Category Archive: LIFE
Bloomsday
June 16 (1904) June 16 is the day we commemorate Ulysses, the massive (“unreadable modernist”)* novel by James Joyce (2/2/1882 to 13/1/1941) which turns on events on that day in Dublin. It is structurally based on The Odyssey, a work written a few thousand years ago (Leopold ‘Poldy’ Bloom is Odysseus, or Ulysses in Roman parlance; Marion Bloom is Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus is Telemachus), so that episodes, action (if you can call it action – not a whole lot happens) and characters follow, roughly, Homer’s book. Psychologically, Joyce adds the modernising shade of Hamlet. For The Varnished Culture, the novel is too big…
Continue Reading →A Last Crusade
"Siege of Zadar" by Andrea Vicentino
Memo to Christians from a fellow-traveller, an unbelieving, yet sympathetic on-looker: You’re losing. You seem to be clueless (although at least not mute at last), about the Islam-O-Nuts. “Peace to all men” is not cutting it. “Turning the other cheek” simply tears you a new scar. And as George VI put it, wars can no longer be confined to the battlefield. There’s no use warning of the dangers of schism, or pooh-poohing fights over the prophet’s succession (H. G. Wells commented: “To watch this schism creeping across the brave beginnings of Islam is like watching a case of softening of the brain.”*)…
Continue Reading →New Australians of the Year
The Council of The Wise has announced a new category of Australian of the Year. Those eligible for “New Australian of the Year” are those great men and women from foreign forebears or other shores, folks whose lives were the template for, and reflect, the current splendid diversity that forms the Australian nation. Nominees can be alive or dead and must embody a facet of the country’s contemporary essence. Categories were submitted to the 2020 Summit (April 2008, which was designed by Prime Minister Rudd to “help shape a long term strategy for the nation’s future.”) Since then, over the last 8 years,…
Continue Reading →Starman
He had been a surgeon; One of the best. Now he’s a fugitive, You know the rest. Tis a technical bent, The hand must be strong, Some of his best work Could not right the wrong. Here’s a funeral scene To mark a mishap; His Practice declines, The quack gets a slap. He takes to the bottle, He has a new view, A fresh decree nisi And a Google Review. Kicked-off the campus And out of his house, With five star abuse His Fund disendows. “He said there’s no risk,” The blogs richly lied, And, gently cascading, The stars scarified. Soon…
Continue Reading →“Let’s Do It for Willow” Glenelg v West Adelaide
Glenelg Tigers vs West Adelaide Bloods @ Glenelg, 27 May 2017 Do you remember the old-fashioned “spray”? That’s when a coach feels it is time to get in the face of a team that has promise, potential and polish, but doesn’t seem to produce it when required. On Saturday, after three insipid quarters against bottom-of-the-barrel West Adelaide, that’s what the Glenelg Tigers got. Senior Coach Matthew Lokan spent a good chunk of ‘lemon time’ delivering a fair old bake to the team that trailed a team with a player list bulleted by injuries and AFL absentees. At that stage, it…
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