Still Life With Cat

I was lucky enough to meet John Clarke once, maybe fifteen years ago. Clive James was launching a big poetry anthology at the Melbourne Wr...

What shall I worry about today? There are a number of choices. [NB: the state of the world is an ongoing given, no surprises there.] Wil...

67 years ago tonight (thanks to Persiflage for the correction to my always-shocking arithmetic), at Adelaide's first-ever Carols by Ca...

"If one takes the normal American ambition to be the pursuit of happiness, and charts the ways in which that pursuit is so cruelly t...

To use what might be considered an unfortunate expression, I have no dog in this fight. I'm a straight woman in her late 50s with no in...

I originally wrote this as part of the comment conversation on the last post, but I'd quite like to say something positive about journal...

In which the very savvy Mr Benjamin Law takes a screen shot of SA Liberal MP Michael Pengilly's Tweet this morning in response to one fr...

... now that the standard November pile of work has been whittled down almost to a reasonable level. (And don't think I'm not gratef...

This kind of stuff -- students buying pre-written essays to memorise and then regurgitate (and I use the verb advisedly) in their HSC exam...

Never having heard of this delightful young woman, though I sure as hell have now, I was mesmerised by this song on the car radio this aft...

Okay so this is totally a First World problem and a very minor one at that. If that offends you, stop reading now. Ahem. There's this ...

From his first novel Open City by Teju Cole, who is a Nigerian New Yorker and professional historian of early Netherlandish art: The cl...

Latika Bourke on Twitter: "Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says the # Qantas dispute 'isn't a Workplace relations problem...this...

Quoted in a report tonight: Bob Brown: 'This lockout is also a sellout of the spirit of Australia.' Tony Abbott: 'It is t...

'There's only one thing worse than being talked about, and that's not being talked about.' -- Oscar Wilde (From Boo...

I had to be dragged, not exactly kicking and screaming but certainly emitting weak staticky signals of protest, onto Twitter. But now that...

How have I managed never to see this before? Thanks to Lucy Sussex for the link.

UPDATE, 27/10/11: I am reliably informed that the AGNSW did indeed have copies of the other books and had either sold them all or not unpac...

I have done all of these things so I know whereof I speak. In ascending order of reluctance: 1) Give blood 2) Give a speech to a crowd, u...

What on earth does the Leader of Her Maj's Opposition think he means by 'blood pledge' ? Doesn't he know that Talk Like A ...