My Bucket List

Some time last year fellow TISM enthusiast and writer for my local newspaper The Mercury, Mr Tim Martain, was asking around for people to write a ‘Bucket List‘ for their wholly locally produced Saturday Magazine colour insert.

After a bit of pondering and some too-ing and fro-ing with him about what the Saturday Magazine would and wouldn’t publish, as well as spending a few days wondering what to write as my ‘Mini-bio’, I submitted my list. It languished inside Tim’s INBOX for a while because he needed a portrait picture of me to go with it. He offered the services of the publisher’s photographer for the purpose, but… well… I’m slack.

Cut forward about six months to when I genuinely needed a professional portrait pic for publication elsewhere. So I mentioned to Tim that I really should get around to getting my pic taken. He told me that the Bucket List in the Saturday Magazine had, to paraphrase him, kicked the bucket.

Here, then, for no particular reason (except that I think it’s rather good even if I do say so myself), is my bucket list.

Peter Lawler: Failed mini-biography author.

1. Finish reading Ulysses 
2. Resist the urge to re-read Don Quixote 
3. Listen to the complete works of Bill Laswell 
4. Attend a screening of “Modern Times Forever (Stora Enso Building, Helsinki)” 
5. Watch c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate 
6. See an umlaut published in The Saturday Magazine 
7. Get the hang of Thursdays 
8. Resurrect Tokin’ Blackman 
9. Apologise to everybody I should apologise to 
10. Write a reasonably achievable bucket list 

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Surveys for the Australian Internet Filter

There’s been some words said about HungryBeast’s survey on the Australian Internet Filter, that the questions asked were skewed. That may very well be true, but I really can’t see how one could survey the topic without skewing results. The topic is so highly emotive.

I can’t help but think of this old chestnut about taking polls. Whilst the topic is National Service, it could quite as easily apply to censorship.

The question that comes to my mind is: Where is the survey ‘Open Internet‘ lobby bases their lobby work upon? Be buggered if I can see it on their site. Much public policy created these days is done on an ‘evidence basis’. Without evidence of many people supporting the Open Internet cause, I cannot possibly see how one could change people’s minds. Well, depends. Does the cause merely want to defeat legislation or educate the wider population on responsible ‘net usage so that similar legislation isn’t proposed again.

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