Journal
Articles
Dressed for success
Hip-hop was about taking this mainstream look – a nice, acceptable, appropriate look – and, like, changing it up. Sampling it like it’s a song and turning it into something new. So when preppy emerged in mainstream white corporate culture, it started mixing with denim in new ways and mixing with sneakers in new ways and becoming a form of streetwear.
Their presence
Straight away you’re taller, sprung firm andspry by their ecstatic vocal runs and upscaling,by their tripping lightly over pages...
Sonnet for the weekend
Glory to God for long weekends,for lattes served by obsequious baristas,sunnied eggs and bacon with the crispy ends,for an...
History in Sid Meier’s Civilization VI
Because they spawn near each otherdiscover one another’s dog-scoutsSparta and Gandhi are contemporariesthe Eurotas river and the Gangesmuddying into...
Louche
On the bleached beachof café seats, he’s drenched, hairslicked, tarnished as tinespulled up from a shipwreck, savea naughty part:silver...
Just like the day before and the day
after and the day beyond thatday and all the days,chairs stack up in silentrestaurants, bicycle couriers carryon past hire...
At the subway station
In a world of cunning shadesI’m the only sleuth. I hop on the train bound for a futureI’ve been hired...
Australia v. The Superhero Film
While Australian cinema has proven itself in most genres, the superhero film remains our kryptonite. We’ve made very few attempts, and they’ve been as bold as they are baffling, rife with McCarthyism, metaphysics and alien orgies. Join me, as I introduce you to The Return of Captain Invincible and Griff the Invisible: Australia’s two unlikely superhero movies, set apart by time and tone.
Help yourself
If we cannot live in the world and escape self-help, as the memoirist Jessica Lamb-Shapiro so wryly observes, we can hardly condemn its virulence without also being struck by its sheer resilience. At best, self-help might broadly inform, inspire and instruct, representing one of the most obvious – though not the most auspicious – mechanisms through which psychological and philosophical insights diffuse to a generalist audience.
Undervalued and overlooked
Western Sydney is home to half of Sydney’s population, and 10 per cent of the population nationwide. In other words, at least 10 per cent of the nation lives in a metropolitan area with almost no bookstores. But the real kicker is this: in Western Sydney, it’s almost impossible to buy books by authors who write from and about Western Sydney.
Behind the bestsellers
The argument that independent and small book grocers have a more impressive and widespread range has held for a long time, but in May, Big W was awarded the prestigious Book Retailer of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIAs)... Recognition on this level legitimises the sales of books for half their value.
Giving ethnics response-ability in multicultural Australia
The poles of evil White nationalist and good White nationalist hold between them the thread of the White nation fantasy – the good White nationalist (who believes in the good of multiculturalism) can only exist if the evil White nationalist (the racist Hansonite) also exists...
