is a Name".

The Beanie would have put the post here (on this blog) but E wouldn't let Beanie have it.

Sheesh. I have to stop referring to myself in third person.

"Safer, cleaner and on time."

"The Government, reeling from a public backlash over the rail network's failings, yesterday dumped the French-owned operator Connex and replaced it with a consortium backed by Hong Kong's metro operator.

In a surprise move, the Government also dumped the French-controlled consortium behind Yarra Trams, replacing it with a group headed by another French firm, Keolis."

For the full article, go here: The Age.

The Beanie thinks that this is a good move... tentatively... because Beanie has heard many good things about E's trips on the MTR in Hong Kong, which was safe, clean, and on time; not to mention there was virtually a train every five minutes and the rails went to almost every part of Hong Kong. But Melbourne is not Hong Kong and the rails don't go everywhere and there isn't a train or tram every five minutes (a lot more trains/trams are needed for that type of service)... so we will see, we will see....

"How I Became an Accidental Slumlord" By Daniel McGinn

"I still hope to make money here, but I'm more aware that no matter how much I try to be the benevolent landlord, my profits are based partly on exploitation; what I've thought of as "cash flow" comes by allowing some discomfort in the lives of others."

And the residents don't even have beanies.

Read the full article here: Newsweek.

Scarred, scared and wanting to go home.

Excerpt from THE AGE, May 16 2009.

Sourabh had high hopes for a new life. Then he was bashed. Chris Johnston reports.

RAVI first saw Sourabh last summer — a thin young man sitting alone at night outside the Werribee station under a streetlight. Ravi was with his taxi at the nearby rank.

The pair discovered they were both from Chandigarh in northern India. Ravi Mishra, 29, drove to make money for his family at home. Sourabh Sharma, 21, worked menial jobs — in what the union movement has called an "invisible army" of international students — and studied at a CBD college. Both wanted to make something of themselves for expectant, distant families.

But Ravi soon discovered Sourabh (pronounced "Shoo-rab") was scared of the dark. A housemate, Aditura Manon, was bashed just before Christmas. Broken ribs. "I said to Sourabh, 'Why can you not walk home, it's not raining?' " said Ravi. "He said he was too frightened."

Sourabh sat like that outside the station just to be around other Indians. There were always taxi drivers there. He'd been in Melbourne only eight months then and felt alone. His father died suddenly when Sourabh was four. Sourabh is bright but, said Ravi, "very innocent. The first time I spoke to him he called me 'bhai', which means 'bro'. He wanted me to like him."

Ravi began to drive Sourabh home to the sparsely furnished house in Mallee Hen Street he shared with seven others. Sourabh slowly gained confidence as his jobs and studies went well. Sometimes he dared to walk home from the train.

Then last weekend Sourabh was brutally bashed and robbed, the latest in what a police source told The Age was an "epidemic" around western suburbs train stations. In just a few minutes his whole life changed again.

For the full article click here: CLICK.

You are reading this blog.

You are reading this blog. Yet you are not a hat. You are not a scarf. You are not even a sock. You are nothing if not bone and blood -- nothing to do with me. Yet you read this blog, written by a hat, a beanie, and expect me to say things specifically about beanies or to somehow reveal some sort of "beaniness" that has been arbitrarily assigned to me by virtue of your ontological beliefs.

However the true ontological issue raised here is not that I am a beanie who can write (or talk or think) but that you should read this blog and somehow think it rather interesting that a beanie should have anything to say. It is a problem that there is a belief that there exists no ontology in which a beanie with a mind might speak it. A beanie does not speak in the dryer, the closet, the washing machine. A beanie does not speak when you wear it. A beanie does not speak, you say!

Thus, I have written this blog. I created this. If I may be bold, I say I am empowering myself with the ownership of my own existence. So. I have written this blog and this blog is my room. My own room. My room to think and speak.

But here you are intruding. Poking your nose into my metaphorical armchairs, desks, rugs, flower pots, and curtains. If you see it -- not that you can see it, if you have no imagination -- there is a pot of soup on the stove and the hearth is warm and the cat is resting nearby via hyperlink. In the bookshelf there are links to Virginia Woolf (quotes) and articles about scholarship or presidents or even anecdotes about ambition. So you are reading this blog, sitting in my armchairs with your latte on my desk(s). You throw open my curtains or you stretch out on my rugs. You become comfortable with some Murakami.

Who am I to tell you what to do with your time in my room? It is there as you please. Waiting for you. Sit there. Write here. Look at the scene beyond and the clouds above from out my windows. Observe -- the sky is full of flowers! It must be spring or was spring, maybe you are looking at a photograph. But do not take my things as if you own them and do not come and make snide comments about my furniture or my tastes... because you are my guest.

The Bad Bunny.

Because people often confuse us with the other, I am going to introduce the Bad Bunny. Note: the Bad Bunny is NOT the Bad BEANIE.

This is the Bad Bunny - sitting on a favourite book.















I am the Bad BEANIE - see pictures to your left.

This is the Bad Bunny - showing off a favourite album.















This is the Bad Bunny hanging out in closets with my friends.















Note: my friends are not "in the closet", they are in the closet. They are clothing (some are hats). They are not people of non-heterocentric orientation because they are not people "oriented" in any way sexually. I am not disputing that my friends (and I) are people. I am disputing that items of cloth must be sexual - they must not, they are not, not matter what vogue.com might say!