It’s bittersweet, this travelling thing. As you go along and find new places, there’s always the knowledge that you can’t stay. When you meet new people along the way, the knowledge that you’ll soon have to leave them. A powerful sense of being transitory. When you’re really on the road it gets exaggerated. In a [...]

Gold indeed :) Yeah, you know I’m a cheese fan too. Rewind to the Paul van Dyk era for proof of that one. And like I said, the music’s ok. It’s just, like Cherny was alluding to, it could have been lifted from any 15-year-old girl’s mid-90s generic house album. But it was the self-important [...]

Hahaha! I should have known you’d be along sooner or later…

Courtesy of the mighty Gleep: Once again, The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its yearly neologism contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternative meanings for common words.

The winners  are:

1. Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one  coughs.

2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how  much weight you have gained.

3. Abdicate (v.), to  give up [...]

Nice. You guys add a touch of class.

Hah! I would have paid attention to his electric blue boots. I want some electric blue boots. I didn’t know I wanted them until you wrote that, but now my life is incomplete.

But yes, I always figured that local bands read their live reviews, and perhaps I’m more tactful in those situations. I just didn’t [...]

New mail from Rabbi :)

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I just bought a vending machine triple choc choc-chip cookie.  You know the ones that promise so much: I’m cookie, they say.  I have choc-chips, they say.  Half of me is covered in actual chocolate, they say.  You’re actually not sure what the third type of chocolate is, but you know it’s there.

The vending machine [...]

I didn’t know that my girlfriend had nearly died until a week after it happened. I was on my first trip to Antarctica in December 2004 when the Boxing Day tsunami hit Asia. She was in Phuket. We were due to meet in her home town of Kuala Lumpur in mid-January to live there together [...]

I’ve got so into the World Cup over here that I’ve started sportswriting for a website called The Roar. It’s something I’ve been interested in for a while, but hadn’t quite had the impetus to branch out. Now I am no longer confined to insulting Jason Singh – I have to figure out publishable ways [...]

This is actually about three weeks out of date now, but I forgot to post it so… you’ll have to deal.

*

Winter is officially here. I wasn’t supposed to see it, I was supposed to be sweltering on the coast of Salvador by now. But the Battle of Wounded Knee has kept me locked up deep [...]

Hahaha…People get fired up over Nokias? Really? The lamer the thing that they’re fanboys of, the funnier it gets. But this is like getting Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo himself down on the message boards saying “Hey! We make real good phooooones! Your a dumhed!!!1!!1!!”

…

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I gave a shake, Simon. Marmalade, love your work. One needs a firm grasp of scripture to read from the Book of Job. It’s a white-knuckle experience. Especially the bit about palm Sunday. But clearly you’re handy with your knowledge. Have you considered a role in the shadow ministry?

Dan, wacky adventures continue. It’s actually almost [...]

Well I gave it a shake, Simon. Marmalade, love your work. One needs a firm grasp of scripture to read from the Book of Job. It’s a white-knuckle experience. Especially the bit about palm Sunday. But clearly you’re handy with your knowledge. Have you considered a role in the shadow ministry?

Dan, wacky adventures continue. It’s [...]

Ahahaha! (again! I can’t believe how many good belly laughs I’ve had out of this.) Fox, that’s brilliant. Send it on to them. Then maybe their Google searches can be free of the black stain of my opinion. For everyone’s reference, I just listened to the song again on YouTube. It’s still not very good.

Dis [...]

This is the funniest thing that has happened…forever. When I first saw it I actually laughed so much that I started crying. Now, even half an hour later, I keep lapsing into fits of stupid giggles at the recollection.

It goes like this. I was asked for a CV today, for journalism-related purposes, and I realised [...]

If I said I injured myself badly in a Buenos Aires gay bar, you would assume there was an interesting story behind it. If I said I was injured trying to pick up a guy in a Buenos Aires gay bar, you’d figure there was a really interesting story behind it. If I said I [...]

Yeah, the love of a nation for sporting achievements is pretty fickle. Look at the amount of shit Palermo has received over the years, and then suddenly he’s man of the moment. Have a read of one of my Book Show articles here to get an idea of how Messi was viewed before the tournament. [...]

It is 3.45 on a Tuesday afternoon and Salta, a town of half a million people, is deserted. I mean, absolutely unequivocally completely deserted. Not one soul is visible on the streets. Like Arcade Fire said, no cars go. The traffic lights blink at empty intersections. The footpaths either side of the long boulevards run [...]

Yes, it’s true. We’ve gone home. This site is now a ghost ship with a skeleton crew. You can find us at our original site, where everything is now pretty and operational:
www.wordplay.org.au
Go to it! Listen and read and enjoy.

I have about ten half-finished posts in my folder, and I have to get up in three hours to go on a bus somewhere or other. So here are two pictures of sportsmen dancing.

Ok, this is one of the funniest things I’ve read in years. John the Pirate received this email a few days ago.
Hey dear!
How are you? I hope that all nice for you.
I write to you, because I want to find man from Europe.
My name is Liudmila and I am 29 years old.
I from city [...]

Thanks for the feedback guys, means a lot. I found writing all that out pretty fucking cathartic as well. And writing the spoken word piece was a buzz too. There is a kind of joy in the misery, and in getting past it.

And I love more than I can say that I have apparently [...]

Washington has gone home, and Buenos Aires is a little emptier. His grand final gesture was a valiant attempt to neck the remains of a bottle of Fernet while his taxi waited outside. “I can’t take it with me,” he reasoned, “so I have to finish it.” And on his special day no-one was going  [...]