foundfoundfound

i wish

2011-09-13T11:58:00.000+10:00

the maritime authority would order all gravy boats back to dry dock for the foreseeable future, never to sail (on to dinner tables) again.

you're kidding

2011-09-12T18:57:00.000+10:00

some spaz on ebay just sold an original coca-cola super russell yo-yo for a measly $35. coo.

i've been holding on to one of these for 30 years (since the yo-yo craze of 1981). it was supposed to be my pension fund.

as loyal penfold would say, "crumbs, dangermouse".

has anyone ever

2011-09-12T18:31:00.000+10:00

admitted themselves to casualty for excessive ab wheeling?

inspector rex

2011-09-12T18:29:00.000+10:00

read him his rights.

if a person

2011-09-11T09:07:00.000+10:00

were to feed a dog a diet of hamburgers, cola, and fried bits of reconstituted chicken chunks (mostly necks and beaks), either one of two things would likely happen. the animal would soon die. or the rspca would bring an action for cruelty.

why, then, do presumably sentient people choose to eat mcdonalds or kfc? barmy.

doing time

2011-05-24T19:10:00.002+10:00

another downbeat breakfast encounter

2011-04-30T16:04:00.002+10:00

with modern agriculture's latest weapon: the juiceless grapefruit.

admire mark allen's enthusiasm

2011-04-28T05:42:00.001+10:00

but oneasia tour stinks. like watching the north caulfield thirds in the footer. what's the point?

hormone-enhanced chicken strikes again

2011-04-28T05:41:00.000+10:00

just saw 10 y.o. indian with moustache and a teacosy on his head.

brooklyn dodgers in financial troub

2011-04-28T05:40:00.000+10:00

is this the moment baseball fans have been waiting 50 years for? repatriation to new york.

the middleton marriage

2011-04-28T05:39:00.000+10:00

could see upsurge of new sport of social climbing. with poss. incorporation in london olympics. pick up those fallen h's.

#sausagefest

2011-04-20T16:31:00.001+10:00

termagants & trulls peeved at omission from first xi for miles franklin lit. prize. looks like adam's rib has gone septic.

whither horse/harness racing?

2011-04-20T12:19:00.000+10:00

the perquisite of sad, impecunious old men & assorted desperates.

bless 'em

2011-04-19T15:03:00.001+10:00

wot enjoy "jane eyre" for what it is—a romance; not for what it isn't—a dreary political manifesto.

brighton rock

2011-04-19T09:44:00.002+10:00

is a lurid, penny dreadful version of catholic theology.

media street

2011-04-19T08:53:00.001+10:00

loud harrumphing over bowlderized ita buttrose biopic. meh. who wants to see a kneeling ita tootling on kerry's trumpet?

in news

2011-04-19T08:52:00.002+10:00

greens leader bob brown's tasmanian cottage for sale. think the less said about brown's cottaging activities the better.

essendon fc

2011-04-19T08:52:00.001+10:00

western suburbs bogans who mistakenly think they've bluffed their way into the middle class.

dash it

2011-04-19T08:51:00.002+10:00

just spilled some of my sunny boy on new crystal cylinders windcheater.

the lesson of "happy days"

2011-04-19T08:51:00.001+10:00

when nerds try to assume attitude of cool, results are abysmal. watch & learn milhouse maher, tim gossage jr.

spare a thought for the far east

2011-04-19T08:48:00.002+10:00

our dimbulb p.m. flies off to rasp the ears of asian leaders with her sylvania waters manner of utterance.

uncrowned king of frankston,

2011-04-19T08:48:00.001+10:00

dermott, is pleased to consider himself melbourne's own triple h. but he's only one-and-a-half h. two h tops.

question for science

2011-04-19T08:47:00.002+10:00

does cycling make women chunky (as widely reputed), or are the women in q. chunky in the first place? hmm.

as i said to the demographer

2011-04-19T08:47:00.001+10:00

you can't throw me out of the middle class. i subscribe to the "new yorker".

nevermind the ladder

2011-04-19T08:46:00.003+10:00

footer teams should be divided into vertebrates (sydney, geelong) and invertebrates (freo, port, richmond &c.).

if chrissy whosis

2011-04-19T08:46:00.001+10:00

wins chintzy gold logie, will she be the ultimate "biggest loser" winner?

brisbane getting over cyclone yowee

2011-04-19T08:45:00.001+10:00

but adelaide still struggling with self-sealing envelopes.

wish dennis cometti

2011-04-19T08:44:00.003+10:00

would refer to steele sidebottom as "iron cheeks".

our dopey prime minister

2011-04-19T08:44:00.002+10:00

forced to dodge some dirty cottagers before giving monologue at sydney institute.

can't imagine

2011-04-19T08:43:00.003+10:00

a more un-english thing than "action for happiness"

can the sydney slits

2011-04-19T08:43:00.001+10:00

go all the way in the netball this year?

is mark allen

2011-04-19T08:42:00.001+10:00

the ted mcginley of 1116 sen?

nato attack on libya

2011-04-19T08:41:00.001+10:00

all well & good, but shouldn't they deal with the enemy in oldham and luton first?

the english contempt for food

2011-04-19T08:40:00.002+10:00

can be summed up in two words: brown sauce.

in adelaide

2011-04-19T08:40:00.001+10:00

they're raving about the commodore 64 computer which was introduced to them last week, to general astonishment and wonder.

people come in all shapes & sizes

2011-04-19T08:39:00.002+10:00

but mostly, it seems, fat.

evening on endor

2011-04-19T08:38:00.001+10:00

roasting ewoks over an open fire.

in the future

2011-04-19T08:34:00.000+10:00

the world will be controlled by julius the monkey.

woody allen's 2 superb questions

2011-04-19T08:31:00.000+10:00

why are we here? and why is it so terrible?

bing!

2011-02-13T13:46:00.003+11:00

i'd buy insurance from this man.

saving grace

2011-02-13T12:40:00.003+11:00

for every daft and depressing thing the beeb does—employing the gross and grosser chris moyles and graham norton, overpaying its 'talent', fawning to the euroweenies in brussels—it also does the odd marvelous thing, like restoring kenneth clark's "civilization" series in high definition. well done, you fellows.

avuncular advice

2011-02-13T10:00:00.004+11:00

i told my nephew if he wants to blend in he should get as fat as he can as fast as he can. nothing else will do.

one and a half cheers

2011-02-12T10:12:00.007+11:00

the pre-publicity for sebastian faulks' new book and bbc2 series "faulks on fiction" has been in the manner of german troops massing on the russian border in 1941 prior to operation barbarossa: steady and clamorous.

faulks kicked off hostilities with three portraits in the "telegraph" on jeeves, fagin, and becky sharp. good choices, what?

the jeeves piece was perfect; concise and exact, the tone just right. score: a hit.

the attempt to essay becky sharp was awkwardly done. faulks insisted on calling her a hero, in the masculine sense, which isn't quite the thing. sharp is tricky, though. too tricky for her creator, thackeray, at any rate. faulks' mistake is to see sharp as an admirable character, like tom jones. she isn't. she's selfish, immoral and opportunistic. though she's certainly the best thing in the novel by a long way. score: a technical draw.

unfortunately things come unstuck with fagin, whom faulks also wants to excuse from moral censure. it won't do. fagin is the worst of villains. a corrupter of youth who deploys an ingratiatingly mannered politeness to ensnare oliver into a life of depravity. there's a good reason dante's design of hell accords a worse fate for frauds, conspirators and corruptors than thieves or murderers. score: a miss.

let's hope the series makes it way to oz. (we had to wait almost 2 years for the "extras" christmas special, and we're still waiting for "fantabulosa").

to do-ishness

2011-02-12T10:01:00.005+11:00

the great ocean road half marathon plus 1·9km (23km) in may. pricey though. still, the great thing about this event is the scenery (weather permitting; the dying weeks of autumn can be a bit iffy) and the enjoyment of inconveniencing the locals for whom the road is closed to traffic for half the day. it's like the london congestion tax only the innocent aren't made to suffer. but, good weather or bad, it beats sloughing through bradford or barnsley.

selected for the first eleven

2011-02-10T19:09:00.005+11:00

a new biography of palmerston has just been lowered onto the shelves. a good thing that. palmerston is one of my favourite english prime ministers; along with salisbury, pitt the younger, and dizzy. in any cricketing list of the best english prime ministers palmerston is among the first fellows picked; being serious, straightforward, a capable administrator and, most importantly, zealous in the national interest, never permitting the crown to be bullied by third world upstarts. his only drawbacks being that he never declared war on france or scotland (england's eternal enemies).

a list of the best ministers inevitably suggests, ipso facto, the worst. they are: brown (scotch and spendthrift), gladstone (a preaching windbag who badly let the side down in the sudan), chamberlain (weakness abroad is seldom applauded by the english) and, of course, heath (for dragging england into the european union). that last one is a real doozy.

can't remember

2011-02-10T08:03:00.003+11:00

the last time i had a kugelhopf.

australia day afterglow

2011-02-06T07:01:00.002+11:00

the highlight of the glutinous australia day celebrations was an address from barry humphries—in the person of dr sir colin leslie patterson, cultural attaché to the court of st. james.

here patterson recounts an incident while flying over the country:

"the pom next to me asked me if i could hear a distant thumping. 'what's that rhythmic pounding?' he enquired. i was as mystified as he was. 'could it be a kangaroo is down there?' said the stupid bastard. 'no, mate,' i said. 'it's 22 million australians patting themselves on the back!'"

wonderful stuff.

book of the year

2010-10-09T07:12:00.003+11:00

"new yorker" readers, if they're honest, will tell you the bek toon is the first thing they look for in the magazine. in the world of toons there is no one better. it's all in the dialogue.

gleesome

2010-10-09T06:34:00.005+11:00

sometimes one's whole day, can be irradiated, made glad, by something as simple as a headline. such was the case when i opened my copy of the "literary review" and found examined the book "the death of french culture". happy thought! hopefully this title connotes a reported fact and not just journalistic prophecy.

any mention of france automatically puts me in mind of england's most bespoke and conspicuous francophile, julian barnes: someone who wears his country's incurable un-frenchness with a permanently pained expression. now barnes is a splendid fellow. a superb essayist and a tolerable novelist. but his francophilia is, put politely, a rum thing. almost indecent.

an excessive fondness for french culture is always discreditable. especially in an englishman.

toby jugs

2009-04-08T11:55:00.001+10:00

are vile vile vile.

sylvia plath waited for her black rook

2009-04-06T10:47:00.000+10:00

i'm waiting for the kookaburra of invention to laugh outside my window.

have now gone 20 years burger free

2009-04-06T10:45:00.001+10:00

excepting one junior burger incident in 1998. feels good.

the "times" asks à propos g20 meeting

2009-04-04T12:33:00.001+11:00

wot about rotherham? well, it's obvious. rotherham's finished. let them eat twizzlers.

one of life's simple joys

2009-04-03T11:55:00.001+11:00

is to leave a ringing 'phone unanswered.

how depressing

2009-04-03T10:22:00.001+11:00

80% of coffee sold in oz is instant. crumbs. that's not coffee, that's toilet duck.

a fellow in the "observer"

2009-04-03T09:13:00.000+11:00

says it's time to bury cool britainia. a simple burial won't do it. exorcism required.

nevermind

2009-04-03T09:12:00.000+11:00

arms reductions talks. it's time for an international treating banning teen movies.

moved to twitter

2009-03-01T15:40:00.002+11:00

username is "ourzippy".

morning rush hour, lower thames street

2009-02-12T19:26:00.001+11:00

looks like a bank holiday crowd coming back from brighton.

the pink revolution

2009-01-01T06:19:00.003+11:00

malibu stacey impersonator, paris hilton, has buzzed into town with the intention of lifting australia’s spirits by trying on dresses in our high street boutiques. lucky us. the media is doing its bit too, obsequiously following her every move. it’s nice to see deference isn’t dead.

looking back, it seems 20th century philosophy was mostly concerned with the problem of meaning in a disenchanted (i.e. godless) world. to sartre and his gauloises-stained chums the answer was ‘commitment’; usually commitment to an obnoxious political ideology of some kind. any kind. it didn’t matter which. so long as it promised to smash liberal democracy.* above all, it was freedom they despised.

this is where paris hilton’s “pink revolution” comes in. her response to the crisis of life’s meaninglessness is to pull out her bloomingdale’s card and cry “charge it!”. hence melbourne and sydney are just two more stops on her mission to spread the redemptive message of “self-realization through shopping”. she's a postmodern aimee semple mcpherson. sal-vay-shun!

the new year’s looking up already.

*remnants of it still survive today. witness those forlorn little gatherings in berlin and london cheering on hamas against israel, or else bemoaning the introduction of democracy in iraq.

everyone hails it as progress

2008-12-31T09:00:00.003+11:00

celebrating the blair/brown era of "classless britain" is this new calendar of "british style".

that'll do nicely.

most amusing christmas gift received so far

2008-12-21T12:58:00.005+11:00

one small, 8 months past use-by-date, block of german milk chocolate (with gross raisin filling), with original price tag ($3) attached. wasn't intended as a 'joke' gift either. pure hilarity nonetheless.

top that, napa valley.

bold or brazen?

2008-12-21T10:23:00.004+11:00

it could be the most daring programming decision of all time. one of the commercial tv networks has lifted the kooky soap "the bold and the beautiful" from its regular bored-housewife, mid-afternoon slot and parked it in prime time, monday through friday. one naturally fears for the job security of the person who made that decision.

that's a lot of soap suds for melbourne audiences to chew through.

there was an awful moment the other night when the fellow playing the forrester patriach was almost called upon to act (that's him in the obligatory coma). it was a scary moment. would he or wouldn't he? thankfully, at the last minute minute he reverted to type and resisted the impulse. still, it was an unsettling experience. he was seconds away from actually acting. then who knows what might have happened?

brand new baritone

2008-12-21T10:20:00.002+11:00

the only advantage of getting a bug (in december, for crissakes) is that i can talk like barry white if i want to. oh, yeah.

cracking film, gromit

2008-12-19T09:03:00.004+11:00

typically film and tv 'product' arrives in oz long after it has screened in the northern hemisphere. no one seems to know why. but owing to a rupture in space-time continuum, or a disturbance in the force, or some such, the latest wallace & gromit featurette "a matter of loaf and death" has premiered here in advance of its english broadcast. and it's swell. the sets are superb. it also features a terrific villainess, piella bakewell, who is built on the sturdy lines of 1950s english womanhood. the hairstyle looks to have been lifted from the prim proprietor of the railway teashop in "brief encounter". and just look at that tremendous pair of cankles! grand, eh lad?

bring back mr stokes

2008-09-29T21:22:00.006+10:00

terrestrial tv is a wasteland at the moment. actually, it's been that way for some time. ever since the viewer was caught in a gruesome 'reality' pincers move between "survivor" and "big brother". programming hasn't been the same since. i'm inclined to give up on the medium altogether, except for these last 3 vestiges of entertainment:

"the simpsons" (more new episodes please)

"foyles war" (an tea-soaked elegy to bygone english stiff-upper-lipedness and emotional restraint)

"the great houses of britain" (a swell architectural history of england up until pevsner, le corbusier and mies van der rohe cast their evil, darth vaderish influence over the cities).

lovely manchester

2008-09-25T15:06:00.001+10:00

the native genius of the english people

2008-09-24T10:05:00.003+10:00

a small item appeared in the "times" today (here) describing the horrified impressions of luisa de carvajal on arriving in london in 1605, one year after the composition of the seedy "measure for measure". naturally she was appalled by what she saw—especially the noise, filth, and bad food. but the fun really starts with the "have your say" comments. instead of taking offense "times" readers generally responded in a characteristically english fashion:

"it's dirty and lawless. the food's terrible. glad to see that nothing's changed." (jessica, london)

"yes, yes, but what was london like in 1605?" (slade wallis, retford)

i remember a slow moment during the guardian's over-by-over commentary of the 2003 world cup when the description of play was momentarily abandoned for a discussion of the ugliest conurbation in england. there were dozens of nominations. i think it was reading wot won it. but, crucially, only the english would take pleasure in this kind of amused self-mortification. it's a handy attitude to have. especially if you live in hull.

quite by accident, you understand

2008-09-23T21:31:00.003+10:00

i stumbled across "usedmagazines.com", where someone is trying to offload old copies of "leg action" magazine. (best of luck with that.) i expect our vendor is an o.a.p. from somewhere in the north-east of england, dressed in a mackintosh and flat cap, who picks up his regular copy of the "daily mail" with "leg action" tucked discreetly inside—thereby keeping the universe in harmony, balancing the forces of rectitude and smut.

making spells

2008-09-22T12:10:00.004+10:00

as we know the proper place to learn the language is on the fridge door, pushing magnetic letters around, just like the infant shakespeare did. it's also where the nephew, zoom, currently two-and-a-half, will soon be deploying letters to form important sentence structures like "nanna smells" and "cabbage is gross".

to kick things off i cleaned out the local "toys r us" of their magnetised alphabets and introduced zoom to these three, high-scrabble-scoring, word concepts. "haruspicy": the divination of future events through the examination of animal entrails. "quadroon": persons of one quarter negro blood. and "dropsy": a disease often mentioned in eighteenth century literature, though sadly now called œdema (where's the fun in that?)

unfortunately the manufacturers are stingy with the vowels so "homunculus" will have to wait. otherwise, avuncular responsibilities discharged.

overheard outside a commercial depilatorium

2008-09-21T18:36:00.000+10:00

mother to daughter: "you wait here while mummy gets her minge done".

rather enjoyed

2008-08-20T16:35:00.003+10:00

those extracts from dirk bogarde's published letters which were lodged in the "sunday telegraph". here he is, doing the rounds, promoting one of his books:

"did the 'tour'… birmingham, oxford, all the university towns. fun and moving. harrods, on the other hand, was as funny as a baby's funeral… millions of ugly people and a rude woman who said, in a very loud voice, 'my god! look what he's come to. selling himself in public!'"

that voice, that censorious voice, is the real, true voice of england. recognise it anywhere.

also amusing are some of the other reproving comments lobbed his way while out in public:

"left france, have you?"
"thinner than i imagined"
"pity, but after 50, you know"

and the most splendid of the lot: "he's buying tinned tomatoes". which magically combines disapprobation, noseyness, class distinction, and the mundane. brilliant, brilliant stuff.

some terribly brilliant advice given by a career woman in an english broadsheet

2008-07-28T20:34:00.003+10:00

"my advice to career women is to get into the habit of rubbing really expensive body cream in after a bath."

and that, i expect, will solve everything.

economic indicators

2008-07-24T07:47:00.002+10:00

nevermind the consumer price index, inflation, cash rate, new jobs advertised, or the price-per-barrel of crude oil. it's time for a new econometric measure. an instant guide to economic boom or bust is the s.p.i.: spam frequency index. the current influx of lottery-themed unsolicited emails floating around is a sure sign of economic gloominess ahead.

fool's gold

2008-07-23T22:16:00.004+10:00

what a wheeze. best selling authoress, katie price, has casually disclosed she doesn't actually bother to write her hugely popular entertainments. instead she farms the actual writing aspect out to a thankless factotum or amanuensis. quite enterprising, that. price "merely thinks up the plot - leaving the complex task of conjuring up the golden prose to an assistant," is how one "daily mail" journalist tremulously put it. gold indeed. i wonder if any of her hundreds of thousands of readers feels a little swindled?

goodbye to "east angular" and all that

2008-07-15T20:50:00.006+10:00

after 8 cruel, neuron-busting years it looks like those zeros at channel 10 are finally pulling the plug on "big brother". i think hosanahs are in order. though i can't forget the collateral damage. in particular, how "bb" shattered the illusion that people are basically decent and moderately intelligent. on the evidence of those in "bb" captivity they're not. not by a long way. its only contribution to the culture is adding the phrase "turkey slap" to the lexicon. not much to show for 8 years work, is it? anyway, now that the queen bee of reality tv is gone, maybe all the others will likewise disappear. roll on that happy day.

bloomin' marvelous

2008-07-14T10:14:00.003+10:00

a tremendous pair of queen victoria's knickers, with a truly majestic circumference of 50 inches, are being flogged by the english auction house, hanson's. this garment belongs in the british museum. it's an ornament to the nation. and in churchill's words "makes you proud to be british".

england is in a dreadful way these days. the titanic proportions of these bloomers (made for a woman not quite 5 feet tall) will put a smile back on english faces. and restore some much needed national pride.

so much for price parity

2008-07-11T18:49:00.004+10:00

one of the unexplained quirks of oz is the jumbo price differential for consumer goodies relative to the rest of the civilised world. what something costs in america usually costs two or three times as much here (irrespective of exchange rates). no one seems to know why this should appertain. so when telephone companies promised "comparable" pricing for the apple iphone 3g, i didn't hold my breath. this gizmo is $200 in america and, presto-changeo, $700 here. it must be magic. or a suitable matter for a parliamentary inquiry, i think. still, it's good to see the epidemic of apple iphone fever. no one, i notice, is queuing at 6:30 in the morning for a beige "windows" phone.

snacktacular

2008-07-10T10:43:00.003+10:00

over the other side of melbourne, at queenscliff, the latest tourist phenom involves hand-feeding the giant stingrays (2 metres across) which glide into the shallows under the pier. what fun.

going caravaning

2008-07-08T19:05:00.003+10:00

taste buds are in mutinous revolt against the host organism. i've gone off coffee. all espressoed out. desperate measures required. reverting to tea in the interim. russian caravan tea, to be precise.

a boost

2008-07-07T20:45:00.004+10:00

as a consequence of the sclerotic world economy 600+ starbucks outlets in america are closing. hooray. hopefully the dozen or so in oz will be next.

mcfood

2008-07-04T16:22:00.005+10:00

in an ill-considered attempt to defibrillate flagging sales, mcdonalds in oz has released a "mcafrica" burger. hmm. now africa has certain things in abundance: corruption, famine, war, disease, poverty, ignorance and aids. but food? not so much. now if it were a true mcafrica burger, reflecting the diet of the continent, it would be comprised mostly of africans.

brilliant

2008-07-01T17:02:00.003+10:00

this lovely poster has been designed by the local authorities in england to publicise the necessary work they do. like spew removal. nothing like puffing up one's image, i suppose. perhaps this isn't quite the endorsement they were looking for? though re-addressed, as it were, this poster would do excellent service as a "welcome to liverpool" emblem.

though not intended as a piece of social commentary, this image is a nice summation of contemporary britain: a place awash with illegal immigrants, terrorists, binging, crime, yobs, and a general unseemliness not seen since hogarth's day.

the councilors have unwittingly caught the "very pith and marrow" (to steal from hamlet's phrasebook) of "cool britannia". it's been an astonishing cultural reversal.

the sweet science

2008-06-26T14:46:00.003+10:00

it's a wonder of modern confectionery. or chemistry. i'm talking about sour gummi worms, or "squirms" as they're called here. how can something that is almost wholly comprised of sugar still taste sour? it's a miracle. a suspension of the normal laws of nature. and is more amazing in its own way than the feeding of the 5,000.

a star is gone

2008-06-25T20:33:00.002+10:00

unless it's "singin' in the rain", it takes an extraordinary talent to make a musical watchable. cyd charisse is one of these. what would "the band wagon" be without her? or "silk stockings"? hollywood just lost a true star. a pity.

hail to the chef

2008-06-24T21:48:00.003+10:00

gordon ramsay recently touched down in oz. naturally there were teenage girls on hand to meet him, swoon, scream and forward their phone numbers. he has cursed his way into their hearts.

it's the fizzy drink what done it

2008-06-21T13:01:00.005+10:00

news dominated yesterday by the revelation that australians are per capita the world's fattest. huzzah! take that tonga!

a star is born

2008-06-21T06:48:00.006+10:00

this year's olympics at peking promises jumbo servings of pollution, ruling party bombast, pre-fabricated hyperbole, the usual glut of non-sports (eventing, for crissakes!), and the revelation of track running's next superstar: allyson felix. felix's running gait is arguably the most aesthetically beautiful movement in contemporary sport. it's astonishing that someone so lightly built can dominate a power event like the 200 metres. she's going to light up that bloated, five-ringed circus.

a productive evening

2008-06-06T09:02:00.004+10:00

finally tracked down the uncredited schumann lieder "der nussbaum" used, famously, over the top of the crowd scenes at wolverhampton in "hulmerist" (though can't decide between the elly ameling, karita mattila, and elisabeth schwarzkopf versions). also learned how nerd rod runtledge acquired atomic powers to become radioactive man's aide-de-camp, fallout boy.

the good sydney

2008-06-03T18:36:00.004+10:00

the press has been paying a rather stingy tribute to sydney pollack this week, only getting up off their seats to cheer "tootsie". that's fun but i prefer pollack's wonderful performance in woody allen's "husbands and wives" and his role as an interviewee on alain klarer's "american cinema: 100 years of film-making". usually when people mention sydney they mean the bad sydney (that place just north of here). sydney pollack is the good sydney.

he's english, of course

2008-06-02T17:52:00.002+10:00

after reading about some imbecile who claims to have eaten nothing but mars bars for the last 17 years—12 a day apparently—i only hope that when he's finally carried into st. bart's he's refused all medical help (article here).

dr evil

2008-05-14T19:30:00.006+10:00

wins the annual "robert brasillach lifetime achievement award" for putting an intellectually respectable face on totalitarianism (and general academic p.r. work for other everyday forms of despotism); and being the darling of know-nothing undergraduates everywhere.

hands off, nature boy

2008-05-14T16:58:00.003+10:00

some people say puffins are nasty. not me. i like 'em. they have a wonderful air of aloof self-possession. and unlike the contestants on reality-tv shows, they're very protective of their own dignity. in this case being impudently hoisted and inspected by a prying parkie on faroe island. gotcha!

shelf life

2008-05-14T06:33:00.003+10:00

it must be brooding season. a female columnist in "the sunday times"—putting a spring in every woman's step, i'm sure—urges women everywhere to "settle" for whatever they can get husband-wise (see article here). a proper cheerupper.

relationship frogger

2008-05-13T10:11:00.005+10:00

one of the more curious dating phenoms are those people who, though clearly dissatisfied with their other halves, won't abandon ship until someone better comes along. and so they stick it out, joylessly, all the while scanning the horizon for something propitious. it's rather like the frog in frogger who won't cross the river unless there's another log or bunch of turtles to jump on. makes no sense to me. frogs can swim after all.

peppermint patty needs help

2008-05-02T06:37:00.010+10:00

just when it seemed the "man booker prize" shortlist had put us off literature permanently…

one of better recent publishing enterprises has been the release of the "complete peanuts" cartoons in sequential hardcover volumes. it's a toney production. so far 7 have been issued. that's the "good". the "bad" is each volume costs $60 something. well done, fantagraphic books. that price should scare most readers off.

the star, or scene-stealer, of the strip is marcie, who is inexplicably strange. and kooky. (i also like linus when he's philosophizing or quoting what he calls "scripture".)

another topping moment is peppermint patty's ad in the personals: "help wanted: attractive young lady can't remember history dates. doesn't understand fractions. call patricia reichardt at the number below." wonderful stuff.

wouldn't the world be a better place with the great pumpkin (dispensing his halloween justice)?

feminism exhumed

2008-05-01T11:11:00.005+10:00

linda hirshman in today's "slate" (see article here) disinters the old feminist bugaboo of "hysteria"* in rushing to the support of hillary clinton.

hirshman asks, à propos of hillary, whether she belongs in the company of lucia di lammermoor, lady macbeth, and "anna o" from freud's quack studies. the answer is a gimme. no. she doesn't. hillary isn't an hysteric. in fact, she appears to have no feelings at all. she is gelid. the lady macbeth comparison is nice but doesn't quite apply: hillary would never fall apart after attaining power.

who then are hillary's natural analogues? two immediately spring to mind: nurse ratched from "one flew over the cuckoo's nest" and mrs danvers from hitchcock's "rebecca". but i think hillary's real affinity is with norma desmond from "sunset boulevard": a faded star, desperate for the limelight, who doesn't realise the audience has moved on. presidential politics is still big, it's hillary who got small.

*(a word i'm glad to say jane austen uses frequently)

mens rea

2008-04-30T15:40:00.001+10:00

those who pooh-pooh the immanence of evil have obviously never watched "hannah montana".

a grub in troub

2008-04-30T09:51:00.005+10:00

barry humphries has always said in extenuation of his characters' excesses that les patterson—or to use the full honorific, dr sir leslie colin patterson, mbe—is a mild version of the typical australian parliamentarian. (amazingly, some australians pretend to be offended by this.)

this week humphries has been vindicated by shenanigans out west. troy buswell, leader of her majesty's opposition in western oz, has just lowered himself fully into the soup. buswell is in troub for bra-snapping women in his office and sniffing the chair of a female staffer immediately after she left it.

buswell is obviously not well.

a heap of broken images

2008-04-29T11:42:00.007+10:00

the way educators (tertiary and secondary) have dismantled and then abandoned the canon has been one of the most impressive feats of military strategy since erwin rommel retook el alamein (against superior forces). this strategy may have been improvised on the fly but it has been brilliant nonetheless.

how to destroy the west's incomparable cultural inheritance in 5 easy steps:

1. criticize the canon for not being inclusive enough.
2. adulterate it with inferior "steerage class" literature reflecting the new diversity.
3. further adulterate the syllabus with tv shows and movies.
4. eliminate all qualitative judgments.
5. admit the triviality of the subject and abandon it altogether.

unfortunately the problem with this otherwise winning strategy is that it produces too many people incapable of recognising literate jokes when they encounter them; in woody allen films, for instance: "when it comes to women i'm the winner of the august strindberg award". it also greatly reduces one's ability to insult others in very sophisticated ways, as joseph epstein did in this morning's edition of the "wall street journal": "i have always considered the clintons as little more than a branch of william faulkner's snopes family, in their cases snopeses who have given high sat scores a bad name". these are important "life skills".

it is simply negligent of educators to graduate students who aren't equipped to appreciate jokes they must "process" when watching "the simpsons". really, what else is education for? parents have a right to be upset.