I misheard someone talking about the fairies in their garden as \u201cI\u2019ve got theories at the bottom of my garden.\u201d And I do. So many of them. There are people who cannot deal with me for more than ten minutes at a time because that\u2019s the limit they have for the way my brain works. I also have friends who love to talk with me for hours because I apparently say interesting things.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not going to do that today. Not so much theory. Just a smattering of reaction that may one day become theory.<\/p>\n
Yom Kippur is over and my life is the better for it, but I\u2019m wrapped into how Australian Jews are represented on the public broadcaster responsible for multicultural services in Australia. My latest email from them told me (on Yom Kippur, though obviously I didn\u2019t read it until afterwards) which shows are being moved from their streaming service. One of the two lead shows that is being taken down, as announced on the Jewish Day of Atonement, is David Baddiel\u2019s \u201cJews Don\u2019t Count.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is the same broadcaster that, when I asked what TV programming they had for the High Holy Days last year, sent me to a Hebrew radio show (hint: Hebrew is not the standard language of Australian Jews, English is).<\/p>\n
This year, the special show they had just before our New Year was set at (in their regular email about programming), they explained, a Jewish funeral. It may have been a comedy set at a funeral, though the detailed description sounds as if it was set in the mourning period immediately after a funeral. I don\u2019t know for sure because it was, honestly, not something I wanted to start my new year with. I\u2019m assured by a non-Jewish friend that it\u2019s a good show. If they put it on again, I\u2019ll watch it and find out. I\u2019ll watch the Baddiel tomorrow, though, because these programming decisions make me feel very much as if there are fairies at the bottom of the broadcaster\u2019s garden, that Baddiel\u2019s title sums up what needs to be said about it, and that I\u2019m far safer with my theories than watching public television right now.<\/p>\n
The good news is that some of my thoughts will be words at a bunch of places in October: at the Irish National Convention (I\u2019ll be presenting online), at a Melbourne academic conference, quite possibly at the World Science Fiction Convention (again online), and elsewhere. I won\u2019t be bored. (And if you want details of where I’ll be, let me know and I’ll post them as they are finalised.) I also won\u2019t be able to see if SBS finally sort out why I wax sarcastic about them. They stopped replying to my emails when I pointed out that sending me to Hebrew radio was about the same as sending Australian Catholics to Latin radio.<\/p>\n
I may be full of ideas these days, but I used to be such a nice person. I suspect sarcasm comes with menopause. Just suspect, mind. I now want to read a proper and carefully researched scientific study of the relationship of sarcasm to menopause. I shall go to bed and dream of such a study…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I misheard someone talking about the fairies in their garden as \u201cI\u2019ve got theories at the bottom of my garden.\u201d And I do. So many of them. There are people who cannot deal with me for more than ten minutes at a time because that\u2019s the limit they have for the way my brain works. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[701,636,56,17],"tags":[112,762,763,580,765,764,766],"class_list":["post-2957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aging","category-life","category-life-experiences","category-rants","tag-australia","tag-fairies","tag-gardens","tag-jewish","tag-menopause","tag-public-television","tag-sarcasm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2957"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2965,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2957\/revisions\/2965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}