The Journal
Language and Literature
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Literature and the Search for Liberty
This essay by Mario Vargas Llosa is a month old now. It has been available since then behind paywalls. I only today found a site where the whole essay is available free. This is the first few paragraphs: What is…
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Jennifer Jones And The Corridors Of Time
I have finally finished my teen fantasy novel Jennifer Jones and the Corridors of Time. It will be published under the pen name Wynford Wilde. Now begins the process of finding an agent! This is the…
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Baz Luhrmann’s Gatsby To be Filmed in Sydney
Sydney beats New York for Gatsby – a thumb in the eye for New York. Great news for New South Wales and a $120 million boost for the Australian film industry. Luhrmann has a chance with Gatsby to…
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Oh Sarah, You’re So Dumb
Or maybe not. Sarah tweeted that she wasn’t happy with low-life leftist website Gawker (no link for them!) quoting large passages of her new book out of context, and without her permission. This was Gawker’s reply:…
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Beauty from Dust
This is neat. Scott Wade is an American artist who wanders around supermarket car parks looking for dirty cars. What he finds is dust. These are samples of what he leaves:
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I Can’t Wait Not to See This
I really enjoyed Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy, starting with ‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,’ and I really enjoyed the Swedish film version. It was well acted, perfectly paced, and captured the atmosphere of the book brilliantly.…
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The Goresicle
In honour of former vice-president Gore, Qohel is pleased to announce a new literary form, the goresicle. The goresicle is a short poem of ten lines or less. It has lines that do not scan, and…
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Quadrant Grant Slash A Disgrace
via Australian Conservative. During the years of the Howard government, the funding of left-wing magazines like Meanjin and Overland was never reduced. The Literature Board of the Australia Council has just reduced Quadrant’s grant (which is used entirely…
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Tightly Grasp Your Eyeballs
Or if you like, preese not feed fishes with your private. The Courier-Mail, not quite as dismal a rag as many Australian dailies, has an article about Shanghai’s ongoing crackdown on Chringrish. The article links to…
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Presstitutes
Ha, ha. I don’t know who invented this word, noted here by Michalle Malkin, but it describes some of the mainstream media perfectly. Except prostitutes only sell their bodies to make a living. Many journalists seem…
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Frank Devine
Frank Devine, Christian and journalist, is dead at age 77. Frank was born in New Zealand (as I was) but was a genuine Australian. Like his adopted country, he was dry, beautiful (for his character and his writing), harsh (sometimes)…
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On The Meanings of Words
In this case, marriage. Inevitable disclaimer: I like some gay people, OK? I like about the same proportion of gay people I know as straight people I know. My brother is gay. My brother in law is…
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Who’s A Snollygoster?
World Wide Words defines a snollygoster as ‘a shrewd, unprincipled person, especially a politician.’ Snollygoster has not been heard much for the last sixty years. President Truman used it in 1952, and defined it, either in ignorance or…
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Espresso Book Machine
Angus and Robertson in Melbourne installed one of the 1.5 model of these brilliant machines in September last year. Now Blackwell’s in London have installed one of the new EBM 2.0 models. The Espresso Book Machine can print a…
