I'm old enough to know that I don't have any answers, but that won't stop me talking
The phrase “Land of the Long Weekend” was coined by the late conservative Melbourne psychologist and sociology commentator Ronald Conway, as the title of a book he published in 1976. I have not read that book, but I consider, just like Donald Horne’s 1963 classic The Lucky Country, the phrase itself has passed into Australian …
Continue reading “The Land of the Long Weekend – Reflections on Australia Day”
Aside from my occasional fix of AFL, I am not really that interested in sport, although I wish I had bothered to watch the Indian test team win against the odds in the final batting session of the fourth test today. Reading on my news feed stories about how many of the tennis players and …
In the mid 1980s, a little known cult known (in as original a way as possible) as the Jesus Christians decided on a major publicity stunt. They announced that several of their members were to prove their faith in the Lord by walking across the Nullarbor without supplies. For those of my readers in mainland …
The first Sinclair Lewis novel I read, probably most aptly, was ‘Can’t Happen Here’. It is a dark and pessimistic story about a populist demagogue, probably based in part on Huey Long, who turns himself from US President to Fascist Dictator. It was one of his later novels, written in the 1930s, where issues in …
Continue reading “Can’t Happen Here? Observations on the Situation in the USA”
Early last year, I wrote in this blog that I had chosen to adopt the NFL’s perpetual underachiever, the Cleveland Browns, as my NFL team. After all, as a lifetime supporter of the Footscray Football Club (aka Western Bulldogs), I find underdog teams quite endearing. Well, perhaps my decision to adopt them has proven lucky, …
As a small child, my parents took me each year to have my photo taken with the Santa enthroned in the (now long gone) Forges of Footscray department store. I suspect it (like my baptism, first communion and confirmation) were things that were more for my parents’ benefit than for me – a photo of …
Continue reading “Stop Laughing – This is Serious! Why ‘Haha’ is not funny.”
A lot of memes have been sent to me over the past few days marking the end of the old year and the start of the new year. Most of them farewell 2020 with some profanities of some sort – I will not repeat them because, as Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, swearing gives people an …
You can probably surmise that I am a fan of Tolkien.
Nature-wise, 2020 has been a good year for sighting native animals in my street. I saw a kookaburra across the road in August, and in autumn I sighted an owl in my gum tree on two separate nights. There have been various sightings of marbled geckos, mostly around the BBQ. And on the weekend, I …
During the current trade crisis with Communist China, I have been reading a lot about Chinese ownership of various Australian interests. Aside from wineries (an issue very close to my heart), Chinese Communist interests own Ansell, Swisse, Bellamys, Altinta Energy, and Energy Australia. Landbridge, a Chinese company closely aligned to the communist regime, has a …
Lost For Words!