Kenneth Turan complains about the "heartlessness" of modern arthouse films. Well, to use his closing examples, this fan of Fight Club has long since discovered the joys of Les Enfants du Paradis. And, while recognising that both are products of entirely different periods of filmmaking history and that neither has much in common with the other, I nonetheless like them both. And though the modern arthouse/indie scene sometimes has little going for it, it's not like the classic arthouse scene of the 1950s and 1960s was entirely marvellous. It's not like Antonioni or Bergman were exactly overflowing with joy and life...
8:50 PM | link
Interview with Roger Waters. Sample:
You get a lot of double-speak and double-think in this business. It's like U2 saying, 'Oh we have to play football stadiums otherwise all our fans can't see us'. That makes sense. But then why charge 60 quid a ticket? Why not charge five quid? So it's not for the fans. It's because they're in it for the money, or partially in it for the money.
I just looked up the Ticketek website to confirm the prices I'd heard for the Waters concerts here. Sure enough, the show at the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne on Monday, $89.90 for A Reserve and #132.00 for Premium Seating. So "why not charge five quid", Rog?
8:40 PM | link
OK, so Blogger's behaving like a complete cunt this afternoon. So instead of posting a bunch of links individually, I'm going to lump a few of them together in one hit, because I can't be fucked waiting for Blogger to take three hours to decide whether or not it'll post something.
Man whose dog was attacked by a cat describes the attack as a hate crime.
Tom Cruise legally straight. This is the sound of me giving a fuck about Tom's sexual preferences.
Remodelled, rereleased ET seems to have been a gigantic flop. In 1982/83, it pulled in half a billion pounds (I'm quoting this figure cos it's on the BBC site, I don't know the American $ amount). In 2002, it's pulled in less than five million in 26 countries over the Easter weekend.
Hundreds of billions of shareholder dollars wasted. That's what this report says, anyway. Makes me kind of glad I don't hold shares in anything...
Woman attacked by naked man wearing one rollerskate. Like she said, you don't normally run into people like that. It's the single rollerskate that intrigues me, though...
Peter Buck gets off scot-free with his drunken rampage. Which I presume only demonstrates the sort of lawyers you can get for yourself when you have lots and lots of money.
Teacher tries to cut class by making bomb threats. I predict we will now see a spate of students following her shining example.
Book on children and sexuality causing a fuss in the US. Then again, anything to do with sex seems to cause a fuss there. Decide for yourself whether or not this thing is "evil", as it's been called...
Ah, the old school tie. Good old Sydney Boys getting its name in the paper, this time over a push by certain Old Boys (among them my old Headmaster, Bob Outterside) to get government policy changed so that the offspring of former students who want to go there don't have to sit the same test as the rest.
As an Old Boy myself, all I can honestly say to this is: fuck them. I had to sit the test. I never had a father or a grandfather there. Why the hell should it be any easier for them that do? The Old Boy network is a fine enough thing, but I object to this nonetheless. Would it be unfair of me to suggest that this comment, reproduced from an interview in the current OBU newsletter, is a revealing one:
The demographic of the school are fast evolving and year 7 is currently 90 per cent Asian, which has the flow-on effect on the school's traditional sports of rowing, cricket and rugby.
In other words, too many Asian kids. Even I'm somewhat stunned by the figure; I remember we had a lot of them in our year, but certainly not that proportion. And as Mum said to me, pointing the article out to me, "isn't that disgusting?" I wonder if some of the blokes behind this had similar thoughts. So, an honest attempt to make things easier for the sons of old boys who they reckon deserve a place, or a late-in-the-day rearguard action to stop the Asians taking over completely? Either way, something about it doesn't sit well with me...
How Dubya spent March fighting against terror. Pretty damning.
4:12 PM | link
Jesus Christ but Blogger is fucking pathetic today. Is it just me, or is everyone else finding it's moving at a speed which would embarrass a snail?
3:16 PM | link
Ozzy Osbourne invited to White House. Life must be looking increasingly surreal to Ozzy at the moment. First his TV show, now this. Place your bets now as to how Tony Iommi will now try to muscle in on the game...
1:48 PM | link
Judge shows pro-government bias at hearing for John Walker Lindh. Now THERE's a shock. Wasn't I just accusing the Washington Times of stating the fucking obvious? Lindh is going to go down like Tim McVeigh went down, so that he can be made an example of. The outcome of whatever trial Lindh gets has already been determined, much as McVeigh's was. The only difference I can see is that Lindh apparently isn't getting the death penalty; don't know how they managed to let that slip...
1:39 PM | link
Publishing world in mourning as Oprah Winfrey closes down Oprah's Book Club. Apparently she just can't find enough "compelling" books to discuss on a monthly basis. Next: Oprah cancels her magazine after she runs out of poses for the cover shots...
1:22 PM | link
Politicians seen as a threat in Italy. Next: politicians seen as a threat everywhere else.
9:47 PM | link
The interference of the US administration in the affairs of Chile finally catching up with them.
7:26 PM | link
New Mexico government department wants you to know The West Wing is fiction. Talking of fucking idiots...
7:13 PM | link
Cybersquatter bilks man of much money. That said, something within me just thinks the man in question was a fucking idiot.
7:10 PM | link
Woman sues Florida jail from beyond the grave. Seems she hung herself in her cell and her suicide note left instructions for her lawyers to sue the jail for failing to stop her. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't she have the choice of whether or not to kill herself, and didn't she take it? Daft...
7:06 PM | link
Megadeth split. Sigh. Tis the season for long-running metal bands to be splitting, it seems. Wish some of those fucking nu-metal acts would do something similar...
6:54 PM | link
John Ashcroft to sing on Letterman? I'm sure I'm not the only one scared by this idea. Hope Letterman knows what he's doing...
6:50 PM | link
Japanese beer glasses that order their own refills. Next: Japan becomes an even bigger hotbed of alcoholism.
6:36 PM | link
J.M.W. Turner painting used as catflap. By Turner himself. I was rereading Evan Eisenberg's Re-Recording Angel the other night, in which he decries the uses some people put music to. It's obviously not a musical example, but I wonder what he'd make of Turner treating his own work with such apparent disrespect...
6:22 PM | link
The tale of the Egyptian sex film that took thirty years to get censorship approval. Oddly enough, it was a supposedly more liberal regime than the current one which first banned the script from being filmed in 1971.
2:24 PM | link
The continuing mystery of who wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey. New research claims it's likely the former is the work of one person, but the latter is probably a collective job. A shame the researchers couldn't also determine whether or not this actually makes a damn bit of difference...
2:03 PM | link
Another head-scratcher, this one about the Turin Shroud:
"The scientific facts leave me in no doubt," says Dr Lomas, a physicist who now lectures in Information Systems. "The cloth was used to wrap Jacques de Molay, the leader of a monastic order known as the Knights Templar and whose followers were given refuge by Robert the Bruce."
The idea, he says, might sound far fetched, but he’s confident it would stand up in court against the original claim.
"For a start, the radiocarbon dates fit. Also, de Molay was neither dead nor resurrected. The person in that shroud had to be alive to produce the image."
Unfortunately this still fails to explain precisely why it was actually done at all. What is a live person doing being wrapped up in a burial shroud like that? Why de Molay in particular? Answer me that.
1:59 PM | link
Republican Party not right-wing enough. And I know the people at Newsmax are pretty far-right, but this is just bewildering.
1:50 PM | link
Thai pop band composed of AIDS sufferers forced to disband. Apparently everyone in the band just keeps dying. The cause is worthy enough, to be sure, but this seems like a mighty odd way to go about promoting it...
1:46 PM | link
Man who threatened to kill Dubya to be represented during his trial by Jesus Christ. Why do I get the feeling he's been huffing some of that propane he claimed he was going to use against the Shrub? Still, at least the guy who runs that Jesus Images site should have a new drawing: Jesus Christ, Defence Attorney, With You Always.
1:40 PM | link
Teaching English with... garbage trucks? This is like something out of the Onion.
1:37 PM | link
Fighting the big book chains. I have mixed feelings about this myself, I must say. The whole politics of whether you should shop at a large shop or a small independent is something I've never entirely resolved within myself.
1:05 PM | link
Incidentally, I saw Monster's Ball the other day. While I still can't shake a certain suspicion regarding last week's Oscars, and though I think Billy Bob Thornton plays the better part (how the hell did he not get nominated?), it has to be said Halle Berry's damn good. It's a harrowing thing, the first forty minutes or so are almost unbearably intense and grim, and I don't know that it's the sort of thing I can easily recommend, but I will suggest people should see it. It's the sort of thing you need to be in a right frame of mind for (it's not light popcorn fare), but it's worth it. I reckon this and Gosford Park are the two best new releases here this year so far...
10:04 PM | link
Mark Adnum tears strips off Rabbit Proof Fence. I've not seen it, and must admit to not having much desire to. Something about the hype surrounding it, the self-righteousness of the surrounding discourse, was too off-putting for me. It basically looked like just another white liberal guilt trip and as such was of no interest to me. I know I need to see it before criticising it—after all, you never know when you're going to be pleasantly surprised—but Adnum's piece leads me to think my suspicions aren't baseless.
9:54 PM | link
Remaking, remodelling, rereleasing: in which Sandy Starr wishes certain Hollywood figures would get on with making good new films instead of tooling about with their good old ones.
9:42 PM | link
Alex Beam: does he really understand this weblog thing, or is he just being a supercilious little cunt?
Welcome to Blogistan, the Internet-based journalistic medium where no thought goes unpublished, no long-out-of-print book goes unhawked, and no fellow ''blogger,'' no matter how outre, goes unpraised.
So that's what blogging's all about. Hmm. I better start writing about everything I find on the Net rather than decide about a reasonably large number of things "nah, that's actually not interesting" and talking up more books that people can't find anywhere, including myself. As for that last bit, I'm pretty outre, and I don't recall seeing myself praised in anyone's blog yet...
4:55 PM | link
Witchcraft in African soccer. Damn, can't they just do drugs like sportspeople here? Do they have to bring magic into it?
4:45 PM | link
Another amusing Bruce James art review. If he's the person I'm thinking of, who used to be art critic on some ABC arts review program in the mid-90s, then I must say he works better in print... only ever struck me as weird and insufferable on TV. I remember reading reports at the time claiming he actually had a bit of a cult following, which unfortunately never extended to me. I like him well enough in print though; may well check this exhibit out too...
4:39 PM | link
This is the policeman who got shot not that far from where I live. He died. Now that it's murder, may the cunt who pulled the trigger rot for it.
4:34 PM | link
Jodee Rich claims Kerry Packer wanted his right testicle. Literally? I can actually kind of imagine Kerry doing that. Though to be sure, there would probably be a shitload of people wanting to tear a chunk out of Jodee before him...
4:26 PM | link
Islamic nations conference fails to agree on a definition of terrorism, claims the UN is better placed to do that sort of thing. Oh, and apparently attaching bombs to people and sending them into public places to explode and kill people is not terrorism. Next: Islamic world still wonders why non-Islamic world hates it...
4:23 PM | link
Texan town likes resident, but curses him for being an atheist. Personally I've always thought the quality of a person's actual behaviour in life more important than their theoretical beliefs, but not everyone has evidently got that far.
4:08 PM | link
School rejects "Predator" as mascot as it reminds them too much of Catholic priests getting it on with kids.
4:03 PM | link
The Middle East: a worst-case scenario. The subheading intrigues me: "how the crisis could push the region's armies into a conflict beyond their control". Funny, but I could've sworn it already was.
4:00 PM | link
Poor sleep habits linked to moodiness, other problems. No. Really. Who'd have ever thought it.
3:57 PM | link
Alice Echols on the 1960s. I hope she doesn't think her claim about how the 1960s tend to be viewed in a fairly simplified and romanticised way these days is actually original, cos I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one to have noticed this before too...
3:55 PM | link
The Internet Archive: trying to make sense of the Internet. It's a worthy enough idea, but at no point does it address the minor issue of copyright. For example, a quick search of the site reveals copies of my own web pages grabbed back in October 1999, but I've given no permission for the reposting of my material. However good the idea is, I fear he's going to run up against someone soon with a bit more legal clout than me and a greater propensity to sue for copyright infringement...
3:25 PM | link
Phil Donahue may be returning to talk show hosting. Evidently they couldn't find some new hack to host a talk show so they had to bring an old hack out of retirement. There's also talk of Sally Jessy Raphael being invited to do the job, which makes me wonder why they bothered cancelling her show a few weeks ago...
3:17 PM | link
September 11 mythmaking. No, not of the Boeing-never-hit-the-Pentagon type...
3:14 PM | link
The Afghan film renaissance. Personally I didn't know Afghanistan even made films before the Taliban rocked up in 1996, but it seems they did, and more to the point, are making them again.
3:10 PM | link
South African DJ fired for April Fool joke about the death of Robert Mugabe. I think expelling Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth, as if that was actually going to stop him being a bad boy, was a better joke...
2:57 PM | link
Another sporting stamp error. Does no one check these fucking things before going to print?
2:54 PM | link
Ah, Onion fresh! "Ruutel replied with an angry six-page e-mail blasting Suriname's decision to form an alliance with Estonia's unfriendly neighbor. When Venetiaan responded by sending a Golden Girls "I'm Sorry" Lifetime Network e-card, Ruutel placed his country on full military alert."
2:31 PM | link
Debra McCorkle on Bily Graham. My mother's a bit of a Billy Graham fan. I don't think she knows about this business of him making anti-Jewish remarks. Worst thing is, if she did, I don't think it'd make a difference. She'd either refuse to believe it or just brush it off. That said, being essentially irreligious (though having a certain comparative interest in the subject) as I am, I've never had a huge opinion of Graham, and I can't say this has really lessened my own view of him...
8:06 PM | link
The return of Media Watch! About damn time, the media needs someone to keep them on their toes and Media Watch has been away for too long. And fuck Piers Akerman. So David Marr will bring his own particular prejudices to the position of hosting the show, will he? How exactly does that differ from what Piers does when he sits down to hurl forth his latest piece of right-wing bile?
7:49 PM | link
So it's the mainstream rock scene who are fucking with the form and the alternative hipsters being retrogressive. Good lord, there's an original observation. And dig this:
There is much to dislike about Linkin Park. The group's album is formulaic, their lyrics are often inane, and even their catchiest songs aren't memorable. But Linkin Park also exemplify hard rock at its most open-minded, with a line-up that includes a rapper and a DJ; nearly every song juxtaposes heavy riffs with ambient electronic sounds. If none of this seems revolutionary, thank Korn, Limp Bizkit and Rage Against the Machine, who transformed rap-metal from a novelty into a commonplace.
Commonplace is the word all right. For all that the author snipes at the Strokes and Ryan Adams and the White Stripes for lack of originality, I'll be damned if I can work out how the originality of these other folks necessarily makes them any better than the latter three...
7:44 PM | link
Absolutely fucking pathetic. So the poker machines are taking over clubs and pubs, creating a gambling addiction problem, and what does the government do to help prevent this? Orders the machines be switched off from six to nine in the morning. I don't know if it's just me or what, but how many people are actually in pubs and clubs then? And how many of those are playing pokies? If they wanted to put a dent in the pokie industry instead of looking like they're good friends with them, perhaps good old Dick Face should've made it six to nine in the evening...
7:35 PM | link
Chilean McDonald's sues woman for a million bucks after she claimed their burgers gave her son food poisoning. Doesn't take much to set them off, eh? Must've been that fine the outlet in question got when it was found by the government health inspectors to have excessively high bacteria levels...
7:26 PM | link
Six men jailed in Missouri for having gay sex. Yes, it's actually still illegal there to have same-sex relations. I'm bewildered by the prosecutor's comments:
"It is not my intention to judge the conduct of consenting adults," Wilkins told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for a story in yesterday’s editions. "This is not about throwing homosexuals in jail. This is about trying to prevent future conduct."
So if he's trying to prevent gay conduct, precisely how is he not judging these people's conduct by jailing them? I don't get it.
7:21 PM | link
A French book about the "missing Boeing" at the Pentagon is becoming a smash hit. So the American government invented that bit about the Pentagon? Well, I remember watching the events as they happened on TV late at night as it was here, and I distinctly recall all of this happening at the same time. The planes flew into the WTC, the Pentagon got hit, then the towers came down. Unless I'm much mistaken, that's kind of how things actually came across on the TV, live, as it was happening, there and then, etc.
I really don't get it. Unless the government also orchestrated the entire terrorist attack, how could they have faked the Pentagon thing? It's not like they had time, did they, "whoops, two planes just hit the WTC, quick, make it look like something happened here too..." Um. No, I don't think so. I trust the US government and its motives for doing things—I think they're using the events of the last six months as a convenient lever to get into Iraq now, whether or not the activity is justifiable—but I somehow can't bring myself to believe they pulled this stunt. If only because the thought that anyone in the US gov't could be so cynical as to plan and carry out these attacks on their own territory, just so they could be excused for bombing the shit out of the Middle East like they've always really wanted to do but couldn't just go in and do it without a reason, is too horrible and vile to contemplate.
7:00 PM | link
Are blogs killing journalism? Maybe, maybe not, but frankly, if some of the shite you see on programs like A Current Affair is journalism, or if some of the stuff the Telegraph publishes is journalism, is it such a bad thing if they are?
6:48 PM | link
Afghan man fights hunger by eating stones. This should be funny, but it's not. Still, given the recent activities of the US military in Afghanistan, at least he'll have plenty of rubble to feed on...
6:39 PM | link
Another mildly amusing April Fool thing. Still, if it were for real, AOL would be more than welcome to this one. Honestly. Twenty million bucks and it's theirs. I have no problems, nor indeed any integrity, when it comes to large sums of money.
6:34 PM | link
Why famous people go nuts when staying in hotels. And if Enrico Caruso's any indicator, it's not a recent rock star trend either.
6:31 PM | link
Now this is a dispute. "They said the two fought over a chicken dinner. Norington accused Hale of taking more than his share and attacked him with an ashtray, pliers, a hammer, a fire extinguisher, a dumbbell and, finally, a knife, then called 911 about 2:30 a.m. to report the incident, prosecutors said."
6:22 PM | link
Tales of media censorship. This is quite terrifying, in its way.
4:55 PM | link
Oddly enough, given that it's April Fool's Day today, the only April Fool joke I've seen is this not exactly shining specimen:
EXCLUSIVE: CHILDREN OVERBOARD - THE MUSICAL
1/4/2002: Refugee Proof Fence is the working title of a controversial big budget musical satire with a screenplay by Roy and HG, on Australia’s ‘children overboard’ scandal, to be directed by Phil Noyce, starring Hugh Jackman and Kylie Minogue, with music by Elton John and Paul Kelly.
This from Urban Cinefile. Still, given the time differences between here and the rest of the world, it'll have been April Fool's Day in the US and elsewhere tomorrow. So more things may roll in then.
10:25 PM | link
Like Mac Thomason, I'm damned if I can understand the rationale behind deliberately wanting to have a hearing-impaired child. The deaf community thing is all fine and well, but I can't help but think this is downright wrong. Wonder what Jim Roots, alt.movies.silent's resident deaf person, makes of this...
1:28 PM | link
If the Italian gov't was pissed at The Australian's review of the Italian masterpieces show in Canberra, they'll hate this. Some samples from Bruce James' SMH review:
The Italians: Three Centuries of Italian Art seems to be less a considered curatorial enterprise than an opportunistic ensemble of loans gathered at relatively short notice. It contains a worrying percentage of minor, or simply uninteresting works. [...] Far worse in my view was Sgarbi's performance at the press conference called last week to answer criticisms of the show. He made Halle Berry's Oscar night histrionics look understated. Instead of serving the national honour of either Italy or Australia, he shamed both. In no democratically accredited society in the Western world have opera buffo ejaculations ever advanced the cause of art-historical scholarship. [...] The introductory essays [in the exhibition catalogue] are scattershot, even tokenistic. Sgarbi's is arguably culturally offensive to Australians. It is certainly patronising. All of this indicates a hurried compilation and decisions made on the run.
I can see the lawsuits piling up over this one. Read it in full, it's all good.
12:47 PM | link
Doctor surrenders licence in order to avoid a raft of charges. Among them, hilariously, is a claim that he would keep falling asleep while administering anaesthesia in operations. Was he administering some to himself while he was at it or something?
12:38 PM | link
Does anyone honestly think slapping a tax on soft drinks will do a damn thing to reduce the rate of childhood obesity? They put taxes on cigarettes, and guess what? PEOPLE STILL SMOKE!!!!! And they still die of lung cancer too!
12:32 PM | link
Seems that everyone in the "blogosphere" is talking about the current wave of suicide bombers in Israel, and variously taking sides with the Israelis or the Palestinians—mostly against the latter, as far as I can see. As for me, I'm just going to make this one blanket statement before moving on: I don't care who you are, what side of the equation you're on, your cause is or how worthy and righteous it may be. If you think that killing innocent folk is necessary and/or desirable to further that cause, then you are scum, pure and simple; and if there is an afterlife then I hope there are places reserved in Hell for you, whoever you may be.
12:27 PM | link
More Australian political leadership bullshit: Aden Ridgeway reckons the Democrats should never have replaced Meg Lees with Natasha Stott-Despoja. Well, I don't think John Howard should've been made prime minister, but at least I know I never voted for the bastard. As Natasha's deputy leader, I presume Aden would've voted for her in the April 2001 leadership ballot, so if he's not happy now then it's his problem. Is it just me or is a Democrat version of the recent Chikarovski/Brogden switch coming up?
12:13 PM | link
Scottish kiltmakers fight over whether or not celebrities are devaluing the dignity of the kilt. Better get Scottish parliament to decide on this one, they're probably not doing anything else useful or important anyway...
11:48 AM | link
Thief steals swimming pool. When I saw that headline, I must say that at first I thought they'd actually nicked it out of someone's backyard, which would've been way more impressive than just driving off in a truck with the uninstalled pool sitting in the trailer...
11:40 AM | link
Archbishop of Nebraska blasts Catholic parishioners critical of him in local newspaper, orders them to do penance. Goddamn but some people really do have thin skins, don't they? Methinks the good archbishop needs to work out what's a greater disgrace to the church: people criticising him in the local secular press, or priests looking up kiddie porn on the Net from their office at the local high school...
3:35 PM | link
US prosecutors deny John Walker Lindh is being mistreated in custody. Translation: "stop whining, the little bastard's still alive, isn't he? What more do you want?"
3:26 PM | link
How Churchill convinced Hitler that the latter's flying bombs had done more damage to London than they actually had. Though I can't help but wonder if the people who lived in South London and Kent, which were "sacrificed", as the article says, to protect other parts of London, were terribly happy about being sacrificed in this manner; if a flying bomb came through my roof and killed my family, and the fucking PM told me it was for the greater good, I'd be leading an insurrection...
3:11 PM | link
Did Pope Clement V actually pardon the Knights Templars before they were exterminated? Seems he did; long-lost documents pertaining to a secret trial have supposedly come to light claiming old Clement forgave Jacques de Molay et al, but that he was too scared to publicise this absolution in case it provoked a church schism; the Templars were duly wiped out and the absolution document lost for centuries. Strikes me as odd, though, that you'd have a public trial to kill them all and a private one to let them off the hook. I don't know...
3:06 PM | link
Marshal Tito's ghost haunts Belgrade apartment block. Honestly, building things over old military graveyards must be as bad as building them over old Indian burial grounds...
2:59 PM | link
Scottish prisoners given methadone to wean them back onto drugs. Yes, just when I thought the French cloning rabbits was the stupidest thing I was going to read about all day, along came this. Apparently, if the prisoners claim they're likely to go back to smack again when they get out of jail, they get methadone in jail to make it easier for them upon release. Um... none of the people responsible for this have ready Junky, have they, the book by William S. Burroughs? The one in which Burroughs is forced to take a cure for his addiction instead of being encouraged by officialdom to maintain it (which is how I think of the legal shooting gallery in Kings Cross here, just a form of government-sponsored addiction)? Is it not better to have people off drugs altogether rather than actively encourage the drug trade like this? You'd think so, but apparently they don't... sigh.
2:56 PM | link
Berlin church holds "laughing service" for Easter. "That Jesus, right? Back from the dead, right? HA HA HA HA! How funny is that, I mean really, dying for our sins and then coming back from the dead, that's priceless, that is... oh, God, I've laughed so much I've got a pain in my side... hey, I'm bleeding down there... and holy shit, where did these holes in my hands come from?" Parenthetically, as well as being Easter, it was the end of daylight saving here this weekend also, meaning the clocks go back an hour. This led me to wonder the other day, if we get another hour in bed for daylight saving, would Jesus have got another hour in the tomb?
2:41 PM | link
Another avowedly left-leaning blog, for those of you who find such things important. I've no doubt there will be interesting things in it, though for some reason I find myself faintly suspicious of liberal-minded bloggers who link to Tim Blair, who'd most likely just sneer at their puny liberal ideals...
2:30 PM | link
I've noticed a certain fondness for ridiculing the French out there in the "blogosphere". Glenn Reynolds from Instapundit seems particularly keen on it, but frankly I find it kind of tiresome. Still, when French scientists are busy cloning the last animal that needs help reproducing, it's perhaps no bloody wonder they do it...
2:20 PM | link
RIP Queen Mum, 1900-2002. I'm not a Royals fan by any means, I think Charles and Andrew in particular have been a bit of a disgrace to the institution, but the Queen Mother always struck me as being harmless so I never had any beef with her. Poor old Queen Liz, eh, what a fucked year she's having. Margaret died, it's her 50th jubilee and hardly anyone seems to care, and now this... she's probably wondering what else can go wrong in the nine months of this year that still remain if the first three months have been this bad.
Got an email from my English correspondent Richard this morning. Mum had got a call about the Queen Mum and, since there was a while to go before the next newsbreak would come on the radio or TV, she asked would I hop online to see if there was any news about it on the Net. So I did, and collected my email while I was at it, and there was this message from Richard... which started by saying I'd no doubt heard the Queen Mum had shuffled off her mortal coil, but that he'd been in a record shop at the time she did so (about three in the afternoon UK time) and the CD he'd bought was The Smiths' The Queen Is Dead. Now that surely is timing...
1:33 PM | link
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Operating out of Sydney, Australia since February 2002. Designed for viewing at 800x600 or more.
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I have various reasons for linking the sites below (a link rarely constitutes a 100% endorsement, of course). I'm usually happy to link to anyone who specifically asks, or anyone who links to me. I reserve the right to remove any link at any time for any reason.
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Catallaxy Files
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What the critics have said
"short tempered, rude, sarcastic and generally unable to cope with authority figures"
-Martin Forrester-Reid (former employer)
"formidable"
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"outstandingly quirky"
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"prolific"
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"pithy"
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"excellent"
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"my Australian pal"
-Eric Olsen
"Who?"
-Glenn Reynolds
