These three cleverly-designed clocks make the world look nicer… and the gods know we need that on a Monday morning!
The Compulsory 9/11 Post
Until now I’ve avoided adding to the 11 September outpourings. It’s important, yes, but it takes time to reflect. And I don’t really remember it anyway. Garth Kidd‘s phone call woke me. A plane had crashed into the World Trade Centre, he said. I told him it wasn’t my fault, I couldn’t do anything about it — and went back to sleep.
Oops.
Five years on, I’m not mourning. I didn’t know anyone there. There’s only subdued anger. I’m angry that the deaths of 2749 human beings (plus 19 terrorists) have since been used for questionable political ends. Angry that Australia seems to have gone along with everything that’s come out of it, like a faithful little lap-dog. (However even the most cowardly little lap-dog will bark when he’s asked to do something wrong.) And angry that America’s worst ever terrorist attack has such a stupid name.
Eürobeat: Julia Zemiro touched me!
I’m a fan of Julia Zemiro, host of SBS’s RocKwiz, so it was a sublime pleasure to see her play the “beautiful and beguiling” co-host Bronya, “the face of modern Bosnia-Herzegovina,” in the Eurovision send-up stage show Eürobeat on Thursday night.
Julia is Bronya and, with the delightfully self-conscious Sergei (Jason Geary), brings us the the stilted, tacky presentation we come to know and love from the “real” contest. The rest of the cast captures perfectly the gamut of eurotrash — from the UK’s cheesey duo Rayne & Sheiner’s I Love To Love To Love (Love) and Russian boy-band KGBoys with Ice Queen (“She’s frozen my heart.”) to Iceland’s Björk-esque Gert Grollmersdetter and Love Ballad #3A.
Many good words have already been written about this show, including an article in the Sydney Morning Herald. And I agree, this is all great fun. Yes, plenty of jokes about goats, and turnips. But this is Eurovision: cliché is compulsory.
“Honourable” is a nice compliment
My good friend and colleague Zern Liew gave me a copy of Cubicle Commando today — not as you might guess from the title some sort of military-themed gay beat sex DVD, but a new book he co-authored with Lisa Messenger.
Inside he thanks…
Stilgherrian for being one of the most perceptive and honourable people I have had the opportunity to learn from.
Am I chuffed or what? Of all the adjectives which could be used to describe me, I think “honourable” is one of the best ever.
“Essential”? It’s all a matter of perspective…
“Essential”, says the Macquarie Dictionary (Fourth Edition), means “absolutely necessary; indispensable: discipline is essential in an army“. But the new Thursday supplement in the Sydney Morning Herald, entitled essential: Style + Home + Health (not online), must work to a different definition.
Continue reading ““Essential”? It’s all a matter of perspective…”
Why the US space program is shite
Thanks for joining us. In the centre of the screen, wearing the white spacesuit — sorry, white Extra-Vehicular Mobility Unit — is Heidi Piper. This is her first Extra-Vehicular Activity in her brand new Extra-Vehicular Mobility Unit. Heidi’s current task is “remove aft solar array blanket box restraints”.
Judging by the loud clanging noises, followed by something falling off, Heidi’s task involves bashing something until it falls off.
No-one else seems bothered. I assume it’s OK to bash your space station until bits fall off.
You can’t quite see him, but up on the left is Joe Tanner. This is his sixth Extra-Vehicular Activity — oh, “spacewalk”, dammit! — so he gets to “mate the T5 to the J5” on the P4 truss segment.
That’s is, Joe plugs in a data cable.