Your daughter plays Frere Jacques in E Minor on the flute. The tune dwindles to its natural death. She looks you in the eye and says, “Did you like that?”
Instead of no, you say “I love how you did that first bit.” This is Lying by Evasion.
Your boss wants to know if you’ve finished the […]
One of my favourite road signs in Australia is planted in a coal-mining service town called Biloela. Marking the corner of the Inland and Dawson Highways, the sign promises two of Queensland’s more make-believe destinations: Banana and Dululu.
So enrapt, I took a snap in 2003, when passing through Biloela on the Great Cassowary Safari, […]
Tarzan swings, Tarzan falls,
Jane hangs onto Tarzan’s balls.
Now we know why Tarzan calls aaaaaaaaarrrrghh.
Anthropology is just one topic covered by kids’ rhymes, as I discovered the other week. The young poets also tackle ethnology, sex, hypocrisy, TV and brutality – all with a clap, a skip and a tempo allegro.
To find out more about the […]
Jimmy Barnes is part of Australia’s rock furniture. The former frontman for Cold Chisel has wailed a surplus of national anthems, from Khe Sanh to Flame Trees, from Cheap Wine to Working Class Man. Once that Glaswegian shrill breaks the silence, you can’t mistake the sound for any other creature.
Even after double-heart surgery this year […]
Just supply your gut response to the ten scenarios below, each one cropped from Richard Wiseman’s fascinating book - The Luck Factor (Arrow Books, 2004).
Because luck you’ll discover is as much attitude as a bouncing roulette ball. The mystic power, asserts Professor Wiseman, is less mystic as a cocktail of confidence, optimism and resilience, […]
Nearly a year ago, I heard about a guy called Tony. A Scottish animator. Late 20s. He took a working holiday in Hong Kong to create cute goblins for Asian TV.
Gig done, he flew into Oz to catch up with an old schoolmate, a brief stopover on his way home to Aberdeen. And that’s when […]
Mary had a little lamb
Her father shot it dead
Now Mary takes her lamb to school
Between two chunks of bread.
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Cinderella dressed in yella
Went downstairs to meet her fella.
On the way down her panties busted.
How many people were disgusted?
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Kids are masters of naughty rhymes. From eeny-meeny-miney to this sailor bloke going to sea-sea-sea, the playgrounds of the […]
Bullet point seems the way to go when introducing a police story:
+ Since 2003, after writing my true-crime book - One Down One Missing - I’ve been missing from the police beat.
+ That changed last month when Sunday Life magazine threw me into the scrimmage of the Domestic Violence Unit in western Sydney - […]
Watched a casino inside a casino last night. This mind-bending exercise took place in a Gold Class Cinema within the Crown Labyrinth – first a sneak peek at Oceans 13 and later a spree on the baize tables of Las Vegas, 3001.
So the new movie? Danny Ocean and his ever-chewing cohort Rusty Ryan amass the […]
Just posted the original draft for a Geoffrey Rush profile. For those who read the downsized feature in Sunday Life magazine this May, you’ll notice several changes, largely to obey the laws of ever-shrinking press space, as earlier chewed on this blog.
This draft, some 500 words longer than the mag version, has a lot more […]