What would John Galt do? Ayn Rand and all that.

I went through my Leo Tolstoy binge when I was about 24. I finally bit the bullet and read War And Peace, and then backed it up with Anna Karenina. I must say, whilst War And Peace is both epic on the grand scale and deeply moving closer to home, I think, as a novel, …

Down the Rabbit Hole – the Musical Tragedy of Grace Slick

I doubt that I would ever make a good music critic. A bloke at work whom I sometimes manage is a drummer, and one of the bands he was in happened to be ARIA nominated (he refuses to clarify which one exactly it was), and whilst one of my friends from the office assures me …

Being from the Countdown Generation….

I’m what is commonly known as from Generation X. Here in Australia, we could also be called the Countdown Generation. Countdown was a popular one hour weekly music show on the ABC from 1974 to 1986, hosted by former music producer Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum. It usually featured as guest host some popular musician or band, …

Welcome to the Big Smoke….

Until this month, whenever I have walked around the city at lunchtime and noticed various international students wearing face masks to filter out the pollution, I have thought them rather silly. After all, this is Melbourne, not Kuala Lumpur or Beijing. Guess who is laughing on the other side of his face now?!? This morning, …

Amway – Hilarious Blog to visit!

Amway strikes me as a really efficient way to lose your friends and alienate your family. My only direct experiences of multilevel marketing are two separate instances where acquaintances and friends of mine got entangled into Amway and its Australian offshoot Omega Trends and tried to get me involved (out of politeness I heard them …

White Ribbon Foundation – How to spot when a charity is not worthy of your support….

I have a reasonably good and prosperous life, so I do like to give back, albeit probably not as much as I should or can afford. I have several charities to whom I have authorised direct debit on a monthly basis, as the main way that I give back. One of them is, or rather …

Grill’d’s latest controversy…

If you get to know me, you will realise that proper use of apostrophes is one of those things I go a bit OCD about. The above heading, where I chose to use a possessive apostrophe with the word “Grill’d” which does not exactly need a contraction, is something which almost sent me a little …

The Simple Suburban Peasant Life….

Yesterday afternoon, I picked a giant bowl of strawberries from my strawberry patch in my back yard. This is what I, in my mundane lower middle class suburban existence, see as getting back in contact with my peasant origins! Yet, as my mother might say (and does, most times I visit her), I have not …